I just want something to soothe the angst

[cashew]

Spent a whole day reading way, way too much 卢俊义×燕青 fanfic. One, Water Margins fanfic is significantly better written. Two, Water Margins fanfic almost exclusively fades to black when it comes to porn because no one can figure out how to write passable porn in Classical Chinese, so like, kudos that that one explicit PWP in Classical Chinese for Jing Yuan/Dan Heng ship. Three, all this just makes me even sadder about the state of Jing Yuan in HSR.

I feel like miHoyo bit off more than they can chew with this character. MiHoyo writing is already pretty shit, but they really don't seem to know how to write characters as bad-ass. The voice acting is pulling a lot of the weight, but the plot makes no sense. (Yes, I finally watched the next part of 2.4 patch...I'm not impressed.) Character motivation is all over the place, or it's opaque for the sake of being "mysterious", but I suspect even the writers themselves have no fucking clue what they actually want to do with Jing Yuan anymore. Cool and tactical, a gentle giant with nerves of steel and...that's it. Is he meant to be tragic? Heroic? Scapegoat or savior? There is no plan!

Why does Xianzhou higher ups want to pull down an immensely talented general who has proved himself over and over and over? Who knows...the writers are just throwing in the "evil magistrates" trope and ignoring that those "evil magistrates" characters had personal interests that conflicted with whomever they're trying to frame/slander/murder. What is the political structure of Xianzhou? Who knows, let's just drop cool names that sound ancient. What's the chain of command and how is the military organized? Who the fuck cares, here's a new character, pay us.

I feel like Xianzhou is miHoyo's attempt to do Wuxia (or Xianxia) but in SPAAAACE, and it honestly sucks. It has all the dressing of the genre but none of the emotional core. Wuxia is a genre that's defined by its exploration of what makes a hero, both in feats and in the emotional journey of trying to live up to conflicting expectations while fighting for a balance between personal desires and social responsibility. Xianxia is an exploration of the complex interaction of elements that makes up an identity set in a fantasy world where rules don't always follow that of our human understanding, which allows us to breakdown how lineage, upbringing, ideology, sexuality, gender norms, and inter-personal relationships contribute to fully realizing personhood.

Meanwhile, HSR is...Heeeeeey, look, funny rivalry.

What's frustrating is that there's actually so much here that can be expanded upon. A deeper delve into these characters by having their actual backstories, seeing them deal with events and respond to other characters, would have been a rich mine of genuine emotion. Showing us, the players, characters with vulnerability and flaws and frustration and failures would serve so much more to make these characters fleshed out and real. Instead, miHoyo is too busy vibing and thinking up new game mechanics to question the character of the characters they've released.

All we're left with is just a bunch of walking tropes. Here's the sly one, the cool one, the reserved one, the scheming one, the brash one, the thoughtful one, the loner one, etc. etc. etc. Accidentally, they'll create something that has so much potential that it almost seems like a fully realized character. But then the story proves that actually, no, there's nothing. It's just all smoke and mirrors.

Comments

[tanithryudo]

To be fair... I don't think gatcha games are meant to be a great medium for storytelling from the concept. It's one thing if they are using an existing IP, but in those cases, the story is already told using other mediums/format/etc. But the only predecessor that Star Rail *sort of* has is Impact 3rd and that's a gatcha game too.

So eh... it's better for your blood pressure if you don't carry too much expectations into the story. Less disappointment that way.

Fanfic on the other hand... well, that depends on the generation of writers. And as with all fanfic, it's gonna be 99% dross and 1% good stuff. In that respect, the problem with Jing Yuan is that his pairings are not really that popular, unfortunately. Compared to the Aventurine/Ratio pairing, although there's a whole lot of sucky fic there too, at least the total is large enough that there's also a higher number of decent/good fics.

[cashew]

Re: gacha story -
I mean I don't hold very high expectations overall for games, even less for gacha, but there are definitely degrees of suck. Another Eden is also a gacha game, but it's able to stick to a coherent main plot and clearly identify "side" vs "main" story. Side stories are pretty extended affairs, but it remains isolated from the main plot thematically, and changes who the main character is. Another Eden smartly drops the main story's protagonist during side story quests to signal the shift. And the side story always wraps up (over the course of multiple patches much like HSR) and results in character growth. It's also a smart way to keep old characters relevant by upgrading their kits after the story has been released (and sell more gacha pulls because the free story has now gained the character more fans).

But HSR doesn't even have that basic storytelling structure in place, so now it's impossible to parse what section is the main arc vs what section is the side story. The set up suggests that exploring new worlds and the constant interference from the IPC or Stellaron Hunters ought to be the main conflict, with each world/planet serving as a new battle ground with some local issues popping up as a sidequest. But with how detailed Xianzhou's political mess has become (compared to the more straightforward conflict on penacony & belobog), HSR is poised to make this a main arc. In which case...the IPC and Stellaron Hunters ought to have been introduced much later, not to mention the story should've began in Xianzhou rather than on the space station. As it stands, the story structure is a complete mess. It feels like HSR cannibalized another game and tried to stuff what should have been a standalone game plot into this current space drama.

Re: fanfic -
Actually there's less fic for Water Margins than HSR because classical Chinese scares people off. Also fic writers tend to be younger and most of them prefer newer/modern materials. (See difference in fandom size between Iliad vs Percy Jackson, for example. Both deal with Olympian gods, but Percy Jackson much higher fic numbers.)

I think Water Margins have better fic bc the original material is just better written and only people who have confidence in their Classical Chinese are even interested in writing fic for Water Margins, whereas HSR is mostly modern vernacular so people just write whatever. The self selection is basically non-existent.

[tanithryudo]

Well, they also have to pace the storytelling with selling the banners. So sales requirements are taking precedence over plotting, which contributes to the problem. A lot of fans believe (and I agree) that the Quintet storytelling was at least partially ruined due to the order they had to sell the banners for Blade, DHIL, Jingliu. But unfortunately since this is the sales model they've chosen, there's not much that the user can do about it.

Not sure if it's a good sign or not that the 2.6 patch will only have 1 new character banner. Maybe they'll slow down the release of new characters in the future and better pace storytelling? ...Nah, better not get my hopes up.

[cashew]

the Quintet storytelling was at least partially ruined due to the order they had to sell the banners

Oh, 100% this. But even the banners can be worked around to a certain extent. Like, since the banner release was Blade, DHIL, Jingliu, they could've centered the story on the mystery of Dan Heng. Presuming we're stuck with the tutorial and belobog as is, have Pom announce their next destination is Luofu. DH immediately freaks out and refuses to go, leaving the rest of the crew confused. Cut to DH dreams, with headless shots of the Quintet talking, the names being blanked out, then suddenly focus on Blade's face and the threat to make "Imbibitor Lunae" pay. This establishes DH has some bad blood with their next location. Throw in a quick shot of JY smiling in the dream as the hook. (Start selling Blade banner here.)

Then the party sans DH arrive, go to meet up with various bureaucrats (Yanqing, Fu Xuan, etc.) to get a basic run down of why they've been called in: Cloud Knights are overwhelmed by the sudden incursion of 丰饶孽物 and the general decided to call in a personal favor. Team can then be all, what personal favor? We have someone who has a personal connection here? At which point JY can join the convo, partially explain he knows DH while being vague about how he knows, but also isn't surprised DH rejected his request. This establishes even more mystery regarding WTF is going on with their fellow crew member.

While the team gets sent on a merry wild goosechase cleaning out mooks, the story periodically cuts back to DH sneaking around Luofu, showing that he actually does care but also doesn't want his identity revealed for some reason. At this point, Blade crashes the party, shouts a bunch of accusations about sedition and other keywords that the party encounters during their half of the quest, and the fight drags out enough to alert the Cloud Knights intelligence. Yanqing rushes in to see WTF is happening and now DHIL is revealed. (Begin selling DHIL.)

Change focus of the story to DH. Have Blade escape, but DH allows Yanqing to arrest him bc he doesn't want to cause any more problems, and JY shows up to clear the air. JY can even be all "I knew in your heart of hearts you wouldn't abandon Luofu" and have DH rebuff the olive branch. Have JY use the leverage of the Express party being in danger and twist DH's arm to get him to help. DH can be all "You've changed" and JY makes sad face to establish a tense relationship. Take the awkward moment into boss fight, have DH save JY, JY faints, and everyone rushes the general back to 丹鼎司.

This means we can meet up with Bailu, who can explain JY needs rest. Team, being nice people, can decide to stay until JY is back on his feet, they're not in a rush, while DH is tsundere about it. While they're hanging out to help with various Cloud Knight problems, suddenly a ruckus breaks out. Turns out escapee Jingliu has returned! (Sell Jingliu banner.) DH has a headache as the name triggers some memories, so he decides to go see this person bc the theme of this arc is "mystery of DH's past".

