Imagine making a endgame mode that is to easy for veterans, while also not allowing most other people to even play the hardest difficulty. Next Video will either be the Raiden Video, The How to Make Proper Endgame Video, another episode of Elemental Review, Or a Collab with Flip. Idk yet, still undecided
My problem with Imaginarium Theater is not that you have to build characters that you're never gonna use. It's the element restriction, most of the time you're going to be running a team with 2-3 DPS and no synergy. I wish they just added buffs to 3 elements instead of restricting it...
Agreed, this rotation in particular is very indicative of that problem because the finale boss is tha Algorithm of stupidly long name that I wont memorise, and if you don;t have a dendro character to trigger Quicken then that thing is waaaay harder to beat than it should be, except Dendro isn't available this rotation, I basically had to reset after like 12 attempts because i ofc had no idea it would be at the end and the only good electr unit I had left was Raiden, who I didn't currently have built for DPS cuz again, I didnt know this thing would be the final boss
This current rotation is sooooooooooo boring. I don't want to play a bunch of geo overload teams for 10 stages... There has to be a better way to impose restrictions on the mode than what it currently has. Just hand pick the characters we can use to boost banner sales, at least it will probably be more fun that way
@@dohickey7184no problem, my last team was probably Navia or Chiori with borrowed Raiden and I wiped the floor with him. Because of reactions being OP I rather think you need to plan the elements and final team composition. It's a team planner with rng. It's not really mandatory to have quicken and in fact there is no Dendro in the 3 elements so devs don't expect you to have it.
Or at least more usable/strong trial characters. They on purpose added trial characters, that everyone has: Dehya (free selector), Xiangling is free, Yaoyao - lantern right, Barbara - free, etc etc. If this mode made more for older players, why me who played less then a year often has almost all trial roster, and mine builded 10 times better 🤣 It's just another greedy move from hoyo.
WHY IS THE POOL RANDOM TOO??? I thought I’d be able to just use my team and slowly buff them over time like Divergent Universe but nah I gotta use Arlecchino, Gorou, and Keqing together 😭😭😭
Unless your Arlecchino can't carry shit, that problem is not as bad as the first time IT was released because now you can buy buffs that makes non-synergistic characters slightly useful, such as Pyro + Geo, or Pyro + Electro interaction buffs.
Having this (and abyss) reset once a month is such a letdown. It barely qualifies as content. It’s just something you do once a month then never go back in until next month.
I remember people's reaction when they saw the abyss reset changing from 2 weeks to 1 month, wild how mihoyo goes to these lengths to avoid giving us more primos income despite the game having nearly 100 characters
@@stiflash i mean they do give more primos and this system is just like HSR (except HSR has more endgame content) but yeah they couldve made Imaginarium Theatre reset every month and let spiral abyss do its usual rotation. From what i heard, the implementation of Imaginarium Theatre is there to add a more "fresh" Gameplay while reducing the stress (time limit for SA and IT is 1 month instead of 2 weeks) and giving more rewards (from 1200 a month to 1600)
Yup. I miss doing it 3 times per patch because it was more rewarding. You had put in the hard work, time to reap the reward. Now with it only running once a month, you're rewarded far less for the work you did.
7:17 YES THIS IS SO STUPID; I had a friend who took a break once Sumeru came out and recently returned. Now he's getting even LESS primos because he can't even access theatre because his teams are invested into a certain elements? So not only is abyss getting even more restricted and damage spongy, theatre is requiring even MORE? Wild.
I'll say one thing and one thing alone. Hydro has only 4 permanently available character of which 1 is a 5 stars (Mona) and 2 are in the game since 1.0.
This shows in hindsight how much the mode is for veterans lol In the end I ended up building more pyro characters. But then veterans probably have Yelan, Furina and Neuvillette so that's not bad either. Hydro MC exist just to pad the numbers BUT Mc is almost always just better off on the 2 other elements anyway and is very useful as a 1 time investment to permanently increase 1 slot for every theater.
My take is that Imaginarium Theater is more for veteran players that can now find use cases for characters they might have benched because they fell off the meta. But as a newer player, I'm still tryna figure out optimizing mora and resource management while also building a couple characters at once, so it's just kinda stressful until I'll eventually get a built up roster.
As a veteran player, i dont think IT is for me either I spent 4 years playing Genshin, making my favorite characters stronger just to be unable to play them and have fun due to elemental restrictions
I'm veterans (From 1.0) and also F2P. Imaginarium Theater is Challenging isn't hard to be honest (Maybe because my account is horizontal investment). I can clear the Visionary level in Imaginarium Theater. Even the buff you get in 5.0 imaginarium theater is worthy. Make the reaction more potent to combat.
If you want to clear these contents as fast as possible for new player and no fun, here is my take: *Just build whatever meta DPS (that you have and you want to play) right now Neuv, Arlec, Mualani, etc. Don't have to crown any character as the overall damage improvement from talent 9 to 10 is roughly 5%. Crowning is a luxury that you should use on characters that YOU LIKE. Keep them at 80/90 (max ascension but don't max out their levels at 90). *Then build support like Xingqiu, Xiangling, and Yelan, you can farm emblem set (quite resin efficient as some other DPS can temporarily use Shimenawa). Though, you can get away with just feed them enough ER to get burst every rotation. Level 6 talents are alright. Keep their level at 60/70 or 70/80 is fine. You only need their ascension 4 passive unlocked. *For Kazuha, stack EM for sands, goblet and cirlet with ER subtat. At least 160ER for solo kazuha with Favonius sword and nearly 200% without Favonius, run ER Sand instead of EM if needed. Don't need to level his talents, just need ascension 4 passive. He is there with Viridescent to swirl, crowd control and give elemental RES only. If you don't have him, sucrose works okay. Just 1 or 2 set of Viridescent and move on. *For Furina, ER requirement is about 200% for solo, 150-200% double hydro. When pair with Neuv, you only need 130-150% ER. Run ER sand instead HP% if needed. Then HP%>Hydro goblet. Cirlet is either crit rate or crit damage. *For Xilonen, you only need her E to talent level 8 or 9. Run DEF% sand, DEF% goblet sand Healing cirlet on Hero of Cinder City set. You don't need her if you have both Kazuha and Sucrose. However, her elemental RES last way more than Viridescent. *The cost of leveling a character from 1-90 is 1.6 million Mora and 418 Hero's Wit. The cost of leveling a character from 1-80/90 (ascension 6) is 0.987 million Mora and 247 Hero's Wit. Hence, it's recommend for newer account not to leveling characters to 90. Characters like Neuv, Hu Tao, Furina etc can benefit from level 90 with maxed base HP but doing this after you somewhat build your supports. Reactions like overload, Electro-charged, Burning, Bloom, Hyperbloom, Burgeon, Aggravate, and Spread can benefit from characters level but I don't recommend you look into this for now. *Don't farm 5 star artifact until you get highest Domain IV (You'll get at AR45 if I remember correctly). They guarantee, at least, a 5 star artifact for every 20 resin (2 if lucky). Build your character set first then slowly improve them. Min/max artifact early isn't optimal. *Characters I mentioned above, if you don't have them, DON'T spend money to get them. You are paying 16000 primo just for 1200primo per month is not a good investment. DO go for 5 star characters that you like (personality, play style, damage, story, etc...). For 4 stars, you will get copy of them eventually for free in events or in 5 star banner that you want. Xiangling, Xingqiu, Bennett, and Fischl can be bough in Paimon's bargain. Just one copy if you don't have, no need for constellations, you will max constellation eventually. *DO NOT stress out if you can't get max reward. Eventually, with enough investments and min/max artifact overtime, you can max-clear contents with non-meta. Hence, I recommend pull for characters that you like. *Last but not least, if you want to deep dive into building a character, look for guides. Personally, I would generally recommend "*insert_purple_fake_cat_girl_name* Main guides". They are short and good enough. I can't give out the actually name as my comments got deleted from other UA-camrs. I don't know if Mr_leech is cool with it or not. Just play it safe so at least, you can see my comment. Don't forget to have fun!
Not even for veteran players, more targeted for ppl who spend money on the game. I’ve playing for 4 yrs n barely scrape by the char limit, having to switch the travelers element to whatever’s usable and use bench warmers like amber n chichi just to participate, so I end up w half my roster being useless.
Ah yes, the 2 endgame modes, the time restricted bullet sponge gauntlet and the time restricted gauntlet of having to build 22 characters to have shit teams to play with Is it that hard to make an endgame score attack mode, or a mode where you have to engage with enemy mechanics that spark joy instead of "wow, another elemental shield"?
I'm one of the very few imaginarium theatre enjoyers and I will defend it till the day I die. HOWEVER why in God's name did they change the spiral abyss reset. there was no reason
The IT sounds like a useful addition on paper. It adds content for horizontal investment, making it the natural opposite for SA, which rewards vertical investment. The issue is that it was added so late into the game’s lifespan, after years of the endgame revolving around preparing at most two, maybe three well-invested teams while also sharing artifacts and weapons to lessen the need to grind. IT throws that out the window and raises the barrier to entry by a lot so that only the long term players with enough weapons and artifacts to pass around can start it. Even if we have enough characters, however, the randomness of it all can hurt more than it can make a run interesting. In this current season of Pyro, Electro, and Geo, characters like Sethos and Razor are borderline unusable without their respective Dendro and Physical teams, and you won’t always have the characters necessary to make an Overload team for Chevreuse or a Mono-Geo team for Gorou. It is satisfying when it all clicks together for one or two floors, but that does little to elevate the experience of the entire journey.
Finally some sane critique. I agree that IT is the perfect counterpoint to SA on paper, but the time it got implemented at was bad for its reception and it needs refining. But the concept itself is good and encourages horizontal investment.
I don't actually mind it. It's a really crude attempt at a roguelike (I don't know HOW it's bad considering Star rail does this much better) but it makes you think about what characters you should use and forces you to use characters you usually wouldn't. It also provides characters of the elements in rotation to use, so something like cryo running isn't as big of an issue as it would normally be. Of course, if the trial characters in are ones you already have it isn't helpful, but I guess it's more like a bandage than a clear fix. Usually you can just throw slop at the early waves and conserve for later and that's what's carried me to the end so far.
I love this game mode tbh. It allows me to use so many characters that i want to use in the abyss but can't use since i can only use 8 characters in floor 12. Also the elemental restrictions allows me to find out how well do my characters do when not in their best teams. Like I've always used al haitham in spread and hyperbloom but the last theatre forced me to try him on burgeon teams, and i was pleasantly surprised by the teams i could use with him. And being able to use one character from your friends is also great(wish it was 2). Because of that i am able to use kazuha or arleccino (whom i hate as a character but love the playstyle) often
The worst part is that if you're 1 character short and you sould be able to do it cuz you can take a character you don't already own from a friend the gamemode won't let you in. I don't know if they fixed that already but it happend to me once.
I love it. It's not for new players. It's built for old players like me and is fun to try to conserve my good characters for later while choosing rooms I can beat (with stellar star) with only my weaker characters. Edit: I do agree that lowering Abyss resets sucks
I don't think it should be for newer players because it's endgame. Even then you're restricted in Abyss until you're more deeper into the game But I'm glad to hear that you enjoy it :D
100% agree. As someone who played almost since the start and has difficulty fully cealering Abyss even now, because A. I'm ass at this game and B. My artifact luck is terrible this is way more fun than Abyss and just the right amount of difficulty for me. It feels sooo good that my years of playing finaly pay off. The rewards from Abyss being split tho is still scummy from hoyo, as it just punishes new players, while it's them that should get more to possibly cach up to older ones, like in other gachas.
@@Sky-re2dw im no whale and got 10/10 my first time this cycle. it was annoying to feel pressure to use my resin to upgrade chars i didnt really care about or want to use, but now its done. every char i have is 60, ready to be ascended as the new cycles demand. ill be honest, im actually kinda glad about it. got a buncha standard pulls in, and 1600 per 4 week cycle is better than 1200. kinda fun working your jank ass characters thru it. but ive certainly had mixed feeling about it prior. i think its just an ar60 check for max rewards. finishing the hard mode with 8 stages isnt that tough to get to.
