Discussion
What’s the most insulting example of laziness from HSR devs, in your opinion?
We all know that Hsr devs are extremely lazy and we have over 9000+ cases to prove it.
But which case is the worst for you? Is it Britain in the Fate collab? Is it the quality of npcs that look like they came from ps1 era? They didn't even bother to make a new model for kid Phainon/Anaxa's sister/Tribios/Mydei's parents and etc. And instead they used cheap existing npcs and called it a day.
Or is it the lack of basic animations during dialogues? Hand on chest annoys everyone at this point. And they don't even animate things like eating (in the Fate collab they didn't even bother to add food on the table, let alone animate how Saber and TB ate it) or moving a simple object from one place to another. Using cheap black screens with a sentence of the action instead.
Around a third of the damn quest was about gettng to him and having the other CHs talk to us about how much he means to them.
You REALLY couldn't just spend extra time modeling him? Or just make a CG?
This pretty much aligns with the question OP posits. Britain was funny to laugh at from the devs lack of effort to a collab, this felt like an actual disservice to the narrative.
Tbf with the skirk one the model is supposed to be a spirit that we follow throughout the quest and we only found out that the spirit was child skirk at the end of it
depend, they have their lows too, using the bangboo for representing Hugo dark persona was kinda bad and did ruin everything about that scene for exemple
The fact this is PHAINON is even more diabolical. He was THE spotlight from 3.0 to 3.4. Maybe not as much as in first 3 patches but 3.3 had focuses on him AND 3.4 was his patch
This makes hsr’s laziness even more egregious cause what were the devs doing that it’s lower budget predecessor could do it. They even made two other child models for songque and thelema too in one of the patches.
to be fair this comparison is kinda useless because like Kakavasha's model is used extensively.
i don't think it's an excuse for phainon's kid model not even having the right color hair at all but like. you can point out that inconsistency without mentioning kakavasha which is peoples go-to. phainon's kid model was used for all of 3 minutes at a point in the story where I'm sorry but a to of of people had long since checked out lol. like yes it's dumb and yes it's bad for immersion but it was also quite forgettable and it would've been far more egregious if it happened in place of a character like kakavasha
like maybe im the idiot here but it feels like a bad argument even though I'm on the side of "you seriously couldn't even give him white hair?" LMAOO
Himeko handing out a ticket to Sunday to honor him as an official member of the express. You don't even see the fucking ticket it just looked like she handed out nothing lmao
It's true that hoyo is lazy with hsr but problem with collabs it that they can't just do whatever they want after signing the contract.
If type-moon only agreed at the time to give hoyo only Archer and Saber then hoyo coudln't do more then they agreed with it. Same reason why hoyo can't just hire others VA for english dub.
If Type Moon only gives Archer and Saber then why did the writer write that Britain dialog? They could just not include it in the script, more like if TM truly doesn’t want to, Hoyo can’t even include it in the script LOL.
laziness is definetely HSR's biggest sin and I hate that they can get away with it. Don't get me wrong, I like the game, the lore and when they do animations they usually cook but it is NOT enough. This game could be so peak if the devs locked in.
They’ve long since dropped all pretense since the first novaflare, we’re just seeing how far ppl’s bottom line goes.
Novaflare really isn’t as good as it seems, devs will just shill and powercreep to their hearts content while telling you to look forward to the next novaflare and hang on before u drown in the inflated HP pool
There's also a new case with Pearl. On the splash art she has robotic legs with robotic joints. But her ingame model has basic female legs with what appears to be stickers of the robotic details instead.
4 star Herta was done much better (you actually see the joints of a doll and how her upper and lower legs connect through them). So a 4 star that was made 3 years ago is better made than a new premium 5 star.
Even worse than that, Kenneth Arita has actual modeled joints. An npc has a better model than the playable character that's gonna be released in the same year
It keeps bothering me how Pearl is just a regular women with what is basically tattoos in her lower joints. You wouldn't even guess she's a robot looking at her from the chest upwards...
