I think this game mode really highlights some problems with this game that never mattered that much. Like how a surprising amount of characters don't have a good kit, have poor synergy with other characters and don't deal good enough damage to justify playing them. Genshin wasn't made with that in mind, which makes it so that in the theater you're just gonna have a dead slot character in the team to save a good one, and it's frustrating. Also, I think that the characters should go on a 2 wave cool down or something instead of just disappearing out of the run after they have been used up
I mean, for a gacha game that keep producing characters every patch for years, you cant expect each and every characters to be good, especially 4 stars. And this problem is shared with hsr or zzz too when they become as old as genshin.
@@Amir-ry7pp the issue isn't whether characters are good or bad, it's that characters aren't designed with diverse team building in mind at all. Take Bennett and Xiangling, for the evergreen example. The issue isn't that newer units don't measure up to them, the issue is that no new units are even copium alternatives to them - this game is 4 years old and the only two off field pyro alternatives to Xiangling are Thoma and Dehya. Genshin releases disproportionately more on field DPSers than anything else, and it sucks on a gamemode like theater because all of these on field DPSers are fighting for the same 3-4 support units. This was not an issue in Abyss because you only had to build two teams, but when you have to build 4-5 teams for Theater it suddenly becomes very obvious how over reliant Genshin's team building is on these same old characters.
It's not a roguelike, but it's not a problem. It's more like a puzzle, but quite scuffed atm. And I think that with the last battle event which they've separated into two stages (on the first one damage didn't matter, reactions and character mechanics were more important), they're looking for solutions for the Theater. Basically, to let battle stages use proper teams, and then on "other" stages players could just play with random stuff because of certain effects (like running around with one-shotting circle from this recent event). This way they could also lower entry requirements, because not all teams should be able to do damage at all.
Yea... it could've been so much more. Considering the staggering amount of bosses in this game, it would've been simple for them to add an endless roguelike mode, and randomize the enemy lineups each run, with bosses at the end. And if you remember, there was an event during the chasm patch,... the "Perilous Trail" event was a FANTASTIC way of making us utilize more characters. At the end of every 3 combat rounds, you had to remove 2 party members from your party. That would greatly incentivize people to build more characters, without it feeling "forced" like imaginarium theater.
cant speak of replayability when it differ from player to player but randomization is always there lmao. No way youre clearing the theatre with the same exact team from start to finish.
I HATE that the game forces you to run 4 characters each time The amount of times i had to use supports in teams that just needed 2 characters to clear but lost vigor for this stupid reason sucks Separate from that, I have no urge to play it. I have an urge to play abyss every once in a while but anytime theatre resets, it feels like a fucking chore
The problem is thet Theater doesn'T really work with Genshin mechanics at all. The fact thet it is random BS go is antithetical of the whole idea to build teams based on elemental synergise and character's personal kits. Genshin's characters are just not flexible enough to make it work. Other problem is thet because you lose your characters you can'T even use the buffing cards conssitently, the whole idea of a rouge-like/lite is thet as you play you get more and more random/semi-random buffs where you activly try to get the most synergistic ones to achive macimum power, but as the cards work in Theatre you can get a full burning build without any dendro character left in your roster and then your buffing cards all wasted. The whole Imaginarium Theatre fail as a Genshin game mode and as a rouge-like as well.
I think its unlikely that you gonna face with the issue of not having the character with the same element as the buffs you pick, when the mode restricts you to 3 element. And if you invest so much in burning, why didnt you save a few units for it for the final boss? Could be a resource management issue.
clear evidence that they don't listen to the right advice. apparently labyrinth was unpopular in the CN servers (because of course it fucking was) so they didn't want to do that again.
@@plvto1 Yet they made Labyrinth Warriors a weekly thing and also a farming domain for planar ornaments in HSR. That Simulated Universe has got to be the most time consuming low-reward activity they have. Spending 10-15 minutes for 4 trash planar ornament. Good luck to you if you don't have Acheron to skip the mobs.
It might just be me, but I despise the idea behind this game mode. In roguelike games, you actually get stronger characters through buffs and items, but in this mode, you end up building the same teams you could play in the Abyss (if you're lucky enough to get the characters in the right order), and that’s just not fun in my opinion. There's no sense of growing stronger with tougher challenges, and I hate that. In my opinion, WuWa does a much better job with the Illusive Realm in keeping players entertained and wanting to replay. I never wanted to replay the Imaginarium Theater even once, to be honest. Get the primos and get out
As you said, implementing a "vigor station" or "limited vigor reserves" can help the IT gameplay experience a lot, especially when the entry barrier is more obnoxious than the last iteration simply cus characters are not designed equal, like there is still no alternatives to Xiangling and Bennett. Another thing I wanna add is that the boons are so good now but the enemies are still squishy in the last three chambers. Of course, the enemies need to be normal in the earlier chambers but still make the last chambers have more HP than what they got rn. Another thing is we should get 2 out of 4 units rather than 1 out of 2 units after winning a battle. That way, we get more units while still being able to focus on buying the boons
One way to fix this game mode would be to instead of selecting up to 22 characters and obtain them randomly, you select 4 o 5 teams that fit the restrictions and you get those teams randomly.
i super agree with how the lack of teams just fee bad the game just wasn't made for you to be able to put any 4 random characters together and have a cohesive team also it sucks that my good supports cant ever be paired with the dps i intend them to because there's no point in stacking power on a single team. I'd never pair chevvy with arlecchino on theater because arle can clear by herself and chevvy is needed to help the stupid keqing overload floor maybe if the system was build to GIVE energy on mob floors and consume energy on boss floors it would be better, so it incentivizes you to fish for and actively play your good characters. And then on boss floor the team enters cooldown for 2 arcs
there's no need for a cohesive team in the first place. The mobs is not as tanky as the one in abyss and the buffs are way stronger than abyss to help you out.
Can confirm. I got my 10 stars on visionary with half my characters at lv. 70 equipped with random or no artifacts at all. Most chambers, only 1 or 2 characters in the team were actually doing anything... until chamber 10, where I saved a "meta team" (Raiden national with Kuki moral support instead of XQ) to deal with ASIMON. I was also able to borrow a friend's C2R1 Arlecchino, and she pretty much soloed 2 of the middle chambers. The only "strategy" on my part was save the Raiden national-ish team for the end, and pick as many companion cards as possible in order to use up the bad/unbuilt characters early.
I agree about everything and also, it feels weird for a roguelike to HAVE TO switch teams completely all the time because even if you end up playing a good team, most if not all your buffs are probably useless because they don't align with the new team, like this theater, I got a bunch of overload buffs but played Lyney Xiangling Bennett Sucrose on the last 2 fights, ignoring all the buffs (and still killed Asimon in 34 seconds before it went invisible) In star rail, in simulated universe, you can play a single team and get a path and blessings that make sense and everything works out perfectly so you can beat worlds while being underleveled or make teams that hyper focus on a path, and even if your team has big weaknesses (like no sustain) your team works so well with itself that you might clear anyways And in Hades, you don't randomly have to switch weapon before a boss, that would break the whole roguelike thing but that's literally what happens in genshin theater
I'm fairly confident that the character requirement is half the reason the mode even exists, they wanted to "incentivize people to build more characters". It's definitely a problem with the new visionary difficulty though. 22 is too many unless you get lucky with starters you don't have and bonus units you do have. 18 was already a lot. I personally don't particularly like roguelikes so the underdevelopment of those aspects doesn't bother me. I get extremely tilted when I get unlucky late into a run in more heavily randomized stuff like Simulated Universe and waste most of it or lose some rare opportunity and I am happy to not have to deal with that in another game.
There are a lot of issues with IT. But he barrier to entry its just stupid, even on my main account I had to level 5 characters to do the last difficulty this patch. Even if the mode was good most people probably wouldnt experience most of it. They had HSR SU and ZZZ HZ to copy from and they cant even get that right.
Not being able to make teams with less than 4 characters pisses me off. It literally forces me to waste characters that I could use later. Also it's a snoozefest. If you have all characters they tell you to have, you clear. That's it. The meta for new players is honestly just to ignore this mode until you have two teams who can clear the spiral abyss consistently. Otherwise, if you build for this mode, you will only build literal garbage.