@@johns783 I don't like raising characters I don't feel like to play/ harder to play I just want to have fun with it, I didn't care about any clears of these endgames cause I can just grind on other contents just focusing mostly on the story
Me too. It's not for new players. It's built for old players like me and is fun to try to conserve my good characters for later while choosing rooms I can beat (with stellar star) with only my weaker characters.
nah i'd horizontally invest. jokes aside it hurts my soul that so many people hate this mode which i feel like is a by product of abyss conditioning players to invest vertically and not care as much about collection i think IT is much more true to the collection aspect of gachas and as a mode has so much potential it reminds me of a similar mode in my first dokkan what i think genshin needs to take from them is having better rewards for example imagine if the keys or medals they gave you could be turned in for a 4* of the elements of the current season. or if you could spend them on resources like mora exp etc
Agreed This mode is really fun and having to consider characters to build incase i am missing an element adds a lot of depth to my character building and pulling decisions,so i love it.
bro i’ve played since 2.6 and spent a little bit of money on welkin and battle passes and i still don’t have enough chars to do the highest level difficulty yet 😭
The hate come from the fact you can clear the abyss with both vertical or horizontal investment, IT is just horizontal, that doesnt even allow you to use less than 4 chars in the team to save resources for next challenge Imagine you having to pull chars just to play this, imagine you having to waste resources in characters you dont like (mind you, resources in this game takes time) just to >join< the game mode, and in 99% of the time, the team doesnt even have synergy 😩 Thankfully IT enemies are wet paper, but it really doesnt make better to play when you're forced to level up units to LV 70 and play them naked
I'm someone who has horizontally invested, who meets the highest restrictions already, and I still despise the mode. Because it doesn't let me build toward a fun team. Instead, it encourages me to play the least good team possible that can still clear the mode. That "least good" thing is what determines the teams I play and the characters I pick from the choices given. Added to that, certain characters really want certain things to function. And the RNG hampers that. This doesn't make a character like Xinyan fun for me. I have far more fun taking her into a regular domain.
@@stuartpratuch7036 star rail - game allows me to do runs without full teams i can still get max reward if i clear wuthering waves hologram/tower - game allows me to do runs without full teams i can still get max reward if i clear spiral abyss - game allows me to do runs without full teams i can still get max reward if i clear theater - NOPE, we're FORCING you to use full teams for all the fights so you have no choice but to mess up your vigor for your characters
I mean genshin is creative unlike HSR or wuwa nowadays HSR forces you to pull all types of dps like erudition for pf, destruction for mc and hunt for as, also supports too bcs they are broken.@@adriandaliva1341
I am actually so happy about imaginarium theater. I am not a whale, more like welkin player, but i played so long that i have a lot of build characters that i just dont use anymore, so its fun to have a mode that forces me to use these characters and be creative with teams. Its obviously not for casuals or new players, but there are people like me who asked for something new 🤷🏼♀️
Yeah I'm in the same ball park. I've always been that one Genshin player who invested and experimented with any character that I liked (I built Dehya around the time people were hating her cause I like her nd I built Dori because I'm part of the 1% that likes her.) So IT is likely meant for (1) horizontal investors and (2) long time players like me. It's not like the mode is so difficult that you need everyone perfectly optimized, either. For this run, the only Geo characters that I have optimized were Navia, Zhongli, and Xilonen. Itto, Gorou, Albedo, and Noelle are all a espectable Lv.70 and have average artifacts. With a borrowed Ninguang and Chiori, I was able to go in with a full set of characters and clear all the stages in Visionary Mode. Personally, I like having a game mode where I can actually use my other characters that I spent my free time building. And I like being forced to use characters and teams I never considered before. I get why some are dissappinted or even angry, but like you I'm happy with it so far.
I once again feel compelled to mention that if HoYo had just given us a reworked and permanent version of Labyrinth Warriors (a roguelike event from 2.2, if anyone's unfamiliar), everything would've been fine. A small aside: Ever played "Depths of Illusive Realm" in WuWa? Now that was the shit, especially because some of the buffs would just let you go completely bonkers: turn Chixia into Gunslinger Dante from DMC; make Yangyang get motivated and become the storm that is approaching; give Jiyan infinite Dragon Install; and my personal favorite, let Jianxin achieve Ultra Instinct and become borderline invincible. It's a good time and you could earn roll currency, upgrade mats, even echo skins! Here's hoping it comes back for 1.4!
only reason i really dont mind the character restriction is that getting stars doesnt give you anything, so you just need to finish the rooms to get the rewards if i had to level up thee character and be mindfull of the time constrainds, i would be mad at this game mode, but since you just ned to lvel up stuff, as you said, you just need time, which honstly is the same for spyral abyss but to a lsseer extent
Ngl it honestly has improved a lot recently the last one was genuinely fun and amazing but what I feel made this current one feel bad was simply the fact it was geo which has a lot of useless characters which most people won’t have
Tbf altho i think most people know what u mean, u forgot to specify that u can still play the gamemode with less than 22 characters but just not the hardest mode (which sucks)
I disagree. Imaginarium Theatre is easier than the Spiral Abyss. If you can clear one, you can clear the other. In the Spiral Abyss, you needed 8 good characters, while in Imaginarium Theatre you only really need 5, which is 3 less. You need 1 to clear 2 chambers and there are 10 chambers, do the math and it checks out. Yes, you won't be able to do it early, much like the Spiral Abyss, you likely will need 3-6 months or so, much like with the Spiral Abyss back in the day, however in the case of the Imaginarium Theatre, you don't even need to clear it perfectly to get the reward, so I don't see the problem at all. I like the Imaginarium Theatre, it allows you to use units you otherwise have no reason to use, and it's a nice relaxing experience compared to the Abyss even for veteran players. As for your video, I am sorry, but most of your logic was so....backwards, like saying that whales cannot hyper-invest into a few characters when that is the exact opposite, that is exactly how you are supposed to play it, o saying that you have to work twice as hard for the same reward as opposed to old abyss when it's the exact opposite, you work less now because Imaginarium is easier than the abyss, especially newer abyss cycles.
Exactly, IT encourages horizontal investment while spiral abyss encourages vertical. As a day 1 player who has never spent money on the game and just returned after a year, it has given me so much motivation to raise units I wouldn't otherwise and genuinely find fun in new playstyles!
The problem is that i need 22 characters at level 70 that fit into the 3 elements to be able to get the rewards so for players who have hyper invested into 2 teams ever since they started playing like me, we have no chance to get the rewards so we are getting less rewards than what we did when we only had spiral abyss
@@Notion13 Seems like a you problem rather than an Imaginarium problem. If you followed the Meta and only invested in units that were good enough at C0, maybe you could have done it, but it sounds like you invested into rafinaments and constelations. Sorry, but not sorry, consetlations and rafinaments are never worth it.
I agree. But then I'm a day 1 player who has ~70 characters at level 90, with a lv 90 weapon and talent levels 9/9/9. I'm glad that I finally get to use the characters that aren't necessarily meta and I never bring in abyss. This way I still get to use them. I do get that for newer players this game mode might suck ass though
I like the concept of the game mode. It is more about making functional teams with what you have which makes the strength of those teams far weaker than normal. Hence why the challenges are rather easy since most people are expected to be weaker than normal. It is meant for horizontal investment players that just collect a lot of characters. The only thing I really dislike about it is that for people that can not fully access this mode it means that they get less rewards than before.
gacha forcing you to spend more time and money?! no way! but seriously, can we stop using this as a reason to hate, in name of Christ, you are playing a glorified slot machine
I am personally a fan of IT,sure it has issues(specifically too many restrictions) but i really enjoy my time playing it. I think it adds depth to your gameplay or team building when you have to account for having enough characters of every element built. So if your account is lacking geos you go and pull some geo units to make up for that,purely to not get messed up in the theater. I think its really interesting
@@princemannic exactly! You have to account for having enough characters built of every element and it might make you pull or build characters you otherwise wouldn't
The fact that they almost did near perfect roguelike gameplay during the 2.3 patch.... and then made it limited lol. how tf they made Simulated Universe and Elysian Realm enjoyable??? even i cannot clear the harder content? Even goddmn WuWa (another open world, mind you) has their own seasonal roguelike gameplay? Just bring back the Labyrinth Warriors man...
watching this vid as im farming to reach lvl 70 on 4 different characters just so i can get visionary mode rewards on the next teather , i hate this sooooooooooooooo much😭
Ive been playing since launch. I may have 22 characters with a built up weapon, talents and artifacts at best.(2 of which are. Aloy and Qiqi so really 20) No shot I'm invested the time to build up characters I have no interest in for 800 primos. What's does that cost to purchase now? $15. So spend like 40 hrs grinding out to build characters or pay $15. Id just pay the 15 dollars if I was that pressed for the primos.
You summed it up perfectly. I can play normal mode SOMETIMES, not even close to hard mode. This shit sucks ass. Thing is, when I can play it I dumpster it cause its so easy. And normally with a bunch of character uses to spare so like why cant I go into the next mode? Basically, just bring back the bi-weekly abyss and make this separate from abyss, that gives more rewards. If your gonna make us work more, then give us more
Just the simplest of things could make this trash heap of a game mode better, like… NOT FORCING US TO USE 4 CHARACTERS. You can’t even fucking save characters for later, and it makes characters like Chev and Nilou completely useless unless you get lucky
Tbh, i dont even care about Endgame IMT, and Abyss are boring, and the rewards are horrible. I'd rather just pull for non meta characters because it's not like it matters
"pull for non-meta characters" Like who? Units like Kaveh are actually virtually useless? Or the 90% of the cast which isn't "top tier" but excels in their respective niches and teams? Gurl please 😂.
@@el7284 hello?? Im a kaveh main and i OWN Neuvillette. I might not use kaveh in end game , but outside of that i still use him and i have lots of fun bc i love the character. Theres no "useless" character.
@@smirking_moon you're a kaveh main and you own Neuvillette...and? How does this link back to what I said? Also did not say Kaveh was outright useless. He's almost useless *flees*
The lowering of the Rewards was so they could add a third or fourth mode without giving too many resources, but it sucks right now because 2 gives the same amount.
Why don't ignore abyss instead? I hate artifact grind and vertical investments. As pure F2P having decent art stats and any signature weapons is out of question, but having 22 70lv characters on every 3 elemental types is easy.
Yes! Ive been playing for years also f2p and I still struggle a lot with the abyss and most of the time I don't make it. But teathre has been easier and it's fun to have a variety of characters just decent enough.
I found it way easier to lvl 70 my amber and I thought I needed to build her more but it turned out she made a fine burst support for Pyro reaction buffs. It's way easier than needing to lvl 90 999 talents and getting 200+CV artifact set with massive rng for abyss and malding. Or easier : pull signature weapon and C1 and your character clears abyss itself (results may vary for shitty C1).
Abyss was never about vertical investment. And no, having artifacts with decent substat volume is possible as F2P. It just depends on how you define “decent”. If your “decent” is 30+ CV BS. then yeah, you probably ignore a lot of good artifacts you had.
Yeah, I built Xiangling to do that (bc i was going to build her anyway), then I got started on building other characters and realized... i was literally having to farm leylines EVERY OTHER DAY because of how many resources it needed. Yeah no, I'll focus on improving my artifacts to 36 star, maybe level up Ayato and Thoma for that burgeon team I've been dying to try out, and I'll just do whatever Imaginarium Theater lets me do. I'm not gonna focus on it, because raising so many characters to a mediocre level is literally bleeding my account dry
@@Error403HRD I'm seeing a lot of comments saying that the Imaginarium favoring horizontal investment is a good thing. I would agree, if not for the fact that the game itself doesn't incentivize that due to how limited resources are, up to and including the characters and weapons themselves. Oh, you actually DO have a large pool of characters for Hard or Visionary Mode but they're not built? Well then, have fun FURTHER micromanaging when to build what character/weapon so that you don't get one-shot while doing 15 Phys damage. Oh, and you can't change equipment after you've confirmed your lineup. Enjoy.