Jingliu accuses DH of sedition and confirms Blade's story that Imbibitor Lunae did a bad. DH has an emotional breakdown where he denies this and say he is his own person. Boss battle with Jingliu ensues as Cloud Knights try to recapture Jingliu. Jingliu surrenders, but JY, who ought to be having bed rest, shows up to drop the reveal that Jingliu's attempt to get arrested so she can do her convoluted plan isn't going to happen. Jingliu trades some frosty barbs with JY, go their own ways, and JY is rushed back to bed, bc injuries.

Finally, the Express party is ready to leave, JY is recovered and he sees them off. DH expresses that he will not let the past shape his future and JY congrats him on finding his own way forward. Also, the exile order has been lifted, so he can join the party on return visits in the future. As thanks for the huge role the Express team played in aiding Luofu, JY gives them the 玉兆, saying Luofu will return the favor should the Express team ever need it.

End Luofu arc. Next planet.

Like, it's still meh...but at least there's set up and pay off and it's clear this place is meant to be DH backstory planet.

[tanithryudo]

The problem is that kind of storyline would be focused too much on the interpersonal drama, and not enough boss fights to satisfy the players who are not invested in those characters. I mean, a significant portion of the playerbase, especially so early in the games life when a lot of it's players are partly inherited Impact3rd, don't care for male characters. =/

IMO, they could just have more outright explanations of what exactly happened during the Quintet era (in CLEAR WORDS!) and a few cinematic flashbacks of the Quintet era relationships, stuffed into a character quest (maybe Jing Yuan's, cuz I don't recall we ever got a companion quest for him, or even Blade's, cuz I don't recall the contents of his). One of the biggest problems with the Quintet story is that they kept trying to make it mysterious, but then dragged on the mystery for 3 patches (40x3=120 days) and then never really produced a payoff at the end, because a lot of the Quintet drama is *still* a mystery, only partially pieced together from lore fragments that stand outside of any quest narrative.

[cashew]

not enough boss fights to satisfy the players who are not invested in those characters

I mean...how many boss fights are in each patch? I assumed 1 boss per patch. In which case, Blade, Phantylia, Jingliu would be those bosses (per my plot suggestion).

biggest problems with the Quintet story is that they kept trying to make it mysterious, but then dragged on the mystery for 3 patches (40x3=120 days) and then never really produced a payoff at the end, because a lot of the Quintet drama is still a mystery

Honestly, I don't think miHoyo has a story beyond "Dan Feng did a bad, caused Quintet to split up". My proposal focused on the interpersonal drama precisely because there's nothing beyond interpersonal drama. I mean, what else is actually interesting beyond how they interacted when the set up is "a group of friends that hanged out together during their down time"?

The Quintet were conceptualized as a group of 5 people, all exceptional individuals who also happened to be friends. There's no real thought placed into how these people from vastly different walks of life (with vastly different cultural upbringings) actually came together. Hell, according to Jingliu's description, they accidentally fell together because they were all "weirdos" who didn't fit in. That's not exactly a "deep, abiding group of like-minded heroes united toward a common goal". There's no way to build up meaningful boss battles with that framework.

With the stuff from 2.4 patch and Huaiyan's comments regarding vapid titles assigned by laymen, I think the whole Quintet thing is more the result of folk imagination than anything concrete. At least that's what I'm getting when the story can't cough up actual details regarding what the 5 people did together beyond being drinking buddies. At least by making Blade and Jingliu bosses, it would give the game an excuse to explain more about who they are.

[tanithryudo]

I think it is the lack of details that a lot of people didn't like. Like, people who weren't into the characters themselves, they probably want to know more about the backstory worldbuilding...

Like, if they'd provided more details about the threats the Quintet handled and the consequences/lives saved, people would be able to emphasize more with the hype around their legend, and be able to commiserate more with their fall.

If we got more details about the actual damage caused by Dan Feng's experimental blowup other than a few fragmented accounts (and only from rebirthing Vidyadhara at that), people might be more ready to judge against him (or take his side instead, depending on how it was meant to be perceived).

Like, we don't even know enough about the laws of the Luofu to know why they had to scrub Jingliu's name from all the records! She didn't mess around with Abundance. Just went mara-struck, which is an expected event for Xianzhou citizens at the end of their lifespan. She even turned herself in beforehand! How could she be "culpable" for the fact that they couldn't hold her after she went past the limit? And how does is her actions after going insane apparently balance out her long lifetime of service? *throws hands*

As it is, everything we got are vague fragments and hearsay, and the audience has to fill a lot of blanks with our own imagination. Having the VA try to carry the emotional impact alone without any concrete, objective, details to back it up is... eh, hard to emphasize with.

[cashew]

if they'd provided more details about the threats the Quintet handled and the consequences/lives saved

In no way am I trying to defend miHoyo's shit writing, but I think the problem is that there aren't any details regarding the threats that the Quintet handled because they never handled those threats as a Quintet. I think only Jingliu and Jing Yuan spent any time real time together as a fighting unit, as both were part of the Cloud Knights (Baiheng technically was under the command of 天舶司) and we have confirmation from Jing Yuan's personal story that he was working directly under Jingliu for a while because literally no one else in the Cloud Knights could deal with his scheming. Likely the reason they put him under Jingliu's command was because Jingliu was his master and therefore he won't go around pulling crazy stunts before reporting to his commanding officer.

Meanwhile, Dan Feng was a combat medic (according to personal story descriptions), but if we use a little bit of common sense, it's probably unlikely that the leader of the Vidyadhara clan (who have a certain amount of autonomous rule) would have been going out on any long distance campaigns. Most likely he was only ever attending combat when said combat happened on Luofu and there's nowhere to sequester the most valuable Vidyadhara...essentially the threat is on the doorstep and it's an all hands on board kind of situation.

As for Yingxing(Blade), he's literally an engineer. He provided the Cloud Knights with weapons, but that seemed to be the extend of his cooperation in terms going to battle together. His much bigger lcaim to fame is being the head of the 工造司 and maintaining the war machine, 99% of which is probably done by interacting with people in his department and not with the Quintet.

It's entirely possible that the only time the five were actually seen working remotely within a reasonable distance of each other was during the last stand in the Battle against Shuhu, where the destruction to the Cloud Knights was described as "十不存一" (aka less than 10% survived the battle). That sounds like extenuating circumstances and not an "on the regular" type of thing the five of them probably engaged in.

Would it have been better if we got an animated short of the Battle against Shuhu? 100% But it was going to be disappointing no matter what miHoyo did because they decided to string along the audience and make the audience think that the Legendary Quintet did legendary things when the reality was that the legend far exceeded reality.

If we got more details about the actual damage caused by Dan Feng's experimental blowup other than a few fragmented accounts

I mean, this is why I proposed boss fights against Blade and Jingliu, as they both could've given the audience a far greater detailed account of the damage from abomination dragon (it sounds like the dragon did most of the damage). One of the most convincing moments was Jingliu chewing out Dan Heng about how the botched resurrection ruined the memory of Baiheng as a hero as well as disrespecting Baiheng's own wishes regarding her death. On a personal level, that's immensely distressful. (Imagine if your friend promised to sign off on a euthanasia form after contracting an incurable disease, but instead kept you nominally alive on a machine that then turned you into zombie... That's basically the equivalent of Dan Feng's actions.) A cutscene with Jingliu covering her eyes to kill the remains of her friend and showing her emotional breakdown after the fact as she succumbs to Mara while her disciple watches helplessly would've been great. Half of that is in the Ichor of Two Dragons PV. If miHoyo integrated that PV into the actual game right before Jingliu goes absolutely batshit on Dan Heng's ass, we'd have a stronger sense of just how much the even traumatized everyone.

Hell, I would argue that not letting Dan Heng actually remember the events is the biggest miss step of the entire Sedition story, as knowing how much Dan Feng regretted his actions is the most direct way to show how terrible the event was and why it justified (in the minds of 十王司) the torturing the next incarnation. The crazy thing is Jing Yuan even touched upon the subject briefly, which is that even if Dan Heng doesn't remember anything, the pain caused by his predecessor is still remembered by the victims, and he can't escape that. (Just like modern German children can't be allowed to forget the Holocaust, or modern Japanese children need to face the war crimes of Imperial Japan, nor should American children ignore the many crimes against the native peoples during their nation's founding. The argument that "well, they're not the ones who perpetrated the crime" rings pretty hollow.) But the writers aren't actually willing to carry through with the message at the end, so we get this limp-wristed vague mumble about identity and stuff.

we don't even know enough about the laws of the Luofu to know why they had to scrub Jingliu's name from all the records

I thought that had nothing to do with laws and everything to do with control of information? Like the powers that be basically freaked the fuck out and tried to shut everything down, so no one in the future can know what actually happened with Jingliu because... Random Corrupt Political Decisions don't require justification!!! This gets back to miHoyo being all vibes no plot problem again. This problem continues into 2.4, since there's also no good reasoning behind why the higher ups would want to push Jing Yuan out of his position when he's being doing a better job than most that came before or after.

everything we got are vague fragments and hearsay

Yes, this is the key problem, which I feel like we'd be able to address if we actually got Blade and Jingliu and Jing Yuan's version of the story. But we don't because miHoyo DOESN'T THINK ABOUT THEIR CHARACTERS. Again, this is why I wanted Blade and Jingliu as boss fights, because that would force the story to actually explain why these two hate Dan Feng so much, which will make the extent of the damage of the sedition and the culpability of the exact action explicitly clear.

