The Problem With Genshin Impact's Artifact System 

5 Layers RNG for Craptifacts: -1) The set itself -2) The piece itself -3) The main stats for the three last artifacts pieces -4) The substats -5) The bonus enhancement for said substats

Honestly the biggest deterrent I think this game has for new players is this jank artifact system. Yeah story and exploration are fantastic, but playing for long term is just suffering. And I am a gacha veteran! Genshin isn't my first gacha game, but I have never seen a game screw their players so bad with RNG just to make them play longer until Genshin. I really hope they make changes to it because of that recent survey specifically asking about it, but I'm keeping my expectations low from Hoyoverse

You also forgot to say that when farming for a specific artifact in a domain theres also a chance that you just dont get that artifact at all since theres always 2 sets in a domain..

The craziest thing to me personally is how some people seem to be offended when someone criticizes the artifact system. Like, folks, I get it... the combat is good, the characters are charismatic, the lore is indeed interesting and intricate (Main story is absolutely insipid), but Genshin is far from a perfect game. And issues just become more and more glaring when you realize how much money this game makes per gacha banner. But anyway, that's neither here nor there... The simplest and best compromise to the artifact system in GI would be abolishing the use of resin in artifact domains. *JUST* artifact domains. Fine, Mihoyoverse, you want to keep your rng on top of rng bullshit? Keep it. But let me farm as much as I want. It's freaking disheartening to do 8 artifact domain runs *at most* per day, not getting anything even slightly usable and then having to wait 21h to try again, especially when you're f2p/Welkin Moon buyer. In the medium to long run, that ends up destroying any joy you could derive from pulling a new character from the gacha. Yay, 3 to 6 more months before I can even use what I just got after saving primos for 2-3 months! And before I forget, let's not ignore how the artifact system makes the already terrible new player experience even worse. Anyway, great video. Keep up the good work.

Even though I know exactly what’s going to be said and sigh, Im excited for this video because your stuff is always so high-quality and chill

That clip of the raccoon is the most heart breaking thing I've seen in a while... Also the perfect metaphor for how all of our perfect artifacts just die to garbage rolls...

I've mentioned in multiple surveys how the grind to get a new character up to speed kinda dampens the excitement. Like I only have a small moment of excitement seeing the wish turn gold and it just immediately turns to "ugh, how many months will it take for me to get the right artifacts for this character?" It has lately deterred me from spending money on the game because of how massive of a chore it is to make a new character useable in late-game

I'd like to add that it feels like there's too many "Dead" stats, getting flat anything just feels bad, the effects of flat atk/HP/Def is entirely negligible, the stat values need to be either massively buffed or be calculated differently (i.e. flat atk being included in base atk like how a weapons atk is)

Someone in chat said this: "Talk about the resin system next!" I fully agree. The amount of time it takes to build a character is ridiculous. The fact that there's nothing for you to use your built characters on is even more ridiculous.

I feel that at every world level increase from 4 and up, should ad 20 resin to your daily cap. An AR 35 player has 180 resin while an AR 55 player has say 220. Due to the fact that there is more resin to regain, each world level increase also lowers the resin regain time by idk, 30 seconds. The longer you play the more you play, the less you play the more you want to play. edit: tysm for likes, maybe they listen to the community for once?

When the new Xiao set came out I was like "yeah imma be using this within a week" since I had over 60 fragile resin saved up. After burning all 60+ fragile and my concentrated daily resin for over a week, I've gotten 1 good flower and trash everything else (in over 150 pieces of 5* star Xiao set). What got me excited about the game again, an upgrade to my main character, became an annoyance and burn out. P.S: when I say trash I don't mean sub optimal, I mean actual trash (Def% /Def/ HP substats), out of something like 30 hourglasses only 2 with main Atk% (Def substats)

As a new player, the resin feels extremely limiting. Just to level up a character and their aspects it takes weeks! And after you quickly use that daily resin you barely have anything else to do.

Gonna be honest I was malding about artifacts a few days ago. Had the exact situation described, perfect substats but it kept going into ER after ER after ER until it was at 20% ish with every other stat not being touched. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is seeing a near perfect piece slowly devolve into "(insert non crit substat) stat stick". Honestly, only way I can see this system slightly recovered is with artifact rerolls basically allowing you to reset the stats on an artifact so you can roll it again until it's perfect. This both removes some RNG but still forces you to get more fodder to level the piece up again.