@@SageRuffin Exactly! Even WHALES can't get passed the limited resources, so I can't see how this game mode is good for anyone (given that day one players breeze through it with ease because it's not actually difficult, while newer players likely don't have enough characters to even attempt it)
I've been completing Spiral Abyss since mid 2.something AND I done all Imaginerum Theatres and cuz of THAT I claim my RIGHT to complain: Those game-modes are not mechanicly hard, they are investment checks (and luck too). They are choirs we do, cuz primogems, which are VERY low for the effort
For me the only reason i can bare this mode is because i have 2 years worth of characters and the game mode forced me to finally build characters that i just had idling like Layla or Charlotte. I can feel the pain of the players that just want the cisnetic rewards.
Actually i came around and now i love that mode it encourages you to strategize you character picks and buff and gives some character you forgot about a chance to shine and forcing you to get out of your comfort zone without having artificial difficulty like the abyss but enemies have 900 million HP and have HP drain the only downside to that mode being it requires players to have a lot of characters which is something most players wouldn't have but the target audience for that mode is older players who might sleep on some characters and team comps my account was super focused on three teams that could clear the abyss and now i realized the usefulness of some of my characters and the characters i built and enjoy using after the introduction of that mode includes yaoya deyha haizu yanfai sucrose fischil jean ganyu shenhe freminet charlotte layla venti ayato yin jin gaming And yes i went from having 20 million mora to having to farm mora leyline but i don't regret it because i have much more freedom in what team i want to play just because i got out of the mindset of just leveling and investing in the meta characters
This endgame is actually catered for people who uses their resin diligently by building characters. Not build 2 teams and call it done. People are always complaining how easy SA is that they can clear it with 1 character each floor. Now with the HP buff on SA and the theatre, this gives you incentives for building up the characters you get.
@@anupambarua3407 i agree with you, however, I do think this endgame is healthy in the long run. I stopped playing genshin because there's no reason for me to farm if i have 4 teams rotating in SA and are able to clear it regularly. This mode actually made me think building characters isn't so bad anymore since now I have a reason to build them, this also is a test on how good you are at adapting since you won't get your units all in one go, and you can only use them twice, which opens up some interesting gameplay. I do believe that the SA should reset twice a month still, and theatre could reset once at the beginning of the month.
You are wrong for one thing. Specifically, here 7:43 You see, before you got 1200 primogems per month for fully clearing the abyss twice in a month. Now, in order to get the same amount, you still need to clear floor 12 of the abyss and only medium difficulty in the theater, for which you need only 12 characters of 3 specific elements at lvl 60, not even 70. Which is not hard to get at all. So if you care about having the same rewards as before, now it's even easier to get, and everything on top is a bonus reward.
Oh hey! I remember seeing a video of u saying u quit genshin, but looking at ur channel it looks like you've been back for a while. Welcome back! I hope u have a less toxic experience with the genshin community!
As someone that ALWAYS loses 5050 and goes to 160 pulls for any 5 star character I want, and someone that doesnt like leveling characters that i dont like to play, this game mode feels like nails on a chalkboard The worse part is that i already have like 7 hyperinvested teams, but i cant even play them in IT due to element restriction and if i could, that rng to get the characters would make it awful
This game mode basically says you are forced to level 7 characters of every element minimum just to get the required number just to be allowed to enter. I’ve been playing this game for almost four years and I have maybe three characters of each element built at least half decent and I just downright refuse to level characters I don’t like just to participate on this
My solution is lower the character requirement number and raise the number of times you can use each character by 1 so you can use each character in 3 chambers it won’t fix everything but it will at least allow more people to at least play the gamemode.
Nah, as player who started in 1.0, and i rly like this gamemode its not for newplayers, i used characters that i played since old days, and its not even hard buffs make it easy af, so its basicly endgame for players who want proper endgame.
I think the concept is decent enough. I don't have the characters to play the hardest difficulty though. Depending on the cycle, it may be years before I have enough characters. Since I don't roll very often, chances are I'll never be able to complete the hardest difficulties. In addition, not only do you have to have units of specific elements, they generally have to have some kind of synergy with one another in some number of combinations. You can't use a unit more than twice unless you get an even card that gives a unit extra charges. I don't have the weapons to field every unit I own. I barely have enough to field 2 abyss teams. It becomes a game of resources, but ether people who've played for the past 3-4 years or whales have the resources to do it all. If they wanted to do a rogue like, they could've just made Labyrinth Warriors a permanent mode.
All I want is for them to combine Labyrinth Warriors (from 2.2) with parts of the Chasm quest (like with the rotating platforms and stuff) and potentially make it co-op.
I like the theater. Considering it is an endgame mode, new players not being able to meet the requirements makes sense. I’m the type of player who naturally put some investment in my characters cause i genuinely don’t see a reason to never do that if they are your account, so I like having a reason to use them and a game mode that leans more towards planning ahead/understanding the characters rather than having perfect stats. It is a bit of a shame though the abyss cycle changed though.
my personal suggestion for this is to simply count constellations as characters except when you're adding bonus ones. this will limit the pool you get to characters you give a damn about while also incentivising you to build 4 stars, chances are your 5 stars will be at c0 unless you're really hardcore about favouritism and abyss and stuff, which is pretty much every long time player this gamemode was really intended for anyways.
I'm f2p, I have no problem with this mode. I don't have a single 5* geo or cryo character (aside from Qiqi), and it's still a non issue. -it's endgame so it's for people who played for 1,5-2 years so they have enough characters -you get a bunch of characters for free at the start + from friends + off element guests -Lvl 70 is not much Idk man I finally feel rewarded for building all my 4* characters just because I like them; all they need is lvl 70 and a very mid build. People got brainrotted by abbyss for 4 years and vertically investing into 2 teams. Build your Kaeya and Kachina and stop crying. If you hate it or can't do it, it's only 2-3 pulls you're losing anyway. Long time players cried that there's nothing to do in this game, and now that you have something to do they complain anyway. Also please no don't bring 2 weeks resets, I hate it in hsr so much I stopped playing, it's tideous and a headache.
The resin system greatly affects this mode as well because to make the other characters in you party have a chance against these challenges, especially Visionary mode, you need multiple artifact sets. But you only get so much resin daily and it causes players to do so few domains. Plus the drop rate of getting good artifacts is abysmal.
even as someone who slighty enjoys this gamemode, the exact same rewards for twice the work is diabolical. i like how the mechanic forces you to use teams that may or may not work at all it's fun to me but jesus it is not worth the turmoil for not even a tenpull per month.
I actually had to level characters I don't even use just to do the hardest difficulty, and this is coming from someone playing since patch 1.0. I don't pull for every single character, instead I vertically invest in the characters I like.
I hated this endgame mode at the beginning, but now, after a few months, I am not so skeptical about it. The obvious bad thing is wasting resources to level up characters you`ll never use outside the Theatre. I was mad about it, cause my main character's builds can do better with all this wasted resin. But the positive side is you don`t need anything outside of lvl 70th. Characters with lvl 1 talents, weapons and 0 lvl artifacts can get through the most advanced mode with the right buffs and planning. The reaction buffs are pretty powerful and can do most of the work if you know what to choose. I am pretty confident about it cause one of CCs makes videos for every theater update, choosing only 1 built 4* character from a friend, and leaving all the other without weapons/artifacts, and still completing the run successfully. And finally, I really have fun with different twisted teams, that I have to build for the theater, and they still work. This is endgame mode after all, it is obvious that relatively new players will have trouble with it. The same as for the Abyss - the endgame mode is meant to be hard, achievable only with time.
At first when the leaks talked about IT, it seemes like something about overworld so I thought it was neat, maybe something similar to the 2.5 Enkanomiya event where you clear the map from "abyss corruption" or something. Then there were more translation and overworld was just about buffs, so of course it ended up being yet another circular area endgame boring mode. I mean this is literally Spiral Abyss except I can only certain elements, nothing different and definitely not worth the efforts for the average player to bother building 200 different characters for the exact similar content that you can already play with any 2 teams of your choice. (aka Spiral Abyss)
I sleptwalk through every iteration of Imaginarium Theatre, until the last rotation because I only had 21 out of the 22 characters sufficiently leveled and built to participate for the Visionary difficulty. And even then, I only really needed ONE character to clear the floors with ease, if only it would let me.
I cleared the hardest mode and I played geshin just over a year. i build alot of level 70 characters with just barrow artifacts from other not participating elements. luckily i have some dolphin friends where i can barrow to clear the last boss. My best dps got 60/170 crit and its c6 gaming with 4 star weapon. I dont have solid 5 star dps like nuvi or arlecino because i never won my 50/50. My other team for abyss is a nahida hyper bloom and since 4.something i 36 star the abyss. imaginarium hardest level is doable but it’s really difficult and fun for may account😂 and now I’m saving some resources for next imaginarium for which ever characters I might be missing.
Came in prepared to defend IT a little, even if it's not my favorite and I recognize it's shortcomings. I'm the kind of person who just tries to see and argue both sides for the sake of having a complete discussion...but um, yep. I've got nothing.
when they first introduced the game mode I got pretty pissed. As someone who first got into the game during Sumeru most of my characters built were hydro and dendro, and to a lessor extent pyro and electro. So immediately when the mode came out, it excluded those my two most built elements and I had to build entirely new teams. ive been playing the game for nearly 2 years and dont have enough characters yet. at least for some elements.
I hate the argument of hating IT for needing to build characters Yes it has problems but those problems are not needing to build characters "New players dont have the characters" This is an endgame mode, new players shouldn't be playing IT. "Late game players dont have enough built characters" Then build them, you should have more than enough pieces lying around and the time to grind them to level 70 at least. A good 3rd of this video sounds like complaining that you cant spam a handful of meta units and have to spread your attention to more than 2 game ending dpses and their supports I have every character at level 80 and i make them usable at minimum while still having high investment in several characters i enjoy
The Imaginarium Theater, especially Visionary Mode, is the single biggest contributor to my Genshin Center planner being so horribly bloated. I used to pull characters almost exclusively for the Spiral Abyss with the general philosophy of "get two strong on-field DPSs per element plus Physical and their supports"...but the Imaginarium Theater has inflated that to "additionally get lots of characters that function well either or both on- and off-field like Xilonen so you can effectively beat an act regardless of your potentially messy team comp". While I'm very happy that some characters like Sucrose, my waifu, excel at both the Abyss and the Theater, I don't like feeling forced to raise someone like C6 Lynette-I'm not a fan of more "extreme" introverts and I find Sucrose significantly easier to play. (Disclaimer: If you like Lynette for whatever non-immoral reason, I'm not stopping you.)
my geo characters are yun jin, ninnguang, gorou and noelle all unbuilt. i don't have a single geo 5 star because those are exclusive to limited time banners. i skipped sumeru, so all my dendro characters are collei, mc and tighnari. in the case geo and dendro would run together, i would be expected to build all of them above level 70 and then do the same for *fifteen* characters of the same element. I'VE PLAYED AND SPENT ON THIS GAME FOR THREE YEARS BTW.
Honestly when I first unlocked the Imaginarium I took one look at how it works and went, "Oh cool, anyway" and left and had not stepped foot in that location since. Even with the Spiral Abyss having it's own problems at least it allows more of it's playerbase to even play it, not just veterans.
I also dont mind IT as a veteran player (OG kazuha haver on my Debut). I am looking forward to building Gaming and Sethos exactly for this reason.. Although it would be much more useful if IT just auto upgraded them to 90 with mid artifacts and investnent like Divergent universe. Building characters in genshin is just so much more troublesome than HSR.
As someone that loves this gamemode, I agree lowering the reward amount from abyss was a terrible idea and had they just given out more rewards (as would be expected from a gacha this old) everything would be fine. To me this gamemode is just a thank you for long term players, but it sucks that new players cach a stray in the process.
There are still people who praise it for making you think about teams. It's a mode where you get random characters who won't synergize well enough to be a team. It doesn't even ask you to build 90% of them, just show up. The only Endgame in Genshin isn't even Abyss, it's 36 Stars. Any less and you can walk around in trash and complete it.