[tanithryudo]

> they never handled those threats as a Quintet

I dunno, it seems a bit of a reach that the whole "Quintet" thing was made up from folk legend. While historically IRL, I could see how that kind of thing could develop, I am more inclined to believe that Hoyo at least really meant for them to have actually been something of a team that did extraordinary things together as a team (similar to our current Astral Express adventure team) in the past. Most likely despite the disapproval of various factions. And also before the battle with Shuhu; that is, not necessarily during the outright war scenario where they would actually have different obligations to the war effort.

> far greater detailed account of the damage from abomination dragon

I dunno, the mechanics of boss fights usually just focus on the fight itself and not necessarily on the collateral or aftermath. Like, the fight against Phantylia took place in a very flash manner on the Luofu, but we never got any dialogue or stuff afterwards that indicated it caused any/more collateral damage than the Stellaron raising the Arbor did. Ditto the fight against the Doomsday Beast in the tutorial, I don't think we ever saw the bill for that.

> not letting Dan Heng actually remember the events is the biggest miss step of the entire Sedition story

Hm, I could see that the reason Hoyo did that is because a character that is part of the protagonist trio can't have something that ties them down outside of the trio. They can hint at CP outside of the protagonist party, but it can only be hints and never outright anything that threatens to take them out of the group. Otherwise people who were sold on the trio before at the start of the game can easily become offended. And let's face it, CP-players are only going to be a very small part of the playerbase.

For that matter, *because* Dan Heng is part of the protagonist trio, I don't think they can actually make it seem like it's "right" for Dan Heng to be culpable for his predecessor's crimes (eg. if it was too inexcusable/damaging). The fans would riot, and I would also think there would be problems with parents and censorship that would come up. So they are stuck with the requirement that Dan Heng as a protagonist character must be "innocent" legally, and whatever angst leveled against him potentially excusable in the eyes of the audience.

Of course, given that, I'm not sure why they even took the story this way with the Vidyadhara reincarnation and with the Sedition being such a big deal. I can see that they probably always intended Dan Heng to move past his past as part of his "character growth" and "affirming his ties with the Astral Express". But that kind of storyline will either conflict with such a former life backstory, or they would necessarily have to make said problems of the past life...not quite as problematic. Not sure if that's any part of the reason they are vague about it.

I mean, the emotion & relationship centric storytelling version you have would make for a great fanfic, and put in the game, it would probably be awesome for the fangirl playerbase who are invested in the Luofu. But... it feels more jjwtx than qidian, is the feel I get from it. :p So I am not sure the playerbase who are... well, the guys, would react to it.

> Random Corrupt Political Decisions don't require justification

Ugh.

> Blade and Jingliu and Jing Yuan's version of the story

Hm, with Blade, I would suspect there's a 50-50 chance his character story if we ever get it is going to be Stellaron Hunter focused. Because let's face it, the SH and their members are more popular as a faction than the Xianzhou to the playerbase, even from the beginning.

Jingliu already got her character story, and it was like half focused on her current anti-Abundance plans. Which I get why Hoyo decided that, because focusing on the current meta-plot is more important to players than harping on a past that only really matters to one major supporting character. But still, Jingliu sounds like she doesn't actually have any personal beef with Dan Feng/Dan Heng (anymore?), while viewing them as one person. (Then again, her current antics supposedly led to a lot of deaths too, potentially half the Luofu according to Elios' predictions if the Astral Express hadn't intervened. So I guess it would've been hypocritical of her to dump on DF/DH for whatever damage the Sedition caused.)

Jing Yuan's story... I feel that if Hoyo ever makes it, it will be as a vehicle to introduce other Xianzhou generals/ships/etc., rather than beating on a horse that's already been consigned as dead by the playbase. :/

[cashew]

I am more inclined to believe that Hoyo at least really meant for them to have actually been something of a team that did extraordinary things together as a team (similar to our current Astral Express adventure team)

I guess this is a case of personal interpretation. I find it hard to imagine how people in 云骑军、天舶司、工造司 would've combined together into an adventuring unit, not the least of which because I doubt 云骑 had enough vacation time to be running off on an adventure, and since Yingxing was the head engineer of 工造司 (all the work and none of the political power based on Jingliu's account), he also seems unlikely to be able to get much free time. And given the political power struggle between 龙师 and 龙尊, I don't see how Dan Feng could've really pulled himself away from the daily ins and outs of Vidyadhara politicking to go on adventures. (I know emperors have managed to secretly go on vacation in the past, but the ones who did that had absolute power over the court at the time.)

Based on the Quintet's set up that miHoyo gave, I can't really imagine how the writers could have thought these guys had time to go on adventures. Hence my "it's all folklore" perspective. (Then again, this assumes miHoyo writers gave a shit about their characters.)

mechanics of boss fights usually just focus on the fight itself and not necessarily on the collateral or aftermath. Like, the fight against Phantylia took place in a very flash manner on the Luofu, but we never got any dialogue or stuff afterwards that indicated it caused any/more collateral damage than the Stellaron raising the Arbor did.

My comment on the boss fight was refering to the fact that we get a lot of dialogue during the boss fight to reveal the Boss character's motivations, thoughts, and reasoning. It's less about being shown the aftermath and more that if Blade and Jingliu became boss fights, this would give Blade and Jingliu an in-story excuse to explain why they hate Dan Feng so much. They can explicitly tell the audience just how bad the situation with the abomination dragon became, talk about how it hurt them personally and the damage it wrought on the people they care about. This would more explicitly establish the kind of damage that Dan Feng did and give the audience the reason 十王司 used to lock Dan Feng up and torture him (justified or not is dependant on each individual audience member and how much they're convinced by Blade and Jingliu's Boss Monologue).

They can hint at CP outside of the protagonist party, but it can only be hints and never outright anything that threatens to take them out of the group.

I don't think my suggested plot supports any CP tho'? It's all friendship, and broken ones at that.

they are stuck with the requirement that Dan Heng as a protagonist character must be "innocent" legally, and whatever angst leveled against him potentially excusable in the eyes of the audience

Dan Heng is innocent, because he's not the one that perpetrated the crime. Just like modern Americans aren't the one's killing native residence. Burden of history doesn't make one guilty. But having to bear the burden of history (aka, feel bad about this and live with the knowledge of ancestors did a bad) is pretty...uh, bog standard morality?

If Dan Heng remembered how bad the situation was and thus decided he feels bad about his predecessor doing a bad to Luofu and makes him more eager to help in anyway he can, this would both make him look heroic and give the Express team a reason to keep coming back for whatever sidequest/filler quests between main story events. Meanwhile, I'm getting the sense that 十王司 is meant to be antagonistic, so having them use a legitimate surface excuse to their torture an innocent person would further establish them as the bad ones. (Kind of like how 9/11 - a legitimate tragedy - provided the cover for torture in Guantanamo by the US government.)

part of his "character growth" and "affirming his ties with the Astral Express"

This seems to be the intent of the entire Luofu arc based on Ichor of Two Dragons PV. The intent is for Dan Heng move past the trauma/sad and go adventuring with the Express. But the writers suck and don't know how to conclude the tragedy at all.

it feels more jjwtx than qidian, is the feel I get from it

I mean, this is Xianxia in Space. Xianxia's core engagement is emotions and relationships. Hell, the part of the reason Xianxia became a thing is because people wanted the personal drama to be of higher relevance than the political background in Wuxia stories, so they stripped the politics out and replaced it with a fantasy world instead.

Also, have you read Water Margins? That entire thing is pure personal relationships and interpersonal drama. I'm just following the path laid by the classics. :p

there's a 50-50 chance his character story if we ever get it is going to be Stellaron Hunter focused

OK, I should clarify that when I said Blade, Jingliu, Jing Yuan's version of the story, I'm refering to their version of the Sedition of Imbibitor Lunae. Since they have the most direct knowledge of what actually went down, they're one of the few people still alive who can give an accurate (if biased) account of what Dan Feng did. I know Blade technically lost a lot of his memories, but clearly his beef with Dan Feng is seared into his mind and it sounds like he still remembers a bit of the past based on his personal story descriptions (especially Part 4).

