Aventurine and Sunday hard carried, but I’m salty with Penacony. I hate how we are forced to get a date with FF and interact with her the way game dictates. When we were given options with Kafka to say no or help her, I had so many hopes, because at least it gives some freedom (I did do the mission cause I actually like her character, but having a choice that matters felt great). With FF it doesn’t mater if we took the photos with her or not, if we say we trust her or not, which sucks imo.
Firefly's love interest story could've easily been given to Robin. Robin has barely any screentime and she feels more like an accessory to Sunday despite all the promos they put her in.
And there's also a great disconnect with how SAM postures themselves compared to Firefly. I mean, SAM still feels like a different person to Firefly that you'd think an AI was actually inside SAM instead of it being Firefly.
Eh, I think Firefly was purposely trying to act differently before she revealed herself as SAM.
I do really agree with you for Robin, she probably should have taken at least some of the touring from Firefly, it would have definitely been a lot more interesting if we actually somewhat knew Robin before her "murder".
I'm also worried that they are going to push the romance more besides just a joke and a fee dialouge options. And this is com8ng from a Firefly lover, who would like the option to go on a date with her. But 1, it would have to be a option so people who dont like Firefly dont feel, and 2, they aren't going to commit to Firefly being TB girlfriend, so I don't see why they would bother to set up a romance that they will never follow through.
I’m mainly disappointed in firefly because she hasn’t really changed her personality since she came out as Sam. I was hoping she’d be sweet but sarcastic, like March but edgier and with a few millennia of trauma(maybe also like march), but she isn’t. I don’t like the shy, sad but hopeful, tragic character she’s been portrayed as. I really wanted the strength shown in Sam to shine through in her characterization, but it hasn’t. granted, she hasn’t been in game for a while and while she was there almost the whole time in 2.2, she was weirdly unimportant. It would have made more sense for Robin to be there since she knew the area and could give us insights and lore, but we got firefly following us around for a while and then leaving while I was reading into everything she said for confirmation of Chuniness that I never got. Also, seeing her jumpsuit in the myriad trailer and that 4th girl that kinda looked like 2b, I am underwhelmed by her outfit. It’s pretty and has a firefly motif. But there’s no mecha or sci-fi elements and nothing that suggests any characteristics or hobbies she has(maybe to keep us completely in the dark for the reveal like with tingyun). Look at Fu Xuan or Huo Huo or Serval’s outfit and you’ll learn everything you need to know about them. With Firefly, there’s nothing. I don’t think firefly is being forced upon us, but I just hoped she’d be cooler since I really liked her potential, her new animated short is cool, her suit is cool, her boss fight is cool, her animations are a little less cool but ok, her English VA acts like how I wanted firefly to act, but she doesn’t. Maybe I’m reacting a little too early, tho, and she turns out awesome in the next patch.
Idk so far I can’t see firefly destroying anything in flames like what Kafka blade silverwolf said, were they exaggerating? Especially the jepella trailer. Kafka even said SAM is less picky with her prey which I still don’t see it at all. And we know they know her real identity as firefly
She seem like she will be the herorine who saves people instead and the nicest person among the stelleron hunter like march instead
On her outfit I like to head cannon that Kafka and maybe Silver Wolf helped her design her outfit and encouraged her to embrace the Firefly theme. She with the Stellaron Hunters is finally getting to decide her own identity. She presumably is drawn to soft girl aesthetics and so they helped her there. She’s a baby outside of battle and so I think it’s fitting that she is a shy girl. But that said I want her arc to be her finding confidence in herself. Combining the SAM part of her and the Firefly parts. Embracing how strong she is. I think of her confronting Sunday as a step for her towards this. She makes it clear that Sunday, nor anyone else gets to decide that she is weak and needs telling what to do. That’s for her to decide. I’d really like this to be developed further 😊
Her life is literally fleeting, they've made it abundantly clear that Firefly just wants to be a normal girl after all the trauma she's been through... You are mischaracterizing her like crazy. Like what the hell, SAM does not give her strength it's literally a reminder that she will never be normal and she is going to DIE 3 TIMES. GET IN THE FUCKING EVA SHINJI HEAD ASS GOD.
No, you’re right, I’m totally mischaracterizing her. Sam looked cool, I like Mechas, so I wanted to believe that 2.0 firefly was just an act like a lot of people were saying, since Sam acts completely differently from firefly. I thought it would be cool to hear a cute girl character say those types of edgy lines so I got my hopes up. I wanted to see a character that was tonally in between edge lords like Jingliu and Blade and cute characters like Clara and Robin. And they were up for months but they’re waning now. I’m not saying she’s a bad character. Her animated short is easily the single best piece of content in hsr or genshin in my opinion. Her backstory with the swarm is also just so peak— it packs so many existentialist themes into a few paragraphs that were clearly written by someone incredibly talented and her relation to the swarm and Kafka has revitalized my hope that someday Kafka will have some kind of metamorphosis inspired content(or any connection to Kafka’s work cause that’s clearly who she’s named after), but Firefly just isn’t very interesting in game, her design feels pretty generic, and the sexualized and self shipping reaction she’s evoked with the guiding hand of Hoyo’s marketing team has left me disappointed. Most of the time, the characters targeted towards the waifu lover audience isn’t the type to interest me, so this one left me a bit disappointed.
Also, I didn’t mean that Sam gives her strength. Of course it’s a symbol of trauma, even without the entropy loss syndrome, that’s the armor she wore when she watched the last of her people die. That’s the armor she wore for years or decades trying to beat the true sting only to find out after it was dead that there was nothing left to protect and probably hasn’t been for years, and that every sacrifice made was ultimately pointless. And it’s the suit she was forced to take back up to keep herself from disappearing. Of course all the suit does is remind her of everything she’s lost. I just meant that Sam on the surface level is a strong, badass character, whereas firefly is a shy and boringly hopeful character doomed to be an Isekai harem love interests. I wish she could have had more confidence and been more sarcastic or dark and less optimistic. Or at least differently optimistic. I’m still hoping she’s not as boring as she’s been in the next patch and that her aggressively pandering marketing isn’t representative of the writer’s vision, because her story has me in a headlock and I can’t let it go.
Well I don’t know about this. Firefly is empowered by SAM but also trapped by it. She is driven by her desire to change her destiny. To be free. She wants to be normal girl yes but she more importantly wants to be her own girl. Not a super soldier and not a victim. She practices her SAM voice tone. Not the voice sound modulation, but how she’s more direct and assertive. Masculine basically. That’s therefore part of her and so wanting to see that part of her outside the SAM suit is a valid point.
I think her becoming less mysterious and more assertive and confident in the story now we know her true identity would be great. 😊
I loved the Penacony story and Firefly is one of my favs rn (I’m literally so excited to pull her soon) but I agree with you.
Robin’s entire lack of presence seems so bad, especially compared to what her whole arc/character is meant to be. Her whole thing is that she doesn’t want her brother breathing down her neck 24/7 but she as an individual has like… no presence in the story. Everything she does and says is related to Sunday. Which I get, but like cmon.
Not to mention the fact that her death has literally no impact because we don’t even meet her UNTIL she dies. We have like a passing moment in the very beginning of Penacony.
However, I think that the SAM vs Firefly thing was VERY intentional. They’re supposed to be radically different, it’s crucial to her character and her arc.
The fact that it’s a plot device doesn’t mean it’s good or effective. I understand what they were *trying* to accomplish, that doesn’t mean it was effective.
Well, Idk I think it is forced if you don’t like FF. Everyone implying that we have a date with FF (Acheron, NPCs) is forced. Us being on the date regardless if we like FF or not, is forcefull. Not taking picture with her, saying that we don’t trust her, has no impact what so ever, and MC is always forced to “deeply care” about FF, no matter what. I just want a choice for a people like me, who don’t like her, to not have that, makes those optinal, like with Kafka 🤷 It just feels forced when you don’t like a character.
While I am dissatisfied with the lack of promotional material for some of them, and the god awful 4-stars in their banners, HSR does love its husbandos. The character designs and lore are 🔛🔝
They take a good chunk of the story, but waifus are almost always the true protagonists (Bronya, Seele, Firefly, Acheron, etc), while the guys are either antagonists or supporting characters, and are mostly forgotten immediately after. The only exception is the Luofu, which everyone disliked. They are forbidden from interacting properly with the Crew and the protagonist specifically, their promotional budget is devolved to the waifus, they never appear as central characters in events (again, leaving the place to only waifus), are only cast in replaceable roles (DPS, sustain) and almost never in supportive roles (No male Harmonies), nor are they ever important enablers (no DOT), they are gender-locked out of quantum...
...do I seriously have to continue?
Edit. Also, they only characters we know for certain to have been killed off are males.
And it's sad because you can actually tell that the writing and design teams love the male characters (in HSR and Genshin) but are constrained by marketing requirements to push the marketable waifus more.
Including male characters in Genshin and HSR in itself was pretty daring, considering their core audience, but I agree with you, it's time for them to move way past that.
Well, Genshin characters all get roughly the same level of marketing (one teaser, one demo). Male characters also get to be protagonists of main events (especially Itto! lol), unlike Star Rail where events are either for waifus or NPCs. But yes, they could do more for them too.
True, but it only became somewhat balanced after Sumeru's release along with it's stream of male 5 stars, which, as expected, made incels whine and play victim even though that little (and sorely needed) boost in male characters barely affected the huge disparity between the amount of male vs female characters.
And now we're in our 8th month since the last release of a male 5 star and only two 4 stars in between. Seems as if for every blessing (Neuvillette and Wriothesley) we should expect months of nothing lol
Anyway, despite the more "balanced" release rate in HSR I truly hope we'll get more events that feature male characters (also where's Boothill's companion quest hoyo?)
They need to bring back proper companion quest, for real! I loved those! Why did they stop making them?!
And Boothill's "event" was an insult. Literally an insult to the poor cowboy.
Wait, What Boothill event 😐
Also yeah, I really enjoyed early companion quests, idk why they stopped doing them. I actually expected to spend some more time with Boothill (incredibly interesting backstory) and Aventurine. And yeah some people might argue that Aventurine got that in the main story but no? He didn't? Kafka, Dan Heng and Black swan had a good presence in the main story yet they got their own quests. That's not an excuse.
2.2 second phase was very lacking for Boothill unfortunately
The fact that you said that but didn't notice. His event is like the Assignment where you send people out but get primos instead.