I’m actually so excited to watch this, the artifact system has been BRUTAL to me and it’s nice to know that I’m not alone😭

Honestly, farming artifacts without having to spend resins would be a godsend, or reduce the cost to maybe 5-20, and they should increase the artifacts quantity we can get.Also extending the resin cap and shorten the refill duration would be really great .Hoyoverse please make it true.

I kid you not, I have spent around 6 MONTHS trying to get a crimson witch 5 star hat with at least 1 decent substation and Crit main stat for hu Tao. Closest thing I got was a Crit main stat with def, def%, hp%, Hp flat. Just wonderful. 👍

One reason many people forget to note is that one of the reasons the game can be very boring is due to the resin and artifact system. If the resin system wasn't as constricted, many players would put more time and effort in the game making characters, which is the best part of the game (the characters). Remove some limitations on the resin system and I swear more people will enjoy the game and spend more time on it.

It's probably intentionally designed to be bad, addicting and time-consuming so a player has to login everyday or spend their money. The chance of getting the right main stat, the right sub stats, the right set between the 5*, are already so low, let alone a good or godlike roll. It's been layered with so much RNG that whoever designed this really wanted the players to suffer so that they really have to turn to whaling and spending money to get constellations and better weapons instead, if they don't want to learn in-game mechanics.

When I first learned how the genshin artifact system worked it immediately reminded me of a less forgiving version of Splatoon's gear system, as in, substats being random for the most part. What makes Splatoon's one better is that they have 1) Items that boost chances for certain sub stat rolls. 2) a way to reset a piece of gear which lets you try again and 3) by doing so you gain shards of the "scrubbed" sub stats which, when you get enough of, you can overwrite a sub stat of another piece of gear. If genshin did something even remotely similar to this I think it would address about 90% of the problem. Imagine the same scenario with the godly Crit Rate hat from 6:30. You don't get a single hit on Crit DMG. Now imagine if you could reset the artifact to level 0 again, and in the process you get 2 ATK shards, 1 ER shard and 2 EM shards and then you can re-level the artifact or even get a guaranteed substat increase if you have enough Crit DMG% shards. I feel like something like this will make the artifact grind more reasonable because even the sadge unlucky moments can provide some sort of progress in some direction.

11:23 THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I THINK I personally believe it's too late to change the artifact system since we are so very accustomed to it. But due to its random nature the cost at least needs to be decreased by A TON. The materials that are just linear are fine.

They need to sub categorise the artifact domain to the piece that you need or drop the complete set every run. It’ll be a whole lot better that way imo.

As crazy as it sounds, the artifact system is the system in this game I would most label predatory. Sure pulling for weapons is pretty bad, but to have so many characters lack even half their value without a 4pc set is cruel. And the trend only appears to get worse. Farming for Shogun, Itto and Kokomi has been a nightmare. What threw me into a fury most was getting artifact load outs on the clam set that would be god tier on most other sets. I have several circlets on that set with double crit and atk% rolls, same for the feathers. That’s what threw me into a fury, the fact that I just knew they tweaked the RNG to give you stats that wouldn’t benefit the set. Pulling for characters doesn’t break me, rolling a slot machine with so many variables and barriers to a decent “payout” is what breaks me. Great video as always.

The first big change I want to see to the artifact system is to have it change where each day of the week each domain will drop a specific slot artifact, so like Wednesday is headpieces, and Thursday is flower, maybe even have it so Sunday and Tuesday you have a chance to farm any of the pieces. If they want it to stay rng on top of rng and have each domain have a set you want and a possible dead set then this could help a ton.

The best fix would be SLIGHT changes of rng for the artifacts without making them too easy or impossible to farm. 1. Make every domain drop each set every other day. There is no reason not to do so, just like talent books or weapon mats. Imagine talents and weapon mats dropping randomly... 2. Make MAIN stats of artifacts - primarily sands and circlet drop with the same rate. Someone could spend multiple months to get EM goblet/circlet/sands in viridescent domain and that is not normal by any standard. ER sands on Emblem set is close too. 3. Make onset elemental goblets more likely to drop. So having geo goblet on geo set would actually become normal and not a literal miracle like it is now. And honestly, I think this is enough to feel better when farming artifacts and feel rewarded for doing so. Substats rng can even stay the same imo.