Also, we still have no idea what Jing Yuan was doing during this whole time. Baiheng got turned into an abomination, Yingxing and Dan Feng presumably were self recriminating after they realized what they created, and Jingliu had to kill her friend's corpse and in the process seemed to have caused substantial collatoral damage. Where was Jing Yuan during all this? Seems like a pretty big oversight in storytelling since Jing Yuan was cleaning up after this mess for 700+ years.

As for personal story quests... Eh. MiHoyo's writing is so crappy that I don't really think they have the chomps to pull of those things.

Jingliu sounds like she doesn't actually have any personal beef with Dan Feng/Dan Heng (anymore?)

Really? The fact that Jingliu sent a letter to Dan Heng and dragged him out to meet her so that she can try to trigger his memories, then spend a giant monologue recounting how shit he is suggests she still hates him. Just because she's not "rar, Imma kill you" doesn't mean she doesn't hate him. Her refusal to treat Dan Heng as a separate person suggests she's holding onto her grudge pretty hard. Her goal with Dan Heng doesn't seem to be wanting vegeance so much as she wants him to apologize on behalf of Dan Feng, but Dan Heng doesn't have the emotional intelligence to realize why Jingliu is emotionally torturing him. That's why so much of Jingliu's dialogue in 1.4 patch is focused on "how could you do..." or "how can you say..." or "how dare you forget...".

Jing Yuan's story... I feel that if Hoyo ever makes it, it will be as a vehicle to introduce other Xianzhou generals/ships/etc.

Jing Yuan is literally getting his story right now in 2.4 with how a substantial faction of Xianzhou hates him out of jealousy and wants to get rid of him. It's pretty shit storytelling and the fact that the writers don't realize they've set up a plot that sets Jing Yuan as the main character but is using it to sell new characters makes me facepalm.

[tanithryudo]

> I find it hard to imagine how people in 云骑军、天舶司、工造司 would've combined together into an adventuring unit

A lot of delegation, I guess? Or in Dan Feng's specific case, he can just do what Bailu does, sneak away from the handmaidens. Like, what are they going to do to him afterwards? A scolding?

But really, this is something that Mihoyo could just handwave away. Like how Feixiao can leave her ship for over a month to attend the Luofu's wardance. (And according to leaks, her aide Moze is actually the Yaoqing's Vidyadhara high elder in disguise...not sure if that's true).

> Dan Heng is innocent, because he's not the one that perpetrated the crime.

Eh, there are enough proponents of the 1-person view of Yinyue that it may not end up being seen that way by the playerbase. Even with the current state of the story, there are plenty of people who feel Dan Heng is actually culpable for the Dan Feng's crimes (and all the problems of the Luofu all the way up to and including the current traitor Vidyadharas, etc.) and should be rightfully executed or imprisoned forever, and his character ruined forever because the protagonist party shouldn't have criminals in it blahblah...

You have to consider that a significant portion of the playerbase are... really young, and don't necessarily have fully developed logic centers (or 三观).

> Xianxia's core engagement is emotions and relationships. Hell, the part of the reason Xianxia became a thing is because people wanted the personal drama to be of higher relevance than the political background in Wuxia stories

Em... are we talking about the modern commercialized qidian genre of Xianxia, or the older works like 《西游记》《蜀山仙侠传》《魔道...》?

Because the "modern" Xianxia genre that the playerbase is more likely familiar with, is more about DBZ-esque endless power fantasy power ups, face-slapping, and occasional harem-building on the side. Oh, and completely formulaic power levels / level ups, because the defining authors were paid by the word count. Emotions and personal drama might fit in there somewhere (especially in some of the edgier works), but not really the emphasis.

> Her refusal to treat Dan Heng as a separate person suggests she's holding onto her grudge pretty hard.

Hm... I've always seen that behavior as Jingliu being in the came of the 1-person theory where it comes to Dan Feng/Dan Heng, or even perpetually living in the past, possibly exacerbated by her not-quite-sane-partial-mara-state. But that's just my interpretation.

> Jing Yuan is literally getting his story right now in 2.4

Eh, they could have written it that way, but it seems pretty clear that 2.4 was made to mainly focus on Yanqing & Yunli on the obvious side, and then Feixiao and her party (the upcoming banners) in the less obvious side. Jing Yuan honestly felt like he was being pushed to the background a lot to make room for all the new characters.

[cashew]

Like how Feixiao can leave her ship for over a month to attend the Luofu's wardance.

She's doing this under direct orders from the Marshal. This is part of her general duties, not some side hobby thing. Much like how presidents can run around all over the world meeting up with diplomats, but they're still expected to show up in the capital during non-official time spent outside the country.

Having Quintet running around doing heroics on their own time would be significantly harder as the Cloud Knights duo would need official military leave; meanwhile, Dan Feng risks a sedition from the elders while he's not around; and Yingxing is already being marginalized so him leaving will simply give the rest of the politicians even more reason to marginalize him -- something I presume he wouldn't want to risk.

You have to consider that a significant portion of the playerbase are... really young

*squinty eyes* How young? I mean if kids can be expected to understand the moral ambiguity of 哪吒闹海 or condemn the bandit behavior of Wukong when he was harassing the Dragon Kings and causing all sorts of problems locally, then they should understand one is not the same person after losing one's memories.

Also, just because audiences are dumb doesn't mean the writers should cater to the stupid. I mean there is a majority of MCU fans that think Steve Rogers is a conservative bigot, but that doesn't mean the MCU movies need to start writing him as waving a rainbow flag just to counter the idiots...

《西游记》《蜀山仙侠传》《魔道...》

Those works were written in three different centuries. 😭 That last one was written this decade. Why are they in the same bucket?!

But actually, I was thinking more in lines of 《香蜜沉沉烬如霜》, which was a TV show in 2018... Is that old?!

Jingliu being in the came of the 1-person theory where it comes to Dan Feng/Dan Heng

Oh, I agree Jingliu is of the 1-person theory. Her attitude toward Dan Feng/Heng is the same as Blade. But even so, it seems she wants an apology more than anything else, which is far more reasonable. She wants to know that 饮月 regrets his actions, which doesn't really cost Dan Heng (and more importantly the writers) anything. Hence why I felt having Dan Heng actually remember the event, feel bad, apologize, and feel like he owes Luofu despite personally having nothing to do with the even will show him in a far more heroic light.

As it currently is, by not letting Dan Heng remember anything, it's stepping into the quagmire of "sins of your ancestors have nothing to do with you", which is a pretty damn hard pill to swallow, even for mature readers. Like I said, the descendants aren't guilty per se, but they should definitely step up and try to right the wrongs of their ancestors if they're meant to be a heroic person. (Obviously, if the character is meant to be an everyday regular person, then the standard is different.)

(I mean, imagine if, say, Spiderman sees a robbery and is all "eh, I'm not involved, let's back away" like a regular person. I feel like this is what the current writing is doing with Dan Feng, which is terrible.)

2.4 was made to mainly focus on Yanqing & Yunli on the obvious side, and then Feixiao and her party (the upcoming banners) in the less obvious side

The story is structured such that the inciting incident is an investigation into Jing Yuan. Literally everyone we've met is trying to pull on their personal connections to help Jing Yuan out of this political mess. The framing of the story very much sets Jing Yuan at the center of the conflict and the plot. The purpose being to sell new characters is the result of shitty understanding of story structure by miHoyo writers.

[tanithryudo]

> Dan Feng risks a sedition from the elders while he's not around; and Yingxing is already being marginalized so him leaving will simply give the rest of the politicians even more reason to marginalize him

I don't think there was any risk to Dan Feng's position before the Sedition, because Vidyadhara governance does have the feel of "might makes right", and there was nobody who had "might" above him. Even after the Sedition, there was a pretty significant portion of guards, civilians, courtiers, etc. who still supported Dan Feng, and had to be censored or forcibly reborn. And the only reason that could've been done is because the Preceptors against him at that point had the support of the general Xianzhou government, and because Dan Feng decided to leave the picture (by accepting arrest instead of, say, resisting).

Yingxing I feel like never had political status. He seems to be more like a genius engineer who had the figurehead position, but was mostly expected to do engineer things rather than manage people. I just don't see most of the Xianzhou people in the government system actually be willing to take orders from a short-life species.

Jingliu and Baiheng, I can actually having enough seniority in their respecting organizations to actually propose and conduct special ops missions. Jing Yuan is the only one I see likely to be tied up by bureaucracy... but possibly Jingliu can pull him as needed due to their relationship, maybe?