And when you're forced to waste characters, your immediate question when teambuilding becomes:"Which character is so trash i need to get rid of them ASAP?" Having an endgame horizontal mode make you think that is bad!
its not just needing 22 characters, its also needing 22 weapons leveled up (how many times i realized i dont have a weapon mid run and its even more stupid that you cant fix that after you enter the game mode) you cant change artifacts or weapons, and cause the game mode has so much randomization many characters need more ER than usual and you cant even fix mid run! i yet to use the IT buff cause i was trying to get the only good characters but still i could not get them in time, still i dont think the buff will be massive cause this IT is overload and only chevy make overload viable and you can only use her twice and it you want to use her then you need a full team of pyro/electro, good luck if the rng of the run allowed that
At least don't force us to use 4 characters at once to artificially use up vigor. I hate that part so much. Or maybe just let us choose between doing IT or 2x abyss. At least abyss still is very, very replayable which is supposed to be a requirement for endgame content. I've never found myself replaying IT because there's no point, but I do go in the abyss from time to time to test out stuff. At first I was gonna build some of my characters for IT, but then my resources still aren't enough at this point. Playing since 3.8 at AR 59, daily, and I'm still running out of mora, books, and ores, so I'd rather save those for characters I like rather than IT fodder.
I think they should add an endless mode and allow us to use fantasia flowers to regenerate vigor. The reward can be artifact exp and mora , which is extremely important now that they want us to craft sanctifying elixirs.
They should up the amount of friend characters to at least 3. The problem with adding more trial characters is they are bad and if you own the trial characters you aren't gaining any amount of extra characters. Also increase the vigor to 3 or refresh vigor like you said.
Do you think a way to fix theater could be for the principle cast to not use vigor so you can always build teams with 1-2 of your own characters and fill them up with the principle cast? That would lower the character requirement and make building teams easier, this rotation chevreuse would always be available for example
-this mode only exist for players who don't do abyss and don't pull "teams" they just pull "characters" (which is admittedly the biggest part of genshin player base just go to hoyolab and see) that's why every time someone brings up the randomness of team building you just get told "but it's part of the strategy!" or "it gives you a chance to play different teams" which is why a lot of people - rightfully so from their own perspective - feel like they finally have a mode to play which isn't a bad thing itself. the problem is, you just separated "endgame" into 2 parts and which you cannot tackle the one without severely jeopardizing the other especially for newer accounts (and by "newer" I mean account that are at least 1 year old minimum and even then it's still a problem). but then they make abyss reset less? so even if you are a "hardcore" player and you 36 star abyss consistently you are locked out of halite rewards you can normally get unless you participate in the arbitrary character building requirement they put. also my tinfoil hat tells me this is them trying to bring star rail into genshin because they cannot powercreep as fast to make people impulse pull as much units as they possibly can just to keep up with endgame modes flavor of the month requirements (which you can argue is already happening) so they said "fuck it, just make a mode where an account need as much characters as possible". essaying
Its nothing changed to abyss. Because before you didnt get monsters reset but just rewards so nothing changed in terms of NEW ABYSS RESET with NEW gameplay in it.
What made me enjoy it was finally building more chracters. I basicly always used the same ones. Now that I have a lot of characters built, I finally enjoy the theater a lot. I have more fun there than in abyss.
Over 4 years Ive built 15 characters in Genshin as I have zero interest in 70% of the games cast. Feels like this mode was specifically made to spit in the faces of players like myself.
-If Hoyo would do a balance pass and actually buff "useless" characters, players would be more inclined to experiment with imaginarium comps. I personally already level every character I get but I have to admit, I wouldn't even bother slotting some of them in if not for this mode. -Maybe I'm not understanding the mechanics, but there's too much soft-lock probable randomness? Dunno how else to put it. I put off selecting a character, and that one that I want to save never shows up unless I spend all my points. -The buffs when raised to Level 4 are insane. OP. Don't get me wrong. I clear, I get gems. Yay. But It's basically a walkover, in which case I feel I didn't really accomplish my victory.
Vigor needs to either be unlimited/refreshable or the character acquisition needs to be removed entirely and you get access to your whole roster from chamber 1 but can only use everyone 2x. This mode has too many restrictions and they all are fine individually but mesh together horribly. Why do we need to level the characters to 70 when they could just raise them to 70 or 80 like Divergent Universe? Why all this random nonsense just to obfuscate that we are just playing spiral abyss 2 instead of actually making a roguelike?
I feel they really aren't sure what to do with IT when it comes to making characters, you'd think they'd make more characters like Chevruse or nilou but instead they're just making characters who are hoping for a currently hypothetical pyro character they all can't share at once, really just feels like n excuse to get people to try and pull new characters just to complete it, likeIi dont ever see anyone recommend a character based on how well they could do in IT
IT wasn't designed to be roguelike or to be fun. It was designed to solve specific problems Mihoyo has - players not pulling characters and players not building characters (because what they alrdy have is good enuf). Essentially it was designed to make money, so there is no problem from Hoyo perspective. They never cared about making their games fun in the first place, all they care is money.
NGL, I don't think they ever intended the entry-level for the event to be cheap and easy to begin with. With how many rival gachas were coming out and interest kind of waning, I think they just cooked up something to engage the long standing players who were complaining about more endgame. It's a joke of an endgame because they need to care about mobile device players, but it's just a bone to throw to the people who have been around for a while and have nothing really to do with their characters.
They need to take notes from elysian realm, a give unique buffs to the promoted/trial characters. Give us events that make odd teams viable rather than just buffing preexisting reactions. It feels like it offers nothing new. Gameplay wise you save your usual team, suffer with whatever you dont mind losing until the boss fights which dont offer any challenge or any need to think about your build. A meta team can take out the last visionary boss without any buffs to their primary reaction so what is the point of it all?
I feel like I'm the exact target audience for a mode like this, I like pulling and building as many different characters as possible and I can easily hit the requirements to participate. Somehow its still not fun, not even for someone like me. Genshins combat system is so unique bc so much of it is in teambuilding, but you cant really do that in this mode. you just gotta use whatever random unsynergistic bullshit they give you. And even the buffs they give you would make so much more sense if you could freely choose what characters/ teams you want to use. Picking up a buff for a specific reaction or having to decide wether you want more hydro or pyro application for your vape team just feels bad if you cant actually decide to play teams that work with that specific buff throughout your run.
First 5 stages: trying to use a combination of shit trial characters + shit expendable units to get through mediocre combat sages Last 5 stages: combining 1-3 of your good units with trash units each stage, and hoping that you don't have to rewind because you got element-blocked.
I feel extremely frustrated with that game mode and its so annoying having to play that I refuse to play it I agree that the barrier to entry is too high Hoyo expecting players to build almost every unit for a game mode, while a part of building is artifacts and pulling on banners (just get lucky) makes it stupid
wanting 22 characters of 3 specific elements to just participate in the highest diffculty is crazy lol cause its not just about levels its also about artifacts and talents for those units, not just this but you cant even focus on upgrading your favourite units to a higher level due to this
@@shsuemlshdkI’m an endgame player, but for such a high requirement the gameplay isn’t even rewarding So yes, the game mode is meh, near 0 replayability
@@shsuemlshdk genshin players and defending their game on everything still go hand in hand huh. I literally clear ITs visionary mode, it's still a horribly designed mode, also endgame doesn't equal "pull meta or you can't beat it" Even a waifu puller should be able to beat it assuming they are making cohesive teams. In IT you can't even make any team for the most part and also it wants you to have 22 units of 3 different elements each patch and none of those units even get utilized, they are just for bench lol. The problem isn't having an endgame, it's having it be horribly designed.
It seems like Hoyo is too proud to admit it's mistake with Theater and will still do everything to "fix" it. The entire concept is faulty and like others have said, they already developed events in the past that would be better endgames modes.
i build ALL my characters, so personally that issue isn't a problem, but can definitely see why it would be. but they fixed it in HSR DU (divergent universe) already - they bring up unbuilt characters for you. this would relieve a lot of the absurd build requirements in IT.
this the one theater that took me time to clear because i dont have much geo, only noelle but she wants furina... had to raise sara, yunjin, and gouro just to hit the character quota... and as much as jstern mentions "it is easier to get characters" but i got really unlucky and dont get as much characters early stages, had to used up all my rewinds and honestly, i dont know if i can clear imaginarium theater if i didnt borrow a navia...
They had the perfect skeleton for it with the 2.2 Labyrinth event mode.. all they had to do was copy and paste , up the difficulty or make different options for different difficulty and everyone would have been happy.. But no!!! The game's brilliant devs took "how to create FOMO and how to disappoint our players again" route and made Imaginarium theatre... Ok i get it , this is a gacha game , they want to create FOMO so they make players spend their money on their game but like c'mon...