The artifact system is the only thing that prevents me from inviting friends to play...because i know they would hate it and drop the game in a week, or the moment they see how bad it is...also another point is that the artifacts need other artifacts to level them and every level increases the EXP cap then with the exp from lvl16 to 20 you can literally level another piece to lvl16, and the exp transfer from 1 artifact to the other is not 100%, making dificult leveling new artifacts with old ones more efficient

Going to the artifact domain is like going to the casino, you always come in full of excitement only to leave with extreme disappointment. Every. Single. Day.

I’ve been constantly frustrated with the artifacts so thank you for this content. I couldn’t have expressed the frustration in such detail with so much experience. Thank you.

I completely agree. I feel motivated to improve my characters, but automatically resort to improving the character talents and level first. The moment I have to consider artifacts my motivation evaporates. I really can't be asked to waste time, resources and attention when there's a guaranteed way to improve.

I feel like they only need to change 2 thing. 1: Remove the flat stats. Because right now getting them besides from Elementals Mastery everything else is borderline useless when the % stats is always superior. 2: Let's the players pick 1 out of the 5 artifacts pieces. So everyone can have a good flowers and feather before getting the full set.

Honkai has a substat re-roll feature that allows you to select which specific sub stat of a stigmata you want to re-roll and whether or not you want to keep the re-rolled sub stat or not. We use a specific material to re-roll these sub stats and there’s certain materials that influence how a sub stat’s re-roll would lean towards. It’s still RNG, but allows players to adjust sub stats that would otherwise be considered “trash” or “unusable”. I’m not saying to copy and paste the system, but rather make it so that it would feel less tiring to have an item that would help in reducing “Trash Artifact” waste similarly how weekly boss drops have Dream Solvents which allow players to feel less shitty in getting the wrong boss drop… and the craftable Artifact Box system doesn’t work to fix this. It’s a decent feature, but not the right direction, most of the trash artifacts come from the wrong sub stats being raised while leveling up the artifacts, not exactly from the artifact drop rate itself. One RNG is enough, having another layer of RNG that takes up more Resources is too much. Just as the video explains RNG on top of RNG is not a good business model, and will never be a good business model. If Hoyoverse won’t adjust this, then at least allow players to feel less shitty about getting the wrong sub-stat and have the option to “Reforge” an artifact; be it a way to reset an artifact’s level back to zero, or having the ability to re-roll a specific sub stat, or re-distribute a sub stat’s ascension. And that won’t be the end of the world.

I feel like it could be pretty intuitive and fair if they kept the randomness for HOW MUCH a substat is upgraded but make it so that we can choose WHICH substat we want to upgrade.

The artifact system is one of the major reasons why it made me took a break from Genshin the first time. Doing the same domain over and over really contributed to why I got burnt out.

The sad fact is that everyone knows and acknowledges this problem, there's lots of heavy spenders that keep saying that it's fine to face this kinda artifact system without realising it's very taxing for f2ps considering they don't even get to recharge their resin to Max with primos everyday(unless you're not saving them for a character)

5:20 I would argue Emblem of Severed Fate is also an exception to that as well since many charas use that set (Xiangling, Beidou, Raiden etc) and is currently THE artifact domain to farm with Shimenawa also being usable with the 2 piece set.

Imagine if the piece the domain drops is dependent on the day. Like Monday-flowers only, Tuesday-feathers only, etc. It’d make farming easier (similar to ascension mats) and you’d be able to complete a set more reliably.

I genuinely used to like the artifact system, about 50 hours ago. I only have 1 decently built Keqing at this point and I'm working on a Diluc I recently pulled and the longer I have to grind for artifacts the less I'm enjoying Genshin and I do genuinely think I'm close to burnout, Ley Line disorders even make them more annoying to run through it's like the game is punishing you on so many levels just for trying to enjoy it

I’ve always thought they need to make artifacts day dependent like talents and weapon upgrade mats. Like flowers on Mondays, feathers on Tuesday, etc. As it is you can spend days without seeing a sand, let alone it being of the artifact set you want, main stats you need or it having any good sub stats.

