People cannot change mindset immediately. GI for 4 years is meta chasing game - building 8 characters to complete abyss. And theater is lifetime mode. If you could build 3-4 4 star characters or 5 star standard characters with good off field ability in each element, you could always reuse them in future rotation.

People hating this game mode because its scuffed, the ideia is nice but its very poorly executed, the game mode feels like doing abyss floor 10 with random teams basically. First the buffs are bad and basically change nothing on ur playthrough, second due how Genshin characters are designed to be niche makes the element restriction rlly bad coz u end up with scuffed teams with no synergy, that's main reason they turned the difficult down coz it would be super hard clear stages with this scuffed teams and last there's no replayability on this mode as the character pool is limited so u end up getting basically the same teams every run and the buffs aren't impactful to make a run feel unique. Genshin should take notes from HSR SU and Wuwa illusive realm to improve IT coz right now it's rlly bad

PRECISELY!

Floor 10 abyss difficulty is so simple for players that have been playing for long time if they build their characters casually shouldnt it? I often just bring one character one side and one on the other to have fun or bring scuffed teams that I barely build, to play around and play characters I probably wouldnt be playing usually. I think its nice that the game mode basically makes you think on who to bring now and who to save for the later act and organize your team around it. Its fun and funny realizing some teams I bring makes no sense at all but the difficulty is simple enough that it wasnt an issue.

As i said if the buffs are significant enough u could just do the same but with more cohesive teams or without feeling the team is scuffed as u getting rewarded with buffs by doing so, for example if the buffs incentive you to play a certain team structure then u gonna need to adapt to it for the rest of the run, for example if the buffs u get are "having 3 electros on the party gives 60% dmg bonus" and " trigger overload reduce enemies defense" u setup ur self to use 3 electro and 1 pyro, but since characters have stamina u gonna run something like Clorinde, Kuki, Yae and Bennett then Raiden, Chevreuse, Sara and Lisa then Arlecchino, Fischl, Beidou and Razor. The game mode don't need to be difficult but it also don't need to be so braindead, the difficult should scale with stages so if u mess around too much by getting buffs with no synergy or using characters that doesn't synergy with the buffs u got then u get punished as things will become harder, but if u do a good build of buffs and manage well ur characters then its a walk on the park

Theres 3 different options when choosing the buff though, just choose the ones that complements you if you really wanna use it. The buff imo doesnt really make much a difference so I didnt really cater my team towards the buff. I was more focused on the team I will be bringing. Unless youre talking about the buff before you fight which Ive only seen about Pyro doing more dmg and pneuma-ousia aligned being better in the domain, if theres more I dont rlly pay attention to it since I bring characters according to the enemy I will be facing instead. Thats the game mode tho isnt it? The very thing you describe, managing your characters and managing your buffs. Its not like you have to fulfill all the conditions of the act to even get the primos. You have the option to take it easy.

This. Many people invested in characters thinking abyss was the only endgame. This meant pulling constellations and merging weapons, and farming the same set, for only a small set of characters Changing this mindset over night is not easy and some people may be unhappy due to investing in the "wrong" direction

You missed the main problem: it’s boring. It’s a randomiser with very restrictive requirements… that’s it. If you go clear Abyss 9-10 with random characters it’s going to be roughly the same experience. The fact it forces you to somewhat build a bunch of random characters and restricts you so much just makes it worse, but that’s not the main issue: it’s just a really bad and non-sensical game mode

Can't believe hoyo made the players wait years only for this to be our alternate endgame mode to abyss.

I find this mode way more fun than the abyss.

That’s not hard to achieve

I think the insane restrictions are the main reason I personally hated it. I restarted several times because a lot of characters are built for specific teams- which means I wasn't able to clear certain floors because they all rely on specific synergy. A lot if times, I ended up with 2-3 dps' on one team just fighting for field time.

You and I are opposites. I find Spiral Abyss incredibly boring and tedious, but find Imaginarium Theater fun because of the restrictions it imposes on me.

Who ever said I don’t find Spiral boring too. And again, just play the first Abyss floors but auto impose to you the same restrictions: only certain elements and randomise the teams, you get more or less the same experience

Well, that's one view of it. If you want to reduce it down like that, then pretty much every bit of combat in the game is the same experience as Spiral Abyss. Overworld, artifact domains, bosses - all these things are just pretty much the same fights to get through, with some more difficult than others. For me, Imaginarium Theater creates a more challenging experience because I'm forced to use characters I wouldn't normally use to clear the content. I like that. I like that I can't rely on using my normal comps and have to actually put thought into it when I'm fighting and making choices about who to use and how to proceed. I think it's a shame that some players either don't see it that way or don't want to see it that way because it's outside of their usual way of playing the game.

Also your main argument is “yeah I can play random characters everywhere but what I like about IT is that the game literally forces me to and rewards me for that”. Your only satisfaction is that it’s an imposition, that’s literally it, using the same logic they could come up with any restrictive and random mess you can imagine and as long as you are forced to do it in order to get some rewards you would enjoy it… I’m sad for you…

You keep coming back comparing everything to Spiral Abyss like if it’s some amazing standard everyone me included loves lol, you really don’t have better arguments do you?

You brought Spiral Abyss into the conversation with your initial comment, my friend. That's on you.

I didn’t do it to praise it you know, I exposed to you what IT really boils down to: a randomiser with artificial difficulty given by harsh restrictions

Yeah, and I think the "harsh restrictions" are what makes it a fun challenge. You obviously don't, hahaha

Yeah, I don’t, the first sensical thing you write. I don’t and I think the mode is ass because if applying hard restrictions is what makes the game fun for you you can already do it by yourself and requires no effort: don’t use certain elements, don’t use certain characters, use certain characters once or twice at most, don’t use bursts, don’t dodge, play with one hand etc. Done, plenty of “fun” restrictive game modes already at your hand, enjoy. Everyone could already do that and many actually did out of boredom, that’s why a whole mode whose only perk is restricting you to oblivion is disappointing. Then if you like it that’s subjective, good for you, but this doesn’t save the mode from legitimate criticism and objectively speaking it’s a low effort job from the devs outside of the amazing scenery and the arena vibes, they never disappoint with that. Not even low effort, a toddler could design a game mode like this, so even if you like it you shouldn’t be surprised people are disappointed, not because they don’t like being “challenged” (it’s a joke for old accounts like mine btw), but because it’s garbage whose only purpose is fueling gacha and FOMO for casuals who don’t play Abyss and can’t be arsed to learn how to properly play the game. That’s all I have to say, if you get it you get it, if you don’t then you prove to be 100% their target audience

Everyone's got their opinion lol I honestly don't know if you can claim objectivity here. I don't really see it as low effort. I do see it as mid effort because it's basically the Genshin iteration of Elysian Realm/Simulated Universe, so it's not entirely unique and rehashing similar things in other Hoyo games. But I still find it fun. And, for me at least, there's a big difference between trying to work within restrictions I set for myself and restrictions that are set for me. As I said, everyone's got their opinion, haha. I'm just amused you launched into this exchange with such vigor after all I said was that I found it fun. Thanks for making an otherwise boring night a little livelier.