They needed to encourage horizontal investment somehow. There are better ways to do this, sure, but an additional incentive to pull more characters was always in the cards. Honestly, I’m fine with it. It gives Hoyo a way to encourage pulling additional characters without relying on power creep, which is something that benefits spiral abyss enthusiasts too. I agree though that the ‘must have x number of relevant characters built to play’ is not ideal. It would be nice for it to simply be more difficult-then you’d still be incentivized to build a wide roster to accommodate the elemental restrictions and random team assortments, but mid game players could at least get a taste of it
You said word for word my thoughts about it, i have played 2 and a half years genshin, i could barely clear it when there was hydro characters and found it incredably unreasonable when it made me pick cryo characters, that a normal player has probably less than 4 well built. And i wasnt about to build rosaria or mika.
Meh. Have to disagree. Been playing for just over a year. Yeah the 22 character requirement sucks, had to bring 7 characters to 70/70 for this cycle bc I'm not a fan of Geo (took a week of burning resin), but I didn't even have to get artifacts on them to get full marks. Endgame and its rewards could be better, sure, but newer players shouldn't really have to stress about the 1 additional pull they can get from Visionary Mode. They have other things to focus on like Archon Quests, exploration, getting to AR45, artifact farming. It's called endgame for a reason.
The theater is a pin for someone like me that has only been playing for a couple years and doesn't have a crap ton of maxed out characters. I just know finally have 5 level 90's
The issue with Imaginarium Theatre for me is that it’s the gamemode that’s supposedly supposed to have players use their brains and form teams that work well with a restricted selection of characters. Yet it fails at its main premise, because I don’t think having characters like Faruzan or Gorou on an Arlecchino team is a good way to teach players how proper team building works, it’s mostly just random s**t go and hoping it works. I do think it’s cool that you have restricted characters, it makes it more challenging, but the element restriction on top of the RNG and the fact that you need certain characters, alongside them needing to be a specific level to even use is pretty annoying sometimes.
I did this estimate a long time ago so i dont remember it exactly but at minimum it takes about 2 weeks to build a character from level 0 at World Level 8 and that if you get really lucky with artifacts and also doesnt factor in needing mora or level up books
The sad thing is, I would be the perfect person to play the Imaginarium Theater. I'm okay with the random elements, and I don't really care that much about strict meta. But I've been playing less than a year, and don't have enough built characters. Plus, I don't want to build every character I do have, and if I do, I won't use them outside of Theater. I already don't do Spiral Abyss because I don't like it, and now I feel locked out of something else.
I agree with the take. I ignore IT because it's not for me, and I'm not going to grind just so I have the characters. You're either in one of two camps: 1) If you've actually built your account to like 42-49 (6-7 characters of each element) with weapons, talents, artefacts, etc., then you're probably fine for the IT. 2) If you're not in category #1, then this mode isn't for you. Either because you cannot even show up, or because you don't have enough characters properly built, so you cannot do it. After 2.5 years of Genshin, I sit somewhere in the middle of #1 and #2. I can show up and play IT I have enough characters, but I don't enough of them properly built, and it's not worth it to build that many. *I would add that the stamina system in IT is BS. It adds nothing but pain. Want to see Stamina done right? Look at the Tower of Adversity in WuWa: it's meant so you have the flexibility of building teams and swapping characters between floors, BUT... it won't let you just run the same 3 characters on every floor. It's a nice balance because you're not locked in like the Abyss.
I play theatre on hard and pass decently easily even with my hand eye coordination problems, I love when people (even whales) tell me how useful my characters are it fills me with absolute pride (especially my Venti) but right now is probably the hardest theatre for me because I do not own a single 5 star Geo or electro character on my main account and I own 1 Pyro 5 star in the form of a C2 Dehya, one could say "oh why don't you pull on Xilonen or Chiori, why don't you use those 52800 primos to get any other characters from the roaster" well my friends I'm an autistic with a hyper focus on Venti and I missed his early rerun (I got him day one) and I am finally saving to C6 him! I cannot pull on any character banner until he is C6 as I want to start with the best chance of getting him C6 as I will be kicking off my Venti pulls with 75 pity and a guarantee for C2 Venti. Nothing and I mean nothing will away me (this is why I have 2 extra accounts they help me satiate, the gambling addiction) I will not stop until I have the best Venti in the world i am that determined. XD
all this stuff aside,i think what bothers me the most about theater is how unfun it is. it's not the restrictions in themselves, it's the frustration of finally starting to clear the spiral abyss consistently and hoyo suddenly decides "well fuck you, have something harder and less enjoyable,even though you've spent years building teams for abyss", and i technically have to do it. why would i want to miss the primos? i can at least do hard mode. so now i'm obligated to sit through "optional endgame content" (that may i add i'd never touch otherwise due to my distaste for it) every month because as a completionist who has almost all exploration and achievements and all story quests/hangouts done i NEED a consistent source of primos, and it's with a mode people don't even like. i had hopes it would be more about sustainability so now i'd get to build more healers and shielders,but no, for me it feels something like a dps check except oops,now you can't even have a proper team especially due to element restrictions. sincerely, what the fuck hoyoverse?
Also, hehe funni hydro has the worst 4* to 5* ratio with THREE 4* and TEN 5*, but fret not, you can use hydro MC and reduce your life expectancy by 15%. Gear your Barb and Candeez, cuz if *you* haven't been around for a few rodeos, *they* will be. (the other elements' ratios: pyro 8/7, dendro 4/6, electro 8/5, anemo 5/6, geo 5/6 and cryo 7/7 if ignoring Aloy)
I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Imaginarium. I like the idea of encouraging (forcing) players to think outside the box and use team comps they usually wouldn't. - Hell, they made me go for Overloaded Sethos and that was actually a really fun combo. But at the same time, I hate being forced to play characters I simply don't like and don't want to play. (... I don't know how Ayaka works, I don't want to know how Ayaka works because I'll never pull for her anyways) However, I do think there's an issue of just, making Abyss reset every 4 weeks now, and effectively cutting rewards in half for a lot of players for quite some time until they have enough characters to at least play on the second hardest difficulty. I don't think the whole "you need xyz amount of characters" is THAT bad, it sucks but I don't think is as bad as people make it out to be, it kind of depends on the element line up and that includes Cryo. If it's paired with elements that have lots of characters like Electro and Pyro, there's not really an issue (Pretty sure there was a Cryo IT last rotation, and my only Cryo 5* is Qiqi, but is was perfectly fine with friend characters + the characters Hoyo gives you), but it'd be problematic if the other elements are something like Hydro, which has a total of 3 4*, one of which being Candace who is borderline useless before C6, and something like Geo. And it's not like, all the used characters NEED to be built, think Hoyo made sure that the difficulty is low enough to allow for what is basically dead weight as well as not needing all stars for the full rewards. There's a part of me that thinks this could soo easily be fixed by just bringing the old Abyss Reset Schedule back, and if Hoyo feels really stingy, like they usually do, maybe even reduce the rewards to 600 per full clear again. Just so that those who don't have enough characters for IT, aren't punished for that. That way you'd have the regular Abyss rewards and have a few extra primos if you clear IT on easy or medium, while also having something to work towards and veteran players have a little extra reward for... well being veteran players.
IT is strange as an end-game “challenge cycle mode.” There’s a reason why the other two hoyo games built a rogue-like game-mode around fun character power + super funny scaling + identifiable build paths and combinations, but have never been relevant to cyclical end-game that gives rewards, but as permanent features with one time rewards and uses the fun of the mode as the reason to play more. IT attempts to make use of the 3 elements each cycle to create specific buffs for reactions, but the way the team handles demands that you dump very specific strategies quickly. Why am I upgrading to Lv 5 overload? So that I might use the overload side of my roster later or attempted to hold on to? What reasonable benefit am I getting now? It’s mostly why the end-game is so easy, is because they literally can’t expect the player to have any specific strategy with the buffs at any given time or even a working team, so just make everything middling. Your list of units even assuming that all 22 participating units are reasonably built don’t particularly have any identity in how they play every stage. Even though the game is limited to a handful of elements you still can’t actually play EC.comp or Burning for like half the floors and even then the game’s enemies have even less ability to interact with the player with the player getting super buffs. It felt like instead of making a proper game mode they went ahead and cobbled together parts of a roguelike at a time with buffs that nobody would read and then shoot the player’s agency in the kneecaps so that they could pretend “planning each floor” was a difficult task. Does anyone even remember what half the buffs do in any one cycle? I can remember everything the elation path has in star rail on the back of my hand. What’s the point of an unrecognizably bland and frankly not even needed to win progression system in this so called rogue-like mode. I want to see them make an actual crystalize archetype that does fun stuff in a mode that actually scales and doesn’t take my legs away, because a game should elicit any amount of decent emotion. IT is simply a dispenser of primos based on yes or no question.
I know I should wait for your "meta is fun" video but I got to say as a none meta player I know that people have fun with meta, people need to understand that because why don't they see that there are so many websites, and content creators on the subject. It's like when some people ask, "how can you like turn base games or strategy games in general?", some people can say they like to think of other was to win the game. I play Genshin completely different from others, like I didn't grind for that many artifacts and just leveled up all the characters I have, some may say that it's a stupid way to play but that's my way of having fun
I lile it. It forces you to build some mid tier characters and use them. Plus, of the 22 characters they give you 5 trial characters, so there's that also.
Stop making good videos! Damn. Only been watching your vids this past week for me but every vid has been a great topic so far. As a returning player from roughly release, It's great to hear your perspective. Thank you. (Obviously please don't stop making videos) Oh and side note - adventure rank 54 upon returning... I can't even start this game mode on the second difficulty.
I was so confused, as someone who hasn't done many rotations. This entire time I just assumed that you could add friends and sub in any of their characters; making it less "You need to build dozens of characters" and more "You need friends who build a couple of characters". That would make sense. But I never added people on Genshin so.... Turns out it's only one, huh? Wow. This could've all been sidestepped by turning it into a collaborative roguelike and drive engagement by ensuring people keep their teams updated
The worst part is that hydro has only 3 4-stars and the hmc Candace without c6 is bad and hmc is always bad so most players would have 2 usable 4-star hydro units (the lucky ones get 3) and probably only up for to 3 5-star hydro units most likely being Yelan, Furina and Neuvillette.
Imagine making a endgame mode that is to easy for veterans, while also not allowing most other people to even play the hardest difficulty.
Next Video will either be the Raiden Video, The How to Make Proper Endgame Video, another episode of Elemental Review, Or a Collab with Flip. Idk yet, still undecided
Collab with our favorite former minor lets gooooo
Collab with flip would be cool
They should create an Endgame mode that's actually made for fun and not for monthly primogems.
Can't wait for the enemies that completely drain your energy to be added to the abyss.
Wait, that sounds familiar.
Sounds like something they’d do when they want to push dps that are NA/skill reliant.
Wayob manifestations : "Allow us to introduce ourselves..."
@@Daniele-PierreDuLac so the meta will shift from Neuv/Arlechino to....oh wait...neuv/arlechino
@@bushy9780😭
My problem with Imaginarium Theater is not that you have to build characters that you're never gonna use. It's the element restriction, most of the time you're going to be running a team with 2-3 DPS and no synergy. I wish they just added buffs to 3 elements instead of restricting it...
Especially when DPS characters are usually restrictive for certain teams in which they shine hhhhh
Agreed, this rotation in particular is very indicative of that problem because the finale boss is tha Algorithm of stupidly long name that I wont memorise, and if you don;t have a dendro character to trigger Quicken then that thing is waaaay harder to beat than it should be, except Dendro isn't available this rotation, I basically had to reset after like 12 attempts because i ofc had no idea it would be at the end and the only good electr unit I had left was Raiden, who I didn't currently have built for DPS cuz again, I didnt know this thing would be the final boss
I thought that was sorta the point for end game.
Given the fact we have all the time and resources
This current rotation is sooooooooooo boring. I don't want to play a bunch of geo overload teams for 10 stages... There has to be a better way to impose restrictions on the mode than what it currently has. Just hand pick the characters we can use to boost banner sales, at least it will probably be more fun that way
@@dohickey7184no problem, my last team was probably Navia or Chiori with borrowed Raiden and I wiped the floor with him.
Because of reactions being OP I rather think you need to plan the elements and final team composition. It's a team planner with rng. It's not really mandatory to have quicken and in fact there is no Dendro in the 3 elements so devs don't expect you to have it.