3+ years player here, I can't play IT cause I refuse to build units that are not fun or dont have an interesting kit, I have build many non meta characters, like Xinyan, yet its still not enough to enter this season IT really hoyo doing the lamest thing and community dont say a thing
It has various problems and at many levels. 1. The first problem is at what I'd say level 0, where you can't even enter the theatre if you don't have a specific number of built characters. 2. Element check.. Why???? They put asimon in this theatre but the characters allowed are electro, dendro, geo. Like wtf bruh??? Did they forget their own in game mechanics?? 3. Vigour- Characters can be used at max twice. What if I want to use my choice of character without a restriction? Atleast give us an option to "redeem" or "revive" the used characters via those flowers(the in mode currency). 4. Team building- It is essentially random bullshit go. I am forced to play weird combinations of characters which have little to no compatibility. 5. Buffs- do they even do anything?
I think the biggest issue is still that you just have characters there to fill in a slot, and that feels awful. Even more because you know those characters are bad but you still had to invest resources on them.
The problem with IT is that its a character bait gamemode and any suggestion that'd make you build less characters than their new quota is probably going to be ignored. The only reason it exists is so they can add new QOLs without changing the status quo by a lot. It's just a standard case of Genshin's combat system not being rigid enough to incentivize a more flexible gamemode.
The game mode also just makes characters dependent on reactions feel terrible. Like Hu Tao in this theatre felt as bad as my barely built Ninguang. I had to play force Noelle carry once just to save characters for the bosses. And don't even get me started on the Bounty Cryo abyss mage challenge. I had a fully pyro team of Gaming, Bennett, Xiangling and Thoma and I couldn't do it..... all of them are well built, like which character is that challenge built for?
its so scummy how they realized that the amount of characters they originally went for to full clear was not enough to make people have to invest in new characters they just leveled a couple chars to 70 every rotation and cleared so they just made it higher
I wish they would give Lv80 trial builds for all characters you own but don’t have leveled up. I don’t mind the 22 character requirement, it’ll come eventually when players pull enough. I do mind having to waste resin leveling characters to Lv70, who I 100% won’t build or use properly anyway and who would be lucky to be switched in once to trigger Scroll That + removing the 4 character requirement for rooms would be the biggest instant improvements to this mode. I like the concept of Theater but this feels like playing an early beta with non fully fleshed out mechanics
I think this is a monkey paw situation. We all asked for more endgame activities and they gave us the most dogshit endgame mode i've ever had the displeasure of playing lol like damn nothing at all would have been preferable
There is also an issue with the bosses, they are restrictive af too, before they put the aeronblight drake which requires a damn archer to knock it down, and now electro and geo are a must to kill both annoying bosses with niche mechanics.
The most annoying part of Abyss for me is the team building. I want to spend time with the actual combat not checking if my mistsplitter is on Kequing or switching my Raiden of her EM build or going back and double checking the enemy list for that one hydro some that's going to make me restart the entire floor because my neuvi team is on that side. Theater takes all of that annoying shit and dials it up to 11 navigating menus isn't fun
It’s a rougelike in name alone, Hoyo realizes the issue of Vet accounts bloating and never using older event five star units. So to address this IT is made to be a test of account width. As someone who plays other non Hoyo gacha games this is nothing new to me. Bleach Brave Souls Senkaimon is this but up to 11, each character has 1 use over 50 floors, with in tower have 150 floors but less character lockouts (5 floors were added a month and based around 5/6 new units from the prior month). The reason why I’d say this is because IT is a mode that keeps you spending. Although anecdotal people have begun to think their accounts have settled, they own Neuv/Arle with best supports so they can clear abyss no sweat. So how do you stay in the hamster wheel? Make an endgame mode which locks out said units, now you have to choose when and where you will use them (if you get them). IT’s saving grace is that because of this thesis they can make characters that overlap existing archetypes because you only get two uses in IT. The mode itself poses these restrictions to make new players do exactly what you did in the account, level up shitters or spend on new banners. For players who want to clear endgame they’ve gained more customers. SimU/Hollow Zero works in HSR/ZZZ because it’s not an abyss-like endgame mode, IT is.
as someone already said i think it would be better if we could choose 4 preset teams instead of 16 charas. and when a team is not used for 2 acts they regain 1 vigor. hoyo can then start buffing the enemies and the buffs as well.
Be it F2P's or whales, most of them stop pulling after they create 2 teams if their only goal is to beat Abyss. Which takes a year to build if you are F2P, no joke. But SU is pretty damning when it comes to the unit requirements. 16 units minimum with 4 more for max buffs is literally screaming, "HEY! WE HATE IT WHEN YOU PULL FOR 2 TEAMS AND STOP. THUS SU IS NOW HERE AND IS MAKING SURE YOU'LL PULL MORE UNITS AND BUY OUR BP AND GENESIS PACKS TO BUILD THEM! 😈" On top of this, they removed one reset of abyss and replaced it with SU, as if giving away 5 more wishes is going to choke them somehow. And the only reason I am fine in SU is because I am a veteran and I usually build all of my units to lvl 70 for the blue fates, which is mad behaviour, I know. I am glad Genshin's income dropped to less than a billion this year, despite SU's release. It shows players are tired of their stale formula. The Teapot is restrictive, TCG is dead and Spiral Abyss and SU are chores rather than being fun. (Also, they have gotten too comfortable releasing the same kit over and over again with newer characters, which needs to change)
I agree that it isn't particularly fun but I didn't mind this cycle too much. While I don't want to do it again I regret I didn't do the crystalyze routes because I bet those feel nice. Basically instead of team building they give you the reaction buffs and those can feel good. So you have to make sure you match your reactions each stage with at least 2 characters and then it will mostly feel good. I hated the IT reset before btw. I got the 10 stellas but that cycle felt bad.
I played on a friend's account and it forced me to level up Amber, Lisa, Collei, and Sara to get to the bare minimum to participate in the last 2 theatre rotation. I barely have enough after that to max Kazuha to level 90.
It's basically just a chore, kinda like Simulated Universe and Pure Fiction in HSR (SimU shits on IT tho, I'll give it that). Also I can imagine a lot of people struggle to make their roster wide enough to play the final difficulty mode. Very sneaky of hoyo to make it impossible to get full rewards otherwise, I didn't realize that it changed so I had to redo the whole thing on the "hidden" difficulty mode, I'll be damned if I don't get full clear in a Genshin end game mode lol. Anyway I basically raise every character, even 4* (and I'm not missing any) and I've been playing for over 3 years. Even I felt a little bit pressed lol, how the hell are younger accounts supposed to do this mode at all? You also need to kit everyone out with artifacts and weapon, level their talents and stuff, it's a crazy high barrier to entry, but once you're in it's pretty easy honestly. That was one of my major gripes with it before the update and they honestly only made that part worse.
I still don't fully understand how this thing works and how to play it most effectively because it just seems so tedious and not fun and I can't be bothered. The entry restriction is ridiculous, I can beat everything easily yet I can't play the highest stage and get all the awards because I don't have enough built characters. This would be easily solved if they simply remove this restriction AND allow us to play without a full team. I'd rather beat a few stages solo or with a duo, rather than using random nonsensical teams.
I like the mode since I have all my characters leveled and built, it gives me an excuse to dust off units I haven't touched in years. That said, it would improve quite a bit by simply letting us select < 4 character teams
I have 19 level 70 unbuilt characters just to enter visionary mode and I got all the rewards for every IT so far. But it left me broke to level the characters I pull for so I skipped 2 patches due to having no mora or exp books. I have saved 350 pulls which I might have spend on pulling.
5:30 ...What a terrible way to start off... Girl, do Dehya, Keqing and Ning and whatever bad character you've gotten from select random character card. 12:00 ... Maybe because the point of a game mode is to make random teams and figure out synergies you can use to clear content in one go. Unlike Abyss that people play on repeat on hardest mode only to test their favorite teams. It's not the same thing.
It's bs but still better than abyss which I complete with the exact same teams for years. Now I have to juggle my characters and use 10% of my brain once a month instead of 1% at abyss.
It's not hard for me. I will select 2 teams that will clear the 4 bosses on Visionary mode then the remaining characters, I will use them for the fights in between. I prioritize selecting companions and sticking to one power (this rotation I only do Overload buffs).