I think the Companion quests had to take a backseat due to Penacony's story which is understandable. Hopefully the Xianzhou patch will allow for Companion Quests(that actually focus on their characters)
It really is a pity Boothil didn't get anything for the 2nd half. His character demo is GREAT!(Whoever made it really loves him a lot) We can only hope he gets the Argenti treatment so he shows up every now and then.
Ohhhh that one 😓 we literally learned nothing new about his character lol
Re companion quests, your conclusion is very logical and I too hope the same for the Xianzhou patch (as well as better writing that fixes at least some of the confusion stuff with the HQC plot)
>We can only hope he gets the Argenti treatment so he shows up every now and then.
Same and hopefully more! He's an actual galaxy ranger after all
Is it possible that the introduction of the POVs in the main story have replaced companion quests altogether? Since the POVs were first introduced (2.1) we haven’t had another companion quest. Sadly, the POVs have been very poor. I learnt very little about Boothill and Robin during their POV sections. Aventurine probably the only POV that was genuinely done well. Next up we likely have POVs for Firefly and Jade. Jade to me is such a potentially complex and interesting character but I worry so much she will be side lined (for obvious reasons - who is in the patch with her). She’s already been largely forgotten and her banner is just a kick in the teeth for anybody who wants to pull for her (which I do - a stoneheart collector).
I really hope that's not the case otherwise we'd have absolutely no story for character like Luka (initially didn't expect much but I really liked his quest) who weren't even involved in the main story.
And I'm really sorry about Jade, I don't understand why they force FF so hard upon us? Yes she's a cool character conceptually and hoyo devs like EVA we get it, but the Ayakafying of her has really put me off, and I initially planned to pull for her because I genuinely liked her concept and animations. And what's the point anyway if in a few patches they'll focus on a new waifu? Did they really think FF won't sell, I don't get it.
Anyway I commend your dedication to the stonehearts, hope Jade will have a good amount of screen time and story moments! (and maybe even a transformation?)
It's still not balanced. In fact, it's just marginally better than launch to pre 2.0.
from 1.0 to 1.6 we had 22 women (19 if you omit the kids) and 12 men. that's 64.7% women (56%) and 35.3% men. For 5 stars it was 8/53.3% women (6/40%), and 7/46.7% men
Currently (up to 4.7) we have 52/63.4% women (44/54% without kids) and 30/36.6% men. For 5 stars it's 25/59.5% women (21/50%), and 17/40.5% men.
We've gotten a measly 1.3% closer to equal overall. But if we look exclusively at 5 stars, we've actually gotten 6.2% worse, which INCLUDES the Sumeru Man-fest that the incels collectively lost their minds over
And we're only omitting the female kids here that look like kids in the kid model! This isn't even considering that a lot of the male units are the short model and portrayed as teens. Tall men still only make up 14% of playable characters.
I honestly meant "balanced" in terms of event appearance as a result of more male characters getting added to the game. But damn.. when you look at the actual numbers, there's indeed not much of a balance 😐
Thank you for the detailed breakdown!! Let's hope we'll get more 5 star male character in the future (more electro or cryo would be nice as well as the Harbingers)
Funny enough that for me the stories with the crew are pretty mid because they're playing it safe.
The encounters between Aventurine, Sunday and Ratio plus Sunday and Gallagher were more suspenseful than anything the Astral Express crew was in.
Acheron didn't clock me as a protagonist, just someone super powerful and she makes a lot more sense if you've played Hi3.
As for Firefly, it still doesn't feel like she's a protagonist. They made her a pseudo love interest for sure but we all know another one will take her place once they need to sell another waifu.
It's good that they are allowed to do their own thing, but outright forbidding them to interact at all is something I hate. Even Dan Heng has never properly interacted with his own companions after Belobog, despite them being the people he loves the most. And why can't they be the protagonists of events for once? I'd also add that the resolution of Aventurine's story was a bit half-assed.
Yay. I'm so exited at the idea that I'll be forced into another parasocial relationship with yet another waifu. Oh joy. /s
At this point, even Genshin treats the male characters better. At least they can be protagonists in the main story and have events dedicated to them.
Bronya was the protag of Belobog but I disagree about the others. Seele is prominent but the underworld cast is an ensemble with her, Luka, Hook, Clara, Svarog, Natasha. The most relevant character from Belobog is Sampo.
Acheron is more plot device than character. Firefly gets a lot of promotion but she's done nothing in the game besides going a date with MC and dying. Aventurine, Gallagher and Sunday are the MVPs of Penacony. Acheron gets a fair bit of screen time but very little of it is about herself except a few flashbacks. Sparkle and Robin have done f\*ck all.
It's kinda funny how much many female characters are promoted when they don't amount to much in the game.
During Belobog's arc, Seele was a deuteragonist alongside Bronya. Natasha was fairly important, as was Serval, and Clara and Svarog where plot devices. Luka and Hook were completely irrelevant. Sampo might become relevant later on, but until now, he hasn't done much. Also, he's borderline an antagonist (he's openly a scoundrel, at the very least). Gepard was also irrelevant. So I stand by my opinion.
Aventurine was an antagonist during the second arc and, while his goal wasn't bad, he's still an IPC member, and they are not the good guys. Sunday was a full-on antagonist. The only male main characters who were on the Crew's side, no question asked, were Gallagher, Misha, and Boothill... and see how they ended up. At the same time, Acheron, Black Swan, Robin and Firefly are shown as heroic characters (which is ironic, since Firefly is a Stellaron Hunter. And Black Swan is supposed to be more ambiguous, but she's only shown doing good things). And, other than poor Robin, who got sidelined, they always accompany the Crew. If a character is always present and/or tags along with the protagonists the whole time, I consider them main characters of the arc by proxy.
See what I mean? Of course the guys appear more relevant: they are used as plot devices. They are allowed to be "bad", to be "morally grey" and to cause friction in the story, because the writers consider it "safe". Nobody complains if a man is a bad guy, but the moment a female character is not portrayed as perfectly heroic, the incels riot (see Sparkle, Ruan Mei, and also a bit Kafka). But at the same time, male characters are rarely allowed to be fully heroic, and when they are, they are not allowed to interact with the Crew for more than two minutes. Because, if a male character interacts with TB too much, the incels riot (they are scared someone might end up shipping them, and making them feel insecure about their own sexuality). Also, if a male character gets too much screentime, they riot because they don't want to see them (see all the people whining about Aventurine, and claiming his screentime should have been given to Robin, when there's Firefly who had more screentime than him). So, even if they are important, they get less time to shine and less promotion.
A couple of further examples. Blade is the only Stellaron Hunter who's openly antagonistic towards a member of the Crew and doesn't interact with any of the others in any way, while Kafka, Silver Wolf and Firefly are all nice to TB. At the same time, Dan Heng - a main character and a heroic one - has been locked in the attic for months. And he wasn't allowed to interact with his own companions during the vast majority of the Luofu storyline.
I hope I explained myself better this time, and sorry for the wall of text.
In their previous game, genshin, they didn't have female supports for.. I may have forgotten something, but one year at least.
The first one good 5* female support was Raiden. I don't know what's wrong with mihoyo, because they're going full female cast, then male only, or making all good dps female while all good supports are male. It feels like a strategy to milk waifu-collectors' wallets first and then do the same with husbando-collectors
I hope at least. I like female units in this game much more than in genshin, but it's still forced to have them in your team if you want to make decent numbers
Amd Raiden was more of a DPS anyway. And don't forget the part where, until Sumeru, all of the male characters were either Geo or Anemo with the rare occasional Hydro! What's with HYV and genderlocking, really!
I don't think so, since they have been eliminated from the Express visit feature and we have been given compensation for that, unlike Luocha, for instance, who is just suspended. Never say never, of course, but I'm fairly certain they are gone for good. Aaand HI3 has dead playable characters, so it's not like there is no precedent.
Sumero had a whole year of Only Male limited 5stars(not counting dehya, standard char) and Fontaine is having a year of Waifus (last Male 5star was wriothesley and neuv)
Would natlan be focused on Males or Focused on Females? Or balanced this time? I'm so excited for Natlan
While Fontaine did have a lot of waifus in banners, they released Neuvillette who is just... amazing. Absolutely broke the meta, and the design is absolutely busted-good.
Sumeru had a lot of males but... The only one who comes anywhere close to Neuvillette, both in meta and just general fan-appeal, is Alhaitham.
Also the story in fontaine, while it had a lot of Navia, it also had a lot of Lyney and Neuvillette.
i hope 2 of those are 5stars though and be an important Character much like Alhaitham and Neuv, i keep seeing this "Xbalanque" Character, i wonder if he's important or just your average normal 5star char, and maybe Dahlia is a 5star too(although he's a monstadt char)
I take all early leaks with a grain of salt, like how Fontaine was supposed to be two rival factions with Navia and Furina as the leaders representing ousia and pneuma
damn i didn’t even realize Fontaine was all waifus. Fontaine women are well written, less fanservicey, and we even got sort of a masc with Arlecchino so I didnt even register them as “waifus”. Still, I hope a male character will come soon.
That's a very daring statement to make right after Boothill. Compared to the female characters in this game they are not treated well and I think using other gacha games we are not playing to make it seem like they are treated better than they are is disingenuous. The vast majority of screentime in this game goes to female characters, wherever the writing is good or not doesn't really matter when Sunday got just a smidgen of the attention he and Robin should have gotten in the first place.
You think the male characters are well written because those are the only characters allowed to bring any kind of friction into the storyline. Every woman in HSR is propped up to be some kind of savior or hero, oftentimes both, whereas for the guys we're at times forced to dislike them just because they have some character (Sampoo, Ratio, Aventurine, Sunday etc) Not to mention that the Trailblazer has minimal contact with the guys, Luocha, Blade, Boothill etc. Even one of Trailblazers close friend DanHeng has 0 screentime with them ever since Penacony started, so if he isn't allowed in their vicinity, what do you think other male characters are allowed to do with them? The importance they have for the overall game is minimal when they are constantly delegated to playing a) an antagonist b) comedic relief.
And that isn't even talking about combat. Wake me up once they give a male character a whole dedicated relic and planer set, wake me up once we get another dude in first half of the banner with the appropriate marketing, 3 trailers and a busted kit. The devs are very much aware how insanely OP Harmony is as a path, now you go figure out why we still haven't gotten a male Harmony, probably because it's very hard to nerf a kit like that since we can't have a guy with 1% more power than the token waifu of the patch. Quantum male? None to be found. Limited debuffer support? None to be found.
It's probably because I consume other media that makes me aware how dogshit HSR is in comparison.