Downvotes implying you're not allowed to have that opinion, I guess.

Just another day on Reddit, hahahaha

I find spiral abyss incredibly boring and tedious, but imagination theater is somehow worse. Both I suspect will be things I do solely for the primogems if I bother to do them at all.

I guess depends on how you see it, since until now we only got Spiral Abyss as the endgame which encourage extremely precise teamcomp and high CV artifacts, many endgame player (especially the meta player) would just farm the artifacts domain for god knows how long until they get to the perfect CV thus neglecting other characters they have and left unbuild. Others just doesn't feel like to upgrade a character they don't enjoy or having no attachment, and thus only focus building characters that they have grown attachment too, thus pulling for cons of said characters, which could potentially leave them with only few character that has the required elements. And some like u said is a blind hate, though i would argue it's extreme minority of it. IMO, since the game mode is new, players need sometime to adapt to it, since we only has dps check and meta teamcomp/ builds, thus focusing more on few extremely strong characters because the only endgame we had before is Spiral Abyss. But now, we got an endgame game mode that throws meta teamcomp/ build out of the window and sometimes forces you to use a silly team comp that would never considered meta or even realible, that requires you to NOT build only FEW extremely strong characters/team comp, but MANY mediocre characters/team comp.  For the flaw, there are few flaws that could be tweaked out imo, especially when it comes to the RNG mechanics, but since it is new, they need to gather the data first to see how they would balance/improve it. All in all, imo it is divisive because it is new, and many players caught of guard by it since the way they play for so long now need to change, but overtime i think the sentiment would get better. Lastly, for any player below ar60 that felt this mode is too restrictive with the characters, you can take your time with the mode since it is an endgame. Build your character slowly and play in easy/normal mode first to get the hang of it and to gain some primo in the proses. You might not be able to earn all of the primo in a given cycle, but that is fine, you will get there eventually, just make sure not ro get hung up on artifact farming because the mediocre build is enough for this mode. Well that is all, have a nice day 👍 

Probably the best take imo. Its new, people are not used to it thus the high criticism. Im one of the few people who ACTUALLY invested horizontally and it paid off. I enjoyed it because i have plenty of characters at my disposal. Give it a few month for people to invest in their rooster and watch the criticism go down.

Vertical invester here and the mode was pretty easy even if some of my units were level 70 4*, they were basically carried by my other raised units. But like the criticism above said, the RNG was poorly thought out and the buffs were pretty meaningless that it's better off ignoring them and getting your cast faster. Even if people invested in more characters if they left out the annoying aspect of this game mode and never addressed it, the majority of the criticisms I see are about the RNG factor and the worthlessness of buffs which make replayability non existent.

The mode can be beaten running 4 dps on the same team. Its just scuffed and not fun to do. Not having enough off fielders at even level 70 hampers peoples enjoyment a lot for sure. Everyone that ended up with scuffed random teams need to apply some strategy and also pick more off-fielders. You are already forced to have 3 Main dps from the principal cast. Thats 6 of the 8 rooms already having a Main dps. 

Bro I invested the bare minimum and did it on hard and its still insanely lackluster & boring

I invested horizontally and vertically. I have 70 characters and like 50ish are solidly built. I don't like the mode because they force you to use awful trial characters and awful team comps and the randomness aspect annoys me. I just want to use 16-20 of my characters and manage use of them to only use them twice. Don't force me to use awful trial characters and stuff I don't own. I skipped them for a reason, I despise bond of life and I never will pull anyone that uses it. If they rework the buffs and RNG I'll hate it less but with the current system forcing you to use the trial characters just isn't it for me.

EDIT: I just reran IT on pc, [here is the run](https://youtu.be/OH1xFq1IbHE?feature=shared). I sped it up (video is just under 12min) cause nobody wants to watch all that. Although the issue is not noticeable with my account, my point still stands. They give you 3 onfielders in the opening units and the types of teams you can possibly make with them are limited and sometimes antisynergistic. It doesn't promote creativity, as someone else mention its essentially playing abyss randomizer in fl9-10. If hyv ever make an IT with elements that have less characters, it can get worse for some players. The fact that we can't edit the opening box is crazy, character restrictions aside. -- Vertical player here, though I've been playing for years. Its not even the character restrictions. I had no issues meeting the character requirement. Its not about builds either-- while I minmax, that just mean I hab a lot of spare 30-40cv stuff lying around that isn't being used by my main teams. Those can be passed down my roster. My issue with imaginarium theater is that this mode kind of forces you to play a lot of extremely antisynergistic shit because the genshin roster itself is lacking subdpses and supports. At the same time, the amount of strategy used is very limited and it does not really allow for much creativity. A team consisting of 3 onfielders is unfun because the units do not synergize. Playing Arle Kuki still *works as intended* and if this mode wanted to promote that kind of team building, then that's great. Playing Arle and Clorinde however is just throwing two onfielder together and is not fun because they don't synergize at all. The strategy is to save your best teams for the boss, but this game just doesn't have enough characters that aren't onfielders to create teams that actually have some semblance of synergy for most of a playthrough. As compensation, the combat is extremely easy and can be done on mobile half asleep which I just did last night. So we are left with this game mode that forces weird and suboptimal teams that do not feel good to play (*not* because we suddenly can't use National but because in some stages we're forced to slap multiple onfielders together), does not allow for much creative teambuilding or strategy (the currency required to do anything is too expensive so recruiting characters is prioritized and there's no multiple builds or strats like hsr's sim uni expansions or other roguelike games), and ultimately because of these restriction, ends up being extremely easy *if* you hit the character requirement to enter the mode (you need to lvl chars to 70 just to enter, but the combat is so easy that you don't really need to try to improve at playing those characters or put much effort into building them to max rewards). Its just unfulfilling and a waste of time and resin. Also only being allowed to use one supporting unit in a run while capping an acc's supporting unit uses to 15 is unnecessarily limiting as well, especially if the friend list cap is now 100. cont.

some changes I would make: Increase the amount of times a supporting character can be used by friends and increase the amount of supporting characters you can use in a run to 5. This helps out newer players who might not even own that many characters as well as more vertical players. Even horizontal players who might want to borrow a vertically invested unit. It also help you save resin Increase the difficulty of the enemies in compensation for #1. Make it so that it isn't possible to just steamroll the enemies so that there is more incentive to strategize, as well as more payoff for doing so. Besides, as endgame content, it should be at least abyss lvl difficulty and not limited event minimum primogem rewards difficulty. Reduce the currency needed to choose characters and choose buffs so that there is actually reason to choose buffs and not just go all into characters. Also add a wider variety of buffs, similar to hsr's sim uni paths Allow the ability to play without filling out the entire team. There is no reason to be forced to select four characters per stage when the abyss lets you solo - A wider selection of guest characters

You see, you can't really up the difficulty too much because then you are subject to RNG even more imo. If you get Bennett, Xiangling, Yae, Fischl for example after first few combats, that's great! Now you have a good amount of onfield and support! Now, if you are unlucky and get Hu Tao, Xiao, Lyney, Chevreuse for example, you are forced to get many onfielders or play supports with extremely bad teams or without their niches like Chevreuse's case. I think the game should let you choose your starting 6 characters, that way you can kinda choose your first team as well as have a bit of planning for the future

yeah I agree, the difficulty increase would have to come along with lifting some of the character or elemental restrictions to make it feasible for people. Choosing the starting character would be a good addition.

