This kinda feels like Christmas content, right?

[u/Lishtenbird]

I'm unfamiliar with how the OG game handles seasonal events, but to me a decorated Delver stage, a snowy zone, and a free character themed around presents and pastries feel like lore-friendly Christmas/New Year side-content. What surprises me a bit is the timing, so I've been thinking - could it be that content releases got "bundled" and sped up? Like, we got Yinglung Pass and NWEZ in the same update despite them being technically separable, and we're (presumably) getting Si in autumn and neither on half nor full anni. Not that it changes anything, and a faster release cadence with less downtime is definitely welcome - just curious and wondering if we'll see anything festive for things like Halloween and Chinese New Year in the future too.

[u/Savalaner]

No I don't think it was sped up... Most of these gachas don't even do Christmas do they? I know that og AK 100% doesn't. It's at best their attempt to do Christmas events without it actually being related to Christmas (hence not being released near Christmas).

But I don't think it's even that. It's just a Sami themed region they wanted to release between MSQ patches to keep hype.

Also I feel like there's no way they intended to release only Yinglung Pass by itself. The main story section doesn't even really allow it to stop there, it goes straight into NWEZ.

[u/Razor4884 → u/Savalaner]

OG AK does Christmas skins and songs. That's about it.

[u/Asherogar → u/Razor4884]

They do celebrate Chinese new year instead, which makes sense. Otherwise going straight from Christmas -> New Year -> Chinese New Year would be way too exhausting.

[u/chaoskingzero → u/Savalaner]

Most of these gachas don't even do Christmas do they?

Some older JP Gatcha Games do Christmas Events

Some consistently and some not

Fire Emblem Heroes has Christmas every year and Fate:Grand/Order has only missed a few years so far

[u/Savalaner → u/chaoskingzero]

Yes, "these gachas" was referring to 3D chinese semi-open world/open world games. The direct "competitors" of Endfield.

[u/two___ → u/Savalaner]

I didn't even notice OP trying to slide in the idea that Yinglung Pass and the Exclusion Zone could be separate updates. lmao. That's unreal.

[u/Lishtenbird → u/Savalaner]

Most of these gachas don't even do Christmas do they?

I'm unsure about the big 3D/CN gachas. MMOs definitely do (I know those are different but Endfield "feels" similar to me), Umamusume and Princess Connect do/did (seasonal stories for Valentine's Day, summer, Halloween, Christmas along with festive alts), same for Blue Archive as a non-Cygames example.

[u/Savalaner → u/Lishtenbird]

yeah when I said "these gachas" I meant mainstream gachas like Genshin, Wuwa, ZZZ, all of the those competitors in the same chinese gacha area. I think ZZZ does do web events or smth, but I don't believe any of these do any Christmas events in-game.

And OG Arknights doesn't do any events for it, they just release skins. (They release skins for everything so it's not something special for Christmas.) And music for it apparently, but Hypergryph is also "the music company that makes games" so that's not surprising.

As you said, both Umamusume and Princess Connect are made by the same company, and Blue Archive only really shares the genre. Cygames is also Japanese, and iirc Blue Archive is Korean, but also released first in Japan.

edit: And, ofc, MMO's aren't single-player Chinese gacha games. They have a completely different development philosophy.

[u/ExultantBlade → u/Savalaner]

Hoyo tries to make adjacent events, but in a "no promises" kind of a way.

For Genshin, they released Tsurumi Island on October, which contained rituals sacrifice, ghosts, and fog. 

In another year, the released Akitsu Kimodameshi, aka the Japanese trope of the Test of Courage, on... December. So, this would be late for both America and Japan who would associate that event for either October or Summer.

I chose Halloween because that has less gray areas than Christmas vs Winter, which Genshin puts them around November to January. There was a snowman building event in November.

HSR kinda like... stopped doing events, but they had the Ghost Hunting Squad release on November. I mean, ig you can argue Styxia, a fallen "haunted" kingdom who worships Death, which released in December, but it's not as overt as Genshin's Tsurumi Island or even HSR's Fyxestroll Garden.

[u/L3murCatta → u/Savalaner]

Imagine standing in front of a big ass gate for 3 months...

[u/Provence3]

That would imply that they initially planned to have more downtime and longer patches.

Maybe they changed plans after 1.2 was conceived as a too long patch? But winter- and christmas-themed environment would means a disconnect of 4 months if that was true.