One thing that really bugs me is how annoying goblets are. Why on earth is it even possible to get crimson witch goblet with CRYO dmg?

You by far, of any Genshin youtubers (or even youtubers in general) have such a solid understanding of the fundamentals on game design and a consistent quality to your discussions, being able to articulate on points in an informative manner without repeating yourself. As a Comp Sci major with an emphasis on Game Design/Development, this channel and your videos are quite the gems, elevated by the fact that its on a game I love and care about as well.

Having to grind months just to get 2 vv EM pieces, not even mentioning how good, was such a drag. Finally getting it felt insanely good but at what cost. When trying to just go for upgrades for e.g. Raiden, I'm going mad at this point. The limitations and layers of rng are terrible. People defending this system are... redacted.

Completely agree and what is even worse is when you complete a domain and don’t even get the right artifact set 😞

Absolutely agree with everything said here. I’m also a day one player and I’ve been playing it almost daily since release. I’ve stopped playing it as of late strictly because of this horrible artifact system. I have so many amazing characters that I can’t fully utilize or build how I’d like because of my horrible rng. I don’t think anything will bring me back to this game until they change how this stupid system works. I would just like to feel rewarded for my hundreds of hours by getting some decent artifacts lol. Got to rank 55 just to still get cucked by rng

I love this channel. Coming from a game dev community, this is exactly the intelligent analysis I love. Everything you say is spot on and thought-provoking. MiHoYo would really benefit from watching these. If they adopted this advice, players would be happier and MiHoYo would likely make more money.

I agree, this is really one of the reasons i quit the game, i played since day 1, and i spent more than 8 months just farming the most optimal artifacts for my 2 teams in abyss, i wanted them to have the best artifacts possible more than (50:100 crit ratio,and certain ER threshholds for xl and xq), even though the current artifacts can still clear the abyss 36 stars already. When I wanted to pull for new units though, a realization dawned upon me, I'd have to farm an entirely new character when i'm not even satisfied with the current one. And there is literally no point to rolling other characters. My 2 teams are already cracked being hutao xq in team 1 and childe reverse vape in team 2. I no longer needed other units. The thing with this game is the endgame is literally garbage. Once you can consistently clear abyss 36 star, There is no more motivation, ur just grinding for the sake of a small chance to get ur character slightly stronger. With that being said, I still love this game at heart, the characters are really well designed, the world is beautiful, but it is just not for me.

The artifact system really is the one aspect that drains my motivation to play the game. I'll still get on to do my dailies, but some days I don't even spend my resin cuz I know I should use it on artifacts and it just feels pointless to try. Several times I've gone months trying to build a certain character, that sometimes I even skip character banners cuz I have too many I still need to build already.

this is so true. Getting artifacts is by far the hardest part of maxing out a character, and the game in general. Not only do you have to pray from the right set, but then the right piece, the main stat, sub stat, and then rolling into the correct sub stat. At this point i would be happy if they changed it so that you can control which set you want like you do for talent books.

I would prefer a laborious and time-consuming artifact system but know where we are going with all this time and resources invested. I imagine a system where you can choose in advance the set, the type of artifact, the main stat and the 4 secondary stats (with fixed values). This artifact doesn't exist yet, you have to invest resources to create it little by little. The coveted stats (CR and CDMG) will be more expensive in resources, and the less coveted (HP, DEF) will be more affordable. To get these resources, you have to farm in the respective domains of the artifact set. The artifact will be improved percent by percent, and may require special resources for certain levels. Maybe like crowns for lvl 10 talents, but less rare. In the end, the perfect artifact will be long and costly to finish, but you would be sure to get it at the end of the road.

I think artifacts needing resin is the worst part if everything was the same but we had an infinite amount of tries and artifacts weren't time gated then it would be fine it would be like shiny hunting in Pokémon but could only do nine encounters per day that would take me 455 days to catch a single one it's insanity