I hate IT for the same reason, why characters needs to be removed from your roster, this is the total opposite of a Roguelike game. I think they should remove the vigor mechanic, I have not problem on them restricting the elemental character you can bring as long as they remove the vigor.
I think its fun, i whoop it but I can understand why alot of others can't. Ive played the game since it launched essentially and i build alot of characters.
Agree on the lack of sense of progression, but hard disagree on letting you just play your planned spiral abyss meta teams? Clearly the idea was to get you to not just play top of meta repeatedly each floor. You're essentially asking for spiral abyss 2 with more buff cards. Lower the requirement sure, but there absolutely needs to be some jeopardy to when you use your kazuha/bennett.
I don‘t think I ever agreed with a genshin opinion video more. I like the idea of getting an additional vigor. my idea was that you can reclaim characters, if I used my Arlechino twice it can show up again in the character cards. In an ideal world it would be an actual rogue like. you start with low build four stars and after each stage you can get better characters, weapons or talents.
Not single endgame mode has to accomodate "rush from beggining" players. I know it's for content, but that is not a valid point at all. Most players are not content creators and will follow natural game progression which is to pull for characters and use them as years go by.
I actually look forward to Theater every month because I find the overall gimmick engaging. I mean, I like figuring out the best way to spread my characters across a run to make the best teams I can, regardless of the lack of actual need to have great teams in most of its chambers. Overall, it's fun to me, more than Abyss that feels kinda automatic for me already. That said, I was fortunate to have always enjoyed building many of the 4 stars, so it never happened that Theater forced me to build anyone I hadn't already, so this negative aspect of the mode never stung me. Besides, I love that all these characters become more relevant with Theater. Anyway, I do think Theater can improve a lot in the future. I like your idea of a card that gives one vigor to any character. I also think it would be good if people could borrow more characters from friends to enter Visionary Mode, so it lessens the burden of building too many characters and makes it more accessible. Improving the relevancy of cards in general would be great too
Here's a fix for it First remove it from the monthly reset and put of the abyss back there Maka it like su(but without the weekly bs) and just add upon it every few patches in a permanent way and since it's permanent players can take their time with it I think this is the best for IT make it less intrusive because I'll be honest i don't like these game modes in any of these games at all so the less intrusive they are the better
Dare I say I like theater significantly more then elysian realm, SimU and Hollow Zero...... mostly bc atleast every rotation is significantly different and most importantly ONLY ONCE A MONTH, instead of every week with the other 3. Indeed if you want something repeatable, theater isn't it. But with the other 3 it just started feeling like a weekly chore to me Do I think theater is better designed then those modes? Oh absolutely not but I get way less annoyed with it
1) its a bad roguelike because there's no sense of progression There's always a sense of progression tho. The buffs you have increase and so is the team members. You start with dehya, ningguang, yaoyao kind of team and by the end, last theatre, i got premium neuv and arle team available. This theatre, I got kinich burn, raiden national, hutao vape, arle vape team available. Is that not progression? Thats not even talking about the buffs. 2) Bad barrier of entry as f2p have to lvl up bad characters Genshin is a 4 year old game, even f2p, if they play from the start and didnt miss a lot of the major event and dailies, would have a lot of 5 stars. I dont think you can fault an end game mode for simply being about the endgame where players are assumed to have a lot of characters in their lineup. 3) Nobody wants to play a bad team If you somehow end up with a really fucked up team, its on you. You either dont have enough characters in your acc or bad at resource management. I dont understand why people want to have a premium team in the theatre where the difficulty isnt that high and can be cleared with 2 units that synergize well with each other and are moderately invested. The available buffs also help. In all my run since theatre release. I never once ended up with a team I would call, bad, unless your definition of bad is not premium. 4) He mentioned how theatre can be fixed with the option to refresh vigour If that's an option, people would just spam that shit on neuvilet, arle, kazuha, nahida. Then your run would just be neuv premium/arle premium, aka, not any different than the abyss. For an endgame that is about promoting variety, that's a failure.
people used to complain a lot how they don't have a reson to build/pull characters anymore 'cuz they can still clear abyss with hyperbat and international bat for 4 years. there you go, now you can pull/build for theatre :) i always knew the horizontal investment will pay off one day. EZ Clap IT doesn't force me to farm Z-merits each week or do the same shit in the menu for blessings for 13 rooms each week. IT takes 15-20 minutes a month and i'm done. if i wanna play actual teams - i go to abyss/overworld/local legends. IT is just a fun mode where i try to play with what i can build, play something i would never play overwise. i'd take that over abyss 2.0 with inflated hp or aoe abyss. or any other weekly time waste bullshit
Yeah I can meet the requirements now since I've been playing for 4 years and have nearly every character but the mode is absolutely bs and sucks. If it was a fun roguelite mode where you play like 3 teams at most it'd be fine imo but they made it too annoying
Fkn remove this elemental restriction or maybe don't give us those shtty elements that don't even react with each other. The f what is this. Its crystalize and overload. And they choose most useless starter characters and hide everything else in the special guest mn. This season is the most f annoying imaginarium theatre so far. And Dorito boss in the last chamber 🗿
@@TheRoleplayer40k how is arcade and ZZZ rogue-like are made to sell a character? Same with Herta gamemodes. Noone pulls units specifically for these modes
Just playing this shit for primos. It's so fkn frustrating. Just all unga bunga random ingredients soup teams. It's just not fun. I play cuz I had to. TCG is just better billion times better if it has the same rewards.
I think this game mode really highlights some problems with this game that never mattered that much.
Like how a surprising amount of characters don't have a good kit, have poor synergy with other characters and don't deal good enough damage to justify playing them.
Genshin wasn't made with that in mind, which makes it so that in the theater you're just gonna have a dead slot character in the team to save a good one, and it's frustrating.
Also, I think that the characters should go on a 2 wave cool down or something instead of just disappearing out of the run after they have been used up
This is so true
There's a reason so many characters teammates are Bennet and Xiangling. Way too many characters are just awful.
I mean, for a gacha game that keep producing characters every patch for years, you cant expect each and every characters to be good, especially 4 stars. And this problem is shared with hsr or zzz too when they become as old as genshin.
@@Amir-ry7pp the issue isn't whether characters are good or bad, it's that characters aren't designed with diverse team building in mind at all.
Take Bennett and Xiangling, for the evergreen example. The issue isn't that newer units don't measure up to them, the issue is that no new units are even copium alternatives to them - this game is 4 years old and the only two off field pyro alternatives to Xiangling are Thoma and Dehya.
Genshin releases disproportionately more on field DPSers than anything else, and it sucks on a gamemode like theater because all of these on field DPSers are fighting for the same 3-4 support units. This was not an issue in Abyss because you only had to build two teams, but when you have to build 4-5 teams for Theater it suddenly becomes very obvious how over reliant Genshin's team building is on these same old characters.
There is also another big problem. It is NOT a roguelike. Roguelikes rely on RANDOMIZATION and REPLAYABILITY. Imaginarium Theater has neither.
It's not a roguelike, but it's not a problem. It's more like a puzzle, but quite scuffed atm. And I think that with the last battle event which they've separated into two stages (on the first one damage didn't matter, reactions and character mechanics were more important), they're looking for solutions for the Theater. Basically, to let battle stages use proper teams, and then on "other" stages players could just play with random stuff because of certain effects (like running around with one-shotting circle from this recent event). This way they could also lower entry requirements, because not all teams should be able to do damage at all.
Yea... it could've been so much more. Considering the staggering amount of bosses in this game, it would've been simple for them to add an endless roguelike mode, and randomize the enemy lineups each run, with bosses at the end.
And if you remember, there was an event during the chasm patch,... the "Perilous Trail" event was a FANTASTIC way of making us utilize more characters. At the end of every 3 combat rounds, you had to remove 2 party members from your party. That would greatly incentivize people to build more characters, without it feeling "forced" like imaginarium theater.
cant speak of replayability when it differ from player to player but randomization is always there lmao. No way youre clearing the theatre with the same exact team from start to finish.
I still have no idea how mihoyo managed to make Elysian Realm and Sim Universe and then somehow fuck up theater
the funny thing is that people don't even like elysian and simu that much either 💀 and they somehow managed to make something worse than both
@@CaelVKMajority of people like them. ER a lot less than SimU cause of heavy favouritism towards new units, but people like it.