Imagirium Theatre needs the Divergent Universe treatment. The game auto build your roster if it's not up to par with the requirement
This might actually be dope. Make it a separate end game content for more Primogems tho hahaha
Yes I would love this
They should have done this from the start. Kinda ridiculous that they didn't. It wouldnt be so bad if they did that
Add some trial characters and new players might actually have a better chance to clear.
Or at least more usable/strong trial characters. They on purpose added trial characters, that everyone has: Dehya (free selector), Xiangling is free, Yaoyao - lantern right, Barbara - free, etc etc. If this mode made more for older players, why me who played less then a year often has almost all trial roster, and mine builded 10 times better 🤣 It's just another greedy move from hoyo.
WHY IS THE POOL RANDOM TOO??? I thought I’d be able to just use my team and slowly buff them over time like Divergent Universe but nah I gotta use Arlecchino, Gorou, and Keqing together 😭😭😭
HAHAHAHA
Unless your Arlecchino can't carry shit, that problem is not as bad as the first time IT was released because now you can buy buffs that makes non-synergistic characters slightly useful, such as Pyro + Geo, or Pyro + Electro interaction buffs.
I love my team of Chevruese, Kequing, Ningguang, and Yunjin, couldn’t be me.
At least better than nilou that can't bloom 😢
Having this (and abyss) reset once a month is such a letdown. It barely qualifies as content. It’s just something you do once a month then never go back in until next month.
I remember people's reaction when they saw the abyss reset changing from 2 weeks to 1 month, wild how mihoyo goes to these lengths to avoid giving us more primos income despite the game having nearly 100 characters
@@stiflash i mean they do give more primos and this system is just like HSR (except HSR has more endgame content) but yeah they couldve made Imaginarium Theatre reset every month and let spiral abyss do its usual rotation.
From what i heard, the implementation of Imaginarium Theatre is there to add a more "fresh" Gameplay while reducing the stress (time limit for SA and IT is 1 month instead of 2 weeks) and giving more rewards (from 1200 a month to 1600)
Yup. I miss doing it 3 times per patch because it was more rewarding. You had put in the hard work, time to reap the reward. Now with it only running once a month, you're rewarded far less for the work you did.
7:17 YES THIS IS SO STUPID; I had a friend who took a break once Sumeru came out and recently returned. Now he's getting even LESS primos because he can't even access theatre because his teams are invested into a certain elements? So not only is abyss getting even more restricted and damage spongy, theatre is requiring even MORE? Wild.
Honestly if they just ditched the minimum character limit and allowed teams of less than 4 I'd be pretty happy with it...
I'll say one thing and one thing alone.
Hydro has only 4 permanently available character of which 1 is a 5 stars (Mona) and 2 are in the game since 1.0.
This shows in hindsight how much the mode is for veterans lol
In the end I ended up building more pyro characters. But then veterans probably have Yelan, Furina and Neuvillette so that's not bad either. Hydro MC exist just to pad the numbers BUT Mc is almost always just better off on the 2 other elements anyway and is very useful as a 1 time investment to permanently increase 1 slot for every theater.
Lol me forgetting Hydro MC was a thing
My take is that Imaginarium Theater is more for veteran players that can now find use cases for characters they might have benched because they fell off the meta. But as a newer player, I'm still tryna figure out optimizing mora and resource management while also building a couple characters at once, so it's just kinda stressful until I'll eventually get a built up roster.
As a veteran player, i dont think IT is for me either
I spent 4 years playing Genshin, making my favorite characters stronger just to be unable to play them and have fun due to elemental restrictions
I'm veterans (From 1.0) and also F2P. Imaginarium Theater is Challenging isn't hard to be honest (Maybe because my account is horizontal investment). I can clear the Visionary level in Imaginarium Theater.
Even the buff you get in 5.0 imaginarium theater is worthy. Make the reaction more potent to combat.
If you want to clear these contents as fast as possible for new player and no fun, here is my take:
*Just build whatever meta DPS (that you have and you want to play) right now Neuv, Arlec, Mualani, etc. Don't have to crown any character as the overall damage improvement from talent 9 to 10 is roughly 5%. Crowning is a luxury that you should use on characters that YOU LIKE. Keep them at 80/90 (max ascension but don't max out their levels at 90).
*Then build support like Xingqiu, Xiangling, and Yelan, you can farm emblem set (quite resin efficient as some other DPS can temporarily use Shimenawa). Though, you can get away with just feed them enough ER to get burst every rotation. Level 6 talents are alright. Keep their level at 60/70 or 70/80 is fine. You only need their ascension 4 passive unlocked.
*For Kazuha, stack EM for sands, goblet and cirlet with ER subtat. At least 160ER for solo kazuha with Favonius sword and nearly 200% without Favonius, run ER Sand instead of EM if needed. Don't need to level his talents, just need ascension 4 passive. He is there with Viridescent to swirl, crowd control and give elemental RES only. If you don't have him, sucrose works okay. Just 1 or 2 set of Viridescent and move on.
*For Furina, ER requirement is about 200% for solo, 150-200% double hydro. When pair with Neuv, you only need 130-150% ER. Run ER sand instead HP% if needed. Then HP%>Hydro goblet. Cirlet is either crit rate or crit damage.
*For Xilonen, you only need her E to talent level 8 or 9. Run DEF% sand, DEF% goblet sand Healing cirlet on Hero of Cinder City set. You don't need her if you have both Kazuha and Sucrose. However, her elemental RES last way more than Viridescent.
*The cost of leveling a character from 1-90 is 1.6 million Mora and 418 Hero's Wit.
The cost of leveling a character from 1-80/90 (ascension 6) is 0.987 million Mora and 247 Hero's Wit.
Hence, it's recommend for newer account not to leveling characters to 90. Characters like Neuv, Hu Tao, Furina etc can benefit from level 90 with maxed base HP but doing this after you somewhat build your supports. Reactions like overload, Electro-charged, Burning, Bloom, Hyperbloom, Burgeon, Aggravate, and Spread can benefit from characters level but I don't recommend you look into this for now.
*Don't farm 5 star artifact until you get highest Domain IV (You'll get at AR45 if I remember correctly). They guarantee, at least, a 5 star artifact for every 20 resin (2 if lucky). Build your character set first then slowly improve them. Min/max artifact early isn't optimal.
*Characters I mentioned above, if you don't have them, DON'T spend money to get them. You are paying 16000 primo just for 1200primo per month is not a good investment. DO go for 5 star characters that you like (personality, play style, damage, story, etc...). For 4 stars, you will get copy of them eventually for free in events or in 5 star banner that you want. Xiangling, Xingqiu, Bennett, and Fischl can be bough in Paimon's bargain. Just one copy if you don't have, no need for constellations, you will max constellation eventually.
*DO NOT stress out if you can't get max reward. Eventually, with enough investments and min/max artifact overtime, you can max-clear contents with non-meta. Hence, I recommend pull for characters that you like.
*Last but not least, if you want to deep dive into building a character, look for guides. Personally, I would generally recommend "*insert_purple_fake_cat_girl_name* Main guides". They are short and good enough. I can't give out the actually name as my comments got deleted from other UA-camrs. I don't know if Mr_leech is cool with it or not. Just play it safe so at least, you can see my comment.
Don't forget to have fun!
Not even for veteran players, more targeted for ppl who spend money on the game. I’ve playing for 4 yrs n barely scrape by the char limit, having to switch the travelers element to whatever’s usable and use bench warmers like amber n chichi just to participate, so I end up w half my roster being useless.
Ah yes, the 2 endgame modes, the time restricted bullet sponge gauntlet and the time restricted gauntlet of having to build 22 characters to have shit teams to play with
Is it that hard to make an endgame score attack mode, or a mode where you have to engage with enemy mechanics that spark joy instead of "wow, another elemental shield"?
I'm one of the very few imaginarium theatre enjoyers and I will defend it till the day I die. HOWEVER why in God's name did they change the spiral abyss reset. there was no reason
The IT sounds like a useful addition on paper. It adds content for horizontal investment, making it the natural opposite for SA, which rewards vertical investment.
The issue is that it was added so late into the game’s lifespan, after years of the endgame revolving around preparing at most two, maybe three well-invested teams while also sharing artifacts and weapons to lessen the need to grind. IT throws that out the window and raises the barrier to entry by a lot so that only the long term players with enough weapons and artifacts to pass around can start it. Even if we have enough characters, however, the randomness of it all can hurt more than it can make a run interesting. In this current season of Pyro, Electro, and Geo, characters like Sethos and Razor are borderline unusable without their respective Dendro and Physical teams, and you won’t always have the characters necessary to make an Overload team for Chevreuse or a Mono-Geo team for Gorou. It is satisfying when it all clicks together for one or two floors, but that does little to elevate the experience of the entire journey.
Finally some sane critique. I agree that IT is the perfect counterpoint to SA on paper, but the time it got implemented at was bad for its reception and it needs refining. But the concept itself is good and encourages horizontal investment.
I don't actually mind it. It's a really crude attempt at a roguelike (I don't know HOW it's bad considering Star rail does this much better) but it makes you think about what characters you should use and forces you to use characters you usually wouldn't. It also provides characters of the elements in rotation to use, so something like cryo running isn't as big of an issue as it would normally be. Of course, if the trial characters in are ones you already have it isn't helpful, but I guess it's more like a bandage than a clear fix. Usually you can just throw slop at the early waves and conserve for later and that's what's carried me to the end so far.
I actually really do like the Theater because it was made for people like me in mind. Built way more characters than most players probably would.
I love this game mode tbh. It allows me to use so many characters that i want to use in the abyss but can't use since i can only use 8 characters in floor 12. Also the elemental restrictions allows me to find out how well do my characters do when not in their best teams. Like I've always used al haitham in spread and hyperbloom but the last theatre forced me to try him on burgeon teams, and i was pleasantly surprised by the teams i could use with him. And being able to use one character from your friends is also great(wish it was 2). Because of that i am able to use kazuha or arleccino (whom i hate as a character but love the playstyle) often
The worst part is that if you're 1 character short and you sould be able to do it cuz you can take a character you don't already own from a friend the gamemode won't let you in. I don't know if they fixed that already but it happend to me once.
keep hoping itll change each cycle but it was still up in all including this one
I love it. It's not for new players. It's built for old players like me and is fun to try to conserve my good characters for later while choosing rooms I can beat (with stellar star) with only my weaker characters.
Edit: I do agree that lowering Abyss resets sucks
I don't think it should be for newer players because it's endgame. Even then you're restricted in Abyss until you're more deeper into the game
But I'm glad to hear that you enjoy it :D
@@luke_at_my_artplus there are easier levels for the newer players - visionary isn't the only level that exists.
100% agree. As someone who played almost since the start and has difficulty fully cealering Abyss even now, because A. I'm ass at this game and B. My artifact luck is terrible this is way more fun than Abyss and just the right amount of difficulty for me. It feels sooo good that my years of playing finaly pay off.
The rewards from Abyss being split tho is still scummy from hoyo, as it just punishes new players, while it's them that should get more to possibly cach up to older ones, like in other gachas.
i like theatre, its how i discover so many playstyles that I previously thought I would dislike, like Mualani
I asked for it. I'm the asker. Genshin always needed horizontal investment catered endgame. Now we need coop endgame and game is complete.
For whales obviously 😂😂 isn't it meant to be casual players but no at the end they always needed money nothing new here
@@Sky-re2dw im no whale and got 10/10 my first time this cycle. it was annoying to feel pressure to use my resin to upgrade chars i didnt really care about or want to use, but now its done. every char i have is 60, ready to be ascended as the new cycles demand. ill be honest, im actually kinda glad about it. got a buncha standard pulls in, and 1600 per 4 week cycle is better than 1200. kinda fun working your jank ass characters thru it. but ive certainly had mixed feeling about it prior. i think its just an ar60 check for max rewards. finishing the hard mode with 8 stages isnt that tough to get to.
"and game is complete" holy cope .