To me, the biggest issue with the artifact system is what gets brought up right after the 10-minute mark: the extreme randomness of the current artifact system completely derails the feeling of making progress by spending your resin. Leveling talents can get really expensive in mora, talent books, and enemy materials, but you can dedicate time or resin to collect any of these things and you know for certain that what you're doing is getting you closer to the character being "finished." You can run talent domains and know that every run means progress regardless of how high the leveling costs rise. Arfitacts work completely differently, though. Instead of every run bringing some level of guaranteed progress, every run is instead just another pull on a slot machine that you know is built not to work in your favor. It's not chipping away with slow but steady progress on improving your characters; it's spending time and resources making no progress until you hit a breakthrough at some indeterminate point. This way, even when you do finally get a full set that feels good enough for a character, the end result doesn't feel rewarding because it's now not equipment that you really built, just something the game finally decided to gift to you. I don't mind the wide array of artifact sets feeling too specialized if you could still see the endpoint of farming a new set when you start it. I wonder if they could implement a system where you could "level up" an artifact after it already hit level 20 where it wouldn't improve the main stat anymore, but every four bonus levels-worth of experience would let you swap a substat for another or otherwise redistribute where some of the bonus rolls go. Even this way as long as you found an artifact with the right main stat, you know that you can eventually build that one into what you want, even if it still takes more exp to get there.

I wrote in my survey that mainstat and substats should be lockable and rerollable. Resetting an artifact to its lvl1 state when it reaches 20 would also be a massive improvement. Not getting any resources back is fine and this way it still keeps a factor of mihoyos beloved rng

I have recomended to alot of my friends and other people in the genshin community that they should add the possibility to chose the stats of one of your artifacts when you complete the domain a certain numbers of times, or even have a tima gated perfect artifact once a month, alot of them say: "that would kill the game, you would get perfect artifacts on every character and don't play it anymore" wich is absolutly false, since if you got 1 perfect artifact once a month you couldn't even equip 3 characters in 1 year, and we get so many new character a year, second if genshin can't even make content for us to keep engaged outside of the artifact system, then they should rethink the way they aproach the game

Love the video! You explained everything really well and easily put our thoughts into such a great format! Definitely agree with you, even the enemy drops are the same at ar 35 and ar 55+. I'm currently AR 58 and it's such non sense that killing a ruin guard in world level 8 gives you 2 chaos devices like... The rewards stagnate from level 35 up, including ley lines, drops and artifacts, so it's completely understandable that most of us aren't enjoying the game anymore. Their events feel to me like trying to cover the stab wound with a band-aid, they try to cater to the players to play more but doesn't solve the main issues causing people to quit

the artifact system is so unbelievably bad that I farm talent books (without needing them at the moment) instead for farming artifacts just because of the thought of getting shitty artifacts and honestly it's probably the thing that making me burned out

I think the amount of specificity in this game is getting out of hand. Spending a boatload of money or dozens of hours on weapons and artifacts that would only ever be useful on 1-2 characters is absurd. And it's even more absurd that MHY keeps designing things this way.

I agree! And I hope in the future they add the ability to "re-roll" sub stats on artifacts you have already obtained.

Agreed 100%. Am new player, resin didn't bother me since there is story, and other stuff to do. But then i got to the point, when am just waiting for new updates, and story quest's. Sooo... i want to build my character for like abyss, or just trying different stuff, different team comps. But guess what? I can't, i mean am doing it, but its gonna take so long, i dont even know should i even bother, cuz am kinda burned out by artificial slowdown(resin and rng). What i mean is, i want to play the game, but the game dont want me to play it lol.

I actually almost sold my account once because I spent 6 weeks without an ATK% sands drop. This system also completely breaks the balance because of how much character's power depends on the artifacts.

I’ve been trying for MONTHS to get perfect artifacts for Childe and even though I have most of it now I’m still lacking a good enough goblet and flower and it’s honestly so frustrating

It's all about the dopamine hits. From seeing a golden meteor, to seeing a quad/penta crit roll. People love that dopamine rush and mihoyo knows it.

Excellent video on the topic of artifacts! One idea that I had in mind to improve the system would be to allow the player the chance to reroll one or two of the substats and maybe even optimize them, kind of like how you're able to reroll a stat and optimize the values in Tom Clancy's The Division.