They’re sucks as well 😭
@@CaelVKI haven't played star rail in over a year but sim universe is where most of my best memories are
@@vukkicos5688 nah dude simuniverse expansions sucks with fucking menus onto menus man fucking hate them
I HATE that the game forces you to run 4 characters each time
The amount of times i had to use supports in teams that just needed 2 characters to clear but lost vigor for this stupid reason sucks
Separate from that, I have no urge to play it. I have an urge to play abyss every once in a while but anytime theatre resets, it feels like a fucking chore
Genshin bots: Then don't clear it. No one is forcing you.
then they'd have to remove the total limit of character which is the whole point of this mode
The problem is thet Theater doesn'T really work with Genshin mechanics at all. The fact thet it is random BS go is antithetical of the whole idea to build teams based on elemental synergise and character's personal kits. Genshin's characters are just not flexible enough to make it work. Other problem is thet because you lose your characters you can'T even use the buffing cards conssitently, the whole idea of a rouge-like/lite is thet as you play you get more and more random/semi-random buffs where you activly try to get the most synergistic ones to achive macimum power, but as the cards work in Theatre you can get a full burning build without any dendro character left in your roster and then your buffing cards all wasted. The whole Imaginarium Theatre fail as a Genshin game mode and as a rouge-like as well.
I think its unlikely that you gonna face with the issue of not having the character with the same element as the buffs you pick, when the mode restricts you to 3 element. And if you invest so much in burning, why didnt you save a few units for it for the final boss? Could be a resource management issue.
Crazy how they already had the formula right in the labyrinth event and now it's nowhere to be seen and they instead make a much worse version
clear evidence that they don't listen to the right advice. apparently labyrinth was unpopular in the CN servers (because of course it fucking was) so they didn't want to do that again.
@@plvto1 Yet they made Labyrinth Warriors a weekly thing and also a farming domain for planar ornaments in HSR. That Simulated Universe has got to be the most time consuming low-reward activity they have. Spending 10-15 minutes for 4 trash planar ornament. Good luck to you if you don't have Acheron to skip the mobs.
@@kibathefang6022 Farming relics is way easier now. Thanks to Divergent U, SimU's step bro. But yeah it did suck a lot.
It might just be me, but I despise the idea behind this game mode. In roguelike games, you actually get stronger characters through buffs and items, but in this mode, you end up building the same teams you could play in the Abyss (if you're lucky enough to get the characters in the right order), and that’s just not fun in my opinion. There's no sense of growing stronger with tougher challenges, and I hate that. In my opinion, WuWa does a much better job with the Illusive Realm in keeping players entertained and wanting to replay. I never wanted to replay the Imaginarium Theater even once, to be honest. Get the primos and get out
At the end of Illusive Realm, your character feels like a god. There really is zero progression in IT.
Careful there, you mentioned genshin community's cryptonite
True, i just go in there every 1st day of the month, get my ppgems and forget it exists until the next reset
I love how illusive realm has character specific buffs that removes any form of drawbacks from them
As you said, implementing a "vigor station" or "limited vigor reserves" can help the IT gameplay experience a lot, especially when the entry barrier is more obnoxious than the last iteration simply cus characters are not designed equal, like there is still no alternatives to Xiangling and Bennett. Another thing I wanna add is that the boons are so good now but the enemies are still squishy in the last three chambers. Of course, the enemies need to be normal in the earlier chambers but still make the last chambers have more HP than what they got rn. Another thing is we should get 2 out of 4 units rather than 1 out of 2 units after winning a battle. That way, we get more units while still being able to focus on buying the boons
One way to fix this game mode would be to instead of selecting up to 22 characters and obtain them randomly, you select 4 o 5 teams that fit the restrictions and you get those teams randomly.
The Vigor system assumes everyone is equally as important, which is just false.
9:43 One must imagine jstern25 happy
i super agree with how the lack of teams just fee bad
the game just wasn't made for you to be able to put any 4 random characters together and have a cohesive team
also it sucks that my good supports cant ever be paired with the dps i intend them to because there's no point in stacking power on a single team. I'd never pair chevvy with arlecchino on theater because arle can clear by herself and chevvy is needed to help the stupid keqing overload floor
maybe if the system was build to GIVE energy on mob floors and consume energy on boss floors it would be better, so it incentivizes you to fish for and actively play your good characters. And then on boss floor the team enters cooldown for 2 arcs
there's no need for a cohesive team in the first place. The mobs is not as tanky as the one in abyss and the buffs are way stronger than abyss to help you out.
Can confirm. I got my 10 stars on visionary with half my characters at lv. 70 equipped with random or no artifacts at all. Most chambers, only 1 or 2 characters in the team were actually doing anything... until chamber 10, where I saved a "meta team" (Raiden national with Kuki moral support instead of XQ) to deal with ASIMON. I was also able to borrow a friend's C2R1 Arlecchino, and she pretty much soloed 2 of the middle chambers. The only "strategy" on my part was save the Raiden national-ish team for the end, and pick as many companion cards as possible in order to use up the bad/unbuilt characters early.
I agree about everything and also, it feels weird for a roguelike to HAVE TO switch teams completely all the time because even if you end up playing a good team, most if not all your buffs are probably useless because they don't align with the new team, like this theater, I got a bunch of overload buffs but played Lyney Xiangling Bennett Sucrose on the last 2 fights, ignoring all the buffs (and still killed Asimon in 34 seconds before it went invisible)
In star rail, in simulated universe, you can play a single team and get a path and blessings that make sense and everything works out perfectly so you can beat worlds while being underleveled or make teams that hyper focus on a path, and even if your team has big weaknesses (like no sustain) your team works so well with itself that you might clear anyways
And in Hades, you don't randomly have to switch weapon before a boss, that would break the whole roguelike thing but that's literally what happens in genshin theater
I'm fairly confident that the character requirement is half the reason the mode even exists, they wanted to "incentivize people to build more characters". It's definitely a problem with the new visionary difficulty though. 22 is too many unless you get lucky with starters you don't have and bonus units you do have. 18 was already a lot.
I personally don't particularly like roguelikes so the underdevelopment of those aspects doesn't bother me. I get extremely tilted when I get unlucky late into a run in more heavily randomized stuff like Simulated Universe and waste most of it or lose some rare opportunity and I am happy to not have to deal with that in another game.
There are a lot of issues with IT. But he barrier to entry its just stupid, even on my main account I had to level 5 characters to do the last difficulty this patch. Even if the mode was good most people probably wouldnt experience most of it.
They had HSR SU and ZZZ HZ to copy from and they cant even get that right.
Not being able to make teams with less than 4 characters pisses me off. It literally forces me to waste characters that I could use later.
Also it's a snoozefest. If you have all characters they tell you to have, you clear. That's it.
The meta for new players is honestly just to ignore this mode until you have two teams who can clear the spiral abyss consistently. Otherwise, if you build for this mode, you will only build literal garbage.
And when you're forced to waste characters, your immediate question when teambuilding becomes:"Which character is so trash i need to get rid of them ASAP?" Having an endgame horizontal mode make you think that is bad!
its not just needing 22 characters, its also needing 22 weapons leveled up (how many times i realized i dont have a weapon mid run and its even more stupid that you cant fix that after you enter the game mode) you cant change artifacts or weapons, and cause the game mode has so much randomization many characters need more ER than usual and you cant even fix mid run!
i yet to use the IT buff cause i was trying to get the only good characters but still i could not get them in time, still i dont think the buff will be massive cause this IT is overload and only chevy make overload viable and you can only use her twice and it you want to use her then you need a full team of pyro/electro, good luck if the rng of the run allowed that
At least don't force us to use 4 characters at once to artificially use up vigor. I hate that part so much. Or maybe just let us choose between doing IT or 2x abyss. At least abyss still is very, very replayable which is supposed to be a requirement for endgame content. I've never found myself replaying IT because there's no point, but I do go in the abyss from time to time to test out stuff.
At first I was gonna build some of my characters for IT, but then my resources still aren't enough at this point. Playing since 3.8 at AR 59, daily, and I'm still running out of mora, books, and ores, so I'd rather save those for characters I like rather than IT fodder.
I think they should add an endless mode and allow us to use fantasia flowers to regenerate vigor. The reward can be artifact exp and mora , which is extremely important now that they want us to craft sanctifying elixirs.
They should up the amount of friend characters to at least 3. The problem with adding more trial characters is they are bad and if you own the trial characters you aren't gaining any amount of extra characters. Also increase the vigor to 3 or refresh vigor like you said.