> I mean if kids can be expected to understand

Well, sure, but books and movies are usually meant to tell a moral of the story to begin with. HSR I feel is meant to cater to an audience willing to spend as its top priority, and the story is only maybe 5th or 6th priority. So there's a limit to how... em, subtle they can make the storytelling, which then clashes against when they try to be vague/mysterious/build suspense (often with sales related goals)... and the end result is a mess. Which is fine to the audience who skip the lore/custcenes, or who just do a shallow read of things and accept it at face value. But it drives anyone who actually cares up a wall.

> 《香蜜沉沉烬如霜》

Generally, by the time a story has gotten to the point of being televised, it's been deemed to have stood a certain amount of test of time (or popularity/readership).

Also, the televised xianxia genre tends to be of the jjwxc flavor. That is, they tend to overlap with romance genre and targeted to a female audience. The qidian flavor that targets male audiences tends to be more of the DBZ kind of story.

> The purpose being to sell new characters is the result of shitty understanding of story structure by miHoyo writers.

Less shitting understanding than purposefully sacrificing it for the purpose of sales.

[cashew]

risk to Dan Feng's position before the Sedition, because Vidyadhara governance does have the feel of "might makes right"

I don't know, it sounded like there was a lot of push and pull between 龙尊 and 龙师. From what I was reading, it sounds like there's been bad blood between the two groups since 雨别 decided to use 古海 as the seal on the Arbor. Like, that caused some serious tensions and every 饮月 thereafter had to deal with a seditious faction (since it sounded like 饮月 was pro-integration), and it got really bad during 丹枫's era. Yes, there's his people who would like to keep him in power, but there was a substantial group that would've liked to oust him. That's why when 饮月之乱 happend, the seditious faction used that excuse to force 丹枫 through the molt process. Because it sounded like 龙师 wanted to preserve the knowledge of how to make new Vidyadhara while getting rid of 丹枫. I mean, that's why they tried to torture the information out of him first, because then they wouldn't have to preserve his memories into the next cycle.

the only reason that could've been done is because the Preceptors against him at that point had the support of the general Xianzhou government

Er... Did they? From what I understand, the Xianzhou government (or rather 十王司, because the other 6 department heads had no real say in the matter), wanted the entire Imbibitor Lunae line dead. 龙师 had to go to Jing Yuan and beg him to help them preserve the line. Jing Yuan getting involved in the matter and negotiating with 十王司 was the only reason Imbibitor Lunae's death sentence got reduced to molting instead.

(Source: 【景元721年将军生涯里做过什么？饮月君欠景元多少人情！景元这一生的努力，有用！但又没有用！带你走进五骁最大怨种：景元元！】 【精准空降到 09:36】)

Yingxing I feel like never had political status.

He was still the nominal head of 工造司 and he was still responsible for any problems that pops up. In a sense of doing all the work with none of the perks. If anything went wrong with the Luofu war machine, Yingxing's head was on the line.

In the sense of Yingxing wasn't going to get any political protection by being the head of his department, then yes, I agree he had zero political status. But that only meant he had no protection from subordinates' screw ups, not that he had the leisure to run off on adventures.

Jingliu and Baiheng, I can actually having enough seniority in their respecting organizations to actually propose and conduct special ops missions.

Uh...yes, and that's also bureaucracy? Like, they can't just be all "hey, general, I've got an idea". They'd have to lay out a plan, clarify the logistics, clear said logistics with other departments, etc. etc. That's all bureaucratic work...

the story is only maybe 5th or 6th priority

Is it? Because HSR is billed as a "story focused gacha game"...

it drives anyone who actually cares up a wall.

Yes, I am being driven up that wall right now. LOL.

televised xianxia genre tends to be of the jjwxc flavor. That is, they tend to overlap with romance genre and targeted to a female audience. The qidian flavor that targets male audiences tends to be more of the DBZ kind of story.

But doesn't that just reveal that the jjwxc flavor has a bigger audience, a more generalized audience, and hence a greater potential of monetization than the qidian flavor? Why go with qidian flavor if the purpose is money? (I mean, I get that the game industry has prioritized male audiences forever, but from a mobile gaming perspective, which is a platform that is heavily geared toward a "general" audience and have been slammed by "core" gamers, appeal to both sexes has been a much more successful model in general.)

[tanithryudo]

> lot of push and pull

Sure, but that seems to more between each different generation of High Elder might have a different dynamic with the Preceptors based on how "strong" they are, in power and personality. The impression I get from Dan Feng's case, at least, was that he always had the upper hand vs the Preceptors, and thus they were only able to build their resentment until his fall in the Sedition. *shrug* Unfortunately, we just don't have the details of how exactly they interacted back then.

> Er... Did they?

I was referring to the force rebirthing of Dan Feng's supporters among the Vidyadhara, not Dan Feng himself. Presumably, the Ten-Lords would likely delegate the removal of Dan Feng's popular support to the Vidyadhara Preceptors since those people technically haven't broken any of the taboos to fall under the jurisdiction of the Ten Lords. This would certainly be a great time for the Preceptors to do a political purge.

> Like, they can't just be all "hey, general, I've got an idea".

In a real working military/government model sure. But in the game-designed setting here... I don't think that's out of the question.

> story focused gacha game

...With gacha and all that entails going before the story.

> jjwxc vs qidian

Eh, the reason why qidian works don't get televised is not because they're not popular enough, but that they're just too f*king long. I mean, the average jj story rarely goes over 100-200 chapters, whereas popular qidian works are often 3000 chapters and ongoing. That's way too long for television (because CN doesn't do multi-season shows, as far as I know). Which is why qidian works tend to get adapted to multiple season anime (or 3D animation) instead; you can find some of them on bilibili.

[cashew]

Presumably, the Ten-Lords would likely delegate the removal of Dan Feng's popular support to the Vidyadhara Preceptors

I'm not getting the sense that the Ten-Lords actually care all that much for Vidyadhara internal politics. The main political tension from the Ten-Lords' side seems to be coming from the stress between Ten-Lords and Arbiter-Generals, since the Ten-Lords was a political body that was established before Lan came into the scene while the Arbiter-Generals were established much later. However, Ten-Lords were losing political power to the Arbiter-Generals (and the 六司), and now only have criminal punishment under their complete jurisdiction anymore. If anything, it sounds like the Ten-Lords resent the Arbiter-Generals for gaining so much political sway in Xianzhou government. I'm just starting to catch up to 2.4 patch plot and it seems like the main "suspicion" of Jing Yuan is being urged on by the Ten-Lords who want to make it seem like Jing Yuan didn't do his job. By all accounts, Jing Yuan is the longest serving Arbiter-General (since Huaiyan spent much of his time not in that particular position to protect himself politically), so taking him down would, in the Ten-Lords' minds, probably shake the Xianzhou people's confidence in letting the Arbiter-Generals have so much control over their political lives.

Combined with the earlier lore of Jing Yuan essentially sticking his neck out and intervening with Ten-Lords's arbitration post-Sedition (by negotiating for a lesser sentence), the political grudge of an Arbiter-General intervening in the last of the Ten-Lords' political stronghold is probably driving the current drama. (This is presuming miHoyo actually is thinking about their plot, pays attention to things like foreshadowing, and not just...y'know, winging it based on viiiiiibes.)

In a real working military/government model sure. But in the game-designed setting here... I don't think that's out of the question.

The game-design is still meant to emulate real world dynamics and real world politics. Just because the game writers are crap doesn't mean we have to accept the crappiest reading, especially when canon is vague enough that a more realistic reading is possible. Especially when "running around and beating up monsters" is kind of a bland trope-y backstory and doesn't really offer much in terms of character development.

qidian works tend to get adapted to multiple season anime (or 3D animation) instead; you can find some of them on bilibili.

Are any of them actually good or is it just more DBZ stuff over and over?

qidian works don't get televised is not because they're not popular enough, but that they're just too f*king long

TV shows adapt only partial sections of long works all the time when a story is genuinely popular. I don't really buy that the qidian stuff is actually good enough for general audience consumption if the writing is basically DBZ. Like, yes, young boys will eat that shit up. The general audience (meaning, adults with work and love lives and children and worries about public and personal relationships) are going to find works that focus on interpersonal dynamics, political machinations, and other more adult worries far more interesting. Not to mention a substantial group of young women will also prefer romance over powerups.

[tanithryudo]

> This is presuming miHoyo actually is thinking about their plot, pays attention to things like foreshadowing, and not just...y'know, winging it based on viiiiiibes.

> The game-design is still meant to emulate real world dynamics and real world politics.

I just don't think the game designers actually know that much, or care, about how the real life part of such things works. As opposed to say, fictional tropes or such.

> Are any of them actually good or is it just more DBZ stuff over and over?

I watched the first season of 凡人修仙 and it was...ok. I mean, obviously aimed more that the shounen audience, but the graphics and fight scenes I thought was nice. Unfortunately, S2 required subscription (and was also unfinished at the time?). Same for a lot of other shows, I don't sub for bilibili anymore.