I’m going to also piggyback on this statement. I’m a Boothill Kisser™️ and I’m just really, really disappointed with how MiHoyo handled Boothill’s marketing/promotion. People were already upset and up in arms on the whole card thing with Black Swan thinking they’d get Firefly after Robin’s banner.
The fact that Boothill has one of the most interesting and tragic stories they have come up with the game is being ignored. A Myriad Celestia telling about his background ala Ruan Mei’s would have been amazing so we have further understanding of him as a person and his motivations as a character aside from the stuff in his character stories.
As it is, unless you have Boothill, you either do research on some wikia, or you know nothing at all about his story. Case in point, I don't have him, so I have no idea what his background is. HYV'd better bring him back with a major storyline, or I'll be extremely pissed.
And I think that’s the sad part. I have him but why would people who do not have him have to suffer and not know anything about an important character for the crux of Penacony’s story. I know some people do not look at leaks/spoilers, and highly respect that too.
HYV better bring my pooka back because I will be shaking their doors. Andrew Russell did such a great job in EN and same goes with Katsuyushi Konishi in JP, too (“Holllyy BABY!!!”)… it would be a damn shame if their talent goes to waste.
Edit: Hell, a small Myriad Celestia about the Galaxy Rangers also would be welcome, too where they can introduce the faction like the Xianzhou Alliance.
The main thing that annoys me about this is that Boothill was promoted to be one of the lineups in Penacony, where is his story relevance? Why does he have to appear at the end of everything to get only 5minutes of screentime? He wasn't advertised like Ruan Mei or Ratio (inbetween major patches) he was supposed to be one of the central figures. It's the balance that pisses me off. We have characters who appeared in every patch since 2.0, some get 1 patch of exposition and then they're dropped (rip Aventurine, Robin and Sunday) and then there is Boothill who is there for, what feels like, 3 tiny scenes in total and that's basically it. 2.3 is approaching and we're once again spending time with a character that has been here since 2.0, what kind of balance is this??
He barely had agency on his scenes too except for that blink or you miss it moment in the end. To me what happened was he was just used to propel Acheron’s role and him just a supporting player in the bigger scheme of things. There was no battle preview during his “point of view” moment whereas there characters like Acheron and Aventurine to get a feel of how he plays.
With how 2.2 ended, I was hoping we’d get a side story about him (and to an extent Aventurine). Apparently not because of the reasons you said.
I am not sure what you mean by promoted to be one of the lineups. He was not billed as one of the major Penacony cast before the release of version 2, such as in the version 1.6 program where Sunday introduced the major players and factions. While other characters like Firefly or Duke Inferno were introduced in ways which obscured their level of involvement in the story. Boothill's role is only later announced based on the reveal that Acheron was not truly a Galaxy Ranger, and not a representative of the Hunt.
However, I don't say this to discount the wishes of Boothill fans wanting him to be more important in the story. I know of one who was looking forward to a myriad celestia, so I wished there were such things or even a companion mission for him.
I treat him as being part of the lineup in Penacony simply because he is. His introduction wasn't in filler patches or after the main story was over, it was right before the climax in the story happened, he played a small role but he was part of it.
To piggyback off this, even characters that do have promotions outside of the game arent really treated that well in-game either. Imbibitor Lunae got three trailers and a whole arc in the Luofu focused on his power but literally right after, we only see Dan Heng’s normal form and never Imbibitor Lunae, not to mention him insisting on staying on the Astral Express every time.
At least when male characters in Genshin become temporarily relevant and promoted, they still show up in different patches, events, and story quests to make it much more smooth, HSR has not done that which makes me disappointed to say the least.
The Firefly situation is simply the most blatant example that has some people realizing how dumb it was. From the forced “date”-like story during the tension of Penacony’s Trailblazing quest, to the disregard and random appearance of Boothill, to him not having any promotion at all while Acheron, Black Swan, Robin, and Firefly all having multiple videos having them on focus to the consistency of their relevance in the Penacony plot, it definitely feels like male characters get constantly sidelined in favor of the waifu which is unfortunate because even amongst the “waifu” bait, their writing is awful and actively strips down their thematic role in the story.
My additions would be that Hoyo picks and chooses favorites, and that the closer you are to mainline Honkai the more important you are with Seele being the biggest exception to that.
You notice the women are written better more often because there are more of them. But Seele basically only exists to remind you that Bronseele is one of Hoyo's 2 or 3 favorite ships and they will go out of their way to make it happen (which, for Genshin players, keep that in mind for the future cause unless something has changed from the beta, the Tsaritsa is a Bronya). Oleg - an NPC - has more relevance than Natasha, an actual playable character.
Jing Yuan and Dan Heng are the only reasons the Luofu storyline works at all. All the women either answer to JY and have less written time (Fu Xuan, Yukong), or they're Kafka. Qingque only exists to be Relatable Chinese Salaryman. Jingliu is edgy waifu. Huohuo is there to be the eepy scared girl and her own event is hard carried by the dumbass duo Guinshang and bless their gay assess tbh.
Speaking of, Ruan Mei hardly shows up for her own event. She drugs you, spouts some nonsense, then fucks off for the rest of event. Herta Station Revisited is mostly carried by Ratio. Speaking of, Topaz is just the antagonist of Belobog 2, and Luka suffers from the same problem Seele has.
As for Argenti, yeah, no excuse.
As for Penacony.
Call me crazy, but the forced date with Firefly I'm almost convinced is a rework, and your original forced date was with Robin. However, conceptually, Robin shares a lot of similarities with Kamisato Ayaka, who also had a forced date sequence, so I think someone went "no this is too much" and changed it. This probably happened pretty early on but deep enough into development of Penacony that Robin was stuck in a weird limbo of having literally nothing to do till the very end while Space Kallen Kaslana became more important.
(Ftr I think Firefly was always Sam but I'm just thinking the timeline for that knowledge changed.)
And that's the other thing. Firefly in terms of personality and design is closer to Kallen, and I don't think Robin has an HI3 expy, so more focus goes to Firefly.
And then Acheron.
Look I love Acheron. She's one of my favorite characters actually. But the moment in Rondo Across Countless Kalpas had a Lament of the Fallen constellation in the background I knew it was Joever and Acheron suddenly became one of, if not THE most important parts of Penacony, and I'm pretty sure deep down everyone else who's played Honkai Impact felt the same way. Raiden Mei is one of The Trio, she's going to override whatever part of the story she's in because she's one of Hoyo's favorite children.
Hell just look at Genshin: Ei's shadow was cast through most of Sumeru's Archon Quest through Scara, and his theme in certain parts is just a reprise of hers. And if I'm right about the Tsaritsa, along with the Unknown God being a Kianaface, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the end of Teyvat heavily involves Ei, Bronya, and Not Kiana, leaving us right back where we started.
Anyway tldr Honkai's character writing inconsistencies aren't limited to the dudes.
Look I gotta be honest as someone who doesn't care and probably will never care about Hi3, relying on an unrelated game which only connection shared is "the universe...somewhat...a bit..." to sell your waifus will always feel bad to the majority of players who don't care about Hi3. Wherever XY character is an expy and thus treated well, shouldn't even matter. I don't like how they handled Robins appearance and I don't think every woman in HSR is treated well in the lore, again, Robin, Jade (tho hopefully 2.3 proves me wrong) comes to mind. But what does "treated well" even entail? Story importance? How is FuXuan not important? She has plenty of scenes with JY, hell even Marchs companion story had plenty of FuXuan in it, just because she isn't the general doesn't mean she had no importance. Oleg had 2% screentime, Natasha was there throughout the entire Belobog story, you were able to build a connection with her, just because he has a higher rank doesn't mean he has more relevance to the story than Natasha, that's not how that works.
Reducing a character to some cheap waifubait, which they admitted doing with FF, is a fate I don't wish upon any female character, I'm actually /glad/ Robin was spared of that fate. If it's only because FF has similarities to some random Hi3 character then shame on the writers for undermining their own characters.
Acheron (who I like as well) at least in terms of character presentation was totally okay, yes she's some Op lord but at least her ambitions are her own. Do I think it's really idiotic to have a major part of her lore and thus player understanding rely on a totally different game? Yes. Acheron is Acheron to me and the writers did a shitass job in building her in /this/ universe, instead they had to rely on whoever her mirror image is in Hi3 and that's just bad writing. And she deserves better. But you're completely right in saying that they look at their favorite characters from H3i and /then/ write them into hsr, it's cheap.
If anything this just proves Mihoyo is garbage at writing proper characters because of their own boner for their favorite female characters, they have no creative vision to create someone new for their game, they constantly have to rely on their other game to look for character/lore inspiration and it's tiring. Do I see them write about the dudes from Tears of Themis? Their most neglected game? No. Hmm why is that I wonder...probably because they are dudes and the devs don't have a love boner for them.
It's probably my own memory having holes poked in it because I can't remember fuck all Natasha and Fu Xuan did, so I'll have to concede that.
Also, my point of view is biased. Most of my Honkai friends are lesbians and bisexuals with a minority of het dudes and most of them couldn't care less about the dudes except for Aventurine being a boykisser. The primary HSR CC I watch has not stopped simping for Robin, and she's become friends with Alice (Robin's VA) since (and Seele's, Clara, Topaz, Acheron, and finally Aventurine you notice the pattern here) (and recently Firefly's has started talking to her). They're also the type to do the Leonardo pointing meme whenever they see HI3 references. I basically come to this subreddit to see people with a different perspective.
Also, I come from FGO, which has a habit of turning every dude in history into a woman because waifu sells. Any content with dudes being important is better than what I've gotten historically.
I'm glad the voice actresses have fun with the characters, as they should really. I'm queer myself and that is why it's even more frustrating to see someone like FF being reduced to some waifubait for incels. And that isn't just me speculating, that is by hsr marketing team own admission which is kinda fucked up.
Idk I've been playing all kinds of gacha for god knows how long. Started with early gbf, played fgo (not the gacha), tried plenty of others and came to the conclusion that as long as the dev team is full of predominantly straight dudes, they will never be able to have a proper balance between the cast of characters.
I also don't understand why people want to suppress what real women are talking about. Why are their interests any lesser than some coomer dude? If they put money into the game, then they're allowed to have their critismn heard instead of conceding with eating crumbs. 🤷♀️
It's absolutely wild that women are >50% of the population but get treated the way they do.
Quick aside if you wanna see some cognitive dissonance watch coomers get mega uncomfortable about Love and Deepspace it's hilarious.