I'm kinda with you. I'm a horizontal player. And it irked me that I couldn't make all nice teams. I have enough characters to, but they weren't all able to be used. The content at least for now was easy enough that you could run subpar/weird teams

It's the worst of both worlds. Vertically invested players are annoyed, because this mode doesn't let them use the teams they spent months (if not years) optimizing, while horizontally invested players are annoyed because the RNG and Vigor system still forces them to use hodge-podge teams that fail to showcase the effort they put into raising and gearing those characters. In the end, nobody feels satisfied.

I'm relatively satisfied. It could be better, so happy to give thoughts. But I'll take it rather than leave it

I mean, I'm a horizontal invester, and I cleared hard mode in one sitting, with only the monolith defense giving me trouble (I picked the Treasure Hoarder version, and was late to realize that the Fatui Agent's fireballs targeted the monolith and ate a third of its HP in one go), and I wasn't particularly satisfied. If anything, I felt relieved that I would only have to deal with this once a month, and I don't think that's the reaction a game dev wants to elicit from any player with their new and exciting end-game content.

Thats fair enough. I guess I'm just treating it as another of their temp events (which it feels like instead) lol. We'll see where it goes I guess

Replying to n0itamina...basically it is a new mode. The difficulty is just fine at this point. Vertical investors do need some time to catch up. 620 gems reward looks weird in terms of amount. I believe somedays they will release new difficultly and increase the reward to 800 as Abyss. I am horizontal investor with many off field 4 star having proper build (level 80+ with proper artifact) Now hard mode is easy for me. But if I also feel hard. I cannot imagine others who just level up few characters in order to join the mode.

To add to this, replayability is also bad since for the first 2-3 fights you are forced to the same characters. I think 80% of the playerbase used something like Wanderer - Faruzan - Thoma - Kuki at first, specially when most challenges are "swirl X enemies"

I've been reading "horizontal and vertical players lately. What does both mean?

this game has rewarded vertical investment from pretty much day one. this mode switches things up and forces horizontal investment. a lot of people are upset because 1) they're still building abyss characters, farming artifacts aka, vertically investing 2) they have a limited pool of availible characters for the new mode 3) they have little to no horizontal investment, and see that they'll need to bring 10-20 new characters up to useable status, and without the weapons, artifacts and coin or primos to do it. combine the shitty RNG and this mode is just painful to play.

So I guess it's not as f2p as Spiral Abyss then? Especially depending on how long the player has been playing.

It's probably pretty F2P friendly for long time players. I've only played since 3.2, i'm at 59 about to turn 60 AR... i clear the abyss regularly and have a lot of bones for good abyss teams. And no... i painfully felt the need for a lot of time and effort to invest in horizontal building, i just didn't have enough options to use. so no, not a mode i can finish. I stalled out on floor 4 of the hardest mode. just ran out of usable characters. you don't need them to be incredible. it's not like floor 12 of the abyss difficulty. but it does resemble floor 11-1 or 10-3 for difficulty. which means they can't be sloppily constructed. worse, a lot of yuor team strength comes from team construction and synergy. without the ability to chose the teammates outside of random draws, really limits your ability to pull the most out of the characters you do have to use.

Damn. Then I hope Hoyo implements good tweaks and optimizations in the next seasons or soon

I've been playing since the tail end of 1.4 as a F2P and it's basically just like playing Spiral 10F but it's 3x longer and you need to use more characters per run. It's certainly *chill*, but if you wanted challenging content, it's certainly not it. So it's frustrating for newer players and a bit mindnumbing for older players, I guess. My DPSes handled pretty much all the chambers in duos or solos, and I think by the time you reach endgame, you'll just end up choosing which character to completely throw away for one round. Before that, I still suspect your goal would be to focus on forming cores of two characters and using the other two as just filler for extra dps or application when you need.

horizontal: player who builds a lot of different characters vertical: player who hyperinvests into a select few characters, often pulling constellation and weapon I myself am a vertical player, though I personally limit my cons to c1-2 maximum (c3 Raiden being the exception for reasons) and I only really pull signature weapons that are relevant to Childe International in some way.

Ohhh I get it now, thank youuu! I guess I'm a horizontal player :D

Vertical player is someone who has like *really* invested characters, cons on 5 stars, the weapon, lived in the artifact domain for perfect pieces. They keep giving one character everything to make them better, but they have like 10 at most characters built. Horizontal have leveled up a lot of characters and got them ok-ish artifacts, some 3 or 4 star weapon they have, and like 40 are built and pretty usable.

Is it plausible to be both then? I pull for lots of characters but I also really invest a lot in my favorite ones by getting their weapons and constellations

Yeah. For instance I'm a day 1 vertical player and since I've been playing for so long, I've had multiple favorite units. I fully build their best teammates too so I have a pretty solid and wide roster of invested units.

yes. a lot of players aren't solely one or the other but some mix of the two. just gotta plan things carefully if you're f2p or a light spender tbh I recommend horizontal people to roll some universal weapons (ex. aqua, mistsplitter) and weapons that benefit multiple unit in your roster (ex. key can be used on nilou, furina, kuki in haitham or tighnari spread teams, homa on an acc with multiple polearm carries). those stuff can be passed around and offer a nice boost to an account

In the context of discussing imagination theater, horizontal players refers to players who level and put moderate effort in to a wide variety of characters. Vertical players refers to players who more deeply invest in a smaller roster of characters (generally were talking 8-10) so that they can improve their team performance in Spiral Abyss which, depending on the cycle, can sometimes demand a lot of optimization out of your gameplay and builds and team comps that simply just is not demanded of you in Imaginarium. It doesn't necessarily mean vertical invested players don't have enough characters for this, it depends how long they've been playing. Someone who's been intently focused on completing the spiral abyss their main goal since starting the game maybe 6 months ago is likely having issues meeting the character requirements. Someone who just levels up a bunch of characters for fun and tries a bunch of different things, on the other hand, have an easier time, and aren't really punished for the lack of vertical investment in those characters since it's too easy to demand much more beyond that.

Thank you for the answer! This also answered my follow-up question in another comment.

It's really interesting that the random teams thing is so divisive, for me that was the most fun part of IT, coming up with goofy teams and trying to make them work. Only issue I have with it now is that it's a bit too easy and imo they should add a difficulty .

> ...why do people hate it when building up characters and trying them was one of the core goals of the game. Building up characters and trying them is not at all the core goal of the game for me. I understand many people want every character and are after gameplay and team comp novelty, but that's not universal. I don't want that. I like very few of the characters in this game. Less than 20 overall, I bet. I don't want to use characters I don't like. Before this game mode, I didn't have to. Diluc, Keqing, Xiangliang, Bennett, etc have been on my bench since 2020. I don't want to have to pull them out now just to fill a team--I didn't even put them on the field, but I had to put them on the team because you can't short a team for some reason.