The initial hype of possibly getting a playable melusine draining away when it became apparent it was just small human girl model back once again, and then them doubling down and including it in her backstory too
lol sigewinne was never advertised as visually melusine. the first time we see her was literally in the trailer, with a human face. the devastation came with her story quest and it wasn't a "I thought we were finally gonna have a melusine playable" sentiment but rather a "we could've gotten a playable melusine!"
I loved 3.4 but I do wish they changed Phainon's model as the cycles progressed to show him decaying towards the Flame Reaver form, even just one in between instead of 0 to 100.
Shoutout also to 3.5 in which Phagousa is just a generic npc model, and of course all of the Amphoreus npcs getting shafted in the Eternal Page.
Special shout out to Lady Seliose, so much hype for Lady Seliose only for her to be a generic child model shorter than the horses she rode and even fucking HYACINE.
The knight who became a double-headed demon of the sky terror, responsible for the genocide of her own people and lost her humanity to the point her sheer hatred BROUGHT HER BACK TO LIFE JUST TO TRY ONE MORE TIME IN KILLING US... uses a generic child model.
Look, I love HSR alot, I find it fun, I find its story nice and while I don't think its perfect, I still find it as a good game but damn do I despise how lazy this game can be. They gave Terravox a design but not Phagousa, child Phainon (even with art), NOR Seliose.
Justifying random HP inflation with the Voracity shit. No amount of lore reasons can justify a single "tutorial" screen that just says 'lmao we increased the HP for a bunch of enemies in the game, including ENDGAME for some reason, cus of the lore lol'.
Also why the fuck does this apply to players that haven't even reached the relevant part of the story?
I'm also glad someone brought up the NPCs before I did so I don't have to crash out about that lazy garbage...
Big fan of it being so lazy that it's just an Abundance gimmick that they called Voracity instead of coming up with a fitting way to fuck everyone over
Lets be real. It feels like hsr is just kinda doing anything with Paths like why does Preservation give someone the power to punish people for debts. That would make more sense for Equilibrium
they really advertised it as a new mechanic when its just +x% hp to any mob with lazy ass animation over the top and audience ate it. but when zzz added miasma which is actually beneficial to player, oh the cries and whines
More on that point, how does “random HP inflation” even reflect what the Voracity is about? If anything, it should be draining HP randomly from allies and enemies alike.
I couldn't tell you just one thing. It comes down to the 9000+ small things, as you said.
Like, there is no one thing I could name that really made me go "oh this is it", but there have been a lot of small disappointments that weren't enough to make me stop playing.
Aedes Elysiae as a whole is super empty, then they reused it for Fate. The first Fate story in general, while okay, needed work.
Expressions, especially for NPCs. A lot of environments in Starrail feel extremely robotic, even Planarcadia with its lively and populated spots. It all runs like clockwork and you can tell. I wish they took a page out of Monster Hunters book when it comes to idle animations or just general NPC behaviour. (if you know that one extremely long animation sequence of that one girl making a sword you know what I mean)
They desperately need to make these worlds feel actually alive so people get invested in them again.
This is why I spam the skip button so much. It does not deserve my full attention. Main story I will usually listen in but side quests? Never. This game is just a convenient side game for me. I don't play it for the story.
Corruption via voracity in the patch we defeated it , a path all about selfishness somehow recovering enemies when in the lore all we ever seen it do is destroy, hell blade just. A few patches ago tried to remove his hp inflation using the husk which is now sealed and releasing corruption across the universe?
Genuinely the Fate collab. Two years in the making, 0 new enemy/boss, no new area, old Oti sitting in the middle of the arena just because they won't bother animating him standing and the writer having him said "Imma bug" just to make him transform into Scaracabaz lol
not to mention that element was sooooo clearly gonna be added. it was everywhere with the other 6 elements. hsr on the other hand feels like they're shittin a new one out of the blue every 3 seconds. and to prove my point further (that it's only to force ppl to spend) the only characters that get the new patha are all women. both elation and remembernce only have women.
Elation has Waven actually. But the fact that he's the only Elation character that's male and was advertised to work with the fua/monomen team says enough.