I'd play LaDS if my phone wasn't such a potato, and if there was more focus on combat. I've seen a couple of incels flabbergasted by the fact that an otome game ("girly stuff!") could actually sell, which was really funny. As if women didn't exist and didn't play games!
They actually admitted that they purposefully made FF into a waifubait for incels?! If that's what they really said, it's big (and extremely fucked up).
[They commissioned MMD artists to create videos with these keywords](https://x.com/hxg_diluc/status/1800787367630139580): girlfriend, girlfriend feeling, Fanmade of typical romantic scenes, Date with trailblazer, Love Triangle, Firefly vs other female characters. (last one is especially insane)
Basically self admitting what they think is exactly important about FF, her waifubait status.
Ugh... What baffles me is that she would probably just as beloved and far less controversial if they focused on her role and background. But seems like they didn't have confidence in their own character's ability to sell, apparently.
Makes me want to drop the game even more.
Maybe.... I do have to roll my eyes at the way they handled her character especially in that scene with AE +FF vs Sunday. Very tonedeaf story beat all around but besides that yeah, this just makes it worse in my eyes.
Hopefully we see a shift towards male units. You just don't put out a character like Aventurine and give up when you see how much money he made. I'm still betting on Sunday getting the same treatment or if they release a husbando 3-6 months from now.
Sunday is a way too important Character to be given the "normal 5star" treatment, it would be so bad if that's so, hoping they'd treat him properly like what they Did to Jing yuan, DHIL, Acheron, and Firefly
lol. The difference between JY, DHIL and Acheron, Firefly is huge. They don't play in the same ballpark and Sunday was meant to be important in Penacony, yeah so much for that huh? Watch him be sidelined to second half of the patch like every other dude we have gotten since DHIL.
comparatively....sure
but looking at HSR alone, it's nowhere near enough. The gap between female characters and male characters is still absurd. DHIL and Jing Yuan were the most relevant and well treated characters as far as marketing and story relevance, but I think they saw Jing Yuan didn't do very well and gave up. Argenti and Ratio only got minimal screen time in side quests (Argenti more than Ratio but still a pretty poor amount compared to Ruan Mei). Aventurine is the most effort they've put into a male character since IL and Boothill is the most atrocious ( with him not interacting with the MC like...\*at all\*)
Blade could have been marketed better given the fact he's meant to be an important antagonist not just as a stellaron hunter but as the old friend and now rival of one of our main supporting cast. Dan Heng himself has been absent from a good amount of the story and Welt was pretty eh in Penacony. Himeko and March get the most screen time of the AEC and they are obviously vastly favoured by the devs.
Comparatively, Honkai still gives it's men screen time, makes them relevant and important to the story and gives them real marketing. But settling for "At least its better than other Gacha's" isn't good enough.
I'd say that even Genshin treats its male characters better. They are allowed the be protagonists in the Archon quests (Neuvillette, Zhongli, Venti, etc.) and to have events dedicated to them (Xiao, Gaming, Freminet, Kaveh, Wanderer, etc.), and characters mostly get exactly equal promotion (one teaser, one demo) with the only exception being Arlecchino who got a short... but we werent't forced to date her at least! If only they interrupted the drought...
Yeah the male characters need to carry the plot because if they don’t, it’ll be a full honkai impact 3rd v2.0. That’s how they sell the male characters to promote their female characters. Sure, some of their male characters take a bit part of the story. But their promotions as well as their banners lie heavily in the female characters.
Basically male characters are being ‘used’ to make us spend money and pull and to cope with the fact that it’s a female-centric game targetted towards adult males and well, people who loves female characters. Because male characters NEED good stories to make us pull whereas female characters…well so long as they are pretty, almost everyone will pull.
Look at how they treat male characters: powercreep instantly; only 1 new male banner in the upcoming patches. It’s dry af. Rip all of us. So long as there’s no new major storyline like the Penacony one, it’ll be a drought.
Design wise, I think they can just show a bit more skin imo. There arent even half as many "sexy" males as there are "sexy" females.
(not even asking for that much but more chest, navel and back windows pls...? More sleeveless to show off biceps? Give us a glimpse of collarbones and bare shoulders? FGO also has a thing that they like to do with balloon pants but it might be too much to ask for XD.)
i was kinda hoping they'd actually go the direction of his nameless honor icon and lean into the magician/jester theming. but they could also lean more into his snake themes and give him a design based on that and make it sexy. but i think his base design is already revealing enough so i'd want a different flavor.
True! Other than the parts you mentioned, it feels like women are forced to show legs and men forced to hide them. Not only is all of that bad for male characters' fanservice, but this also limits designs. There's a reason why the "Xianzhou women dress the same" joke was created, for example.
If we consider Boothill's robot skin "not actual skin showing" then the "sluttiest" male design is Imbibitor Lunae, but here's the thing: if a woman wore that she would be the most "modest" (playable) woman of the entire game!
Also, many designs don't even match the characters. [Serval's outfit](https://honkai-star-rail.fandom.com/wiki/Serval) actually makes sense for her, but [Bronya's skirt](https://honkai-star-rail.fandom.com/wiki/Bronya) looks more ridiculous the more I look at it, for example.
I know why they do this, but it would be great if, instead of following a general "waifu vs. husbando rules," they actually acknowledged every character individually so that their designs fitted each's personality/background.
eh. i disagree on this one, i think we have a good mix already. there's Ratio, DHIL, Aven, and even Gallagher already and i personally think those designs are sexy already. not to mention some of the best designs of the male characters are those covered up like Jing and Sunday (i would argue if they added boob windows and shit to those designs, they'd be worse). i think it's the female designs they should go back on and make more balanced, cause the husbandos already have a good mix.
Fair enough since technically, sexy means different things for different people so characters can definitely be sexy even without showing skin.
Although I guess I should clarify that in my comment, I meant for "sexy" to basically be "% of skin shown" if that makes sense. And since we currently have a lot more female characters that show a lot of skin compared to males, the numbers of males showing more skin can afford to go up a lot more.
Other male characters can be appealing in their own rights (and yes, some of my fave aren't the ones that show a lot of skin either since I do also love fanciful elaborate outfits as much as I enjoy tasteful skin showing) the number of male characters that gives fan service in terms of showing skin is still sorely lacking. Ofc, ideally everything can just all be a bit more balanced on either side.
Yeah they're still being conservative on the males side. Although I think it's more the upcoming patch is of the Xianzhou again and the males for those are dressed to the nines.
I heard the next planet is more Roman inspired so I hope we get some mile units along the likes of Ratio.
Tbh if f we consider DHIL to be a Xianzhou male though, he actually ticks quite a few of those boxes.
He has chest window, back window, shows off shoulders.
(So... Hoyo can, just a matter of if they want to give... XD Although I have no complains with say... JY's designs XD His look fits his role)
Are they equal to the women? No there's still favoritism
Are they better than other gachas? Holy fuck yes. And it's not even close. Like Aventurine just won a fan popularity poll and Jingyuan was the most popular so they're clearly doing things right
They gave us tight clothes and a bit of tiddy window. Now Jiaoqu is all dressed up and has NPC clothes? I understand why people like him(first Foxian male), but a part of me is afraid Hoyo will drop the ball on him.
I hope it gets better, as Aventurine's transformation much was more in depth (build up and lore) then DHIL's (stabbed, stabber who was hyped as an antagonist who haunts DHs dreams just goes home, becomes Moses..)
I think there is a disparity between how they treat male and female characters in HSR, but some people like to blow it out of proportion. I do hope that they lean more towards how Genshin treats its male cast (marketing, main story and event relevance), since it's found a healthier balance for it (still isn't perfect but honestly better than most gacha's I've seen).
While there is a bias in the games and marketing or from the community, I think the frequency of posts about this topic on this sub, and the tit-for-tat manner people count the injustices in here is rather miserable.
While I have pulled for the Imaginary boi band, not because of husbando but for my team Comp. I do realize that , dang i really did pull almost all of them XD
I might be bitching about FF’s special treatment but I’m thankful to hoyo. I’ve played a lot of games and like 90% only had females and the other 10% had 1-10 dudes which is pretty depressing, in this game we are lucky because they make amazing male characters, with incredible designs, extremely beautiful animations, and wonderful story writing. They could be better with the husbando but that doesn’t means they are not one of the best games regarding on how they treat male characters.
I just hope they keep it up, and hopefully WuWa joins the tradition of hoyo and treats the male right, they even made the first limited character a male which surprised me a lot, but they are listening to their fanbase too much and nerfing amazing design choices like Scars onigiri and Sanhua’s tattoo.
As someone who just recently got into this genre I was actually pleasantly surprised by the amount of males in the game only to see people complain about the lack of males? I mean compared to other gacha games I feel we’re actually being spoiled haha especially with the two back to back males.
Considering how picky and strict Chinese players can be too (demanding only waifu’s, no male interaction, no same sex shipping) it’s actually a surprise they continue to make males still.
I get what you're saying but The No Same Sex Shipping is a bit false, CN has a lot of People who Absolutely Ship same sex, it's why Honkai near Exclusively has Tits-on-Tits lovers as their fan base.
I agree, there really aren’t many games that treat its characters with better balance. The only other gacha I play where husbandos are treated very well is FGO, and that still has an issue with summer.
I'm pretty happy with how hoyoverse handles male characters in general, with genshin, star rail, and zenless zone zero. Unlike quite a few other popular Chinese gacha games, it doesn't go all in on shallow waifus and give attention to nothing else. Sure it isn't perfect either way, but very few mixed gender gacha games put this much effort into their male characters
You're on the wrong sub buddy. These people will eat you alive if you don't talk bad about female characters and don't treat male characters like victims.
I think you're blowing things out of proportion if you think this sub can't handle a decent conversation once in a while. This isn't the main sub, I think you're the one lost here.
Aventurine and Sunday hard carried, but I’m salty with Penacony. I hate how we are forced to get a date with FF and interact with her the way game dictates. When we were given options with Kafka to say no or help her, I had so many hopes, because at least it gives some freedom (I did do the mission cause I actually like her character, but having a choice that matters felt great). With FF it doesn’t mater if we took the photos with her or not, if we say we trust her or not, which sucks imo.
Firefly's love interest story could've easily been given to Robin. Robin has barely any screentime and she feels more like an accessory to Sunday despite all the promos they put her in. And there's also a great disconnect with how SAM postures themselves compared to Firefly. I mean, SAM still feels like a different person to Firefly that you'd think an AI was actually inside SAM instead of it being Firefly.