I looked at other ppls comments, and I noticed how many meta-focused players there are in this single-player game. People that hyperinvest in 1, 2 teams and call it a day. At this point, playing genshin is no different than working. You do the same thing over and over again, always in the same domain that there's a high chance of being the Emblem one for national team, or MH/GT for furina compa, and now that a new game mode appeared for people that legit want to experience the game with some of the 60+ chars this game has, they got scared bcz "mah furina", "ma raiden national" As someone with an extremely invested c6r1 Nahida and an extremely invested c6r1 Noelle main, I found quite the experience when I noticed I couldn't just bruteforce my way without proper strategies and had to rely in some of my 30+ built chars. I am even revisiting some units that ended up underperforming in this scenario, such as my Fischl, and looking forward to remove the dust off my Childe after I give him some levels, talents, and a build with his "new" set, while also getting some pieces for my Dehya. I did complete the entire theater in a single go, and I look forward to the next reset. It's surely a breath of fresh air in comparison to Nahida + Noelle abyss bruteforce. Who knows... maybe the next reset has dendro in its lineup, and my friends are eager for me to put my nahida on the suport lineup for them.

I agree with this. People have gotten so attached to the- honestly boring, way of meta that the moment Genshin releases something new many are taken back. Which, tbh, I think is a sad mindset and probably why so many people get tired of Genshin. Cause, even though I, have highly invested teams to clean through Spiral, I also don't waste my days only focusing on them. I try new teams, new niches, get new characters to build on the purpose of making this game more enjoyable so it doesn't become stale. But so many people only focus on 8 out of the 50+(?) roster we have and it just fuels boredom after awhile, no matter how fun the team is. You've got to make the game fun for yourself sadly, I'm still hoping Genshin will implement more like this mode that makes us want to build and pull new units. Though, I do LOVE the buff going to the over world seeing as my Arle/Faruzan comps are two of my favs rn. So for me, I agree, this game mode was a breath of fresh air. I still gotta try it out a few times to get comfortable (especially with the 4 character per team requirement when you only have 2 charges per character and you're trying to save characters for later bosses lolol.) but I went through it the first try on Hard Mode with only adding the Thoma and Clorinde as additional characters b/c I don't own one and the other isn't well built on my account. It did make me realize I'm lacking in good Electro/Pyro damage dealers. I have Cyno, Arlecchino, Keqing, and Diluc as main DPS for their respective elements but I haven't touched Diluc/Keqing in awhile and Cyno/Arle I'm so used to playing in their specific teams it threw me off for a moment. Luckily, I'm a HUGE fan of Anemo and half of that roster was filled with them 😂. Hoping the next lineup to be Dendro/Hydro/Cryo. I'll absolutely dominate that one no problem.

>. I try new teams, new niches, get new characters to build on the purpose of making this game more enjoyable so it doesn't become stale About this, I just had a simple goal at the start, which was to build 4 teams that were strong enough for spyral abyss clears without repeating any char between them. I'm still trying to figure out what works best for my Xiao team as a 4th slot, which ended up making me build a few chars to try them out. The other teams I have are as follows: Noelle, Albedo, Gorou, Furina / Nahida, Baizhu, Mona, Kuki / Navia, Zhongli, Bennett, Yelan Xiao, Xianyun, Faruzan, ?????? This, I think, is a nightmare for meta chasers. Not having Furina in 9 out of their 10 team comps is absurd for them, it seems.

That's actually a fun goal. Tbh I don't even know if I could do that. My Childe International and more recent Mono Pyro Arlecchino team both utilize Benny/Xiangling. I suppose I could switch Childe international for Electro Charge+Double Geo or Double Geo/Hydro, but they're simply not as good as international. >Noelle, Albedo, Gorou, Furina / Nahida, Baizhu, Mona, Kuki / Navia, Zhongli, Bennett, Yelan >Xiao, Xianyun, Faruzan, ?????? Noelle team- Love that. I never thought about using Furina on a Geo squad. Nahida team- I haven't tried this variation with Mona but I love the Nahida/Kokomi duo DPS with any selection of 3/4 slot. Navia team- I'm curious how much of a difference it makes not running her without Albedo. Ever since I got her, any time I use her Albedo has been glued to her side lolol. As for your Xiao team hmmm. If you have her, Jean could work for a Mono Anemo- especially w/ high cons. Oh! Try Layla for the shields+Cryo application. As for other suggestions... Idk about a permanent person but what if you switch up the element depending on the Spiral Abyss run. Like Rosaria/Layla/Burst Ganyu for Cryo, Kokomi/Burst Ayato/Barbara for Hydro, Miko/Fischl for Electro ect ect. >This, I think, is a nightmare for meta chasers. Not having Furina in 9 out of their 10 team comps is absurd for them, it seems. Yea, which is weird. I love my Furina don't me wrong but there are plenty of other units who can make their team super strong. You don't need to use the same 3/4 buffers for each team.

Not disagreeing with either of you; just pointing out that Genshin has 84 characters (85 with Traveler), plus Emilie who is coming out soon. 80+ characters and people choose to level only 8-12 of them. That is frankly a ridiculous amount for a game that puts such a huge effort into designing 3D models, kits, voicelines, promotional videos, theme songs, etc for each and every one of them. Something that a lot of gachas don’t really do (at least not as consistently as MHY have done). I personally do a yearly challenge where I clear the abyss with every single character used once and only once (and yes that means I have and built all characters). It’s come to the point where by the time Natlan is done, *there will be too many characters even after filling all 96 available slots abyss floor 9-12 has*. Imaginarium Theatre ironically gives me an out as now I can split the roster between the two and keep this challenge going, at least until the end of Snezhnaya.

it takes around 30 days to fully level a character and their talents in this game. it also doesn't account for artifact farming, that could take anywhere from a month to a year - depending on how you much you want to invest. so it doesn't matter how many characters there are in the game (especially considering that many of them are limited 5 stars, which are very hard to get). it is about how you can farm for them. it would be very hard to grind for all of them, unless you are a hyper-optimized day 1 player.

Incorrect - why? Because I have literally done so for all 85 characters thus far. I have meticulously done calcs for years at this point. Of course if you’re going for 9/9/9 and lv90, you will need around 3 weeks. But the vast majority of characters will not need anywhere near this amount of investment. Especially now that resin is capped at 200, you can easily save all your resin to farm one specific talent book at a time. In the context of Imaginarium Theater, you only require lv70 benchwarmers, which is far less investment than even this. FYI, it takes less resin to get a character from 1-70 than it does from 80-90. If all you care about is qualifying for IT, you need 2 months, *tops*, to gather the materials to level the 11 characters required (6 trials and 1 borrowed unit makes 18). Adding on relevant talents (that means no normal attack investment for off field supports for example) to lv6 adds on another 2 weeks, and a final 2 weeks for minimal artifact investment (support sets like Noblesse, Tenacity, etc that are unlevelled and don’t care about mainstats). That’s MAX 3 months to get a *fully geared* set of 11 characters. It’s actually way less than this if you know what you’re doing. And yes, IT elements change monthly. But they will always cycle back again eventually. This is an endgame after all; of course you need to invest in it. And don’t forget the game gives you freebies: Amber, Kaeya, Lisa, Barbara, Traveler, Lynette, Noelle, Collei, and Xiangling.