This, and the lack of end-game focused content are my biggest gripes with Genshin for sure. I love the exploration and character, but everything else sort of falls short :(

I also feel like they have set bonuses done backwards. They reserve unique gimmicks and means of making a character's playstyle unique (or just playable like Kokomi) under the 4-piece set. Going for pairs of 2-piece sets is outright kneecapping yourself outside of a few specific characters. You can not mix and match, only do one thing for one character and be damn lucky in the meanwhile One could really open the doors for customization if the sets were reworked so we weren't forced at gunpoint to go for full sets. For generalists or to give certain characters multiple tasks, they can run pairs, like giving Kokomi both overhealing attack with Ocean-Hued Clam and attack buffing with Heart of Depth. And for specilization, they can go the full set, making Kokomi either a pure healer or a pure Hydro DPS/sub-DPS (provided she get the slight tweaks in her base kit to make her better capable at fighting)

All points laid out beautifully. In one of the recent player surveys, MiHoYo gave a list of potential frustrations with the game, and the Artifact farming system was among them. Feels like a long shot but I am hopeful that this inclusion means that they are at least considering a revision. The game will see its 2nd anniversary this year, meaning that a portion of their player base will have been invested for that long--MiHoYo simply has to reward all of that time, effort, (and money) if they want to continue seeing the same massive success. Hopefully, thoughtful fan feedback like this will encourage them to make the right decision. Thanks for putting out great content, looking forward to the next Genshin video.

It's kinda curious how some people say that it is to prevent players from leaving the game since it keeps them playing. Like, if people will stop playing the game once the artifact rng or resin system is removed, wouldn't it mean the game is dogshit in anything unrelated to farming? In my case i already stopped playing it precisely because i felt hardstuck with my artifacts from a long time, it wasn't that i lacked free time to spend, but honestly, each time i obtained a new 4 star character the main question was "i can farm from only god knows how much time to have fun with this new character i don't even know if i like more than the ones i already have (when you play the demo of a character, you can't select your comps, so...) or i can go tank TF in toplane with chat disabled and have fun rn" and guess what i usually picked :v . I don't intend to compare GI with LoL, it was just an example that can be applied to any other game, but truth be told: my time matters for me, and if a game doesn't respect that, i simply don't play it.

I think the artifacts system might change in future cause if i remember correctly there was a survey in this version where they asked about if artifacts farming was bad or something like that

Suggestions for artifacts -Give players an option to use a sort of alchemy formula to allow tempering/changing of substats/main stats. Kinda like the Umbracites in Nioh. -Make each substat scale off of the 4/8/12/16/20 level evenly. -Increase the XP offered by the Artifact XP mats sold in the teapot. The only real efficient way to get XP for artifacts is by more artifact farming -Can we at least get more Resin/higher refresh rate? Hell scratch the other suggestions. Just have this fixed and some significant problems would get fixed.

Vars, coming from League of Legends, I'm so happy for you that you managed to get a following on Genshin too! I've been watching for a long time and used to play league but switched to Genshin when it came out and I love the videos. I'm likely going to study game design too and your videos are very interesting 🤠🤠

I’ve been farming Geo artifacts for Ningguang lately. Only running a two piece. In probably the 100+ artifacts I’ve gotten out of that domain. I’ve only found one single good artifact for her. My second piece is a hat with CD main but hp, hp%, def%, and atk%. It’s absolutely garbage but I can’t get any other artifacts that are remotely usable or wanted. Such a bad system

I just wish the main stat was "Elemental Damage", instead of specific elements. But if they really would make it better, making a artifact shareable or letting us choose which substat I want to level every 4 levels

It makes me want to question why they would implement this sort of mechanic into the game. It’s really unnecessary having players to spend your resins or sometimes your lovely freemogems or your real world money on artifacts you don’t want, especially when also receive random stats you don’t want. I would be fine if Hoyoverse divided two different artifacts separately per challenge. For example if I was going after thundering fury only, then I challenge this domain that only gives you thundering fury, instead of an additional thundersoother. And as for me who has played the game for 4 months, this is where the point the resin system and lack of endgame content starts rearing its ugly head.

Old topic but yeah.. What I would like to have I think is an Artifact Re-roll system, like the strongboxes where you could lock the either the main stat or the secondary ones and reroll the other by sacrificing a number of other artifacts. Either that or double the daily resin, idk.

this needs more upvote honestly... i came to Crimson witch of PAIN domain for 8 months to just get a minor upgrade on 1 circlet, oh mind you that's a bonus 1.7% crit rate. thanks Mihoyo.