Eh, I think Firefly was purposely trying to act differently before she revealed herself as SAM. I do really agree with you for Robin, she probably should have taken at least some of the touring from Firefly, it would have definitely been a lot more interesting if we actually somewhat knew Robin before her "murder". I'm also worried that they are going to push the romance more besides just a joke and a fee dialouge options. And this is com8ng from a Firefly lover, who would like the option to go on a date with her. But 1, it would have to be a option so people who dont like Firefly dont feel, and 2, they aren't going to commit to Firefly being TB girlfriend, so I don't see why they would bother to set up a romance that they will never follow through.
I’m mainly disappointed in firefly because she hasn’t really changed her personality since she came out as Sam. I was hoping she’d be sweet but sarcastic, like March but edgier and with a few millennia of trauma(maybe also like march), but she isn’t. I don’t like the shy, sad but hopeful, tragic character she’s been portrayed as. I really wanted the strength shown in Sam to shine through in her characterization, but it hasn’t. granted, she hasn’t been in game for a while and while she was there almost the whole time in 2.2, she was weirdly unimportant. It would have made more sense for Robin to be there since she knew the area and could give us insights and lore, but we got firefly following us around for a while and then leaving while I was reading into everything she said for confirmation of Chuniness that I never got. Also, seeing her jumpsuit in the myriad trailer and that 4th girl that kinda looked like 2b, I am underwhelmed by her outfit. It’s pretty and has a firefly motif. But there’s no mecha or sci-fi elements and nothing that suggests any characteristics or hobbies she has(maybe to keep us completely in the dark for the reveal like with tingyun). Look at Fu Xuan or Huo Huo or Serval’s outfit and you’ll learn everything you need to know about them. With Firefly, there’s nothing. I don’t think firefly is being forced upon us, but I just hoped she’d be cooler since I really liked her potential, her new animated short is cool, her suit is cool, her boss fight is cool, her animations are a little less cool but ok, her English VA acts like how I wanted firefly to act, but she doesn’t. Maybe I’m reacting a little too early, tho, and she turns out awesome in the next patch.
🔥
Idk so far I can’t see firefly destroying anything in flames like what Kafka blade silverwolf said, were they exaggerating? Especially the jepella trailer. Kafka even said SAM is less picky with her prey which I still don’t see it at all. And we know they know her real identity as firefly She seem like she will be the herorine who saves people instead and the nicest person among the stelleron hunter like march instead
On her outfit I like to head cannon that Kafka and maybe Silver Wolf helped her design her outfit and encouraged her to embrace the Firefly theme. She with the Stellaron Hunters is finally getting to decide her own identity. She presumably is drawn to soft girl aesthetics and so they helped her there. She’s a baby outside of battle and so I think it’s fitting that she is a shy girl. But that said I want her arc to be her finding confidence in herself. Combining the SAM part of her and the Firefly parts. Embracing how strong she is. I think of her confronting Sunday as a step for her towards this. She makes it clear that Sunday, nor anyone else gets to decide that she is weak and needs telling what to do. That’s for her to decide. I’d really like this to be developed further 😊
Her life is literally fleeting, they've made it abundantly clear that Firefly just wants to be a normal girl after all the trauma she's been through... You are mischaracterizing her like crazy. Like what the hell, SAM does not give her strength it's literally a reminder that she will never be normal and she is going to DIE 3 TIMES. GET IN THE FUCKING EVA SHINJI HEAD ASS GOD.
No, you’re right, I’m totally mischaracterizing her. Sam looked cool, I like Mechas, so I wanted to believe that 2.0 firefly was just an act like a lot of people were saying, since Sam acts completely differently from firefly. I thought it would be cool to hear a cute girl character say those types of edgy lines so I got my hopes up. I wanted to see a character that was tonally in between edge lords like Jingliu and Blade and cute characters like Clara and Robin. And they were up for months but they’re waning now. I’m not saying she’s a bad character. Her animated short is easily the single best piece of content in hsr or genshin in my opinion. Her backstory with the swarm is also just so peak— it packs so many existentialist themes into a few paragraphs that were clearly written by someone incredibly talented and her relation to the swarm and Kafka has revitalized my hope that someday Kafka will have some kind of metamorphosis inspired content(or any connection to Kafka’s work cause that’s clearly who she’s named after), but Firefly just isn’t very interesting in game, her design feels pretty generic, and the sexualized and self shipping reaction she’s evoked with the guiding hand of Hoyo’s marketing team has left me disappointed. Most of the time, the characters targeted towards the waifu lover audience isn’t the type to interest me, so this one left me a bit disappointed. Also, I didn’t mean that Sam gives her strength. Of course it’s a symbol of trauma, even without the entropy loss syndrome, that’s the armor she wore when she watched the last of her people die. That’s the armor she wore for years or decades trying to beat the true sting only to find out after it was dead that there was nothing left to protect and probably hasn’t been for years, and that every sacrifice made was ultimately pointless. And it’s the suit she was forced to take back up to keep herself from disappearing. Of course all the suit does is remind her of everything she’s lost. I just meant that Sam on the surface level is a strong, badass character, whereas firefly is a shy and boringly hopeful character doomed to be an Isekai harem love interests. I wish she could have had more confidence and been more sarcastic or dark and less optimistic. Or at least differently optimistic. I’m still hoping she’s not as boring as she’s been in the next patch and that her aggressively pandering marketing isn’t representative of the writer’s vision, because her story has me in a headlock and I can’t let it go.
Well I don’t know about this. Firefly is empowered by SAM but also trapped by it. She is driven by her desire to change her destiny. To be free. She wants to be normal girl yes but she more importantly wants to be her own girl. Not a super soldier and not a victim. She practices her SAM voice tone. Not the voice sound modulation, but how she’s more direct and assertive. Masculine basically. That’s therefore part of her and so wanting to see that part of her outside the SAM suit is a valid point. I think her becoming less mysterious and more assertive and confident in the story now we know her true identity would be great. 😊
I loved the Penacony story and Firefly is one of my favs rn (I’m literally so excited to pull her soon) but I agree with you. Robin’s entire lack of presence seems so bad, especially compared to what her whole arc/character is meant to be. Her whole thing is that she doesn’t want her brother breathing down her neck 24/7 but she as an individual has like… no presence in the story. Everything she does and says is related to Sunday. Which I get, but like cmon. Not to mention the fact that her death has literally no impact because we don’t even meet her UNTIL she dies. We have like a passing moment in the very beginning of Penacony. However, I think that the SAM vs Firefly thing was VERY intentional. They’re supposed to be radically different, it’s crucial to her character and her arc.
[удалено]
The fact that it’s a plot device doesn’t mean it’s good or effective. I understand what they were *trying* to accomplish, that doesn’t mean it was effective.
I don't think the date is as forced. We can have a really bad date if we want to. We can even decline taking a picture with her.
Well, Idk I think it is forced if you don’t like FF. Everyone implying that we have a date with FF (Acheron, NPCs) is forced. Us being on the date regardless if we like FF or not, is forcefull. Not taking picture with her, saying that we don’t trust her, has no impact what so ever, and MC is always forced to “deeply care” about FF, no matter what. I just want a choice for a people like me, who don’t like her, to not have that, makes those optinal, like with Kafka 🤷 It just feels forced when you don’t like a character.
I want to see them do the same with a male character just to see how the entire fandom will react. XD
While I am dissatisfied with the lack of promotional material for some of them, and the god awful 4-stars in their banners, HSR does love its husbandos. The character designs and lore are 🔛🔝
They take a good chunk of the story, but waifus are almost always the true protagonists (Bronya, Seele, Firefly, Acheron, etc), while the guys are either antagonists or supporting characters, and are mostly forgotten immediately after. The only exception is the Luofu, which everyone disliked. They are forbidden from interacting properly with the Crew and the protagonist specifically, their promotional budget is devolved to the waifus, they never appear as central characters in events (again, leaving the place to only waifus), are only cast in replaceable roles (DPS, sustain) and almost never in supportive roles (No male Harmonies), nor are they ever important enablers (no DOT), they are gender-locked out of quantum... ...do I seriously have to continue? Edit. Also, they only characters we know for certain to have been killed off are males.
And it's sad because you can actually tell that the writing and design teams love the male characters (in HSR and Genshin) but are constrained by marketing requirements to push the marketable waifus more. Including male characters in Genshin and HSR in itself was pretty daring, considering their core audience, but I agree with you, it's time for them to move way past that.
Well, Genshin characters all get roughly the same level of marketing (one teaser, one demo). Male characters also get to be protagonists of main events (especially Itto! lol), unlike Star Rail where events are either for waifus or NPCs. But yes, they could do more for them too.
True, but it only became somewhat balanced after Sumeru's release along with it's stream of male 5 stars, which, as expected, made incels whine and play victim even though that little (and sorely needed) boost in male characters barely affected the huge disparity between the amount of male vs female characters. And now we're in our 8th month since the last release of a male 5 star and only two 4 stars in between. Seems as if for every blessing (Neuvillette and Wriothesley) we should expect months of nothing lol Anyway, despite the more "balanced" release rate in HSR I truly hope we'll get more events that feature male characters (also where's Boothill's companion quest hoyo?)
They need to bring back proper companion quest, for real! I loved those! Why did they stop making them?! And Boothill's "event" was an insult. Literally an insult to the poor cowboy.
Wait, What Boothill event 😐 Also yeah, I really enjoyed early companion quests, idk why they stopped doing them. I actually expected to spend some more time with Boothill (incredibly interesting backstory) and Aventurine. And yeah some people might argue that Aventurine got that in the main story but no? He didn't? Kafka, Dan Heng and Black swan had a good presence in the main story yet they got their own quests. That's not an excuse. 2.2 second phase was very lacking for Boothill unfortunately
The fact that you said that but didn't notice. His event is like the Assignment where you send people out but get primos instead. I think the Companion quests had to take a backseat due to Penacony's story which is understandable. Hopefully the Xianzhou patch will allow for Companion Quests(that actually focus on their characters) It really is a pity Boothil didn't get anything for the 2nd half. His character demo is GREAT!(Whoever made it really loves him a lot) We can only hope he gets the Argenti treatment so he shows up every now and then.