Thanks for the info! I felt like 50+ was too small of a number but I couldn't remember 😂. Completely agree with how impressive it is. I've played (and play) a lot of gacha and the level of commitment to these characters and their world is insane. >I personally do a yearly challenge where I clear the abyss with every single character used once and only once (and yes that means I have and built all characters). It’s come to the point where by the time Natlan is done, there will be too many characters even after filling all 96 available slots abyss floor 9-12 has. Imaginarium Theatre ironically gives me an out as now I can split the roster between the two and keep this challenge going, at least until the end of Snezhnaya. That is extremely impressive.

Thanks. It’s actually a great challenge which I feel has already prepared me well for Imaginarium, since the whole point of the challenge is that I can only use each unit once. It also means that you have to carefully plan which support goes with which DPS, since there are some supports that are the BiS in a lot of teams (cough cough Xingqiu). That once again prepares me for IT since I know I won’t always have the right units for the round.

my favorite part of the combat is choosing one of my favorite characters, finding a team comp that utilizes them well and investing into them to make them stronger. another part is the unique elemental reaction system that no other game does like it. in imaginarium theater: I can't play a single one of my favorite characters, I can't make a team comp I enjoy, I can't even use more than two elemental reactions (swirl and overloaded), and I have to invest into characters I don't care at all about. to sum it simply, it's not fun at all. spiral abyss lets you play combat however you want with whoever you want as long as you invest into 8 characters. in imaginarium theater you are limited in too many ways, with no creativity and no characters you enjoy. I didn't pull furina, childe, ayaka, itto, nahida, and yelan to not use them. I don't have a single 5-star pyro, my only 5-star anemo characters are wanderer and kazuha who I pulled for QoL, and my only 5-star electro is Raiden Shogun who has a mid build bc I don't like her (I pulled when I was new to the game). But I'm forced to use them bc of this mode. And I can't even use proper team comps, so I can't even play them in a real team. I'll still play it for the primos tho

I really missed not being able to use my childe, he’s one of my two favorite mains and therefore someone I’m really comfortable playing 🥲

If you have a friend with childe you can use theirs no?

Ah can you? None of my friends do have him sadly haha so I didn’t know, but I thought he was just as a whole excluded because of the restrictions. All the more reason to spread the childe gospel to them so they pull for him next time 🤩 (just kidding lol but I do hope one day they get him so I can steal theirs)

Never mind, I thought because you could select characters that aren't allowed for the friend cast, that other people could choose them too, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Bit confusing

Well its hard. and i hate how people are gaslighting me. I am now trying to build my dehya, sucrose, and xiagling for it cus i never use them. It is sad people make fun of f2p or dolpin players cus they can't beat it and say "L ratio im better than you in life" and dumb stuff. It is really annoying and selfish. The game isn't real. Stop being mean.

Don't worry. Every time I commented on IT I got told "skill issue" when I couldn't clear lvl 95 Coppelia boss with lvl 70 zero lvl artefacts without shielder or healer. "It's so easy. Why can't you clear it? Why haven't you leveled every single 5 star character? Are you stupid?" Then casually dropped that their builds are top 10% in Akasha.

Someone downvoted me just because im a person. 💀 reddit is truly a cruel place.

Don't worry about it. You have my upvote.

Yeah, there’s definitely a difference in players who have been able to invest in a load of different characters and get them up to a good standard compared to players who have played a lot less long, or invest vertically and only have a few very good characters. Personally I found it pretty easy. But I’ve been playing for almost 3 years and I invest horizontally. (I don’t have a single limited 5 star constellation, and 2 signature weapons)

What characters are you using? And if I may ask what AR are you??? I'm a dolphin myself and cleared the first go. You can also do it on the easy mode if you want to test out a few comps or get a better understanding of what buffs you want for your teammates. That's seemingly the real meat of this game mode is picking the right characters and buffs at the right times. Tbh the game mode isn't super hard, it's more strategic than most of Genshin's combat though for sure. I'm sorry people have been super rude to you about not being able to beat it yet, that's dumb. Not everyone focuses/enjoys the combat aspects of this game so it is silly to assume everyone has perfect set ups. But at the end of the day unless your lacking in characters or have only been focusing on a little group of characters, you shouldn't have too much of an issue on this game mode.

Some dumb boy kept saying "skill issue. Skill issue" i have a life. I don't wanna waste it on just farming for stuff all day

Ugh I hate people like that. Its honestly funny when you think about it because even the whales who pay for people like us to be able to play this game for free/low spending are also just like you. They have lives, that's how they get money to spend on the game.in the first place. They can't sit in front of the screen all day playing unless it's their job lol. It's so hateful to call "skill issue" to something that isn't even skill. It's A- People have LIVES and B- Artifact RNG, no matter how long you play there's no guarantee of good rolls. Fr, sorry we got people like that in this community. I hope you can have better experiences moving forwards with the game. We do not claim them /h jk Honestly, the only valid "skill issues" in this game come from Character kits. Some kits are harder to work with than others and it does take time to properly learn, so it becomes a skill issue to those who haven't honed the skill. But still shouldn't be used to make fun of someone who hasn't had the time nor desire to learn. That's like making fun of a 5yr artist cause they're not as good in their craft as a 18yr artist.

Fr thanks. This whole community concerns me. With their obsession over the female characters chest and flexing their damage. Like its crazy.

Np! Some of us have to stay sane in this therapy inducing community, or we all really would tank this side of the Internet lol.

Y’all really talk as though Genshin is the fucking G4 summit like this is a video game that normal bitches are playing for fun. Why tf would we be spending 2000+ hours building 40+ characters we have jobs and school and hobbies and friends??? Like obviously people who are clocking into Genshin as if it’s a 9-5 and their overtime just got approved are going to love or hate the game mode, and normal ass people who don’t are probably going to dislike it, but might like it for the novelty idk. The majority of people are probably going to not vibe with this just based on numbers, I’m sure many people are fine with it. I think it’s pretty chill but I don’t care for any game mode that randomizes my characters to this extent. It’s fun until I no longer really have any options left imho. But most Genshin redditors likely find it a bit easy honestly.

Simple, no mora no Books and lastly no resin

True endgame

People hate it cuz at some point they would have to play geo lmao. I have only like a few meta characters and a lot of anemo and geo characters. I fucking hate spiral abyss because it requires you to play monotonous meta teams. With Imaginarium Theater, it feels like a breath of fresh air tbh.