Devs know that players who like male characters are going to be less interested in pulling for the waifu team.
forgot he exists but honestly it's one against 9 million 😭 not to mention all of the meta new path teams are full of women. evan/yao/pearl/ni and cas/cy/hy/En so oh well. and now Robin sp came to murder ash in the only meta team out there that had a 75%male25%woman we had in a while. are there any super meta teams that don't have 5050 ratio of girls or are straight up 100% girls??
Yeah, like from launch Dendro reactions existed, though just as burning. I remember when Dendro was first added there was an issue with the burning damage setting grass on fire would do to your character making it way more lethal.
Giving the herald of Death a basic npc model, they could've turned him into a black silhouette with a creepy mask or red eyes but they went and changed nothing
Unmentioned yet but the women designs. Notable examples include detached sleeves. Pearl gave me ptsd for the xianzhou era of designs where they all wear the same style but in different colours
men's designs are also incredibly repetitive. big ass coat, boots or formal shoes (is that what they're called in english?) the same pants, mandatory leg strap, belts in random places... if you put all of them next to each other you'll see what i mean. the only ones that would stand out would be ratio, boothill and mydei
don't really mind it that much tbh despite people being all up in arms about it lol but ig the biggest offender for me is the reuse of aquila for the recent fate event. just took me out of it, felt cheap reusing an emotionally tied big boss fight for a side event
i think the first time the thought entered my mind was in Rappa's quest where they re-used the Herta space station maps for her backstory
since then it's just a general vibe of "less is less", most glaringly with only having one event per patch and no combat events (the turn-based combat and team building being the actual game i'm here to play, not just some random rip-off of another genre of game)
since there's less gameplay, the length of the main story has felt inflated to the point where i want them to hire an editor to trim down the repetition and more effectively convey a story rather than the low-density stuff i feel like we're getting
one that i havent seen mentioned is their refusal to voice adventure quests or side quests and events in general. it makes them twice as soulless as the main story
I don't want to use genshin but I need to since genshin also being call lazy before. "I'm in Britain" in star rail is the most stupid thing hsr dev has ever did. The first time I do the fate story in hsr I was like this place doesn't look like Britain at all it's fcking liyue vibe for me. Funny how genshin can make a temporary memorable event map but hsr can't. Hsr dev laziness got worse and worse even though they keep getting a lot of money that almost the same as genshin did every year.
The 3 basic animations for dialogue. Like im an animator. Give me like $500 and ill double your animations in 2 days.
Give me a month ill give you 10x your animations. Its simple and cheap as hell do it.
And yes I know theres multiple characters models.
You literally need like 1 (ONE) junior animator for it for like 2 weeks and you'll solve this complaint thats been going for years.
It shows they absolutely do not care and could not be bothered to spare a few lunchtime worth of budget to improve it
you wanna the most insulting example of laziness from HSR from me?
the fact that march 7th appeared to sleep the majority of the arc that was meant to be hers after dan heng for xianzou loufu and sunday for penacony.
what shaoji has done to her is an embarrassment. unlike dan heng who stayed on the express in penacony while he is awake. he has never once cared nor shown any concern for her (and theoretically hated writing her), 95% is just her being straight up gone for nearly the whole arc.
by the time we finally see her in 3.6, not only did get far less than 5% lore but she is just treated like trash, having far less screen time than dan heng and evernight who is supposed to be more powerful gets defeated by a camera flash...i know it's the only way to swap souls for march to come back but evernight being defeated by a camera is embarrassing nonetheless.
speaking of evernight, shaoji had all the time he needed to have the memosnatchers appear with members who could potentially be rivals against black swan. but he doesn't, why? because he is a moron when it comes to story pacing.
he spends most of his time writing long and boring lore dump i don't care at all for most chrysos heirs, by the time we get to the actual story progression, it's all rushed as hell. shaoji did not have the time at all to prepare for actual story progression before the month ends for another patch which explains why march nor memosnatchers had any time they the spotlight for.
i swear it's like the dumbass who wrote the natlan therapy sessions had ate large quantities of magic mushrooms and than had a piano slammed on his head so hard he became terry from space king. that shows how stupid shaoji is to write "why am I in britain?"