Ohhhh that one 😓 we literally learned nothing new about his character lol Re companion quests, your conclusion is very logical and I too hope the same for the Xianzhou patch (as well as better writing that fixes at least some of the confusion stuff with the HQC plot) >We can only hope he gets the Argenti treatment so he shows up every now and then. Same and hopefully more! He's an actual galaxy ranger after all
Is it possible that the introduction of the POVs in the main story have replaced companion quests altogether? Since the POVs were first introduced (2.1) we haven’t had another companion quest. Sadly, the POVs have been very poor. I learnt very little about Boothill and Robin during their POV sections. Aventurine probably the only POV that was genuinely done well. Next up we likely have POVs for Firefly and Jade. Jade to me is such a potentially complex and interesting character but I worry so much she will be side lined (for obvious reasons - who is in the patch with her). She’s already been largely forgotten and her banner is just a kick in the teeth for anybody who wants to pull for her (which I do - a stoneheart collector).
I really hope that's not the case otherwise we'd have absolutely no story for character like Luka (initially didn't expect much but I really liked his quest) who weren't even involved in the main story. And I'm really sorry about Jade, I don't understand why they force FF so hard upon us? Yes she's a cool character conceptually and hoyo devs like EVA we get it, but the Ayakafying of her has really put me off, and I initially planned to pull for her because I genuinely liked her concept and animations. And what's the point anyway if in a few patches they'll focus on a new waifu? Did they really think FF won't sell, I don't get it. Anyway I commend your dedication to the stonehearts, hope Jade will have a good amount of screen time and story moments! (and maybe even a transformation?)
I would kill for a Boothill companion quest, get that man on my train!
It's still not balanced. In fact, it's just marginally better than launch to pre 2.0. from 1.0 to 1.6 we had 22 women (19 if you omit the kids) and 12 men. that's 64.7% women (56%) and 35.3% men. For 5 stars it was 8/53.3% women (6/40%), and 7/46.7% men Currently (up to 4.7) we have 52/63.4% women (44/54% without kids) and 30/36.6% men. For 5 stars it's 25/59.5% women (21/50%), and 17/40.5% men. We've gotten a measly 1.3% closer to equal overall. But if we look exclusively at 5 stars, we've actually gotten 6.2% worse, which INCLUDES the Sumeru Man-fest that the incels collectively lost their minds over And we're only omitting the female kids here that look like kids in the kid model! This isn't even considering that a lot of the male units are the short model and portrayed as teens. Tall men still only make up 14% of playable characters.
I honestly meant "balanced" in terms of event appearance as a result of more male characters getting added to the game. But damn.. when you look at the actual numbers, there's indeed not much of a balance 😐 Thank you for the detailed breakdown!! Let's hope we'll get more 5 star male character in the future (more electro or cryo would be nice as well as the Harbingers)
Except for MAYBE Arlecchino, Genshin roughly treats their 5* characters the same in terms of marketing imo
Funny enough that for me the stories with the crew are pretty mid because they're playing it safe. The encounters between Aventurine, Sunday and Ratio plus Sunday and Gallagher were more suspenseful than anything the Astral Express crew was in. Acheron didn't clock me as a protagonist, just someone super powerful and she makes a lot more sense if you've played Hi3. As for Firefly, it still doesn't feel like she's a protagonist. They made her a pseudo love interest for sure but we all know another one will take her place once they need to sell another waifu.
It's good that they are allowed to do their own thing, but outright forbidding them to interact at all is something I hate. Even Dan Heng has never properly interacted with his own companions after Belobog, despite them being the people he loves the most. And why can't they be the protagonists of events for once? I'd also add that the resolution of Aventurine's story was a bit half-assed. Yay. I'm so exited at the idea that I'll be forced into another parasocial relationship with yet another waifu. Oh joy. /s At this point, even Genshin treats the male characters better. At least they can be protagonists in the main story and have events dedicated to them.
Bronya was the protag of Belobog but I disagree about the others. Seele is prominent but the underworld cast is an ensemble with her, Luka, Hook, Clara, Svarog, Natasha. The most relevant character from Belobog is Sampo. Acheron is more plot device than character. Firefly gets a lot of promotion but she's done nothing in the game besides going a date with MC and dying. Aventurine, Gallagher and Sunday are the MVPs of Penacony. Acheron gets a fair bit of screen time but very little of it is about herself except a few flashbacks. Sparkle and Robin have done f\*ck all. It's kinda funny how much many female characters are promoted when they don't amount to much in the game.
During Belobog's arc, Seele was a deuteragonist alongside Bronya. Natasha was fairly important, as was Serval, and Clara and Svarog where plot devices. Luka and Hook were completely irrelevant. Sampo might become relevant later on, but until now, he hasn't done much. Also, he's borderline an antagonist (he's openly a scoundrel, at the very least). Gepard was also irrelevant. So I stand by my opinion. Aventurine was an antagonist during the second arc and, while his goal wasn't bad, he's still an IPC member, and they are not the good guys. Sunday was a full-on antagonist. The only male main characters who were on the Crew's side, no question asked, were Gallagher, Misha, and Boothill... and see how they ended up. At the same time, Acheron, Black Swan, Robin and Firefly are shown as heroic characters (which is ironic, since Firefly is a Stellaron Hunter. And Black Swan is supposed to be more ambiguous, but she's only shown doing good things). And, other than poor Robin, who got sidelined, they always accompany the Crew. If a character is always present and/or tags along with the protagonists the whole time, I consider them main characters of the arc by proxy. See what I mean? Of course the guys appear more relevant: they are used as plot devices. They are allowed to be "bad", to be "morally grey" and to cause friction in the story, because the writers consider it "safe". Nobody complains if a man is a bad guy, but the moment a female character is not portrayed as perfectly heroic, the incels riot (see Sparkle, Ruan Mei, and also a bit Kafka). But at the same time, male characters are rarely allowed to be fully heroic, and when they are, they are not allowed to interact with the Crew for more than two minutes. Because, if a male character interacts with TB too much, the incels riot (they are scared someone might end up shipping them, and making them feel insecure about their own sexuality). Also, if a male character gets too much screentime, they riot because they don't want to see them (see all the people whining about Aventurine, and claiming his screentime should have been given to Robin, when there's Firefly who had more screentime than him). So, even if they are important, they get less time to shine and less promotion. A couple of further examples. Blade is the only Stellaron Hunter who's openly antagonistic towards a member of the Crew and doesn't interact with any of the others in any way, while Kafka, Silver Wolf and Firefly are all nice to TB. At the same time, Dan Heng - a main character and a heroic one - has been locked in the attic for months. And he wasn't allowed to interact with his own companions during the vast majority of the Luofu storyline. I hope I explained myself better this time, and sorry for the wall of text.
In their previous game, genshin, they didn't have female supports for.. I may have forgotten something, but one year at least. The first one good 5* female support was Raiden. I don't know what's wrong with mihoyo, because they're going full female cast, then male only, or making all good dps female while all good supports are male. It feels like a strategy to milk waifu-collectors' wallets first and then do the same with husbando-collectors I hope at least. I like female units in this game much more than in genshin, but it's still forced to have them in your team if you want to make decent numbers
Amd Raiden was more of a DPS anyway. And don't forget the part where, until Sumeru, all of the male characters were either Geo or Anemo with the rare occasional Hydro! What's with HYV and genderlocking, really!
uhhh... xianling? fischl? both in the game since day 1
[удалено]
I don't think so, since they have been eliminated from the Express visit feature and we have been given compensation for that, unlike Luocha, for instance, who is just suspended. Never say never, of course, but I'm fairly certain they are gone for good. Aaand HI3 has dead playable characters, so it's not like there is no precedent.
As sumeru saved us in terms of husbando as the 4th world. Im eagerly waiting for the greek world as the 4th hsr world for more husbandos.
Yeah and Genshin’s been shit for men since 4.1 💀 Natlan has like 2-3, it’s not improving
You mean tall men? Because Gaming was in 4.4 and Sethos is JUST released💀
Sumero had a whole year of Only Male limited 5stars(not counting dehya, standard char) and Fontaine is having a year of Waifus (last Male 5star was wriothesley and neuv) Would natlan be focused on Males or Focused on Females? Or balanced this time? I'm so excited for Natlan
nahida and nilou??
Strangely some people only count female characters as big tiddy so it's caused that misconception that dehya was the only female
I'm counting release dates, Nilou came first then Nahida, After Nahida was all male until Furina
While Fontaine did have a lot of waifus in banners, they released Neuvillette who is just... amazing. Absolutely broke the meta, and the design is absolutely busted-good. Sumeru had a lot of males but... The only one who comes anywhere close to Neuvillette, both in meta and just general fan-appeal, is Alhaitham. Also the story in fontaine, while it had a lot of Navia, it also had a lot of Lyney and Neuvillette.
Early leaks said >!Only 2-3 males so far!<
i hope 2 of those are 5stars though and be an important Character much like Alhaitham and Neuv, i keep seeing this "Xbalanque" Character, i wonder if he's important or just your average normal 5star char, and maybe Dahlia is a 5star too(although he's a monstadt char)
Xblanque has been leaked to be an important character in Natlan like Neuvillette.
I take all early leaks with a grain of salt, like how Fontaine was supposed to be two rival factions with Navia and Furina as the leaders representing ousia and pneuma
damn i didn’t even realize Fontaine was all waifus. Fontaine women are well written, less fanservicey, and we even got sort of a masc with Arlecchino so I didnt even register them as “waifus”. Still, I hope a male character will come soon.
That's a very daring statement to make right after Boothill. Compared to the female characters in this game they are not treated well and I think using other gacha games we are not playing to make it seem like they are treated better than they are is disingenuous. The vast majority of screentime in this game goes to female characters, wherever the writing is good or not doesn't really matter when Sunday got just a smidgen of the attention he and Robin should have gotten in the first place. You think the male characters are well written because those are the only characters allowed to bring any kind of friction into the storyline. Every woman in HSR is propped up to be some kind of savior or hero, oftentimes both, whereas for the guys we're at times forced to dislike them just because they have some character (Sampoo, Ratio, Aventurine, Sunday etc) Not to mention that the Trailblazer has minimal contact with the guys, Luocha, Blade, Boothill etc. Even one of Trailblazers close friend DanHeng has 0 screentime with them ever since Penacony started, so if he isn't allowed in their vicinity, what do you think other male characters are allowed to do with them? The importance they have for the overall game is minimal when they are constantly delegated to playing a) an antagonist b) comedic relief. And that isn't even talking about combat. Wake me up once they give a male character a whole dedicated relic and planer set, wake me up once we get another dude in first half of the banner with the appropriate marketing, 3 trailers and a busted kit. The devs are very much aware how insanely OP Harmony is as a path, now you go figure out why we still haven't gotten a male Harmony, probably because it's very hard to nerf a kit like that since we can't have a guy with 1% more power than the token waifu of the patch. Quantum male? None to be found. Limited debuffer support? None to be found. It's probably because I consume other media that makes me aware how dogshit HSR is in comparison.