Having Goblets be "Elemental Damage Bonus" instead of one random specific element would be so much better... Just to name one single aspect of this whole f'ed up system

The main culprit to me is simply Resin. The simple fact that Resin actively prevents you from playing the game pretty much exacerbates any and all problems in the game. Which goes completely against the main goal of keeping players playing.

The system reminds me of the Diablo 3 item drops getting the right stats on the right set legendary’s makes a huge difference. One thing they did in that game that I think would make a difference is to reroll a substat. It costs some form of currency but can help make a bad item into a good one or a good one to a great item and so forth.

Completely agree! I've been making the point for some time now that the artifact system is what's discouraging me from pulling for new characters. My current ones whom I want to play needs artifacts and I have about 8 characters to go. It's so demotivating to get a new character and they feel underwhelming because they don't have the gear.

This video hits harder to me after I finally managed to get out of the Viridescent Venerer farming hell this week. 20 days worth of resin until I finally got a 5* EM goblet to finish a proper 4 piece set. No circlets on sight, but at least I had random off-set ones. Logging in everyday just to throw my resin there in 10 minutes and seeing how I was getting absolutely nothing of value (and a lot of useless Maiden's Beloved pieces too) was the worst time I had playing this game so far. And who knows for how much longer I could have been stuck there if my luck had been worse...

I've been playing since day one. About half a year or so ago, I got way more into properly gearing my characters after really coming to understand the game mechanics. So I went back to a lot of the units that I went through the game with initially to better gear them and that's when it really sunk in how much I hate the artifact system. Just recently I finished going through my initially batch of character plus one or two recent characters I really enjoy like Ayaka and Shogun, but it takes so long just to get decent artifacts; lets alone perfect artifacts. There are characters that I've gotten over the past several months like Diluc, Childe, Jean, Sucrose, etc, that I really want to play but it feels like I'll never actually getting around to it. Its frustrating and I've begin to just considering dropping the game since it doesn't feel like I'm being rewarded at all for my hours of dedication. RNG on top of RNG is a great way to describe it honestly. If being able to choose a main stat to farm isn't possible, players should at least be able to choose what sub stats get leveled up. Between the RNG and the resin restrictions, artifacts are just an aggravating part of the game that never feels rewarding or like you'll ever finished with it. If it doesn't change, its honestly just going to get progressively worse as the game continues.

Yeah. Some of my worst moments with this system was back when Eula first came out. I fell in love with her kit and character. But I literally spent 2 months straight grinding for Pale Flame for her. Two months straight of resin not counting the resin I used for weekly bosses.

The problem in short is not RNG but RNG (The correct set) behind another RNG (The correct piece) behind another RNG (The correct main stats) behind another RNG (The correct Sub stats) behind another RNG (The correct 1st roll) behind another RNG (The correct 2nd roll) behind another RNG (The correct 3rd roll) behind another RNG (The correct 4th roll) behind another RNG (The correct 5th Roll)

My hope is that Genshin will eventually be pressured into fixing this. FGO in its first couple of years was very similar in its issues, recently they’ve taken to making things a lot easier on the players (JP side not NA don’t get on me for that) due to losing sales. Genshin pays a lot more attention to its fan base though and it doesn’t have the luxury of such a well known IP like Fate/ to back it up, so hopefully that process is a lot sooner,

The one thing i had in mind for artifcats system to work better is Artifact Fusion. If you have like idk 3 Crimson Witch flowers you can fuse them into one(like changing artifact system on Alchemy table) and choose from which one what artifact substat you want. I think it would still make people do more dungeons but not as frustirating

Well said, I agree with everything you said. My main issue is deciding what to spend my daily resin on, artifacts, bosses, talents, etc.

There's so many issues around this character progression. Especially when gated with random artifacts like this. Tbh darksiders item upgrading system is something to consider. We can choose the stats we want for upgrade according to what we feed into that item. We can put all the 3 star and 4 star with crit substat to upgrade the crit stat. This is tough but at least less rng. I think this is great for reducing the randomness.

Hoyo has neglected their game, and their playerbase to the point where it feels like there is a huge wall between. The game is not designed to be fun, it's designed to give you a gambling addiction and to run like a hamster on a wheel. Such an expensive scam, I wish this game never got as hype as it did. Fuck Hoyoverse.