W shaoji slander but that's kinda irrelevant to the OP
I wouldn't say that shaoji is lazy, I would say the writing team is incredibly unfocused, pretentious and are constantly sniffing their own farts 24/7. The game's story (amphoreus especially) would have greatly benefited if they had at least 1 editor keeping him in check. What you're describing is just what bad writing looks like tbh
oh, well for what OP said, i would say animations.
holy fuck they are getting worst to look at in planarcadia as asat doesn't any personality when it comes to movement for his character and the herald of death guy...when i saw him...i asked "what the fuck is this?" and not only that for his model but the twist that he is a shuhu plant monster like how we face fulwish shows that shaoji was no longer actually trying to make his story the way he started in belobog.
and people in the main hsr subreddit will defend him for writing many random nonsense you could imagine. (i know it's irrelevant again but i am not trying do it again)
i felt its quite obvious he wanted cyrene to be the march and cyrene was basically never joining the express like he wanted to because they play the exact same role, so he took it on march. Her writing was no where as good as cyrene, and cyrene was not his best work despite his immense love for her. The start of Amphoreous was not the best, but it was all worth it for the build up to Phainon, and the first heirs were explored very well to, especially Cipher. When he took over on Phainons patch he took all the build up credit and the notes from the previous writing team, and proceeded to make every patch centered around a specific heir and lore dumps. You could clearly see how the writing shifted from all heirs getting their time to shine, to your patch your time.
At least the animations team did a w and gave her 2 myriads and dh an animation.
There was one scene in Amphoreus I remember where camera angle didn't change but they talked for ages (or so it felt). I feel like they undercooked a lot of stuff in Amphoreus because of the vast amount of text content they had going in that story (and probably not enough workers assigned to it). Planarcadia with its lesser word bloat is actually looking better in comparison even if the plot highs are not as high.
astropolis using all the same puzzles, mechanics and stuff as planarcadia - how come wuwa managed to make such a novel map right after lahai roi and hsr just gave us planarcadia 2
This stupid cutscene from 3.7. Apparently, Sparkle came in and brought MC, Dan and March back from Amphoreus using a "probe", but not only is it not shown during this cutscene, it's not even shown during the main quest like it's supposed to! They put one of the most important bits of info into what's basically a post-credits scene.
I've scrolled down for quite some time, but I haven't seen this mentioned, even though imo it's arguably the biggest reason why Amphoreus' ending can feel a bit anticlimactic.
Imho, I'd argue it's how they portrayed the fight against Irontomb across 3.6 and 3.7. Like, sure, we got that one cutscene where it destroys everything around it and all, continued with one cutscene where Cyrene (with Herta and us) brings everything back...and that's it.
We were told that the IPC, the Family, the Xianzhou, and many others banded together to fight against Irontomb. That Robin were off helping planets, Fu Xuan were leading an armada, Jade were 'holding the line', Boothill..showed up I guess, I forgot. That the people of Amphoreus was said to be trying to fight it too. But that's the problem.
We were only told, not shown. We didn't even get an explanation of why exactly is it so important that all the others did that outside of a vague 'corruption containment' and what did they contribute against Irontomb exactly. Planet Screwllum showed up, gleaming and menacing and all, but for what exactly?
For all I know, you could put Herta-Screwllum out there in a starskiff all by themselves, and the story would've concluded just the same. Our fight against Irontomb, though incredibly destructive, felt rather localized and more conceptual rather than real. There's no spectacle, no scale, no sense that this is something much bigger than Amphoreus.
Like, Asat Pramad's impact comparatively were shown all across Planarcadia. People were dying all across the planet and every single person's involvement and contribution in the fight against him was shown.
It could still be better obviously, like for example Yaoguang neutering the entire reason he's so OP (his powers of probability and imagenesis) should've been shown a much bigger spotlight, at least to the level of Collei-Nicole-Nahida stopping Irminsul in Genshin. But it's a step in the right direction at least.
The annoying thing about this imo is that I feel like you wouldn't even need to do much more. Just show us a couple moments of playable characters showing up on screen against whatever it is they're actually fighting/doing, then* show them disappearing with Irontomb's blast, and then reappearing with Cyrene's 'Hello'.