Do you think a way to fix theater could be for the principle cast to not use vigor so you can always build teams with 1-2 of your own characters and fill them up with the principle cast? That would lower the character requirement and make building teams easier, this rotation chevreuse would always be available for example
the community account being 1y/o was a surprise gut punch
-this mode only exist for players who don't do abyss and don't pull "teams" they just pull "characters" (which is admittedly the biggest part of genshin player base just go to hoyolab and see) that's why every time someone brings up the randomness of team building you just get told "but it's part of the strategy!" or "it gives you a chance to play different teams" which is why a lot of people - rightfully so from their own perspective - feel like they finally have a mode to play which isn't a bad thing itself. the problem is, you just separated "endgame" into 2 parts and which you cannot tackle the one without severely jeopardizing the other especially for newer accounts (and by "newer" I mean account that are at least 1 year old minimum and even then it's still a problem). but then they make abyss reset less? so even if you are a "hardcore" player and you 36 star abyss consistently you are locked out of halite rewards you can normally get unless you participate in the arbitrary character building requirement they put.
also my tinfoil hat tells me this is them trying to bring star rail into genshin because they cannot powercreep as fast to make people impulse pull as much units as they possibly can just to keep up with endgame modes flavor of the month requirements (which you can argue is already happening) so they said "fuck it, just make a mode where an account need as much characters as possible".
essaying
Its nothing changed to abyss. Because before you didnt get monsters reset but just rewards so nothing changed in terms of NEW ABYSS RESET with NEW gameplay in it.
@@feyandhisstuff9888the comment is indeed talking about the rewards. Besides, the blessing is different so you have to tackle it in different ways.
What made me enjoy it was finally building more chracters. I basicly always used the same ones. Now that I have a lot of characters built, I finally enjoy the theater a lot. I have more fun there than in abyss.
Over 4 years Ive built 15 characters in Genshin as I have zero interest in 70% of the games cast. Feels like this mode was specifically made to spit in the faces of players like myself.
-If Hoyo would do a balance pass and actually buff "useless" characters, players would be more inclined to experiment with imaginarium comps. I personally already level every character I get but I have to admit, I wouldn't even bother slotting some of them in if not for this mode.
-Maybe I'm not understanding the mechanics, but there's too much soft-lock probable randomness? Dunno how else to put it. I put off selecting a character, and that one that I want to save never shows up unless I spend all my points.
-The buffs when raised to Level 4 are insane. OP. Don't get me wrong. I clear, I get gems. Yay. But It's basically a walkover, in which case I feel I didn't really accomplish my victory.
Vigor needs to either be unlimited/refreshable or the character acquisition needs to be removed entirely and you get access to your whole roster from chamber 1 but can only use everyone 2x.
This mode has too many restrictions and they all are fine individually but mesh together horribly.
Why do we need to level the characters to 70 when they could just raise them to 70 or 80 like Divergent Universe?
Why all this random nonsense just to obfuscate that we are just playing spiral abyss 2 instead of actually making a roguelike?
I feel they really aren't sure what to do with IT when it comes to making characters, you'd think they'd make more characters like Chevruse or nilou but instead they're just making characters who are hoping for a currently hypothetical pyro character they all can't share at once, really just feels like n excuse to get people to try and pull new characters just to complete it, likeIi dont ever see anyone recommend a character based on how well they could do in IT
the problem is the 2.2 childe event
it was way more fun than this
they didnt make this mainly for fun its just a mission to get rewards
IT wasn't designed to be roguelike or to be fun. It was designed to solve specific problems Mihoyo has - players not pulling characters and players not building characters (because what they alrdy have is good enuf). Essentially it was designed to make money, so there is no problem from Hoyo perspective. They never cared about making their games fun in the first place, all they care is money.
Which is good for me since I build almost all characters. I have 50+ of them with level 70+ at least, with their own weapon and artifacts.
NGL, I don't think they ever intended the entry-level for the event to be cheap and easy to begin with. With how many rival gachas were coming out and interest kind of waning, I think they just cooked up something to engage the long standing players who were complaining about more endgame. It's a joke of an endgame because they need to care about mobile device players, but it's just a bone to throw to the people who have been around for a while and have nothing really to do with their characters.
They need to take notes from elysian realm, a give unique buffs to the promoted/trial characters. Give us events that make odd teams viable rather than just buffing preexisting reactions.
It feels like it offers nothing new. Gameplay wise you save your usual team, suffer with whatever you dont mind losing until the boss fights which dont offer any challenge or any need to think about your build. A meta team can take out the last visionary boss without any buffs to their primary reaction so what is the point of it all?
I feel like I'm the exact target audience for a mode like this, I like pulling and building as many different characters as possible and I can easily hit the requirements to participate. Somehow its still not fun, not even for someone like me. Genshins combat system is so unique bc so much of it is in teambuilding, but you cant really do that in this mode. you just gotta use whatever random unsynergistic bullshit they give you. And even the buffs they give you would make so much more sense if you could freely choose what characters/ teams you want to use. Picking up a buff for a specific reaction or having to decide wether you want more hydro or pyro application for your vape team just feels bad if you cant actually decide to play teams that work with that specific buff throughout your run.
First 5 stages: trying to use a combination of shit trial characters + shit expendable units to get through mediocre combat sages
Last 5 stages: combining 1-3 of your good units with trash units each stage, and hoping that you don't have to rewind because you got element-blocked.
I feel extremely frustrated with that game mode and its so annoying having to play that I refuse to play it
I agree that the barrier to entry is too high
Hoyo expecting players to build almost every unit for a game mode, while a part of building is artifacts and pulling on banners (just get lucky) makes it stupid
wanting 22 characters of 3 specific elements to just participate in the highest diffculty is crazy lol cause its not just about levels its also about artifacts and talents for those units, not just this but you cant even focus on upgrading your favourite units to a higher level due to this
It’s endgame if you’re a waifu player why do you care about endgame
@@shsuemlshdkI’m an endgame player, but for such a high requirement the gameplay isn’t even rewarding
So yes, the game mode is meh, near 0 replayability
@@shsuemlshdk genshin players and defending their game on everything still go hand in hand huh. I literally clear ITs visionary mode, it's still a horribly designed mode, also endgame doesn't equal "pull meta or you can't beat it" Even a waifu puller should be able to beat it assuming they are making cohesive teams. In IT you can't even make any team for the most part and also it wants you to have 22 units of 3 different elements each patch and none of those units even get utilized, they are just for bench lol. The problem isn't having an endgame, it's having it be horribly designed.
Imaginarium dogshit
It seems like Hoyo is too proud to admit it's mistake with Theater and will still do everything to "fix" it. The entire concept is faulty and like others have said, they already developed events in the past that would be better endgames modes.
There is no mistake. It was designed to make money, and it works perfectly as intended.
i build ALL my characters, so personally that issue isn't a problem, but can definitely see why it would be.
but they fixed it in HSR DU (divergent universe) already - they bring up unbuilt characters for you.
this would relieve a lot of the absurd build requirements in IT.
this the one theater that took me time to clear because i dont have much geo, only noelle but she wants furina... had to raise sara, yunjin, and gouro just to hit the character quota... and as much as jstern mentions "it is easier to get characters" but i got really unlucky and dont get as much characters early stages, had to used up all my rewinds and honestly, i dont know if i can clear imaginarium theater if i didnt borrow a navia...
They had the perfect skeleton for it with the 2.2 Labyrinth event mode.. all they had to do was copy and paste , up the difficulty or make different options for different difficulty and everyone would have been happy..
But no!!! The game's brilliant devs took "how to create FOMO and how to disappoint our players again" route and made Imaginarium theatre... Ok i get it , this is a gacha game , they want to create FOMO so they make players spend their money on their game but like c'mon...
3+ years player here, I can't play IT cause I refuse to build units that are not fun or dont have an interesting kit, I have build many non meta characters, like Xinyan, yet its still not enough to enter this season IT really hoyo doing the lamest thing and community dont say a thing
don't play it, go to zzz
It has various problems and at many levels.
1. The first problem is at what I'd say level 0, where you can't even enter the theatre if you don't have a specific number of built characters.
2. Element check.. Why???? They put asimon in this theatre but the characters allowed are electro, dendro, geo. Like wtf bruh??? Did they forget their own in game mechanics??
3. Vigour- Characters can be used at max twice. What if I want to use my choice of character without a restriction? Atleast give us an option to "redeem" or "revive" the used characters via those flowers(the in mode currency).