Other adaptations I've heard of but haven't watched... there's Doulu Dalu (Soul Land?) which has like... 6 seasons? (Also think it has some spinoffs, not sure.) There's 斗破苍穹 (Battle Through the Heavens) which is on its...8th season? There's 武动乾坤 (Martial Universe) on its 5th season... etc.

(Everybody makes you pay nowadays. I was trying to do a python coding exercise today and the old guides don't work anymore because accessing amazon's UI has to be done via paid API gateway. -_-)

> TV shows adapt only partial sections of long works all the time

In CN though, the TV shows are limited to like 30-60 episodes instead of multi-season/open-ended stuff like in the US. So in that respect, it does limit what they chose to adapt.

[cashew]

Everybody makes you pay nowadays. I was trying to do a python coding exercise today and the old guides don't work anymore because accessing amazon's UI has to be done via paid API gateway. -_-

Yeah, something something AI training scraping public API... I've been reading that more and more public resources have been going under lock and key...

Re: series on bilibili...so will it be more satisfying or about same as HSR story? Is it worth trying to get into that stuff or should I just stick to HSR now that I've become invested? It sounds like that stuff isn't anymore satisfying than bleh writing that HSR produces. My reluctance to look into the stuff is I feel like it's gonna require a shit ton of investment with minimal return and I'll get more fic out of sticking to HSR's shipping...

[tanithryudo]

Blah, AI ruining peoples jobs. =P

Eh, the genre is shounen, so I don't know how much you'd get out of it. I don't think it's worth getting into just to get HSR's aesthetic.

[tanithryudo]

> "evil magistrates" trope

Some more comments after watching the livestream for 2.5 patch (CN version).

The Xianzhou "civilian" government looks more and more like a mired mess of corruption at the highest levels.

Like, they seem to imply that Hoolay is alive not strictly because of biological immortality (he's not Shuhu level of Abundance, yo), but also because the "old guys in charge" want him around as some kind of leverage on the Foxian populace among the Xianzhou? WTF?

And we also explicitly see a Vidyadhara Preceptor come out and admit culpability for betraying the Luofu to the jailbreakers. So it's no longer just something hinted at from previous chapters.

Feels like the multi-species alliance of the Xianzhou is something that's barely falling apart at the seams. -_-

[cashew]

The Xianzhou "civilian" government looks more and more like a mired mess of corruption at the highest levels.

That's pretty much the feeling since Xianzhou was introduced, since presumably Luofu's political mess is a microcosm of the bigger conflict playing out all over Alliance. Patch 2.4 made it clear than even each ship have political conflicts with each other, despite going to aid one another during major military clashes with outside threats. Hell, the fact that Luofu managed to stay un-mangled for 700+ years under Jing Yuan's watch probably is causing seething jealousy from denizens of less fortunate ships. The problem is we have no idea what "higher ups" look like in terms of political structure, so have no way to understand what is causing the discord. Is it a case of political power or perceived favoritism? How much authority do the other species have over their internal affairs comparatively? Who is allied with whom? How deep does the species divide go? What types of integration are normalized and what aren't? Who are the political authorities above the arbiter-generals that can put Jing Yuan into such a politically difficult position?

So many questions, zero answers. Like...why play coy with Yanqing's age? Why can't the story just give that information? Why lampshade this yet not have an answer? The writers simply didn't think their lore through at all.

Feels like the multi-species alliance of the Xianzhou is something that's barely falling apart at the seams.

MiHoyo should really just tell the audience what the terms of the alliances are at this point instead of making g people guess. This is a constant problem with their writing. They keep implying stuff they should make explicit, then word vomit a bunch of stuff that ought to be shown through action.

[tanithryudo]

The thing is, even though it seems like the alliance is breaking apart at the seams, it is highly unlikely that will ever be the case unless Hoyo wants their main audience to completely blow up on them. Like, a multicultural supra-national space!China having an outright rebellion from an ethnic minority or province? LOL, I doubt they have the guts.

But given the real life necessities, I don't see why they're even taking the storytelling towards this kind of setup. Like, it might be unrealistic to be a completely one-big-happy-family governance. But there are other ways to generate conflict (such as concentrating on outward depictions more than inward, for instance) with the limited amount of storytelling done.

[cashew]

Like, a multicultural supra-national space!China having an outright rebellion from an ethnic minority or province?

Pretty sure they can't pass the censorship check...

But yeah, I agree, I have no fucking clue why they decided on this crazy idea to do internal politicking instead of a bog standard fight against an external threat for a world that's meant to only be one amongst many that the MC is supposed to be visiting. The story they settled on is competing with the main conflict (between Express team and Stellaron Hunters or IPC) for limited attention.

Frankly the Luofu/Xianzhou stuff is more interesting to me than what IPC is planning, but it doesn't make sense to put both stories into the same game. And given the distribution of characters they've released, I'm beginning to think the writers themselves want to focus on space!China more than the actual space travel stuff. (I think over half of the released characters are from the Xianzhou Alliance at this point.) In which case, why is that other stuff there?!

[tanithryudo]

I have to wonder if they just have too much character design or concepts built up for the Xianzhou faction before they game launched that they feel like they have to churn them all out? ...Even though numbers are currently showing that the best selling characters aren't necessarily of Xianzhou/CN design?

Or is the high sales for Acheron (JP design) and Firefly (western-based design) would telling them they should keep to churn out new planets/settings that are not CN, instead of making more Xianzhou ships (like Yaoqing, Zhuming, etc) as new planets to visit. Because I think part of the problem with Xianzhou storytelling is that we kept thrown back to the Luofu for everything related, so we never get a feel for the overarching Xianzhou Alliance culture/government structure, and it feels like the Luofu itself is more of a mess because all the problems of the Alliance gets dumped on it during the off-season chapters. -_-

[cashew]

Even though numbers are currently showing that the best selling characters aren't necessarily of Xianzhou/CN design

I mean, based on what you've told me, the reason for a character selling well has everything to do with mechanics. Hard core is going to be the biggest spenders, and they don't care about story, they're chasing after meta. And the meta is designed to favor non-CN designed characters constantly. If the mechanics favored the likes of Yanqing, Jing Yuan, etc. for an extended time, I can guarantee those characters will become the best sellers, story or no story.

This honestly makes me think Xianzhou was intended as a one-off, with the IPC/Stellaron Hunters being the main arc. I don't know what the hell is going on in the back in terms of development, but it feels more and more like they simply tried to cannibalize another unrelated game (that's probably Xianxia/Wuxia themed a la World of Wushu) and tried to force it into the Star Rail cosmology.

part of the problem with Xianzhou storytelling is that we kept thrown back to the Luofu for everything related, so we never get a feel for the overarching Xianzhou Alliance culture/government structure

This is the other reason it doesn't feel like Xianzhou is actually meant to be an extended story at all. See how Jarilo-IV only has one developed city, or Penacony has only one developed hotel despite being an entire planet. Maybe in three to five years I will be proven wrong; that actually HSR knew what they were doing this whole time and tried to use a western sci-fi aesthetic to trick gamers into playing a Xianxia-in-space game instead. But at this point, it just looks like two different games got mushed together.

[tanithryudo]

Well, maybe not all mechanics over design. There's also plenty of sales data to show that male characters in general sell less than female characters as a whole. Probably due to the main demographic playing the game and large numbers inherited from Impact3rd. *shrug*

Besides, the powercreep will always favor the "next" story centric character. As long as there are future chapters revisiting the Xianzhou (like the current patch), there will always be new Xianzhou characters. Feixiao, from all accounts, is a meta DPS, replacing Dr. Ratio in the follow-up meta team. Sales are likely to be high, though at least partially also because she's going up along with the first triple rerun banner, which includes Robin, a highly anticipated rerun. *shrug*

As for the Xianzhou theme... I think the Xianxia in space was planned all along. The problem is the genre clash with the more...western themes of the other planets is kinda glaring. I do think it would help if we got the other Xianzhou ships as separate "planets", each with a different take at the Space!China idea. Like, a modern-china-themed Yaoqing (which I'd imagine to be a bit like New Kaineng from GW2 :p), a cyberpunk-themed Zhuming, maybe a bronze-themed Yuque or something... and then with slightly different cultural themes as well to go with...

[cashew]

male characters in general sell less than female characters as a whole

I mean...doesn't that also correlate to the fact that male characters are generally less meta than female characters as a whole? The fact that Feixiao is replacing Dr. Ratio so quickly seems to be an indication that male characters aren't going to get much of a fair shake in the meta cycle chase.

the genre clash with the more...western themes of the other planets is kinda glaring

Yeah, this is why I'm not super sold on the CN themes having been "planned all along". They should've been able to recognize how poorly the two aesthetics integrated and chose one over the other.

it would help if we got the other Xianzhou ships as separate "planets", each with a different take at the Space!China idea

I doubt it would've helped much given the story we're seeing right now. Unless you're saying making each ship a separate planet would somehow avoid the current internal politicking period drama plot altogether.