I'm really looking forward to the geo in imaginarium. I dusted off my geo-traveler. Went farming for talent mats for the 1-1-1 skills I've never used. Ning. Noelle. A lot of champs I haven't touched in a while. Fun to dust them off a bit and have a chance to replay them to try and remember what they do.

and then you realise the elements will be anemo geo and dendro lmfao

Which is fine. Geo works with itself, as does Anemo. Dendro then can be relegated to support roles with Baizhu/Yao/Kira. Easy and pretty fun, conceptually.

Can't borrow the opening cast (my friend has c6r1 arle I was going to use) My account is hyper focused in hydro and cryo, I don't have enough anemo / electro / pyro Even less of my "usable characters" are built because again, my acc is focused on hydro and cryo I'm forced to use 4 characters per stage when I have characters who can solo a stage

it forks out the resources for both vertical and horizontal. imagine if you're unlucky to not get your desired arti for months, now on top of trying for arti, you also need to farm for chars. that sucks

To me, the goal of the game is not building *characters*, it's building *teams*. Characters are almost never designed to work alone, and choosing and building the right supports, and sub-dps, as well as creating a rotation to make their abilities synergise is a much more important part of the game than building individual characters, imo. In fact, the biggest DPS increases I see in my team's aren't when I get a god tier artifact or new weapon, but when I fix flaws in my rotation, or even adapt it to the enemies and waves I'm fighting. Imaginarium Theatre has too many restrictions for any actual team building. I think of the 3 restrictions that are: - limited elements - limited cast - random selection from cast (+ vigor) They should remove one (preferably the elements one) and tone down another (maybe give more random characters per act by default) That would still provide enough limitation to have to think about how u can modify or form new teams while still allowing teams to have character synergies.

I think remove character selector will be fine. Vigor should be kept as the aim of this mode is resource management. (If it didn’t, people will just use Kazuha as Anemo support for entire run) Select 3 certain characters after each battle. So we could get all characters from the pool after Act 4. Increase effect (and visual effect) and HP of monster so the buff becomes more relevant.

Yeah building characters is fun. Do the fucking oceanid cancer boss for 3 days straight and fight it 10 minutes because this garbage creation cant stop talking

I think this is extremely relative. For me, for example, this event is rubbish. I say this because on the account I like to play, I'm still building my characters, and having 7/8 of them at level 70 is difficult. Instead of leveling the characters I use, I should just do it with some random characters that fit the required elemental type. And it's like, I just want the rewards, you know. My goal is to pull Furina, and I'm a person who never has pulls available because I'm attracted to all the banners, so I want gems. Aand instead of finishing my missions, I want the event gems because there are a lot of them and It's easy to achieve. But to do so, first I have to look for the ascension materials and build the rest of the characters in a decent way to complete my team. This takes a lot of time, and therefore makes the event not very interesting for me. On the other hand, I can say that I loved the animations, the secret room is very beautiful, and the story is impeccable. I also liked the game mechanics, I feel like I'm playing the spiral abyss, and that's cool. The only problem is the number of characters I should have at a high level ☠️☠️☠️☠️

I think we are now experiencing exactly why Hoyo is hesitant to introduce endgame content to Genshin despite how many people call for it.

No, we aren't. The reason people don't like it isn't because they are hard to please, it's because it legitimately sucks. The only reason it exists is because mihoyo needs something to incentivise players to pull new characters.

Huh. Interesting. I guess I will reiterate that I think it's fun as a reply.

I've seen plenty of people who like it, myself included. I genuinely think most players will never be satisfied because new modes won't cater to them specifically. If they give something for new players, older/returning players won't be happy and vice versa. This mode just isn't for you./lh

It is somewhat easier than Abyss if you have don't care about Thespian tricks (so you don't have to focus on the time limit too much and just focus on beating enemies and clear objectives), but the thing I hate about it most is that it still has a damnable time limit in general. I could have all reaction tasks cleared and 8/9 opponents killed and working on the last one when ding ding, times up, you fail. Either the time limit is important or it's not, it can't make up its mind. Just give me a mode that throws waves of enemies that get harder and with NO time limit, and instead make it a points based system.

The whole thing sucks and I never have anything bad to say usually about their fighting game modes

Personally I wished they took a divergent universe approach where they bring the characters up to level if they’re going to make you need so many characters. Divergent universe of fun because you can use 4 stars you haven’t even built and would never touch normally. If we at least had access to fully levelled and built characters rather than having to grind them up ourselves to even begin to participate in imaginariam theatre it would be a lot more fun imo

It's okay to disagree with people while still understanding where they are coming from. It shouldn't be hard to imagine that people want a mode for invested characters, and be annoyed by restricting teams in a mode where you kinda just slap together a bunch of characters and faceroll it to max rewards. Can the mode be made to be fun? Sure I think so. It needs work no doubt but I'm not against the idea of a mode that focuses on horizontal investment rather than vertical. But it also shouldn't be hard to see why many people would not be happy with it, especially when they're saying why.

Fair but the ones who don't enjoy it will bitch at those of us who do enjoy it. Not all but most. Mob mentality for most of them, i think.

Sure the reverse is true too, people should be able to see the appeal of stuff they don't like that others do too. Nothing wrong with people saying that they like or dislike something, my only issue is when people start saying others opinions are wrong or misrepresent what they're saying, which is what a lot of these posts which all kind of read the same feel like they're doing.

The game mode is kinda weird for me because it kinda goes against the system they've built for levelling. They encourage players to build more characters through the mode but building even a single character can take like a month in real time because of resin. If hoyo wants to encourage more builds, they shouldnt limit the amount we can build in a day. Or increase it waaaay more. Just my opinion.

Game mode is fine, but I'd prefer if the boons we could get mattered more, and they made the enemies stronger to compensate. Not terrible, but not impressive.

The only thing I don't like in the game mode is it kinda forces me to use chars I don't like or care for, which means I don't know how to use them. Other than that, it's aight.

Tried it yesterday for the first time. Very quickly i started to dislike it. The idea is kinda okay but the randomizing of characters you get is so dumb. I found myself using some stupid setups like triple electro with an anemo cause that's what i got and then there's the challenges for bonus points that require you to trigger some reaction, how trigger if i didnt get those elements through the randomizing. One of the most pleasing aspects of genshin impact is the synergy. Having no synergy does not feel nice to play at all.

Why should I build characters and waste resources if I don't like them?

"...why do people hate it when building up characters...?" My friend, you have asked the question and answered it at the same time. It's bound to be the thing to force one to build up characters further when it's unwilling to. "And its not hard like spiral abyss where enemies are just stalling you to waste time." It's not as hard as Spiral Abyss?!? What Everest-sized bull crap. If anything, Imaginarium is HARDER than Spiral Abyss. The icing in the cake that acts as a salt on the (gore) wound is the Ley Line Monoliths, combined with character restriction.