As if they wouldn't fumble that too
@@johns783 I don't like raising characters I don't feel like to play/ harder to play I just want to have fun with it, I didn't care about any clears of these endgames cause I can just grind on other contents just focusing mostly on the story
Me too. It's not for new players. It's built for old players like me and is fun to try to conserve my good characters for later while choosing rooms I can beat (with stellar star) with only my weaker characters.
nah i'd horizontally invest.
jokes aside it hurts my soul that so many people hate this mode which i feel like is a by product of abyss conditioning players to invest vertically and not care as much about collection
i think IT is much more true to the collection aspect of gachas and as a mode has so much potential
it reminds me of a similar mode in my first dokkan
what i think genshin needs to take from them is having better rewards
for example imagine if the keys or medals they gave you could be turned in for a 4* of the elements of the current season.
or if you could spend them on resources like mora exp etc
Agreed
This mode is really fun and having to consider characters to build incase i am missing an element adds a lot of depth to my character building and pulling decisions,so i love it.
bro i’ve played since 2.6 and spent a little bit of money on welkin and battle passes and i still don’t have enough chars to do the highest level difficulty yet 😭
@@sw1ftrresources management issue
The hate come from the fact you can clear the abyss with both vertical or horizontal investment, IT is just horizontal, that doesnt even allow you to use less than 4 chars in the team to save resources for next challenge
Imagine you having to pull chars just to play this, imagine you having to waste resources in characters you dont like (mind you, resources in this game takes time) just to >join< the game mode, and in 99% of the time, the team doesnt even have synergy 😩
Thankfully IT enemies are wet paper, but it really doesnt make better to play when you're forced to level up units to LV 70 and play them naked
I'm someone who has horizontally invested, who meets the highest restrictions already, and I still despise the mode. Because it doesn't let me build toward a fun team. Instead, it encourages me to play the least good team possible that can still clear the mode. That "least good" thing is what determines the teams I play and the characters I pick from the choices given. Added to that, certain characters really want certain things to function. And the RNG hampers that.
This doesn't make a character like Xinyan fun for me. I have far more fun taking her into a regular domain.
6:47 it was made for gullible people who will spend 16k primos to complete a game mode that rewards 800 primos.
That just feels like every endgame mode tho
@@stuartpratuch7036
star rail - game allows me to do runs without full teams i can still get max reward if i clear
wuthering waves hologram/tower - game allows me to do runs without full teams i can still get max reward if i clear
spiral abyss - game allows me to do runs without full teams i can still get max reward if i clear
theater - NOPE, we're FORCING you to use full teams for all the fights so you have no choice but to mess up your vigor for your characters
@@stuartpratuch7036 finally somebody said it.
I mean genshin is creative unlike HSR or wuwa nowadays HSR forces you to pull all types of dps like erudition for pf, destruction for mc and hunt for as, also supports too bcs they are broken.@@adriandaliva1341
@@adriandaliva1341You can't get resonance buffs without full teams though.
I am actually so happy about imaginarium theater. I am not a whale, more like welkin player, but i played so long that i have a lot of build characters that i just dont use anymore, so its fun to have a mode that forces me to use these characters and be creative with teams. Its obviously not for casuals or new players, but there are people like me who asked for something new 🤷🏼♀️
Yeah I'm in the same ball park. I've always been that one Genshin player who invested and experimented with any character that I liked (I built Dehya around the time people were hating her cause I like her nd I built Dori because I'm part of the 1% that likes her.)
So IT is likely meant for (1) horizontal investors and (2) long time players like me. It's not like the mode is so difficult that you need everyone perfectly optimized, either.
For this run, the only Geo characters that I have optimized were Navia, Zhongli, and Xilonen. Itto, Gorou, Albedo, and Noelle are all a espectable Lv.70 and have average artifacts. With a borrowed Ninguang and Chiori, I was able to go in with a full set of characters and clear all the stages in Visionary Mode.
Personally, I like having a game mode where I can actually use my other characters that I spent my free time building. And I like being forced to use characters and teams I never considered before. I get why some are dissappinted or even angry, but like you I'm happy with it so far.
I once again feel compelled to mention that if HoYo had just given us a reworked and permanent version of Labyrinth Warriors (a roguelike event from 2.2, if anyone's unfamiliar), everything would've been fine.
A small aside: Ever played "Depths of Illusive Realm" in WuWa? Now that was the shit, especially because some of the buffs would just let you go completely bonkers: turn Chixia into Gunslinger Dante from DMC; make Yangyang get motivated and become the storm that is approaching; give Jiyan infinite Dragon Install; and my personal favorite, let Jianxin achieve Ultra Instinct and become borderline invincible.
It's a good time and you could earn roll currency, upgrade mats, even echo skins! Here's hoping it comes back for 1.4!
only reason i really dont mind the character restriction is that getting stars doesnt give you anything, so you just need to finish the rooms to get the rewards
if i had to level up thee character and be mindfull of the time constrainds, i would be mad at this game mode, but since you just ned to lvel up stuff, as you said, you just need time, which honstly is the same for spyral abyss but to a lsseer extent
Yes it does, you cannot obtain the rewards unless you get full stars.
@@Sergmanny46no.
You get achievements from getting all stars
@@miscellaneous7777 that's a one time thing tho and it's only 20 primos
@@Sergmanny46nah. You can get all prinos just for clearing mode even with 0*.
Ngl it honestly has improved a lot recently the last one was genuinely fun and amazing but what I feel made this current one feel bad was simply the fact it was geo which has a lot of useless characters which most people won’t have
Tbf altho i think most people know what u mean, u forgot to specify that u can still play the gamemode with less than 22 characters but just not the hardest mode (which sucks)
I disagree.
Imaginarium Theatre is easier than the Spiral Abyss. If you can clear one, you can clear the other. In the Spiral Abyss, you needed 8 good characters, while in Imaginarium Theatre you only really need 5, which is 3 less. You need 1 to clear 2 chambers and there are 10 chambers, do the math and it checks out.
Yes, you won't be able to do it early, much like the Spiral Abyss, you likely will need 3-6 months or so, much like with the Spiral Abyss back in the day, however in the case of the Imaginarium Theatre, you don't even need to clear it perfectly to get the reward, so I don't see the problem at all.
I like the Imaginarium Theatre, it allows you to use units you otherwise have no reason to use, and it's a nice relaxing experience compared to the Abyss even for veteran players.
As for your video, I am sorry, but most of your logic was so....backwards, like saying that whales cannot hyper-invest into a few characters when that is the exact opposite, that is exactly how you are supposed to play it, o saying that you have to work twice as hard for the same reward as opposed to old abyss when it's the exact opposite, you work less now because Imaginarium is easier than the abyss, especially newer abyss cycles.
Exactly, IT encourages horizontal investment while spiral abyss encourages vertical. As a day 1 player who has never spent money on the game and just returned after a year, it has given me so much motivation to raise units I wouldn't otherwise and genuinely find fun in new playstyles!
The problem is that i need 22 characters at level 70 that fit into the 3 elements to be able to get the rewards so for players who have hyper invested into 2 teams ever since they started playing like me, we have no chance to get the rewards so we are getting less rewards than what we did when we only had spiral abyss
@@Notion13 Seems like a you problem rather than an Imaginarium problem. If you followed the Meta and only invested in units that were good enough at C0, maybe you could have done it, but it sounds like you invested into rafinaments and constelations.
Sorry, but not sorry, consetlations and rafinaments are never worth it.
Am I the only one who actually enjoy the imaginarium theater ?
I agree. But then I'm a day 1 player who has ~70 characters at level 90, with a lv 90 weapon and talent levels 9/9/9. I'm glad that I finally get to use the characters that aren't necessarily meta and I never bring in abyss. This way I still get to use them.
I do get that for newer players this game mode might suck ass though
I really enjoy it too, don't worry brother 🤝
I like the concept of the game mode. It is more about making functional teams with what you have which makes the strength of those teams far weaker than normal. Hence why the challenges are rather easy since most people are expected to be weaker than normal. It is meant for horizontal investment players that just collect a lot of characters.
The only thing I really dislike about it is that for people that can not fully access this mode it means that they get less rewards than before.
I also dont like character limiting, its just straight up forcing people to spend more on game
gacha forcing you to spend more time and money?! no way! but seriously, can we stop using this as a reason to hate, in name of Christ, you are playing a glorified slot machine
I am personally a fan of IT,sure it has issues(specifically too many restrictions) but i really enjoy my time playing it. I think it adds depth to your gameplay or team building when you have to account for having enough characters of every element built. So if your account is lacking geos you go and pull some geo units to make up for that,purely to not get messed up in the theater. I think its really interesting
@@K1ra_245 i feel IT adds to the resource management of the game both in and outside the mode
@@princemannic exactly! You have to account for having enough characters built of every element and it might make you pull or build characters you otherwise wouldn't
The fact that they almost did near perfect roguelike gameplay during the 2.3 patch.... and then made it limited lol.
how tf they made Simulated Universe and Elysian Realm enjoyable??? even i cannot clear the harder content? Even goddmn WuWa (another open world, mind you) has their own seasonal roguelike gameplay?
Just bring back the Labyrinth Warriors man...
watching this vid as im farming to reach lvl 70 on 4 different characters just so i can get visionary mode rewards on the next teather , i hate this sooooooooooooooo much😭
Ive been playing since launch. I may have 22 characters with a built up weapon, talents and artifacts at best.(2 of which are. Aloy and Qiqi so really 20) No shot I'm invested the time to build up characters I have no interest in for 800 primos. What's does that cost to purchase now? $15. So spend like 40 hrs grinding out to build characters or pay $15. Id just pay the 15 dollars if I was that pressed for the primos.
The Theater gave me a reason to grind and use Resin again. I build 10 extra 4 Stars to LV 80 talents 8/8/8 other the last 5 months.
You summed it up perfectly. I can play normal mode SOMETIMES, not even close to hard mode. This shit sucks ass. Thing is, when I can play it I dumpster it cause its so easy. And normally with a bunch of character uses to spare so like why cant I go into the next mode?
Basically, just bring back the bi-weekly abyss and make this separate from abyss, that gives more rewards. If your gonna make us work more, then give us more
Poor newbie 😭
Just the simplest of things could make this trash heap of a game mode better, like… NOT FORCING US TO USE 4 CHARACTERS. You can’t even fucking save characters for later, and it makes characters like Chev and Nilou completely useless unless you get lucky
Tbh, i dont even care about Endgame IMT, and Abyss are boring, and the rewards are horrible. I'd rather just pull for non meta characters because it's not like it matters
"pull for non-meta characters"
Like who? Units like Kaveh are actually virtually useless? Or the 90% of the cast which isn't "top tier" but excels in their respective niches and teams?
Gurl please 😂.
@@el7284 hello?? Im a kaveh main and i OWN Neuvillette. I might not use kaveh in end game , but outside of that i still use him and i have lots of fun bc i love the character. Theres no "useless" character.
@@smirking_moon you're a kaveh main and you own Neuvillette...and?
How does this link back to what I said?
Also did not say Kaveh was outright useless.
He's almost useless
*flees*
Some idiot didn't get the point of the comment smh 🙄
@@el7284Not everyone is a meta slave. I'd rather pull Chiori than Arlecchino.
2:03 It’s ok guys they only need to be level 7
The lowering of the Rewards was so they could add a third or fourth mode without giving too many resources, but it sucks right now because 2 gives the same amount.
WHY DID THEY EVEN MAKE THE SPIRAL ABYSS 30 DAYS ANYWAY??
Why don't ignore abyss instead? I hate artifact grind and vertical investments. As pure F2P having decent art stats and any signature weapons is out of question, but having 22 70lv characters on every 3 elemental types is easy.
Yes! Ive been playing for years also f2p and I still struggle a lot with the abyss and most of the time I don't make it. But teathre has been easier and it's fun to have a variety of characters just decent enough.
I found it way easier to lvl 70 my amber and I thought I needed to build her more but it turned out she made a fine burst support for Pyro reaction buffs.
It's way easier than needing to lvl 90 999 talents and getting 200+CV artifact set with massive rng for abyss and malding. Or easier : pull signature weapon and C1 and your character clears abyss itself (results may vary for shitty C1).
Decent artifacts are a lot less dependent on spending. Players usually do not spend primogems on resin
Abyss was never about vertical investment.