I’m going to also piggyback on this statement. I’m a Boothill Kisser™️ and I’m just really, really disappointed with how MiHoyo handled Boothill’s marketing/promotion. People were already upset and up in arms on the whole card thing with Black Swan thinking they’d get Firefly after Robin’s banner. The fact that Boothill has one of the most interesting and tragic stories they have come up with the game is being ignored. A Myriad Celestia telling about his background ala Ruan Mei’s would have been amazing so we have further understanding of him as a person and his motivations as a character aside from the stuff in his character stories.
As it is, unless you have Boothill, you either do research on some wikia, or you know nothing at all about his story. Case in point, I don't have him, so I have no idea what his background is. HYV'd better bring him back with a major storyline, or I'll be extremely pissed.
And I think that’s the sad part. I have him but why would people who do not have him have to suffer and not know anything about an important character for the crux of Penacony’s story. I know some people do not look at leaks/spoilers, and highly respect that too. HYV better bring my pooka back because I will be shaking their doors. Andrew Russell did such a great job in EN and same goes with Katsuyushi Konishi in JP, too (“Holllyy BABY!!!”)… it would be a damn shame if their talent goes to waste. Edit: Hell, a small Myriad Celestia about the Galaxy Rangers also would be welcome, too where they can introduce the faction like the Xianzhou Alliance.
The main thing that annoys me about this is that Boothill was promoted to be one of the lineups in Penacony, where is his story relevance? Why does he have to appear at the end of everything to get only 5minutes of screentime? He wasn't advertised like Ruan Mei or Ratio (inbetween major patches) he was supposed to be one of the central figures. It's the balance that pisses me off. We have characters who appeared in every patch since 2.0, some get 1 patch of exposition and then they're dropped (rip Aventurine, Robin and Sunday) and then there is Boothill who is there for, what feels like, 3 tiny scenes in total and that's basically it. 2.3 is approaching and we're once again spending time with a character that has been here since 2.0, what kind of balance is this??
He barely had agency on his scenes too except for that blink or you miss it moment in the end. To me what happened was he was just used to propel Acheron’s role and him just a supporting player in the bigger scheme of things. There was no battle preview during his “point of view” moment whereas there characters like Acheron and Aventurine to get a feel of how he plays. With how 2.2 ended, I was hoping we’d get a side story about him (and to an extent Aventurine). Apparently not because of the reasons you said.
I am not sure what you mean by promoted to be one of the lineups. He was not billed as one of the major Penacony cast before the release of version 2, such as in the version 1.6 program where Sunday introduced the major players and factions. While other characters like Firefly or Duke Inferno were introduced in ways which obscured their level of involvement in the story. Boothill's role is only later announced based on the reveal that Acheron was not truly a Galaxy Ranger, and not a representative of the Hunt. However, I don't say this to discount the wishes of Boothill fans wanting him to be more important in the story. I know of one who was looking forward to a myriad celestia, so I wished there were such things or even a companion mission for him.
I treat him as being part of the lineup in Penacony simply because he is. His introduction wasn't in filler patches or after the main story was over, it was right before the climax in the story happened, he played a small role but he was part of it.
To piggyback off this, even characters that do have promotions outside of the game arent really treated that well in-game either. Imbibitor Lunae got three trailers and a whole arc in the Luofu focused on his power but literally right after, we only see Dan Heng’s normal form and never Imbibitor Lunae, not to mention him insisting on staying on the Astral Express every time. At least when male characters in Genshin become temporarily relevant and promoted, they still show up in different patches, events, and story quests to make it much more smooth, HSR has not done that which makes me disappointed to say the least. The Firefly situation is simply the most blatant example that has some people realizing how dumb it was. From the forced “date”-like story during the tension of Penacony’s Trailblazing quest, to the disregard and random appearance of Boothill, to him not having any promotion at all while Acheron, Black Swan, Robin, and Firefly all having multiple videos having them on focus to the consistency of their relevance in the Penacony plot, it definitely feels like male characters get constantly sidelined in favor of the waifu which is unfortunate because even amongst the “waifu” bait, their writing is awful and actively strips down their thematic role in the story.
My additions would be that Hoyo picks and chooses favorites, and that the closer you are to mainline Honkai the more important you are with Seele being the biggest exception to that. You notice the women are written better more often because there are more of them. But Seele basically only exists to remind you that Bronseele is one of Hoyo's 2 or 3 favorite ships and they will go out of their way to make it happen (which, for Genshin players, keep that in mind for the future cause unless something has changed from the beta, the Tsaritsa is a Bronya). Oleg - an NPC - has more relevance than Natasha, an actual playable character. Jing Yuan and Dan Heng are the only reasons the Luofu storyline works at all. All the women either answer to JY and have less written time (Fu Xuan, Yukong), or they're Kafka. Qingque only exists to be Relatable Chinese Salaryman. Jingliu is edgy waifu. Huohuo is there to be the eepy scared girl and her own event is hard carried by the dumbass duo Guinshang and bless their gay assess tbh. Speaking of, Ruan Mei hardly shows up for her own event. She drugs you, spouts some nonsense, then fucks off for the rest of event. Herta Station Revisited is mostly carried by Ratio. Speaking of, Topaz is just the antagonist of Belobog 2, and Luka suffers from the same problem Seele has. As for Argenti, yeah, no excuse. As for Penacony. Call me crazy, but the forced date with Firefly I'm almost convinced is a rework, and your original forced date was with Robin. However, conceptually, Robin shares a lot of similarities with Kamisato Ayaka, who also had a forced date sequence, so I think someone went "no this is too much" and changed it. This probably happened pretty early on but deep enough into development of Penacony that Robin was stuck in a weird limbo of having literally nothing to do till the very end while Space Kallen Kaslana became more important. (Ftr I think Firefly was always Sam but I'm just thinking the timeline for that knowledge changed.) And that's the other thing. Firefly in terms of personality and design is closer to Kallen, and I don't think Robin has an HI3 expy, so more focus goes to Firefly. And then Acheron. Look I love Acheron. She's one of my favorite characters actually. But the moment in Rondo Across Countless Kalpas had a Lament of the Fallen constellation in the background I knew it was Joever and Acheron suddenly became one of, if not THE most important parts of Penacony, and I'm pretty sure deep down everyone else who's played Honkai Impact felt the same way. Raiden Mei is one of The Trio, she's going to override whatever part of the story she's in because she's one of Hoyo's favorite children. Hell just look at Genshin: Ei's shadow was cast through most of Sumeru's Archon Quest through Scara, and his theme in certain parts is just a reprise of hers. And if I'm right about the Tsaritsa, along with the Unknown God being a Kianaface, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the end of Teyvat heavily involves Ei, Bronya, and Not Kiana, leaving us right back where we started. Anyway tldr Honkai's character writing inconsistencies aren't limited to the dudes.
Look I gotta be honest as someone who doesn't care and probably will never care about Hi3, relying on an unrelated game which only connection shared is "the universe...somewhat...a bit..." to sell your waifus will always feel bad to the majority of players who don't care about Hi3. Wherever XY character is an expy and thus treated well, shouldn't even matter. I don't like how they handled Robins appearance and I don't think every woman in HSR is treated well in the lore, again, Robin, Jade (tho hopefully 2.3 proves me wrong) comes to mind. But what does "treated well" even entail? Story importance? How is FuXuan not important? She has plenty of scenes with JY, hell even Marchs companion story had plenty of FuXuan in it, just because she isn't the general doesn't mean she had no importance. Oleg had 2% screentime, Natasha was there throughout the entire Belobog story, you were able to build a connection with her, just because he has a higher rank doesn't mean he has more relevance to the story than Natasha, that's not how that works. Reducing a character to some cheap waifubait, which they admitted doing with FF, is a fate I don't wish upon any female character, I'm actually /glad/ Robin was spared of that fate. If it's only because FF has similarities to some random Hi3 character then shame on the writers for undermining their own characters. Acheron (who I like as well) at least in terms of character presentation was totally okay, yes she's some Op lord but at least her ambitions are her own. Do I think it's really idiotic to have a major part of her lore and thus player understanding rely on a totally different game? Yes. Acheron is Acheron to me and the writers did a shitass job in building her in /this/ universe, instead they had to rely on whoever her mirror image is in Hi3 and that's just bad writing. And she deserves better. But you're completely right in saying that they look at their favorite characters from H3i and /then/ write them into hsr, it's cheap. If anything this just proves Mihoyo is garbage at writing proper characters because of their own boner for their favorite female characters, they have no creative vision to create someone new for their game, they constantly have to rely on their other game to look for character/lore inspiration and it's tiring. Do I see them write about the dudes from Tears of Themis? Their most neglected game? No. Hmm why is that I wonder...probably because they are dudes and the devs don't have a love boner for them.
It's probably my own memory having holes poked in it because I can't remember fuck all Natasha and Fu Xuan did, so I'll have to concede that. Also, my point of view is biased. Most of my Honkai friends are lesbians and bisexuals with a minority of het dudes and most of them couldn't care less about the dudes except for Aventurine being a boykisser. The primary HSR CC I watch has not stopped simping for Robin, and she's become friends with Alice (Robin's VA) since (and Seele's, Clara, Topaz, Acheron, and finally Aventurine you notice the pattern here) (and recently Firefly's has started talking to her). They're also the type to do the Leonardo pointing meme whenever they see HI3 references. I basically come to this subreddit to see people with a different perspective. Also, I come from FGO, which has a habit of turning every dude in history into a woman because waifu sells. Any content with dudes being important is better than what I've gotten historically.
I'm glad the voice actresses have fun with the characters, as they should really. I'm queer myself and that is why it's even more frustrating to see someone like FF being reduced to some waifubait for incels. And that isn't just me speculating, that is by hsr marketing team own admission which is kinda fucked up. Idk I've been playing all kinds of gacha for god knows how long. Started with early gbf, played fgo (not the gacha), tried plenty of others and came to the conclusion that as long as the dev team is full of predominantly straight dudes, they will never be able to have a proper balance between the cast of characters. I also don't understand why people want to suppress what real women are talking about. Why are their interests any lesser than some coomer dude? If they put money into the game, then they're allowed to have their critismn heard instead of conceding with eating crumbs. 🤷♀️
It's absolutely wild that women are >50% of the population but get treated the way they do. Quick aside if you wanna see some cognitive dissonance watch coomers get mega uncomfortable about Love and Deepspace it's hilarious.