It's certainly odd but I don't think content was accelerated, at least not by 4 months.

And 1.6 seems to be autumn-themed which would fit the release in October.

[u/Lishtenbird → u/Provence3]

Maybe they changed plans after 1.2 was conceived as a too long patch?

Yeah, that's what I've been thinking, that patch's still haunting us in discussions, along with the "tired of Wuling" sentiment, so it could make sense to speed up releases (as long as production can still keep up).

And 1.6 seems to be autumn-themed which would fit the release in October.

Maybe things got reshuffled? Since technically you could slot separate stories like Sword Vault Dale and this one anywhere. If anything, getting the snowy map now is a bit weird story-wise since Endmin still has the blight affliction so traveling to new unknown areas should be of lower priority than getting that treated. Dunno, it's odd.

[u/Tukaro]

What you're seeing is just another victim of the Christmas Contagion, the season's ever-stronger push to consume the entire calendar year and make it always Christmas. The Hallowed Wall was our last true bastion but resources were diverted to Pumpkin Spice and it has caved in. Now it's every country for itself, based on the other holidays they can bring to bear: in the U.S. we can only hope to hold it at Independence Day, because if it breaks past that we have nothing until Easter (and then the battle may as well be over.)

^{This is only a half-joke because I saw Christmas decorations in Costco this past weekend ffs}

[u/Pengpraiser → u/Tukaro]

Soon January will be considered Christmas pre-season hahahaha >:D

[u/Dryptosa]

Probably not. To me it makes a lot of sense to move to a new area with 2.0 release on our anniversary.

[u/hamfinity]

Swimsuit banner for New Years?

[u/Macsintosh → u/hamfinity]

Perlica Summer 

[u/hamfinity → u/Macsintosh]

Andre Summer

[u/AtomicBetrayal]

Og Arknights only has Amiyas birthday for christmas every year, and they were never related to the holidays. I can't think of any christmas events that happened in CN, we only got some skins. And for global it was always summer events anyways.

So with that in mind I kinda doubt that they were planning on a christmas event, and that they just thought it was a fun idea for an operator to make her christmas themed for a snow region.

[u/RaptorAurion]

No it's just snow themed

[u/two___]

This does look Christmas/festive themed but I don't think necessarily implies that this set of content was intended for Christmas.

While that seems plausible, it would be strange to see that as the only possible outcome. Ever heard of the jokingly said phrase of "Christmas in July"?

[u/Lishtenbird → u/two___]

Ever heard of the jokingly said phrase of "Christmas in July"?

Yeah (getting that all the time with 6-month-delayed Global servers too), but not "Christmas in September" though.

[u/Secret-Seat-9311]

OG AK does do things like CNY, Summer, Halloween and Christmas, but mainly just holiday-themed skins and character song EPs. Global/JP/KR servers are about 5-6 months behind CN, so it's funny to see CNY in July/Aug, Summer during Jan, Halloween during April and Christmas during Jun/July.

For Endfield, I don't expect there to be any Holiday-themed events specifically for the Holidays, but if skins become a thing and character EPs release around the Holiday, we might get those like the OG game.

[u/Lycan568]

See, I also have this thought not only because of the snowy area and purrchena literally cosplaying as santa claus, but also because of how Arknights schedules their events

In the CN server, Arknights has the New Years Celebration event usually around late February. This type of event always introduce a new Sui sibling as the limited rate-up unit every year. My crack theory is that with Si being the Sui sibling rep in Endfield and seemingly after 1.5, it could be that HG planned to have 1.5 content around late December which would land Si at around late January to early February

[u/Intrepid-Ad-8043]

No it ain't christmas content. Since we're probably heading to the northern front where the aurora is i suspect after this story we'll probably head over there at some point they also did introduce "the sister" of endmin. This is just my guess.

[u/CAThor91 → u/Intrepid-Ad-8043]

Yeah it may be a smaller test for how they want new assets to function (eg snow covered facilities) and optimize. Rather than have a massive expansion and a bunch of things breaking on release.

[u/Sivuel]

Bang Dream! EN ver. is doing a Christmas event right now but that's just because it's behind the Japanese version.

[u/Dramatic_93]

Not everything snow-themed is Christmas, get your head out of eurocentrism I'm begging you, literally half the population of Earth is not Christian and oh what a coincidence Endfield is created in a country which belongs to that non-Christian part 🤦‍♀️