So i recently started a new account that just pulls whatever and doesn't focus too much on the story since i already played through it on my main acc and when i got lucky and somehow got sw999 she was somewhat decent??? I say this because i don't have the current flagship elation team in it's full and complete form but replaying through the side story of wardance and using her talent reminded me of acheron and the core problem with hoyo's current design, characters are too dependent on pulling new 5 stars to feel completed, ESPECIALLY elation teams.
If we were to look at acheron back then, we were very much taken a liking to acheron solely because of how f2p friendly she was back then with the amount of 4 star nihility characters she could use as well as gallagher that could give a lot of stacks for her ult, while not always comparable to very expensive premium teams this was at least a good way to have acheron provide a fun experience to your account while not pressuring you to pull for new 5 stars unless you want to get higher dmg. Contrast this with sw999, where now she REALLY needs yao guang or sparxie at the bare minimum to even activate her ult and get some decent dmg. This is a whole opposite in design philosophy because elation as a whole CANNOT function if you do not have yao guang and a dps (sparxie and sw999, not sure about evanescia as i dont know about her kit) but because of this we need to go into future rail and constantly worry about new characters to work with.
So why is this a problem? For most veteran players you would have gotten used to playing and planning your teams and builds by now, but for new players this is a REALLY bad experience for them and can be detrimental in the long term. Think about it, i'm a veteran player already who has a surface level understanding of the elation path mechanics so i can somewhat skim around sw999's caveats, but if a new player saw sw999 and pulled her just as their introduction to hsr to find out she is a brick unless they pull more 5 stars? Yeah i would be disencentivised to continue playing this game.
Castorice was still ok, reason being is that gallagher exists so new bud generation was not the worse. Castorice could still work with non-rememberance characters and have at least a good dmg floor. While it's not comparable to the full mono-rem team with cyrene at least playing her didn't feel bad if you only pulled her as your first 5 star. Sw999 on the other hand could only get her ult after an aha instance and emc's ult on her, but afterwards you get 3 turns of low dmg and forever to recharge her ult if you didn't save up emc's ult for her after her zone ends. There's an arguement to be made for using eagle 4 pc but bro, you think a new player will know about spd tuning and action values that fast into the game? Sw999's dmg floor is just too damn low right now and het gameplay feels too hard to work around UNLESS you have one of her premium team members and that is such a turn off for many new comers.
Hoyo now faces the issue that they will not be able to attract new players if they continue with this design philosophy where there are no decent enough substitutes like 4 stars that could alleviate or provide a better floor for their new characters before moving into premium teams once they play long enough to like the characters.
While some may say that hoyo is now giving free 5 stars, i think you're also forgetting that they are giving them for a certain range of period. We've sern many posts from newer players that they did not claim archer (one of the friendliest f2p hypercarry) because they joined passed the event period where archer was given for free, and what about dhpt, one of the best sustains next to hyacine when it comes to endgame modes, what happens when players are no longer able to claim him. Sure we have bailu and gallagher but as dmg and hp inflation increase over time they will eventually start to drop off when we need characters that can tank nuke shots from enemies, and if hoyo keeps solely making 5 stars but don't have an accessible way to get them in the FUTURE, then hsr will truly dwindle as we get lesser and lesser new players.
To sum up, my main conerns are that hsr's current kit philoophy is way too beginner unfriendly and may cause a drop in new players and my points have solely been around kits and how they synergize with other paths as alternstives to provide a good dmg floor and not focus on the highest dmg ceiling. To a new player they will see this as it's a game that's too demanding from them when they're just starting out.
While novaflares try to address some of those issues i find their upgrades weird and doesn't seem to work like how other gacha games try to address power creep with old characters upgrades, i mean heck fgo has times where they needed to upgrade their characters 3 times and that game feels very good to play as some of their lower stars characters are still very op and can be used to this day for their 10+ years of running the game.
But my points were only partislly related to dmg numbers, another main point from it is the issue of how comfortable is it to use a character and as we can see from sw999's current character kit it's very wonky UNLESS you're already a veteran well versed in spd tuning, action values and know the core mechanics behind the characters.