4. Team building- It is essentially random bullshit go. I am forced to play weird combinations of characters which have little to no compatibility.
5. Buffs- do they even do anything?
I think the biggest issue is still that you just have characters there to fill in a slot, and that feels awful. Even more because you know those characters are bad but you still had to invest resources on them.
The problem with IT is that its a character bait gamemode and any suggestion that'd make you build less characters than their new quota is probably going to be ignored. The only reason it exists is so they can add new QOLs without changing the status quo by a lot. It's just a standard case of Genshin's combat system not being rigid enough to incentivize a more flexible gamemode.
Imaginarium Theatre is a game mode based on strategic (random BS go) use on your built (haphazardly scrounged up) characters.
i thought abyss was already annoying but Imaginarium Theater had the achievement of being even worse, I'm never complaining about abyss again
The game mode also just makes characters dependent on reactions feel terrible. Like Hu Tao in this theatre felt as bad as my barely built Ninguang. I had to play force Noelle carry once just to save characters for the bosses.
And don't even get me started on the Bounty Cryo abyss mage challenge. I had a fully pyro team of Gaming, Bennett, Xiangling and Thoma and I couldn't do it..... all of them are well built, like which character is that challenge built for?
they already made a decent rouge-like mode in an event before in inazuma (i forgor the name) they shouldve just made that permanent
its so scummy how they realized that the amount of characters they originally went for to full clear was not enough to make people have to invest in new characters they just leveled a couple chars to 70 every rotation and cleared so they just made it higher
For anyone wondering how it is for those who horizontally invest in their characters as well, here's the 22 units I brought for Visionary. My take away is that my Beidou is typically collecting dust in the bench but was really helpful here as subDPS.
Pyro (all are level 90 with their own weapon and artifacts.)
1. C0R1 Hu Tao - Triple Crowned
2. C6 Bennett - Triple Crowned
3. C5 Diluc - Triple Crowned
4. C6 Gaming - Triple Crowned
5. C6 Xiangling - 6/9/10
6. C0 Dehya 9/9/9
7. C3 Chevreuse
Electro
1. C2R1 Keqing 90 10/9/10
2. C0R1 Raiden 90 6/9/10
3. C6 Sara Mouun's Moon 90 1/1/10
4. C6 Fischl R5 Stringless 90 6/10/9
5. C6 Beidou R5 Luxurious Sealord 90 6/9/10
6. C0 Yae Miko R5 Widsith 90 6/10/9
Geo
1. C2R1 Itto 10/9/10
2. C0R1 Albedo 6/10/9
3. C6 Gorou R5 Fav Warbow 1/10/6
4. C0 Zhongli 1/10/9
5. C0 Chiori (Trial)
6. C6 Ningguang TTDS 9/9/9
Guest
1. C2R1 Kinich 6/10/10
2. C0 Yelan R5 Fav Warbow 6/9/9
3. C0 Venti R5 Sac Bow
I wish they would give Lv80 trial builds for all characters you own but don’t have leveled up. I don’t mind the 22 character requirement, it’ll come eventually when players pull enough. I do mind having to waste resin leveling characters to Lv70, who I 100% won’t build or use properly anyway and who would be lucky to be switched in once to trigger Scroll
That + removing the 4 character requirement for rooms would be the biggest instant improvements to this mode. I like the concept of Theater but this feels like playing an early beta with non fully fleshed out mechanics
The problem is it’s too basic for veterans that have lots of characters and too restrictive for new players that don’t have a lot of characters
I think this is a monkey paw situation. We all asked for more endgame activities and they gave us the most dogshit endgame mode i've ever had the displeasure of playing lol like damn nothing at all would have been preferable
@@bulat9331 erm
Actually
They took away abyss content to make room for theater
There is also an issue with the bosses, they are restrictive af too, before they put the aeronblight drake which requires a damn archer to knock it down, and now electro and geo are a must to kill both annoying bosses with niche mechanics.
The most annoying part of Abyss for me is the team building. I want to spend time with the actual combat not checking if my mistsplitter is on Kequing or switching my Raiden of her EM build or going back and double checking the enemy list for that one hydro some that's going to make me restart the entire floor because my neuvi team is on that side.
Theater takes all of that annoying shit and dials it up to 11 navigating menus isn't fun
Couldn't agree more, Genshin's Dev team makes some very weird decisions sometimes.
It’s a rougelike in name alone, Hoyo realizes the issue of Vet accounts bloating and never using older event five star units. So to address this IT is made to be a test of account width. As someone who plays other non Hoyo gacha games this is nothing new to me. Bleach Brave Souls Senkaimon is this but up to 11, each character has 1 use over 50 floors, with in tower have 150 floors but less character lockouts (5 floors were added a month and based around 5/6 new units from the prior month).
The reason why I’d say this is because IT is a mode that keeps you spending. Although anecdotal people have begun to think their accounts have settled, they own Neuv/Arle with best supports so they can clear abyss no sweat. So how do you stay in the hamster wheel? Make an endgame mode which locks out said units, now you have to choose when and where you will use them (if you get them). IT’s saving grace is that because of this thesis they can make characters that overlap existing archetypes because you only get two uses in IT. The mode itself poses these restrictions to make new players do exactly what you did in the account, level up shitters or spend on new banners. For players who want to clear endgame they’ve gained more customers.
SimU/Hollow Zero works in HSR/ZZZ because it’s not an abyss-like endgame mode, IT is.
not even the primos could bring me back to this game mode tbh, it's that bad for me.
as someone already said i think it would be better if we could choose 4 preset teams instead of 16 charas. and when a team is not used for 2 acts they regain 1 vigor.
hoyo can then start buffing the enemies and the buffs as well.
Agreed. And I hit like before even watching the video. Also, why can't we make teams with less than 4 characters?
@@mormegil84 I'd rather consistently be able to make cohesive teams
@@jstern25 That would be nice. Like you said in the video, it's a struggle when it comes to viable supports.
Be it F2P's or whales, most of them stop pulling after they create 2 teams if their only goal is to beat Abyss. Which takes a year to build if you are F2P, no joke. But SU is pretty damning when it comes to the unit requirements. 16 units minimum with 4 more for max buffs is literally screaming, "HEY! WE HATE IT WHEN YOU PULL FOR 2 TEAMS AND STOP. THUS SU IS NOW HERE AND IS MAKING SURE YOU'LL PULL MORE UNITS AND BUY OUR BP AND GENESIS PACKS TO BUILD THEM! 😈"
On top of this, they removed one reset of abyss and replaced it with SU, as if giving away 5 more wishes is going to choke them somehow. And the only reason I am fine in SU is because I am a veteran and I usually build all of my units to lvl 70 for the blue fates, which is mad behaviour, I know.
I am glad Genshin's income dropped to less than a billion this year, despite SU's release. It shows players are tired of their stale formula. The Teapot is restrictive, TCG is dead and Spiral Abyss and SU are chores rather than being fun. (Also, they have gotten too comfortable releasing the same kit over and over again with newer characters, which needs to change)
I agree that it isn't particularly fun but I didn't mind this cycle too much. While I don't want to do it again I regret I didn't do the crystalyze routes because I bet those feel nice. Basically instead of team building they give you the reaction buffs and those can feel good. So you have to make sure you match your reactions each stage with at least 2 characters and then it will mostly feel good.
I hated the IT reset before btw. I got the 10 stellas but that cycle felt bad.
I played on a friend's account and it forced me to level up Amber, Lisa, Collei, and Sara to get to the bare minimum to participate in the last 2 theatre rotation. I barely have enough after that to max Kazuha to level 90.
I remember buying the geo+electro buff but i used all my geo chars by the second boss. Felt like a huge waste of time.
It's basically just a chore, kinda like Simulated Universe and Pure Fiction in HSR (SimU shits on IT tho, I'll give it that). Also I can imagine a lot of people struggle to make their roster wide enough to play the final difficulty mode. Very sneaky of hoyo to make it impossible to get full rewards otherwise, I didn't realize that it changed so I had to redo the whole thing on the "hidden" difficulty mode, I'll be damned if I don't get full clear in a Genshin end game mode lol.
Anyway I basically raise every character, even 4* (and I'm not missing any) and I've been playing for over 3 years. Even I felt a little bit pressed lol, how the hell are younger accounts supposed to do this mode at all? You also need to kit everyone out with artifacts and weapon, level their talents and stuff, it's a crazy high barrier to entry, but once you're in it's pretty easy honestly. That was one of my major gripes with it before the update and they honestly only made that part worse.