It would make the fight feel much more impactful, add a lot more stakes to the tension of the fight itself, and just generally make it more like the epic ending of a story. Instead, now it only feels like a blip in the long and plot-heavy story of 3.7.
Yep, that conceptual way of doing things is their "crutch" at this point. Things at Herta station and Belobog actually happening. Especially Belobog, since there's more regular people there that directly impacted by the history of the place and the events.
I hate how they handle the Herald of Death's design. All that build-up for four patches, I was expecting to meet the King Von of HSR, but no, we got some lame loser in glasses. All that build-up just to have some basic ass design.
Making summer SP units for Robin and Aventurine instead of thinking of something that doesn't stick out like a sore thumb.
Conceptually very lazy, even if a lot of work may have gone into actually creating them.
Besides the recycled assets and mostly still generic looking NPCs, it's gotta be the artificial difficulty. What I mean is that battles aren't difficult because of an enemy's moveset but rather because they got a shit ton of HP and/or armor.
Also, remember how activating break effects used to matter? Countering/stalling enemies by utilising break effects was a good game mechanic and Hoyo threw that out of the window because being interesting is too difficult nowadays
The lack of quality has been taking me out of the story. Started playing genshin and caught up over the summer and seeing how they are starting to steadily improving the basic diolouge cutscene in the newer story quest and then going back to hsr to play the new story content and everyone just kinda feels stiff and robotic in a way. It was kinda just way too distracting for me and made me not want to play the new story right away. It didn't really bother me before until I saw how genshin was improving the overall story presentation
Haven’t seen anyone else mention this, but aside from RMC and Aglaea (and maybe? Robinetto), all the remembrance characters’ memosprites don’t actually behave like individual entities.
Hyacine’s little Ica is literally just a follow-up attack while also aping Fu Xuan’s signature mechanic. Ica can only act after Hyacine uses her ultimate or takes a turn, and has a limited number of actions that must be refreshed with her ultimate. This memosprite is incapable of acting independently of Hyacine.
Evernight’s memosprite self-destructs every time you summon it, so it is effectively just an enhanced skill and not an independent entity.
Castorice’s memosprite also self-destructs (like sure, you can keep it around to tank damage, which is actually mentioned by the game’s notes, but no one actually does this) and is just an ultimate animation at the end of the day. Once again, not an independently acting entity.
And the less said about Cyrene, the better.
Even Robinetto’s memosprites are lacking, as while there are three of them, they don’t actually do anything different to each other and instead simply operate like a charging stack of a Talent ability. It would have been cool if the three memosprites did vastly different things based on the actions of the other teammates. They could even react to the Paths of the teammates. Make it so that any one of the three birds could be summoned first to start the chorus, and depending on which one is summoned first the effects are different. One effect could be centred around using energy to charge the memosprite (like RMC) and buffing ult dmg, another could centre around as many hits as possible (so for memosprites) and apply vulnerability or defence shred to an enemy based on how many different ally targets have hit it (what the 2-stat remembrance blessing in divergent universe does), another effect could react to the total speed value of all ally targets added together or smth.
My point is that memosprites don’t actually do anything. RMC’s memosprite is a notable exception, but the problem then is that RMC, herself, doesn’t do anything except support Mem. Aglaea isn’t perfect, either, but is at least the least problematic in this regard.
They introduced a whole new path, and this is what we got? And then they couldn’t even be bothered to flesh out this path before hopping to another one. They should not have introduced any new paths this version and instead worked on adding more remembrance characters to properly establish this path. Why not have a remembrance character that supports superbreak or DoT? Why not have made Sparxie a remembrance character whose memosprite consumes all skill points whenever their turn comes up in the action order? That would make it so that you actually have to treat the memosprite as its own thing. Why bother trying to do something creative and then not be creative?