4:56 OOOOOOOOOOOO, THAT ACTUALLY PISSES ME OFF. I'm gonna be ANGY for a fat minute

spent about 2 months trying to get an ER sands for my raiden, and when i finally got it it had one good substat that it never rolled into. feels good.

I started playing Genshin Impact 3 months ago, and I'm just now hitting the artifact grind. I have no interest in running Spiral Abyss or breaking DPS world records, so I don't mind the many layers of RNG on the substats. I'm just looking for 5 star pieces from the right set with the right main stat, and I still find the current system underwhelming. The funny thing is that I dislike running some of the artifact domains anyway. Even if Hoyoverse gave us unlimited attempts, I'd only do around 4 runs per day, because I don't find them fun. I don't need an incentive to limit my playtime, so for me the combination of the resin system and the layers of RNG feels like overkill. It's like Hoyoverse don't want me to play the game lol.

Honestly it feels like the real issue is just the randomness to how substats roll every 4 levels if that was controllable or a new item allowed you to re roll them it would definitely be better.

i have spent 4000 resin on vv domain and I have received not a single main stat em vv piece, I really hope they make these changes because it is frustrating to have near perfect feather and flower but having zero of the others

I agree so much with the artefact system like I suggested to my friend that we could have at least one day a month where it doesn't cost resin to get artefacts or books or something or make it a weekly thing

My biggest saving grace with Genshin is that while i play the game daily, i don't really do things like Abyss so artifacts can just be 'good enough' for me because I don't need the best of the best

I must admit, as I like to complain about the artifact system, I have to admit every time the perfect artifact hits, you try that piece out on your main and see the visible increase in damage. That's the most satisfying feeling ever

8:50 This is exactly why I only grind Emblem set and use the leftover to use exchange box for noblesse Most artifacts like dusk are optimal for certain characters only while Emblem can be used by most characters, the rest can use wanderer, glad, shimenawa, noblesse, etc where they could mix and match with the only exception being anemo character cuz VV is a must. It isn't optimal but takes so much less effort and the difference in DPS on most character is pretty small as substat quality matter equally if not more than the set bonus. Trying to get an upgrade set for some of my characters like Ganyu for example (with 60% CR and 200 CD using wanderer without weapon substat as I'm using hamayumi) by grinding Blizzard set would take weeks if not months as although the 4 set effect will be much more optimized, your substat will need to be close to an equal level of the non-optimized set to get to that point. And it is only an upgrade in freeze comp, reverse melt would still use wanderer After a certain point, leveling talent and level make much more sense if what you want is progression hence why I almost used up my crown, it start up as pure dedication to my favorite character but now it become the only tangible upgrade despite the stupid resource cost

Well RU-vid just sent me to your channel so been binging your videos. Since I did this kind of video for fun my self and ya you did this topic better then I did. As for the one thing I could say that I could add to it is that 548,352 is the number of potential artifacts with the current RNG. while limiting it to only the guaranteed 5 star drop.

what hurts most is when you just got a perfect artifact after months of farming and you don't have any mora left to fully level it up with no resin left

Completely true, the artifact system is the main reason why I have so much unleveled characters and characters on my blacklist, who'll never get a chance. While you don't need more than 1-2 characters of each element to play the game, you also can't afford building more. You literally get more free wish currency than resin to use the characters you get by wishing. Not that having infinite resin can save this as doing artifact domains is unreasonably boring and 200 times for each character is a big no. And then there is the problem they try to target this at casual players. As a casual player you ain't gonna play every day and use 180 resin. At best you'll play twice a week and use 2x160. So now instead of 2 months, it takes you 7 to max out a single character, well, good luck with that. And that's assuming you haven't already stopped logging in when you ran out of content, reverting to waiting mode for the next major content update, which gives you zero progress for months.

when i started, i didnt really know about significance of substats, and just put artifacts on my characters. it actually served me fairly well as i got to inazuma without stressing about combat. i only put thought into it when i fought my first mirror maiden haha.

Hey, nice video. I just gonna add that there are gatcha games that have very similar equipment system to Genshin and they usually give some ways to modify substats or to sometimes choose artifact of any set you want with rigth stats - basically to help people that got screw over by RNG. It would be nice if Genshin added some methods similar to this.

Can agree with all that you said, the system really sucks to the point that level 1 characters can do the same damage with perfect artifacts than level 90 characters with good to medium artifacts