A seemingly innocent Honkai: Star Rail thread by Reddit user -Rho-Aias has transformed into a conspiracy town over the past 24 hours. Whether joking or otherwise, the belief is that developers miHoYo are attempting to determine what sort of character would earn them the most money.
It all began on Sept. 3 with one question: What type of character would make you go broke attempting to pull on their banner? In essence, this is a fantastic discussion encouraging participants to get creative and draw inspiration from other works of art, fiction, and reality. -Rho-Aias themselves kicked off the forum with their own answer. “A Gilgamesh-type character from the Fate series,” they said. “I love those smug characters that just stand still with their arms crossed as badass attacks happen around them.”
Visuals are undeniably a key draw for so many players of anime-styled gacha games. Whether you are looking at Star Rail, sister titles Honkai 3rd Impact and Genshin Impact, or less story-focused adventures such as Azur Lane and Arknights, all are guaranteed to promote the looks of their characters over differing playstyles.
Nevertheless, this element remains an important factor in the minds of those who stick around for the gameplay itself. “Characters like Kafka that can potentially enable other playstyles are really interesting to me,” explained Bybalan. “There’s lots of wacky stuff they could try.” You can say plenty about Star Rail, but I have been continually impressed with how each character feels unique. Very rare are the instances of crossover roles.
All of these great ideas in one place have aroused some humorous suspicion from laur11ee who has gathered almost as many upvotes as the thread itself. Their response was as simple as could be: “Nice try, Hoyo.”
Now, I’m not here to say that laur11ee is correct in their callout, yet neither would I be surprised if the popular developers had employed similar tactics in the past. As much as their connection to the gargantuan Hoyoverse community is to be lauded, miHoYo ultimately wants to earn as much revenue as they can. Quite literally millions of dollars are expected upon the conclusion of every banner. It is in their best interest to create characters that are desirable be it through aesthetics or mechanics.
There is no harm in miHoYo checking out this thread in any case. -Rho-Aias has likely done them a favor by cataloging more personal feedback than what can usually be offered through the official forms advertised in-game. All I ask for is the same imperious quality that we’ve come to expect.