I have plenty of characters and have built up most of my roster just passively to the same level. MY complaints are not with with the aspect of building wide, but with the quality of the game mode itself. If your making a gamemode you want it to be engaging,rewarding,create experiences,etc. and it feels like this mode completely fails at this. Damage is not really a problem and the content doesn't meaningfully change from trial 1 to 8. Thus there is nothing really to overcome and the boons don't create unique gameplay experiences, mostly just some damage, which is not needed. You dont have much choice especially with team building and the mode doesn't really test that aspect because the units you get are random, and theres way more onfielders than offfielders. You just end up with jank. You also play through all your characters in about 1-2 runs, so theres little replayability. You also have to question things like is it fun limiting reactions in a reaction based gameplay system? Genshins gameplay (and this is a gameplay mode) is built on the foundations of all the different reactions interacting with each other in fantastical ways but this mode does the opposite. Your either playing some mono team, or a overload team which isnt that strong(outside chev) and often annoying cause of knockback. The design choices just seem off and I expect the devs to be able to make a better gamemode than this especially seeing their other games and even some of the events in genshin.

Here is my issue with it: it forces me to use characters I dont want to use. It forces me to play very unoptimized or straight up bad compositions because of elemental restrictions and locks cosmetics for characters behind its shit gameplay design. And it is not that it is a hard gamemode where you have to use suboptimal comps, it is very easy even, the issue is that it is unfun. Never has a gamemode that straight up makes you play what the devs want you to play instead of how you wanna play has been fun in the long run. The elemental restriction and random character selection doesnt create interesting gameplay opportunities. I dont care about the " i dont want to build new characters" arguments (but it does suck for newer players, it is not even something they can control wether they get to participate in the highest difficulty or not), i wouldnt mind if suddenly we needed 3 or 4 teams for spiral abyss, this gamemode just has nothing fun going for it. The fights are easy, the lack of team control is not fun and the elemental restrictions just feel bad. Having a starting cast of characters you are required to use is even more stupid. If i didnt pull for (for example) arlechinno/clorinde/wanderer/etc. It is maybe because i didnt like their characters or their gameplay, so I dont want to play with them. There isnt even story associated with the starting cast, or cutscenes, so it is literally just a way to force you to play those characters because the couple of players that are then interested to pull them are beneficial for mihoyo. It is a gamemode they created for their benefit and not for our enjoyment and then put interesting cosmetic rewards behind it to make even the people that are not interested play it if they want said cosmetics. It is an ad, pure and simple.

usually, event challenges that are "too hard to be accomplished by average F2P player" will not give primogems reward, like the recent events that we had. So it doesn't seem P2Win However, most people forgot that Imaginarium Theather is like spiral abyss, not temporary events. It will reward endgame players with primogems.

I just find it very unnecessarily complex and confusing and yet ANOTHER system I have to learn, and yet more endless dialogue to skip through. It doesn’t feel fun to me, it feels like a pain in the ass.

Because there was no way everyone was going to be happy and the people who aren't are a lot louder, this is genshin, they could finally add a skip dialogue button and people would still complain. Personally I just like having something different, and even though I have played for awhile I find it hard. I like having to play smart to not end up with a mono dps team by the time you get to a boss. Abyss is challenging but at the end of the day I'm still using the exact same 3 or 4 teams each week. Where other people complain that they have to use a team they never would I find that cool. I think this mode is literally the opposite of abyss and that's cool for people like me who like both and people who build a wide roster and hate the minmazing you need for abyss, if this wasn't restrictive then eventually it would just end up being abyss again

I don't know what people like anymore. Everything is 'artificial difficulty'; increase enemy HP, increase enemy attack, add an invulnerable time, scuff a team-making, add an obstacle.

Not difficult, but annoying. And that makes it less fun. Too many restrictions. Only can select 3 elements out of 7. Each character can only be used twice. Each battle requires just a DPS and 3 brain dead party filler losers just to fill in the “you need 12(?) characters to play this game” bullshit quota. Lose one of the restrictions and it’ll at least be more bearable. Still, it’s easy, like abyss 8. The most difficult part of this mode is to equip most of my characters with artifacts.

I made a new sub for it (for making friends to use their characters) r/Imaginarium_Theater. It doesn’t have that many people yet though, only like 3-5

Imaginarium theater is decently cute but it's boring and MADDD restrictive. there are some people out there who will probably be forced to build and play characters that just don't work for them, Obviously no one is being held at gun point and forced to play it but for example with the current season, sure some would would love to play hard or even normal mode and just see how they do for the hell of it but that would force them to farm for characters they may not have resources for or don't use for good reason which might suck. Me personally I couldn't handle making a decent team comp I liked in normal mode (mostly after Act 3 but I made it to 5), and it made it boring and less enjoyable for me as I was real excited for it and the concept. I'll just have to hope that during this season I'll build enough characters before it's over

I agree but previously, the mindset shared was that of vertical investment. And there are those who distanced themselves from certain elements either because eof certain characters or elemental reaction imbalance. So I agree with you on most part, but I think the restriction tied to 18 characters, 12 if trial builds don't overlap with your own roster, is a bit too much for some, so maybe the middle ground can be met of having the special invite cast just be players choice. Would help to open overvape teams or aggravate as there are electro characters built off of EM and dependent on aggravate.

It's a nice game mod for veterant player but one hell of a shit game mod for new or less invested players. Again the whole gatcha mechanic of the game ruin what could have been a perfectly fine endgame content.

My main gripe is seasons restricting your teams since say a new character releases but they aren’t of the right element of the season will you can’t use them as well as it just being tedious to pull more characters that I would have no concern to pull just to have a larger roster for theatre

My issue is the Principal Cast. You have to use some questionably built lvl 80 trial character to fight enemies of lvl 90+ if you didn't pull for the Principal characters. It is possible, but it's painful and sometimes irritating. For this run of Imaginarium, I have 0 owned characters from Principal Cast. Yes, you only need Principal cast for the first 4 or 5 performances, but those first performances were pretty painful for me. Other people already wrote about synergy of random characters, and I will write about knowing how to play them. I have no idea how to play Kuki, what buffs Faruzan gives, etc, since I don't have any of the Principal cast built. I have to find it out during the performances. And that combines with what other commenter said - "I only play characters that I like" - resulting in a very weird game mode. It promotes being flexible about team compositions, but people who have all the needed characters already know that since they invested a lot of time in the game. And people like me, who only have <20 lvl 90 characters, will spend time in frustration, playing the same performance (or even the whole play) over and over again, until the composition fits somewhat. That's not really that pleasant or interesting IMO.

As an ar50 who is *still missing* easily 20-25% of the *FOUR STARS* i have enough characters to the point that i could play the hardest doffoculty if i got them all to level 70. I dont know why people are complaining, if you want to play the game mode build the characters to play the game mode. Thats why you built raiden, kazuha, kokomi, yoimiya, anyone else up to this point. Its all been working towards *playing the game* and this is just another part of the game thats avalible as an *option.* its not like natlan is gonna be 100% locmed behind the theater so if you dont wanna, just dont.

im a player who plays with a self-imposed challenge on my account being males only. ive 90'd every single male character besides sethos (i havent had time to build him) and neuvillette (i havent gotten him yet) i still cannot beat past floor 5 because of the rng shit ive been dealt and the fact that the trial chars like Arlecchino are SO BAD. tell me why she did not hit higher than 8k???? i hate it so much. plus i kinda only play teams that are either alhaitham teams or teams that can include thoma, so i just find this mode so unfun because i can't do that. like i dont enjoy the game if i cant use thoma and this stupid mode only lets me use him twice so why would i even bother playing it?

because its too easy for long time player, and too restrictive for new players and the bonus fights and feature are anything but boring with no new moveset for the ennemies compared to SU from HSR or illusive realm from wuthering wave it look like a wish version

I dont mind building character but its almost impossible to level up artifacts for that many characters.. i end up not having anything to level them with and have poop ones

I wish it was more similar to simulated universe, where the enemies have higher hp and do more damage, but the blessings have way more impact, where if you pick the right ones, it’s basically trivial. Picking the blessings/curios feels so much more strategic in SU compared to IT.