And no, having artifacts with decent substat volume is possible as F2P. It just depends on how you define “decent”. If your “decent” is 30+ CV BS. then yeah, you probably ignore a lot of good artifacts you had.
i’d never thought about it that way, every cycle i would just build more characters that i didn’t want to build just for the rewards
Yeah, I built Xiangling to do that (bc i was going to build her anyway), then I got started on building other characters and realized... i was literally having to farm leylines EVERY OTHER DAY because of how many resources it needed. Yeah no, I'll focus on improving my artifacts to 36 star, maybe level up Ayato and Thoma for that burgeon team I've been dying to try out, and I'll just do whatever Imaginarium Theater lets me do. I'm not gonna focus on it, because raising so many characters to a mediocre level is literally bleeding my account dry
@@Error403HRD I'm seeing a lot of comments saying that the Imaginarium favoring horizontal investment is a good thing. I would agree, if not for the fact that the game itself doesn't incentivize that due to how limited resources are, up to and including the characters and weapons themselves.
Oh, you actually DO have a large pool of characters for Hard or Visionary Mode but they're not built? Well then, have fun FURTHER micromanaging when to build what character/weapon so that you don't get one-shot while doing 15 Phys damage. Oh, and you can't change equipment after you've confirmed your lineup. Enjoy.
@@SageRuffin Exactly! Even WHALES can't get passed the limited resources, so I can't see how this game mode is good for anyone (given that day one players breeze through it with ease because it's not actually difficult, while newer players likely don't have enough characters to even attempt it)
I've been completing Spiral Abyss since mid 2.something AND I done all Imaginerum Theatres and cuz of THAT I claim my RIGHT to complain: Those game-modes are not mechanicly hard, they are investment checks (and luck too). They are choirs we do, cuz primogems, which are VERY low for the effort
For me the only reason i can bare this mode is because i have 2 years worth of characters and the game mode forced me to finally build characters that i just had idling like Layla or Charlotte.
I can feel the pain of the players that just want the cisnetic rewards.
Actually i came around and now i love that mode it encourages you to strategize you character picks and buff and gives some character you forgot about a chance to shine and forcing you to get out of your comfort zone without having artificial difficulty like the abyss but enemies have 900 million HP and have HP drain
the only downside to that mode being it requires players to have a lot of characters which is something most players wouldn't have but the target audience for that mode is older players who might sleep on some characters and team comps my account was super focused on three teams that could clear the abyss and now i realized the usefulness of some of my characters and the characters i built and enjoy using after the introduction of that mode includes
yaoya deyha haizu yanfai sucrose fischil jean ganyu shenhe freminet charlotte layla venti ayato yin jin gaming
And yes i went from having 20 million mora to having to farm mora leyline but i don't regret it because i have much more freedom in what team i want to play just because i got out of the mindset of just leveling and investing in the meta characters
This endgame is actually catered for people who uses their resin diligently by building characters. Not build 2 teams and call it done. People are always complaining how easy SA is that they can clear it with 1 character each floor. Now with the HP buff on SA and the theatre, this gives you incentives for building up the characters you get.
Its all a ploy to get people to waste mpre time
It's the same amount of incentive for more amount of time, hoyo is the one winning not the player
@@anupambarua3407 i agree with you, however, I do think this endgame is healthy in the long run. I stopped playing genshin because there's no reason for me to farm if i have 4 teams rotating in SA and are able to clear it regularly. This mode actually made me think building characters isn't so bad anymore since now I have a reason to build them, this also is a test on how good you are at adapting since you won't get your units all in one go, and you can only use them twice, which opens up some interesting gameplay.
I do believe that the SA should reset twice a month still, and theatre could reset once at the beginning of the month.
You are wrong for one thing. Specifically, here 7:43
You see, before you got 1200 primogems per month for fully clearing the abyss twice in a month. Now, in order to get the same amount, you still need to clear floor 12 of the abyss and only medium difficulty in the theater, for which you need only 12 characters of 3 specific elements at lvl 60, not even 70. Which is not hard to get at all. So if you care about having the same rewards as before, now it's even easier to get, and everything on top is a bonus reward.
Oh hey! I remember seeing a video of u saying u quit genshin, but looking at ur channel it looks like you've been back for a while.
Welcome back! I hope u have a less toxic experience with the genshin community!
As someone that ALWAYS loses 5050 and goes to 160 pulls for any 5 star character I want, and someone that doesnt like leveling characters that i dont like to play, this game mode feels like nails on a chalkboard
The worse part is that i already have like 7 hyperinvested teams, but i cant even play them in IT due to element restriction and if i could, that rng to get the characters would make it awful
Aww don't cry, maybe you will get lucky next time
Love having to lvl random dogwater characters to lvl 70 just to start
This game mode basically says you are forced to level 7 characters of every element minimum just to get the required number just to be allowed to enter. I’ve been playing this game for almost four years and I have maybe three characters of each element built at least half decent and I just downright refuse to level characters I don’t like just to participate on this
My solution is lower the character requirement number and raise the number of times you can use each character by 1 so you can use each character in 3 chambers it won’t fix everything but it will at least allow more people to at least play the gamemode.
Nah, as player who started in 1.0, and i rly like this gamemode its not for newplayers, i used characters that i played since old days, and its not even hard buffs make it easy af, so its basicly endgame for players who want proper endgame.
I think the concept is decent enough. I don't have the characters to play the hardest difficulty though. Depending on the cycle, it may be years before I have enough characters. Since I don't roll very often, chances are I'll never be able to complete the hardest difficulties. In addition, not only do you have to have units of specific elements, they generally have to have some kind of synergy with one another in some number of combinations. You can't use a unit more than twice unless you get an even card that gives a unit extra charges. I don't have the weapons to field every unit I own. I barely have enough to field 2 abyss teams. It becomes a game of resources, but ether people who've played for the past 3-4 years or whales have the resources to do it all. If they wanted to do a rogue like, they could've just made Labyrinth Warriors a permanent mode.
All I want is for them to combine Labyrinth Warriors (from 2.2) with parts of the Chasm quest (like with the rotating platforms and stuff) and potentially make it co-op.
It’s 22 characters over 3 elements. For full IT coverage, you’d need around 50 characters. That’s over half of the entire roster.
Accessibility is IT’s biggest issue because of elemental restrictions to even attempt the highest difficulty for max rewards
I like the theater. Considering it is an endgame mode, new players not being able to meet the requirements makes sense. I’m the type of player who naturally put some investment in my characters cause i genuinely don’t see a reason to never do that if they are your account, so I like having a reason to use them and a game mode that leans more towards planning ahead/understanding the characters rather than having perfect stats.
It is a bit of a shame though the abyss cycle changed though.
my personal suggestion for this is to simply count constellations as characters except when you're adding bonus ones. this will limit the pool you get to characters you give a damn about while also incentivising you to build 4 stars, chances are your 5 stars will be at c0 unless you're really hardcore about favouritism and abyss and stuff, which is pretty much every long time player this gamemode was really intended for anyways.
I'm f2p, I have no problem with this mode. I don't have a single 5* geo or cryo character (aside from Qiqi), and it's still a non issue.
-it's endgame so it's for people who played for 1,5-2 years so they have enough characters
-you get a bunch of characters for free at the start + from friends + off element guests
-Lvl 70 is not much
Idk man I finally feel rewarded for building all my 4* characters just because I like them; all they need is lvl 70 and a very mid build. People got brainrotted by abbyss for 4 years and vertically investing into 2 teams. Build your Kaeya and Kachina and stop crying. If you hate it or can't do it, it's only 2-3 pulls you're losing anyway. Long time players cried that there's nothing to do in this game, and now that you have something to do they complain anyway. Also please no don't bring 2 weeks resets, I hate it in hsr so much I stopped playing, it's tideous and a headache.
The resin system greatly affects this mode as well because to make the other characters in you party have a chance against these challenges, especially Visionary mode, you need multiple artifact sets. But you only get so much resin daily and it causes players to do so few domains. Plus the drop rate of getting good artifacts is abysmal.
even as someone who slighty enjoys this gamemode, the exact same rewards for twice the work is diabolical.
i like how the mechanic forces you to use teams that may or may not work at all it's fun to me but jesus it is not worth the turmoil for not even a tenpull per month.
Love your videos dude, can't wait for you to become a huge youtuber.
Even if sometime I disagree with him, he speaks his mind, and not in an asshole way like Tectone
I've been playing Genshin for almost 3 years, and even I barely have enough characters to participate in Imaginarium Theatre on max difficulty.
I actually had to level characters I don't even use just to do the hardest difficulty, and this is coming from someone playing since patch 1.0. I don't pull for every single character, instead I vertically invest in the characters I like.
I hated this endgame mode at the beginning, but now, after a few months, I am not so skeptical about it. The obvious bad thing is wasting resources to level up characters you`ll never use outside the Theatre. I was mad about it, cause my main character's builds can do better with all this wasted resin.
But the positive side is you don`t need anything outside of lvl 70th. Characters with lvl 1 talents, weapons and 0 lvl artifacts can get through the most advanced mode with the right buffs and planning. The reaction buffs are pretty powerful and can do most of the work if you know what to choose. I am pretty confident about it cause one of CCs makes videos for every theater update, choosing only 1 built 4* character from a friend, and leaving all the other without weapons/artifacts, and still completing the run successfully.
And finally, I really have fun with different twisted teams, that I have to build for the theater, and they still work.
This is endgame mode after all, it is obvious that relatively new players will have trouble with it. The same as for the Abyss - the endgame mode is meant to be hard, achievable only with time.
At first when the leaks talked about IT, it seemes like something about overworld so I thought it was neat, maybe something similar to the 2.5 Enkanomiya event where you clear the map from "abyss corruption" or something.
Then there were more translation and overworld was just about buffs, so of course it ended up being yet another circular area endgame boring mode.
I mean this is literally Spiral Abyss except I can only certain elements, nothing different and definitely not worth the efforts for the average player to bother building 200 different characters for the exact similar content that you can already play with any 2 teams of your choice. (aka Spiral Abyss)
I sleptwalk through every iteration of Imaginarium Theatre, until the last rotation because I only had 21 out of the 22 characters sufficiently leveled and built to participate for the Visionary difficulty.
And even then, I only really needed ONE character to clear the floors with ease, if only it would let me.
I cleared the hardest mode and I played geshin just over a year. i build alot of level 70 characters with just barrow artifacts from other not participating elements. luckily i have some dolphin friends where i can barrow to clear the last boss. My best dps got 60/170 crit and its c6 gaming with 4 star weapon. I dont have solid 5 star dps like nuvi or arlecino because i never won my 50/50. My other team for abyss is a nahida hyper bloom and since 4.something i 36 star the abyss. imaginarium hardest level is doable but it’s really difficult and fun for may account😂 and now I’m saving some resources for next imaginarium for which ever characters I might be missing.
Came in prepared to defend IT a little, even if it's not my favorite and I recognize it's shortcomings. I'm the kind of person who just tries to see and argue both sides for the sake of having a complete discussion...but um, yep. I've got nothing.
when they first introduced the game mode I got pretty pissed. As someone who first got into the game during Sumeru most of my characters built were hydro and dendro, and to a lessor extent pyro and electro. So immediately when the mode came out, it excluded those my two most built elements and I had to build entirely new teams.
ive been playing the game for nearly 2 years and dont have enough characters yet. at least for some elements.
I hate the argument of hating IT for needing to build characters
Yes it has problems but those problems are not needing to build characters
"New players dont have the characters"
This is an endgame mode, new players shouldn't be playing IT.
"Late game players dont have enough built characters"
Then build them, you should have more than enough pieces lying around and the time to grind them to level 70 at least.
A good 3rd of this video sounds like complaining that you cant spam a handful of meta units and have to spread your attention to more than 2 game ending dpses and their supports
I have every character at level 80 and i make them usable at minimum while still having high investment in several characters i enjoy
The Imaginarium Theater, especially Visionary Mode, is the single biggest contributor to my Genshin Center planner being so horribly bloated. I used to pull characters almost exclusively for the Spiral Abyss with the general philosophy of "get two strong on-field DPSs per element plus Physical and their supports"...but the Imaginarium Theater has inflated that to "additionally get lots of characters that function well either or both on- and off-field like Xilonen so you can effectively beat an act regardless of your potentially messy team comp". While I'm very happy that some characters like Sucrose, my waifu, excel at both the Abyss and the Theater, I don't like feeling forced to raise someone like C6 Lynette-I'm not a fan of more "extreme" introverts and I find Sucrose significantly easier to play. (Disclaimer: If you like Lynette for whatever non-immoral reason, I'm not stopping you.)
my geo characters are yun jin, ninnguang, gorou and noelle all unbuilt. i don't have a single geo 5 star because those are exclusive to limited time banners. i skipped sumeru, so all my dendro characters are collei, mc and tighnari. in the case geo and dendro would run together, i would be expected to build all of them above level 70 and then do the same for *fifteen* characters of the same element. I'VE PLAYED AND SPENT ON THIS GAME FOR THREE YEARS BTW.