I guess it really comes down to the development production chain: does the plot dictate the maps or do the maps dictate the plot? Because if we stick to the current plot, being able to visit other maps and then getting told these maps are all connected in one giant alliance is only going to make the battle of side- vs main arc even worse than it already is.

[tanithryudo]

> correlate to the fact that male characters are generally less meta than female characters as a whole

Hm... while I do get that Hoyo is trying make their "star" characters female for the sales, I don't get the feel they are intentially making male characters..."lesser". Aside from individual male characters (*coughYanqingJYcough*) there are a lot of limited 5 star male characters which are all pretty good. Gepard was the core of the preservation path in Simulated Universe until he was replaced by Aventurine, who has in turn been the best-in-slot overall sustain ever since he came out.

Dr. Ratio had some of the highest damage numbers out there, and was staple to the follow-up meta team. While he is getting replaced by Feixiao, he still had a good run as meta from 1.6 up to 2.5 patches, covering almost a year.

DHIL is still valid for general damage by all accounts, which is more than could be said for the similarly highly advertised 1.x DPS Jingliu. Argenti and Boothill, while having low rates of being possessed by the playerbase, both consistently make it to the top teams statistics for endgame.

The only meta team that's going to be all-female is the superbreak team once Lingsha comes out, since she's intended to replace Gallagher (4 star male character). But given the test numbers and predictions from the leaks forums, I'm not sure how much better Lingsha will be in pure numbers. She might turn out similar to Jiaoqiu, where she's a bit of a buff over her 4 star counterpart but not spectacularly so enough as to motivate people who are getting by with the existing team, and saving up for other plans/3.0.

> this is why I'm not super sold on the CN themes having been "planned all along"

I think it's unavoidable that a CN company making a game with multiple different themed areas is going to have a CN based setting among them. It's one thing if the whole game is based around a single non-CN theme. But if there's multiple different themes, their majority target audience is going to question why there isn't a CN one. Like, Genshin had Liyue in their 1.x patch. Star Rail had Xianzhou. It's kinda expected.

Given that, the decision to make the aesthetic of the Xianzhou to be stereotypical fantasy ancient China is...also pretty unsurprising. Like, if you took the average Liyue character and dropped them into the Luofu, they wouldn't raise an eyebrow. Heck, if I took my Guild Wars Cantha characters dressed in any of the Shing Jea sets, and dropped them into the Luofu, they would blend right in too.

Then given that aesthetic, the decision to make the culture into a Xianxia-theme is also...not too surprising. The unfortunate fact is that CN doesn't have any major sci-fi franchise that's easily identifiable. (The only other common interstellar setting I've seen, usually in quick transmigration novels, is imperial CN version of Gundam, but that's more copying anime than intrinsically CN.) Xianxia is the most well known genre that goes up to the cosmic scale. So, I can see the chain of design decisions that arrived there.

> does the plot dictate the maps or do the maps dictate the plot

Probably character design & sales predictions come before both. :p

[cashew]

Aside from individual male characters (coughYanqingJYcough)

I recommend miHoyo fix this by releasing new versions. It's starting to sound like part of the reason Yanqing & JY suck is because they were some of the first 5-stars to get released/designed (I hear Jing Yuan was released quite early, even before Kafka?) and they were balanced against a bunch of 4-stars, making it seem like they were good but were quickly overtaken by later 5-star releases.

Dr. Ratio had some of the highest damage numbers out there, and was staple to the follow-up meta team.

Really? I was reading that Topaz outstripped him by far. This was the same thread where some girls were complaining that being a collector of male characters meant having to suck it up and accept her teams were never going to be meta. (Same thread agreed that Huohuo was a better sustain and Yunli's counter-attack mechanic basically nullified the Erudition line's advantage.)

Like, Genshin had Liyue in their 1.x patch. Star Rail had Xianzhou.

Although both are completely shit stories released by miHoyo, at least in Genshin the Liyue area was an entire area with a self-contained plot. And there's no "fixed" team of in-story characters like the Express party, since it's an action RPG. And unlike Star Rail, Genshin takes place in a medieval fantasy setting, which makes the ancient China aesthetic fit at least in terms of being period appropriate. (Also the cold weapons makes sense in a world where there aren't guns, rocket launchers, battle mechas, space ships, etc.)

Meanwhile, Star Rail is a sci-fi space travel setting... I feel like I shouldn't need to explain the obvious.

he decision to make the aesthetic of the Xianzhou to be stereotypical fantasy ancient China

The problem is that the ancient part of "ancient China" aesthetic. It's one thing if people are just wearing clothes with elements inspired by ye-olden-times (much like how a lot of modern Chinese fashion incorporates old patterns and themes into modern material and cuts, such as the use of danglies, 如意 patterns, traditional flower-bird motifs, etc.). It's another thing to have the entire social structure emulate ye olden times, too. Star reading as a hobby past time by the plebes? Sure. But Xianzhou elevated it into a serious intelligence/counter-intelligence department. Generals are fighting on the front lines. There's still paperwork instead of digital forms. People are still writing with brush pens. All these "ancient" elements ought to have been updated. Make those paper scrolls actually tablet screens or something!

In summary, the character visual designs are fine, it's the world design that's the problem.

Like, if you took the average Liyue character and dropped them into the Luofu, they wouldn't raise an eyebrow.

Yeah, and Genshin is a medieval fantasy while Star Rail is a sci-fi adventure... That's a problem.

The unfortunate fact is that CN doesn't have any major sci-fi franchise that's easily identifiable.

While this is true, it's still stupid to lift the Xianxia aesthetic and plop it into sci-fi without updating the technology. Just like Star Wars is essentially "Samurai in Space", the same can be done with Xianzhou. But work has to go into re-shaping the tropes to fit the sci-fi framing. As mentioned earlier in my reply, the scrolls could be turned into pull-out tablets. Phones can be shaped/colored to look like 玉佩. Elevators can look like nimbus clouds (and make you feel like Wukong riding into the skies or something). Make the cold weapons shoot pew pew lasers when swung. Earrings can serve as headsets for communication. The door guardians double as retinal scanners. (To give credit where it's due, incorporating food delivery mechanical birds was a good decision and more of this should have happened elsewhere in Xianzhou designs.)

So many things can be done to "futurize" the ye-olden aesthetic, but instead miHoyo just plopped everything more or less untouched into a futuristic setting. Hence the lack of integration.

And beyond just visual integration, the story elements need to be updated, too. Kind of like how Dune had to update/modify the medieval politics so that it can span a galactical civilization, so too must Xianzhou's politics and political structure be updated to properly integrate the bigger scale of governance. A political system that works for a couple thousand square kilometer area is going to fall apart when scaled up to govern multiple planet-sized ships. But miHoyo didn't put any thought into what kind of political system is needed to reasonable govern/regulate a civilization this big.

[tanithryudo]

> I was reading that Topaz outstripped him by far.

Topaz is a sub-DPS, not the main DPS, and before Hunt-March and upcoming Moze, she's great at supporting a main DPS, but usually not the only/primary DPS in the team. That's why she's prioritized higher by meta chasers for the follow up team, as it's easier to replace the main DPS (depending on enemy element) than it is a high value sub-DPS (who's there more to buff the main DPS, and damaging the enemy is just side benefit).

> male characters meant having to suck it up and accept her teams were never going to be meta.

That is true, because there's zero male harmony units, and you can't have a meta team without usually two harmony buffers. Well, I guess male version of the MC could technically count, but that's still only 1 slot.

Maybe once Sunday comes out (he's leaked to be harmony), there might be a viable all-male high performance team consisting of male-DPS + male-sustain (Aventurine or Gallagher) + MaleHarmonyMC + Sunday.

> It's another thing to have the entire social structure emulate ye olden times, too.

I have noticed this problem with written works too, actually, not just games like Hoyo's. Like, I've read a lot of original webnovels, some involving sci fi settings, or quick transmigration stories that include settings involving sci fi. In the majority of cases, they always make the government into something with an emperor in charge, with aristocratic houses and all.

Not sure if there is just a lack of originality and worldbuilding, or if there is actually an underlying limitation that I'm not seeing. If I was feeling conspiracy theory about it, I'd think maybe they don't want to depict a government system anywhere similar to real life CN for fear of being censored as satire/parody. And they don't want to make it a government similar to, for example, the Star Trek Federation, for fear of being charged as unpatriotic and USA-loving by readers (I say this because most of the time there's multiple human government factions, it's usually the one called "empire" that's the "good guys" and the "alliance" or "federation" which get depicted as the "bad guys"). I dunno.