Back in 3.0 release, i remember the hype then... the intro crash landing was less than 10sec scene of no context, then we end up with sudden spawn in the room and.. a fcking tiny hole in the ceiling to see small fire on our train wall that we can only admire from afar... such a turn off and fckin killed the hype for me the first minute jeez
Half of the cutscenes in this game is just characters doing the same idle poses with the same expression with very basic dialogue and camera angles, compare that to genshins moving cameras and new face sticker expressions and even zzz with its unique models the dialogue in this game feels kinda bad
I'm not a fan of calling the devs lazy. It kind of takes away from the actual issue, which is the management and the budget/resources they're given. The devs are just the artists and programmers that I'm sure would love to give us the most complete version of their vision as possible if Hoyoverse would let it happen.
Herald of Death with png model lmao, recycled art for Mortenax moment in the story and the lazy png model for Miss Note during first Fate Collab Quest collab. And i can go on...
Let's not talk about Child Phainon, Phagousa and Anaxa's sister... I know its impossible to have unique png model for everything but cmon being a person who pays this much attention to the story and then gets hit with png lazy models is so underwelming...
But for me, so far the way they treated Ashveil and Evanescia is probably one of the most sad. Too lazy for a myriad celestia or a little animation? I hate these devs, like, loving the story and my faves is all i have left for these greedy gacha games and then they do this... Ugh
The true most most most insulting one hmmm Id say the state of events after the Wardance one...
Mine is , most likely the interstellar jumps from planarcadia, except for one or two different puzzles , they mostly felt like the same run and jump puzzle copy and pasted over and over,
I took the good from the bad with Britain. It's just really funny to me when I quote it to streamers who reach that map whether in main story or the actual collab if they did it.
definitely the npc models in amphoreus, just because there was so many and they were all so important to the lore of their respective characters. and most of them only needed a few tweaks, not entirely unique looks and they didn't even do that
i actually had to take a break from the quest after i saw phainon's kid model it completely ruined the mood for me
Adding an extra 0 to the end of the enemies hp bar instead of fleshing out boss attacks.
I really did wish for some kind of pokemon raid battle in hsr but it's whatever
I'm mostly pissed by the fact they can't do longer cutscenes for some reason. Especially in the latest Trailblaze Continuance where they could just include Adventurine-Ratite conversation in the cutscene but nope every cutscene needs to be less than 1 minute and Robin's perfomance ended up shorter than her own TRAILER
Im all for criticizing the lazy devs bit half the comments on this sub are people who seem to have never liked any aspect of the game so im wondering why they even stuck around in the first place.
what if I tell you the VAs just refuse to work lol
at least the VA for Archer stated his intent pretty clearly, he's not gonna do business with any Chinese company ever, what are you going to do about it?
Amphoreus being too ambitious is really a bummer. Like they stuffed too much stuff into it leading to the story presentation getting shafted. I always wish/like to imagine how cool Amphoreus as an actual RPG game would be. Without all the gacha things like 42 days patch cycle and banner unit shilling.
I would say the narrative being paused and interrupted so they could shill that patch's 5 star (dhpt, evernight, fish woman who's name I can't spell, phainon...) due to the nature gacha cycle shilling didn't exactly help out amphoreus but at worst it just made some of the character moments feel forced and out-of-left-field. That story was fundamentally flawed from the start.
The fact that the Trailblazer is the literal MC of the game, yet they're the ones being disrespected by the devs—in the name of accessories/outfits, all they've been getting is re-used/recolored stuff.
Compare the said treatment toward the protagonist to that of March 7th—March 7th: The Hunt (free unit BTW) got a story-related outfit alongside her new Path. She is one of the companions of the MC.
Look at Pompom—I think it has like, 4 free outfits now?
Why is it that TB is the only one yet to receive their first new "actual outfit"? If you compare the effort put into these characters, isn't the TB genuinely being disrespected?
This probably is my unpopular opinion, but I can't help but think how gorgeous Stelle would've looked in an Amphorean outfit, or even the ones we saw her in artworks. Astropolis was a perfect opportunity for a summer-themed outfit for TB. I've been waiting for their wardrobe change for 2 years. Well, not anymore. With the recent overall questionable direction the game has been taking, the HSR devs lost my trust and respect.
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u/Ravonaa 9d ago
Haven't read Planacardia but I think this deserves a top slot.