Honestly when I first unlocked the Imaginarium I took one look at how it works and went, "Oh cool, anyway" and left and had not stepped foot in that location since.
Even with the Spiral Abyss having it's own problems at least it allows more of it's playerbase to even play it, not just veterans.
I also dont mind IT as a veteran player (OG kazuha haver on my Debut). I am looking forward to building Gaming and Sethos exactly for this reason.. Although it would be much more useful if IT just auto upgraded them to 90 with mid artifacts and investnent like Divergent universe. Building characters in genshin is just so much more troublesome than HSR.
As someone that loves this gamemode, I agree lowering the reward amount from abyss was a terrible idea and had they just given out more rewards (as would be expected from a gacha this old) everything would be fine. To me this gamemode is just a thank you for long term players, but it sucks that new players cach a stray in the process.
There are still people who praise it for making you think about teams. It's a mode where you get random characters who won't synergize well enough to be a team. It doesn't even ask you to build 90% of them, just show up. The only Endgame in Genshin isn't even Abyss, it's 36 Stars. Any less and you can walk around in trash and complete it.
I ignore imaginarium theater the way I ignore the TCG gamemode
They needed to encourage horizontal investment somehow. There are better ways to do this, sure, but an additional incentive to pull more characters was always in the cards. Honestly, I’m fine with it. It gives Hoyo a way to encourage pulling additional characters without relying on power creep, which is something that benefits spiral abyss enthusiasts too.
I agree though that the ‘must have x number of relevant characters built to play’ is not ideal. It would be nice for it to simply be more difficult-then you’d still be incentivized to build a wide roster to accommodate the elemental restrictions and random team assortments, but mid game players could at least get a taste of it
You said word for word my thoughts about it, i have played 2 and a half years genshin, i could barely clear it when there was hydro characters and found it incredably unreasonable when it made me pick cryo characters, that a normal player has probably less than 4 well built. And i wasnt about to build rosaria or mika.
Meh. Have to disagree. Been playing for just over a year. Yeah the 22 character requirement sucks, had to bring 7 characters to 70/70 for this cycle bc I'm not a fan of Geo (took a week of burning resin), but I didn't even have to get artifacts on them to get full marks. Endgame and its rewards could be better, sure, but newer players shouldn't really have to stress about the 1 additional pull they can get from Visionary Mode. They have other things to focus on like Archon Quests, exploration, getting to AR45, artifact farming. It's called endgame for a reason.
The theater is a pin for someone like me that has only been playing for a couple years and doesn't have a crap ton of maxed out characters. I just know finally have 5 level 90's
The issue with Imaginarium Theatre for me is that it’s the gamemode that’s supposedly supposed to have players use their brains and form teams that work well with a restricted selection of characters.
Yet it fails at its main premise, because I don’t think having characters like Faruzan or Gorou on an Arlecchino team is a good way to teach players how proper team building works, it’s mostly just random s**t go and hoping it works.
I do think it’s cool that you have restricted characters, it makes it more challenging, but the element restriction on top of the RNG and the fact that you need certain characters, alongside them needing to be a specific level to even use is pretty annoying sometimes.
I did this estimate a long time ago so i dont remember it exactly but at minimum it takes about 2 weeks to build a character from level 0 at World Level 8 and that if you get really lucky with artifacts and also doesnt factor in needing mora or level up books
The sad thing is, I would be the perfect person to play the Imaginarium Theater. I'm okay with the random elements, and I don't really care that much about strict meta. But I've been playing less than a year, and don't have enough built characters. Plus, I don't want to build every character I do have, and if I do, I won't use them outside of Theater. I already don't do Spiral Abyss because I don't like it, and now I feel locked out of something else.
I agree with the take. I ignore IT because it's not for me, and I'm not going to grind just so I have the characters. You're either in one of two camps:
1) If you've actually built your account to like 42-49 (6-7 characters of each element) with weapons, talents, artefacts, etc., then you're probably fine for the IT.
2) If you're not in category #1, then this mode isn't for you. Either because you cannot even show up, or because you don't have enough characters properly built, so you cannot do it.
After 2.5 years of Genshin, I sit somewhere in the middle of #1 and #2. I can show up and play IT I have enough characters, but I don't enough of them properly built, and it's not worth it to build that many.
*I would add that the stamina system in IT is BS. It adds nothing but pain. Want to see Stamina done right? Look at the Tower of Adversity in WuWa: it's meant so you have the flexibility of building teams and swapping characters between floors, BUT... it won't let you just run the same 3 characters on every floor. It's a nice balance because you're not locked in like the Abyss.
I play theatre on hard and pass decently easily even with my hand eye coordination problems, I love when people (even whales) tell me how useful my characters are it fills me with absolute pride (especially my Venti) but right now is probably the hardest theatre for me because I do not own a single 5 star Geo or electro character on my main account and I own 1 Pyro 5 star in the form of a C2 Dehya, one could say "oh why don't you pull on Xilonen or Chiori, why don't you use those 52800 primos to get any other characters from the roaster" well my friends I'm an autistic with a hyper focus on Venti and I missed his early rerun (I got him day one) and I am finally saving to C6 him! I cannot pull on any character banner until he is C6 as I want to start with the best chance of getting him C6 as I will be kicking off my Venti pulls with 75 pity and a guarantee for C2 Venti. Nothing and I mean nothing will away me (this is why I have 2 extra accounts they help me satiate, the gambling addiction) I will not stop until I have the best Venti in the world i am that determined. XD
all this stuff aside,i think what bothers me the most about theater is how unfun it is. it's not the restrictions in themselves, it's the frustration of finally starting to clear the spiral abyss consistently and hoyo suddenly decides "well fuck you, have something harder and less enjoyable,even though you've spent years building teams for abyss", and i technically have to do it. why would i want to miss the primos? i can at least do hard mode. so now i'm obligated to sit through "optional endgame content" (that may i add i'd never touch otherwise due to my distaste for it) every month because as a completionist who has almost all exploration and achievements and all story quests/hangouts done i NEED a consistent source of primos, and it's with a mode people don't even like. i had hopes it would be more about sustainability so now i'd get to build more healers and shielders,but no, for me it feels something like a dps check except oops,now you can't even have a proper team especially due to element restrictions. sincerely, what the fuck hoyoverse?
Also, hehe funni hydro has the worst 4* to 5* ratio with THREE 4* and TEN 5*, but fret not, you can use hydro MC and reduce your life expectancy by 15%. Gear your Barb and Candeez, cuz if *you* haven't been around for a few rodeos, *they* will be.
(the other elements' ratios: pyro 8/7, dendro 4/6, electro 8/5, anemo 5/6, geo 5/6 and cryo 7/7 if ignoring Aloy)
I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Imaginarium. I like the idea of encouraging (forcing) players to think outside the box and use team comps they usually wouldn't. - Hell, they made me go for Overloaded Sethos and that was actually a really fun combo. But at the same time, I hate being forced to play characters I simply don't like and don't want to play. (... I don't know how Ayaka works, I don't want to know how Ayaka works because I'll never pull for her anyways)
However, I do think there's an issue of just, making Abyss reset every 4 weeks now, and effectively cutting rewards in half for a lot of players for quite some time until they have enough characters to at least play on the second hardest difficulty.
I don't think the whole "you need xyz amount of characters" is THAT bad, it sucks but I don't think is as bad as people make it out to be, it kind of depends on the element line up and that includes Cryo.
If it's paired with elements that have lots of characters like Electro and Pyro, there's not really an issue (Pretty sure there was a Cryo IT last rotation, and my only Cryo 5* is Qiqi, but is was perfectly fine with friend characters + the characters Hoyo gives you), but it'd be problematic if the other elements are something like Hydro, which has a total of 3 4*, one of which being Candace who is borderline useless before C6, and something like Geo.
And it's not like, all the used characters NEED to be built, think Hoyo made sure that the difficulty is low enough to allow for what is basically dead weight as well as not needing all stars for the full rewards.
There's a part of me that thinks this could soo easily be fixed by just bringing the old Abyss Reset Schedule back, and if Hoyo feels really stingy, like they usually do, maybe even reduce the rewards to 600 per full clear again. Just so that those who don't have enough characters for IT, aren't punished for that. That way you'd have the regular Abyss rewards and have a few extra primos if you clear IT on easy or medium, while also having something to work towards and veteran players have a little extra reward for... well being veteran players.
Meanwhile me, who leveled EVERY character on my account to 70+ for the 3 free "level up" wishes per chatacter: "idk I kinda like this mode."
IT is strange as an end-game “challenge cycle mode.”
There’s a reason why the other two hoyo games built a rogue-like game-mode around fun character power + super funny scaling + identifiable build paths and combinations, but have never been relevant to cyclical end-game that gives rewards, but as permanent features with one time rewards and uses the fun of the mode as the reason to play more.
IT attempts to make use of the 3 elements each cycle to create specific buffs for reactions, but the way the team handles demands that you dump very specific strategies quickly. Why am I upgrading to Lv 5 overload? So that I might use the overload side of my roster later or attempted to hold on to? What reasonable benefit am I getting now? It’s mostly why the end-game is so easy, is because they literally can’t expect the player to have any specific strategy with the buffs at any given time or even a working team, so just make everything middling.
Your list of units even assuming that all 22 participating units are reasonably built don’t particularly have any identity in how they play every stage. Even though the game is limited to a handful of elements you still can’t actually play EC.comp or Burning for like half the floors and even then the game’s enemies have even less ability to interact with the player with the player getting super buffs.
It felt like instead of making a proper game mode they went ahead and cobbled together parts of a roguelike at a time with buffs that nobody would read and then shoot the player’s agency in the kneecaps so that they could pretend “planning each floor” was a difficult task.
Does anyone even remember what half the buffs do in any one cycle? I can remember everything the elation path has in star rail on the back of my hand. What’s the point of an unrecognizably bland and frankly not even needed to win progression system in this so called rogue-like mode. I want to see them make an actual crystalize archetype that does fun stuff in a mode that actually scales and doesn’t take my legs away, because a game should elicit any amount of decent emotion.
IT is simply a dispenser of primos based on yes or no question.
I know I should wait for your "meta is fun" video but I got to say as a none meta player I know that people have fun with meta, people need to understand that because why don't they see that there are so many websites, and content creators on the subject. It's like when some people ask, "how can you like turn base games or strategy games in general?", some people can say they like to think of other was to win the game. I play Genshin completely different from others, like I didn't grind for that many artifacts and just leveled up all the characters I have, some may say that it's a stupid way to play but that's my way of having fun
I lile it. It forces you to build some mid tier characters and use them. Plus, of the 22 characters they give you 5 trial characters, so there's that also.
Stop making good videos! Damn. Only been watching your vids this past week for me but every vid has been a great topic so far. As a returning player from roughly release, It's great to hear your perspective. Thank you. (Obviously please don't stop making videos)
Oh and side note - adventure rank 54 upon returning... I can't even start this game mode on the second difficulty.
I was so confused, as someone who hasn't done many rotations. This entire time I just assumed that you could add friends and sub in any of their characters; making it less "You need to build dozens of characters" and more "You need friends who build a couple of characters". That would make sense. But I never added people on Genshin so....
Turns out it's only one, huh? Wow. This could've all been sidestepped by turning it into a collaborative roguelike and drive engagement by ensuring people keep their teams updated
The worst part is that hydro has only 3 4-stars and the hmc Candace without c6 is bad and hmc is always bad so most players would have 2 usable 4-star hydro units (the lucky ones get 3) and probably only up for to 3 5-star hydro units most likely being Yelan, Furina and Neuvillette.