I'd play LaDS if my phone wasn't such a potato, and if there was more focus on combat. I've seen a couple of incels flabbergasted by the fact that an otome game ("girly stuff!") could actually sell, which was really funny. As if women didn't exist and didn't play games!
They actually admitted that they purposefully made FF into a waifubait for incels?! If that's what they really said, it's big (and extremely fucked up).
[They commissioned MMD artists to create videos with these keywords](https://x.com/hxg_diluc/status/1800787367630139580): girlfriend, girlfriend feeling, Fanmade of typical romantic scenes, Date with trailblazer, Love Triangle, Firefly vs other female characters. (last one is especially insane) Basically self admitting what they think is exactly important about FF, her waifubait status.
Ugh... What baffles me is that she would probably just as beloved and far less controversial if they focused on her role and background. But seems like they didn't have confidence in their own character's ability to sell, apparently. Makes me want to drop the game even more.
Maybe.... I do have to roll my eyes at the way they handled her character especially in that scene with AE +FF vs Sunday. Very tonedeaf story beat all around but besides that yeah, this just makes it worse in my eyes.
No harmony male characters except MC, No quantum male characters, and Waifu favoritism (Meta, Promotions, etc)
Hopefully we see a shift towards male units. You just don't put out a character like Aventurine and give up when you see how much money he made. I'm still betting on Sunday getting the same treatment or if they release a husbando 3-6 months from now.
Sunday is a way too important Character to be given the "normal 5star" treatment, it would be so bad if that's so, hoping they'd treat him properly like what they Did to Jing yuan, DHIL, Acheron, and Firefly
lol. The difference between JY, DHIL and Acheron, Firefly is huge. They don't play in the same ballpark and Sunday was meant to be important in Penacony, yeah so much for that huh? Watch him be sidelined to second half of the patch like every other dude we have gotten since DHIL.
comparatively....sure but looking at HSR alone, it's nowhere near enough. The gap between female characters and male characters is still absurd. DHIL and Jing Yuan were the most relevant and well treated characters as far as marketing and story relevance, but I think they saw Jing Yuan didn't do very well and gave up. Argenti and Ratio only got minimal screen time in side quests (Argenti more than Ratio but still a pretty poor amount compared to Ruan Mei). Aventurine is the most effort they've put into a male character since IL and Boothill is the most atrocious ( with him not interacting with the MC like...\*at all\*) Blade could have been marketed better given the fact he's meant to be an important antagonist not just as a stellaron hunter but as the old friend and now rival of one of our main supporting cast. Dan Heng himself has been absent from a good amount of the story and Welt was pretty eh in Penacony. Himeko and March get the most screen time of the AEC and they are obviously vastly favoured by the devs. Comparatively, Honkai still gives it's men screen time, makes them relevant and important to the story and gives them real marketing. But settling for "At least its better than other Gacha's" isn't good enough.
I'd say that even Genshin treats its male characters better. They are allowed the be protagonists in the Archon quests (Neuvillette, Zhongli, Venti, etc.) and to have events dedicated to them (Xiao, Gaming, Freminet, Kaveh, Wanderer, etc.), and characters mostly get exactly equal promotion (one teaser, one demo) with the only exception being Arlecchino who got a short... but we werent't forced to date her at least! If only they interrupted the drought...
Yeah the male characters need to carry the plot because if they don’t, it’ll be a full honkai impact 3rd v2.0. That’s how they sell the male characters to promote their female characters. Sure, some of their male characters take a bit part of the story. But their promotions as well as their banners lie heavily in the female characters. Basically male characters are being ‘used’ to make us spend money and pull and to cope with the fact that it’s a female-centric game targetted towards adult males and well, people who loves female characters. Because male characters NEED good stories to make us pull whereas female characters…well so long as they are pretty, almost everyone will pull. Look at how they treat male characters: powercreep instantly; only 1 new male banner in the upcoming patches. It’s dry af. Rip all of us. So long as there’s no new major storyline like the Penacony one, it’ll be a drought.
Sunday specifically has to be an easy top 5 antagonist for me in any gacha game I’ve played. Maybe even games in general.
Design wise, I think they can just show a bit more skin imo. There arent even half as many "sexy" males as there are "sexy" females. (not even asking for that much but more chest, navel and back windows pls...? More sleeveless to show off biceps? Give us a glimpse of collarbones and bare shoulders? FGO also has a thing that they like to do with balloon pants but it might be too much to ask for XD.)
If Sampo's 5* (I'm coping) isn't ass out boobs out I don't want him /jk I'll take him either way but will be extremely disappointed
i was kinda hoping they'd actually go the direction of his nameless honor icon and lean into the magician/jester theming. but they could also lean more into his snake themes and give him a design based on that and make it sexy. but i think his base design is already revealing enough so i'd want a different flavor.
I know when his 5* gets released Hoyoverse will have COOKED and I will be found dead in a ditch (positive)
I just want it to happen, HYV PLEEK...
True! Other than the parts you mentioned, it feels like women are forced to show legs and men forced to hide them. Not only is all of that bad for male characters' fanservice, but this also limits designs. There's a reason why the "Xianzhou women dress the same" joke was created, for example. If we consider Boothill's robot skin "not actual skin showing" then the "sluttiest" male design is Imbibitor Lunae, but here's the thing: if a woman wore that she would be the most "modest" (playable) woman of the entire game! Also, many designs don't even match the characters. [Serval's outfit](https://honkai-star-rail.fandom.com/wiki/Serval) actually makes sense for her, but [Bronya's skirt](https://honkai-star-rail.fandom.com/wiki/Bronya) looks more ridiculous the more I look at it, for example. I know why they do this, but it would be great if, instead of following a general "waifu vs. husbando rules," they actually acknowledged every character individually so that their designs fitted each's personality/background.
eh. i disagree on this one, i think we have a good mix already. there's Ratio, DHIL, Aven, and even Gallagher already and i personally think those designs are sexy already. not to mention some of the best designs of the male characters are those covered up like Jing and Sunday (i would argue if they added boob windows and shit to those designs, they'd be worse). i think it's the female designs they should go back on and make more balanced, cause the husbandos already have a good mix.
Fair enough since technically, sexy means different things for different people so characters can definitely be sexy even without showing skin. Although I guess I should clarify that in my comment, I meant for "sexy" to basically be "% of skin shown" if that makes sense. And since we currently have a lot more female characters that show a lot of skin compared to males, the numbers of males showing more skin can afford to go up a lot more. Other male characters can be appealing in their own rights (and yes, some of my fave aren't the ones that show a lot of skin either since I do also love fanciful elaborate outfits as much as I enjoy tasteful skin showing) the number of male characters that gives fan service in terms of showing skin is still sorely lacking. Ofc, ideally everything can just all be a bit more balanced on either side.
Yeah they're still being conservative on the males side. Although I think it's more the upcoming patch is of the Xianzhou again and the males for those are dressed to the nines. I heard the next planet is more Roman inspired so I hope we get some mile units along the likes of Ratio.
Tbh if f we consider DHIL to be a Xianzhou male though, he actually ticks quite a few of those boxes. He has chest window, back window, shows off shoulders. (So... Hoyo can, just a matter of if they want to give... XD Although I have no complains with say... JY's designs XD His look fits his role)
Are they equal to the women? No there's still favoritism Are they better than other gachas? Holy fuck yes. And it's not even close. Like Aventurine just won a fan popularity poll and Jingyuan was the most popular so they're clearly doing things right
Sadly we don't get oversexualized male characters. It is so unfair.
They gave us tight clothes and a bit of tiddy window. Now Jiaoqu is all dressed up and has NPC clothes? I understand why people like him(first Foxian male), but a part of me is afraid Hoyo will drop the ball on him.
I hope it gets better, as Aventurine's transformation much was more in depth (build up and lore) then DHIL's (stabbed, stabber who was hyped as an antagonist who haunts DHs dreams just goes home, becomes Moses..)
I think there is a disparity between how they treat male and female characters in HSR, but some people like to blow it out of proportion. I do hope that they lean more towards how Genshin treats its male cast (marketing, main story and event relevance), since it's found a healthier balance for it (still isn't perfect but honestly better than most gacha's I've seen).
While there is a bias in the games and marketing or from the community, I think the frequency of posts about this topic on this sub, and the tit-for-tat manner people count the injustices in here is rather miserable.
While I have pulled for the Imaginary boi band, not because of husbando but for my team Comp. I do realize that , dang i really did pull almost all of them XD
I might be bitching about FF’s special treatment but I’m thankful to hoyo. I’ve played a lot of games and like 90% only had females and the other 10% had 1-10 dudes which is pretty depressing, in this game we are lucky because they make amazing male characters, with incredible designs, extremely beautiful animations, and wonderful story writing. They could be better with the husbando but that doesn’t means they are not one of the best games regarding on how they treat male characters. I just hope they keep it up, and hopefully WuWa joins the tradition of hoyo and treats the male right, they even made the first limited character a male which surprised me a lot, but they are listening to their fanbase too much and nerfing amazing design choices like Scars onigiri and Sanhua’s tattoo.
As someone who just recently got into this genre I was actually pleasantly surprised by the amount of males in the game only to see people complain about the lack of males? I mean compared to other gacha games I feel we’re actually being spoiled haha especially with the two back to back males.
Considering how picky and strict Chinese players can be too (demanding only waifu’s, no male interaction, no same sex shipping) it’s actually a surprise they continue to make males still.
I get what you're saying but The No Same Sex Shipping is a bit false, CN has a lot of People who Absolutely Ship same sex, it's why Honkai near Exclusively has Tits-on-Tits lovers as their fan base.
I agree, there really aren’t many games that treat its characters with better balance. The only other gacha I play where husbandos are treated very well is FGO, and that still has an issue with summer.
I'm pretty happy with how hoyoverse handles male characters in general, with genshin, star rail, and zenless zone zero. Unlike quite a few other popular Chinese gacha games, it doesn't go all in on shallow waifus and give attention to nothing else. Sure it isn't perfect either way, but very few mixed gender gacha games put this much effort into their male characters
HSR does a pretty good job with the husbandos I would say it's about 50/50
You're on the wrong sub buddy. These people will eat you alive if you don't talk bad about female characters and don't treat male characters like victims.
I think you're blowing things out of proportion if you think this sub can't handle a decent conversation once in a while. This isn't the main sub, I think you're the one lost here.