> While this is true, it's still stupid to lift the Xianxia aesthetic and plop it into sci-fi without updating the technology.

I'll agree with this. If they made it clearer that using brush and paper is like when Hanya uses her brush attack animation, for all Xianzhou people, it would seem less archaic, for instance. I feel like this is just an overall laziness and/or lack of imagination on Hoyo's part. -_-

[cashew]

there's zero male harmony units, and you can't have a meta team without usually two harmony buffers

...I feel like Jiaoqiu should've been designed as a Harmony unit given his "medical doctor who focuses on prevention via dietary management" characterization. Again, miHoyo not thinking about the characters and just throwing things whatever.

I have noticed this problem with written works too, actually, not just games like Hoyo's. Like, I've read a lot of original webnovels, some involving sci fi settings, or quick transmigration stories that include settings involving sci fi. In the majority of cases, they always make the government into something with an emperor in charge, with aristocratic houses and all.

I honestly think this might be a limitation of imagination. Like, modern CN government is...uh...not that far away from previous Imperial system. The only difference is that there isn't a dynasty, but the current leader still hand picks the next one and 关系 still plays a bigger role in getting things through the bureaucracy than any laws or legal statute does. But even so, having only six departments running a planet-sized civilization is brain dead. Hell, even Ancient China had more than six departments. The Imperial Palace alone required 六司 to manage everything, let alone the entire country.

If I was feeling conspiracy theory about it, I'd think maybe they don't want to depict a government system anywhere similar to real life CN for fear of being censored as satire/parody. And they don't want to make it a government similar to, for example, the Star Trek Federation, for fear of being charged as unpatriotic and USA-loving by readers

I mean, there's also the European Union....

But if they were really concerned about censorship, they shouldn't have written any politicking plot. Just have the Xianzhou war machine going to war with Abundance faction and keep it simple. Have Abundance drive Dan Feng crazy, break up the Quintet, then keep harassing Xianzhou Alliance. Dan Heng comes back because Xianzhou is so shorthanded they need the dragon powers. Boom. Done. Move to next planet.

Xianzhou is basically miHoyo trying to craft something much too complex for their writing skills.

[tanithryudo]

> Jiaoqiu should've been designed as a Harmony unit given his "medical doctor who focuses on prevention via dietary management"

Jiaoqiu's original kit during beta testing did have healing mechanics in it. But it was all nerfed out of him by the time of the final release. (There's usually 5-6 versions of any new characters that get tested before they get released.) I am guessing that the play testing revealed that such a kit was too broken. But the leaks forum was pretty much doomposting him with every nerf.

Harmony units are the best bang for the buck of Star Rail teams though. There are plenty of high end players who like to showcase their achievements of defeating endgame bosses with no sustains and 1 DPS+3 harmony (or even 4 harmony) teams.

> European Union

Generally shoved under the umbrella of "Alliance".

I'm not saying that Mihoyo is concerned about censorship in their xianxia government system. Just that the "trope" they are using maybe formed that way because of the concern of censorship on webnovel platforms. But again, this is just a conspiracy theory. Maybe it's just the genre as a whole is too new for CN that there hasn't been a Roddenberry or George Lucas yet to actually define a distinctively native trope.

[cashew]

Harmony units are the best bang for the buck of Star Rail teams though.

This just means male units are being de-prioritized into less good roles... The game is still trying to cater to the "waifu" gaming crowd and girl gamers get thrown a bone from time to time.

I'm not saying that Mihoyo is concerned about censorship in their xianxia government system. Just that the "trope" they are using maybe formed that way because of the concern of censorship on webnovel platforms.

Fair enough.

Maybe it's just the genre as a whole is too new for CN that there hasn't been a Roddenberry or George Lucas yet to actually define a distinctively native trope.

I mean I know Three Body Problem was a hugely popular CN sci-fi webnovel with distinctly CN narrative tropes. So like...it exists. It's just maybe too advanced for kids?

On the other hand, I have noticed a "modern Chinese aesthetics isn't really Chinese" tendency for some reason. And I guess I'm like WTF? 1930s, 1940s in China still looks nothing like the West. If we look at how much steam punk is influenced by Victorian era aesthetics, then the comparable era in Chinese history would be the 民国 era aesthetics. Hell, the Warlords Era (军阀年代) is essentially a modernized version of the Warring States. Same Chinese politics, different Chinese dressing.

[tanithryudo]

> This just means male units are being de-prioritized into less good roles

There is Sunday coming up. Even though I don't like his character. But apparently he's really popular. I guess a lot of girls like his winged aesthetic. And it seems like a lot of CN players like his slogan of "everday being a weekend" due to the oppressions of the CN workplace, or something. *shrug*

> The game is still trying to cater to the "waifu" gaming crowd and girl gamers get thrown a bone from time to time.

Side note: Looking at recent earning records, it seems like there's a new otome based ARPG called Love and Deepspace which is doing very well and proving that there's plenty of female audience for ARPG properly targeted to their demographic. I'm not planning on taking up another game, but it might be something you can consider looking into?

> Three Body Problem

IIRC the social structure depictions of that novel, at least for Earth, doesn't really stand out. At least, not until either the TV or movie industry manages to make a successful enough adaptation of it that enters the social consciousness.

> then the comparable era in Chinese history would be the 民国 era aesthetics

I'm guessing that era is not often used because of the political sensitivity. Like, any novel that touches on the early development of the CCP run the risk of too much attention from censors. I have seen some historical fiction authors refusing to write for the Qing and Republic era because it's just safer to play in the more distant past, and they are only writing for entertainment/money.

[cashew]

seems like a lot of CN players like his slogan of "everday being a weekend" due to the oppressions of the CN workplace, or something.

But his "weekend" is stuck in a dream world and never leaving. Ever. And everything is fake.

Also, if players are mostly children, why is working age sector of the fandom driving the sales decisions? And if the working age sector is the majority, why not write a story that's more fitting for a more mature audience? I mean you can't have it both ways. Either the adults are driving sales, ergo write a more complex story, or children are driving sales, ergo no reason to cater to the "work sucks" adult crowd.

Side note: Looking at recent earning records, it seems like there's a new otome based ARPG [...] might be something you can consider looking into?

...oh I've been looking...

not until either the TV or movie industry manages to make a successful enough adaptation of it that enters the social consciousness

There's both a CCTV adaptation and a Netflix adaptation... I feel like that's as successful as you can ask a webnovel to get.

I have seen some historical fiction authors refusing to write for the Qing and Republic era because it's just safer to play in the more distant past

I mean, I get not explicitly naming those eras, but I feel like pulling on the aesthetics of those eras are still perfectly fine (especially Qing because...I mean just look at the ridiculous amount of Qing dynasty dramas). Like, one of the super popular re-imagined 哪吒 movies basically used the 1930's aesthetic while having nothing to do with the 1930's in terms of plot.

[tanithryudo]

> And everything is fake.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who would've preferred to live in his false sweet dream utopia and damn the long term consequences. =/

> Also, if players are mostly children

Young adults is the feel I get, anywhere from high school to college-ish age, but before starting a family.

> CCTV adaptation and a Netflix adaptation

I get the feeling they weren't all that popular though. The stats for the CCTV adaption wasn't all that high compared to other CCTV shows. And I've heard more waves in EN about the book more than I have about the Netflix adaptation. Certainly nothing that comes close to the cultural impression caused by major english IPs such as Trek, Star Wars, or even Marvel's GotG.

[cashew]

heard more waves in EN about the book more than I have about the Netflix adaptation. Certainly nothing that comes close to the cultural impression caused by major english IPs such as Trek, Star Wars, or even Marvel's GotG.

I mean a huge part of that is the US-centrism of English language media. Three Body Problem not only has to overcome a significant cultural barrier, but also has to compete with the fact that the story does't have an American protagonist. Just look at how long it took for anime/manga to make any kind of wave in US general media, and, to this day, general audience media publications still don't talk about anime/manga IPs. You need to look for dedicated anime/manga news sites to get any sort of idea of what's "hot". The only franchise that seems to have made any headway in the common cultural awareness was Pokemon, and compared to the US-centric media of Star Trek, Star Wars, GotG, it's also pretty...meh.

When the New York Times put out think pieces worrying about a Netflix adaptation and what it means for evil Chinese brainwashing, I think that's about as much as one can hope for in terms of international impact from any non-US made media. I'll take that back when I see Xianxia stuff getting the same kind of hand-wringing from US mainstream media.

As for the CCTV adaptation, yeah, I don't know, I haven't been following it very closely. But I figured if I'm barely paying attention and still know about the work, then surely it has pretty good word of mouth for me to hear about it.