I still don't fully understand how this thing works and how to play it most effectively because it just seems so tedious and not fun and I can't be bothered. The entry restriction is ridiculous, I can beat everything easily yet I can't play the highest stage and get all the awards because I don't have enough built characters. This would be easily solved if they simply remove this restriction AND allow us to play without a full team. I'd rather beat a few stages solo or with a duo, rather than using random nonsensical teams.
I like the mode since I have all my characters leveled and built, it gives me an excuse to dust off units I haven't touched in years. That said, it would improve quite a bit by simply letting us select < 4 character teams
Ive never considered theatre a roguelike.
I have 19 level 70 unbuilt characters just to enter visionary mode and I got all the rewards for every IT so far.
But it left me broke to level the characters I pull for so I skipped 2 patches due to having no mora or exp books. I have saved 350 pulls which I might have spend on pulling.
5:30 ...What a terrible way to start off... Girl, do Dehya, Keqing and Ning and whatever bad character you've gotten from select random character card.
12:00 ... Maybe because the point of a game mode is to make random teams and figure out synergies you can use to clear content in one go. Unlike Abyss that people play on repeat on hardest mode only to test their favorite teams. It's not the same thing.
Hoyo wasnt cooking
It's bs but still better than abyss which I complete with the exact same teams for years. Now I have to juggle my characters and use 10% of my brain once a month instead of 1% at abyss.
It's not hard for me. I will select 2 teams that will clear the 4 bosses on Visionary mode then the remaining characters, I will use them for the fights in between. I prioritize selecting companions and sticking to one power (this rotation I only do Overload buffs).
You know whats funny? In zzz the event now has a roguelike gameplay and somehow managed to do it well
@@Dooood24 we love bizarre brigade
I hate IT for the same reason, why characters needs to be removed from your roster, this is the total opposite of a Roguelike game. I think they should remove the vigor mechanic, I have not problem on them restricting the elemental character you can bring as long as they remove the vigor.
I think its fun, i whoop it but I can understand why alot of others can't. Ive played the game since it launched essentially and i build alot of characters.
Agree on the lack of sense of progression, but hard disagree on letting you just play your planned spiral abyss meta teams? Clearly the idea was to get you to not just play top of meta repeatedly each floor. You're essentially asking for spiral abyss 2 with more buff cards. Lower the requirement sure, but there absolutely needs to be some jeopardy to when you use your kazuha/bennett.
I don‘t think I ever agreed with a genshin opinion video more. I like the idea of getting an additional vigor. my idea was that you can reclaim characters, if I used my Arlechino twice it can show up again in the character cards.
In an ideal world it would be an actual rogue like. you start with low build four stars and after each stage you can get better characters, weapons or talents.
Not single endgame mode has to accomodate "rush from beggining" players. I know it's for content, but that is not a valid point at all. Most players are not content creators and will follow natural game progression which is to pull for characters and use them as years go by.
I actually look forward to Theater every month because I find the overall gimmick engaging. I mean, I like figuring out the best way to spread my characters across a run to make the best teams I can, regardless of the lack of actual need to have great teams in most of its chambers. Overall, it's fun to me, more than Abyss that feels kinda automatic for me already. That said, I was fortunate to have always enjoyed building many of the 4 stars, so it never happened that Theater forced me to build anyone I hadn't already, so this negative aspect of the mode never stung me. Besides, I love that all these characters become more relevant with Theater. Anyway, I do think Theater can improve a lot in the future. I like your idea of a card that gives one vigor to any character. I also think it would be good if people could borrow more characters from friends to enter Visionary Mode, so it lessens the burden of building too many characters and makes it more accessible. Improving the relevancy of cards in general would be great too
Here's a fix for it
First remove it from the monthly reset and put of the abyss back there
Maka it like su(but without the weekly bs) and just add upon it every few patches in a permanent way and since it's permanent players can take their time with it
I think this is the best for IT make it less intrusive because I'll be honest i don't like these game modes in any of these games at all so the less intrusive they are the better
If you wanna play a better rogue like play the new zzz arcade mini game lmaoo
Dare I say I like theater significantly more then elysian realm, SimU and Hollow Zero...... mostly bc atleast every rotation is significantly different and most importantly ONLY ONCE A MONTH, instead of every week with the other 3. Indeed if you want something repeatable, theater isn't it.
But with the other 3 it just started feeling like a weekly chore to me
Do I think theater is better designed then those modes? Oh absolutely not but I get way less annoyed with it
1) its a bad roguelike because there's no sense of progression
There's always a sense of progression tho. The buffs you have increase and so is the team members. You start with dehya, ningguang, yaoyao kind of team and by the end, last theatre, i got premium neuv and arle team available. This theatre, I got kinich burn, raiden national, hutao vape, arle vape team available. Is that not progression? Thats not even talking about the buffs.
2) Bad barrier of entry as f2p have to lvl up bad characters
Genshin is a 4 year old game, even f2p, if they play from the start and didnt miss a lot of the major event and dailies, would have a lot of 5 stars. I dont think you can fault an end game mode for simply being about the endgame where players are assumed to have a lot of characters in their lineup.
3) Nobody wants to play a bad team
If you somehow end up with a really fucked up team, its on you. You either dont have enough characters in your acc or bad at resource management. I dont understand why people want to have a premium team in the theatre where the difficulty isnt that high and can be cleared with 2 units that synergize well with each other and are moderately invested. The available buffs also help. In all my run since theatre release. I never once ended up with a team I would call, bad, unless your definition of bad is not premium.
4) He mentioned how theatre can be fixed with the option to refresh vigour
If that's an option, people would just spam that shit on neuvilet, arle, kazuha, nahida. Then your run would just be neuv premium/arle premium, aka, not any different than the abyss. For an endgame that is about promoting variety, that's a failure.
the most annoying part for me is to build a bach of niche or barely playable characters just to participate in this clown fiesta
100% accurate.
they are trying to make something like Sim.universe or hollow zero in genshin but fail miserably
people used to complain a lot how they don't have a reson to build/pull characters anymore 'cuz they can still clear abyss with hyperbat and international bat for 4 years.
there you go, now you can pull/build for theatre :)
i always knew the horizontal investment will pay off one day. EZ Clap
IT doesn't force me to farm Z-merits each week or do the same shit in the menu for blessings for 13 rooms each week. IT takes 15-20 minutes a month and i'm done.
if i wanna play actual teams - i go to abyss/overworld/local legends. IT is just a fun mode where i try to play with what i can build, play something i would never play overwise.
i'd take that over abyss 2.0 with inflated hp or aoe abyss. or any other weekly time waste bullshit
Yeah I can meet the requirements now since I've been playing for 4 years and have nearly every character but the mode is absolutely bs and sucks. If it was a fun roguelite mode where you play like 3 teams at most it'd be fine imo but they made it too annoying
Both spiral abyss and IT are not fun for me
don’t like it but able to complete it.
Fkn remove this elemental restriction or maybe don't give us those shtty elements that don't even react with each other. The f what is this. Its crystalize and overload. And they choose most useless starter characters and hide everything else in the special guest mn. This season is the most f annoying imaginarium theatre so far. And Dorito boss in the last chamber 🗿
You ain't see nothing yet... incoming Dendro, Anemo, Geo rotation.
I hate how everything in Genshin has to somehow sale a character. In ZZZ and HSR we have modes made to have fun! But not in Genshin Sadge
Terrible take. Allthe end game mods in HSR and ZZZ exist soley to sell on banner characters
We just need more of the arcade stuff in ZZZ.
@@TheRoleplayer40k how is arcade and ZZZ rogue-like are made to sell a character? Same with Herta gamemodes. Noone pulls units specifically for these modes
Hollow Zero is an amazing advertisement for caesar ngl
Shield resonia are busted
Just playing this shit for primos. It's so fkn frustrating. Just all unga bunga random ingredients soup teams. It's just not fun. I play cuz I had to. TCG is just better billion times better if it has the same rewards.
the character requirments are too highr for the charactersn you need
I HATEEEEEE THIS GAME MODE 😡😡😡😡😡🤬🤬😡🤬🤬😡🤬😡🤬😡🤬😡
I like IT way more than the abyss.
Say something bad about IT in the main sub and you'll be downvoted to hell. Idk if those are paid trolls.
IT is not a rouguelike tho