(Speculative, small spoilers for Genshin’s 2.5 release ahead!)
Genshin Impact’s next upcoming character for their 2.5 version, Yae Miko, is a pillar of elegance and poise. As the head of the Grand Narukami Shrine, one might expect her to be a paragon of brilliance. Players have already gotten a taste of her characterization in Inazuma’s archon story quests. She has made it quite clear that she is a mysterious and extraordinary character, especially in the visual department. So, it would be a reasonable expectation to assume that her character’s movements, particularly the movements of a shrine maiden, would be notably graceful, no?
Without going too much into spoiler territory, it seems that her movements are set to be quite graceful, indeed. Preliminary information points to her basic attack and charge animations to be flowing and fluid, not a dance or a ritual. I’m sure many players who were looking forward to her will be quite pleased with her moveset on release.
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Some people who may not be as pleased, however, are the animation team members at Mihoyo. Note that this is only my personal opinion as the author of this article based on my own speculation. But with what I’m about to suggest, it doesn’t seem too difficult to empathize with them.
Disconnect Between Teams
You see, other preliminary data suggests that Yae’s kit may focus almost entirely on her skill and her burst and that her attack values (how much damage her regular attacks do) are potentially on the low side. Assuming that this is true, then Mihoyo has a situation where their animators have spent who knows how many hours developing and perfecting beautiful, fluid animations for a character that the balance team seems to think that Yae shouldn’t be using much, if at all.
- What I’m seeing is a disconnect between these two teams working at the same company. Theoretically, would it not make sense for the balancing team to focus on properly utilizing the incredibly flowing animations of a shrine maiden that the animation team spent extra work on perfecting for that character?
- Does it not seem weird to focus a character’s kit and playstyle away from the aspects that make her unique and interesting? Why go to all the trouble of instructing the animators to design moves that go above and beyond what we’ve seen in Genshin so far, only to have them not be used due to mechanical design decisions by the balance team?
Standpoints
- From an efficiency standpoint, if the basic attacks animations are a focus, then the character should be balanced around having a strong basic attack chain. If not, then the visual focus should be removed from the basic attacks, and put into the detail of the skill and or burst animations instead.
- From a player standpoint, why would you give players such beautiful, dance-like animations? Encouraging them to want to use them, only to be disappointed at their low values and poor battle results? More accurate teamwork between the two design teams should have resulted in a “pick one and work together” approach. However, this seems either like poor communication, or a lack of planning somewhere.
Either way, I hope they work it out somehow because I foresee many players being disappointed with something so enticing that the game doesn’t seem to want them to use.
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