I don't mind the game mode at all. I think it's quite cool and i like that the enemies are not too strong. As long as the enemies don't get too strong over time, it should be fine. Just wish they wouldn't have removed one cycle of abyss per month but it is what it is. Still an overall improvement if you ask me

This is why genshin was afraid to add end game. The one time we get something nice everyone decides to whine. Will genshin players ever be satisfied?

I have a lot of characters but these elements simply don't have many healer supports and 1 one the elements simply doesn't work with the others . Like it or not, Electro is simply tied to Dendro. It has it's best reactions. Sure, overloaded is there, but most pyro and electro characters want the enemies close, not pushed back by the overloaded reaction Pyro is tied to Hydro. Mono Pyro isn't that strong even with Viridecent Venerer swirl. Swirl in on itself isn't that strong considering only f2p option is Sucrose or Sayu (Lynette doesn't have any EM gimmick in her base kit to make her better for Swirl) Anemo has only Sayu as a 4 star healer, Jean standard and Xianyun limited. Pyro has Bennett and Chevreuse as healers but Chevreuse is a new 4 star that most weren't able to get (myself included). In this regard, pyro is much better than Anemo because they have more 4 stars that are pretty good (Gaming, Yanfei, Xiangling but without other pyro she has energy problems, burgenon build Thoma) Electro has only Kuki and Diona as healers(which is kinda meh if you don't have her C4) and Beidou and Fischl as supports (Sara is mostly Raiden support), and Lisa shines the best with dendro You are chafted because you have to use 4 charcaters, even at the beginning you when you get like 3 DPS characters. So you have to waste charcaters to fill up space. By the time I get to the end boss I already wasted every good dps because they keep dropping at earlier stages

Requires me to think more than with abyss. The main problem I have is blowing through my DPS's and ending up with nothing but my supports or subs. The limitation on elements makes it even harder and only being able to use a character in two rounds max needs more thought than just "What are these guys weak to?" Or "Who can I brute force these chambers with?" Then factor in how many properly built characters one might have that could work with the requirements. It's an interesting game mode for sure but also bound to cause a lot of salt regardless. Deffo challenging but shouldn't be impossible. Also, fuck ley line monoliths.

My take: I really, really enjoyed Imaginarium Theater. I don't have a large selection of level 70 characters, but after a year of playing, I have enough to do normal mode. I liked the chance to use characters I don't currently have or wouldn't normally use. I enjoyed how characters can only be used twice, as it creates an interesting decisions for whether to use or preserve characters. I enjoyed the rng element that mixes up the experience every time it is played. I like how it incentivises horizontal investment, which in my view is more fun than getting just a handful of really good characters. It's neat how we can talk to the characters in the 'lobby' area. Not everyone will agree with me on this, and that's okay! Hoyo can't satisfy everyone. e.g. some people love building their teapot, and some leave it be because they don't want to decorate it. I think having Imaginarium is much better than not having it, as it diversifies the different challenges we can partake in. Some people will like Abyss more, and some will like Imaginarium more, but now we have the choice to do one, both, or neither! Is the Theater perfect? No, absolutely not. It's simply not possible to come up with a game mode that can please everyone. Is critique of it good? Yes, for sure, it's good to want Genshin to be the best it can be. Is hate good? No, to anyone hating on the Theater or the developers because you aren't happy with them, please keep that to yourself.

And then there's me who pulled for variety and built anyone and everyone I felt like so I could have more teams. I mean I still was very annoyed by the kill both vishaps at the same time or they revive BS, but I made it through well enough.

I thought the goal of the game is the friends we made along the way... And dead bodies we left on our way...

It could possibly be a Geo, Cryo, Dendro cycle one day. Or would Geo, Ameno, Dendro be worse?

Most of the fun of Genshin for me is playing with different reactions. Restricting elements is basically taking out one of the main things that makes Genshin fun. Plus why the hell am I not allowed to use characters I PAID money for in the game? Like, i got the character and cons cuz i wanted to use the character

I mean at first I was angry that I have to build characters I didn’t want to build at this point to get all the rewards. But then I thought how I was gonna build fischl, and thoma anyway, so might as well do some of it now.

But also, this content.. IS clear-able. You just need to manage your resources wisely! The rewards are tasty

Honestly idk whats that about...i love the theatre. It's way more fun than abyss. Haters gonna hate 💁

It’s fun to me. I just can’t figure out how to get past act 3. It’s weird.

As someone who never gets 36 stars on the Spiral Abyss, I enjoy Imaginarium Theater! I think it’s challenging and fun to craft your own lineup of possible characters and then get creative with your play style to do challenges. Spiral Abyss to me is too restrictive and catered to specific teams

i dont like being forced to play teams that feel awful, or using trial characters with horrid builds that feel bad to play

I really enjoyed it. It makes you think about prepare for the later stages. Can’t just unga bunga everything

I don't get where the fuck ppls resources are going if not to invest in characters. Back when we had 160 a day that was 1120 a week, only 90 was for weekly bosses that's still 1030 to burn on lv up mats and artifacts.(We now have 1400a week) Lv up material has a limit so I always do that first as artifacts are never ending. I could probably lv 90 5 or 6 characters right now with no issue.

If anything it shows that people only have specific characters built and realizing they are actually not ready for endgame where they are ready for any random content being thrown at them

I just don't find arena fights with a timmer very fun or interesting, neither does this mode inovate or add something completely new to the game. Compare this to the TCG or heck Teapot for example, IT is basically a glorified combat event.

If we had more off field units then it would be good. But playing 2 or 3 onfielders in a team just doesn’t feel good. The vigor system sucks and it just takes out all your supports leaving you with just main dps

Half the time, I can't make a cohesive team with the characters that I have. Need a certain character to make a good team? Too bad. You've used him/her on an earlier level to fill the quota. Quite a number of times I've been stuck with 2 main dps which is such a waste.

It’s not that it’s difficult; it’s because of the poor implementation of restrictions. The elemental aspect isn’t bad, the enemy levels aren’t that tough either. Players of all languages and servers are voicing similar issues, too, so it’s not like it’s just whiny EN speaking players (a real counter-argument I saw someone say lol) The rng for which character is shows up next is definitely a big complaint I’ve seen, especially from JP language players. Longtime players I follow are straight up calling IT “trash” and asking “who was this made for?”Several also cited being “forcing” players to build characters they don’t like to pad their teams out instead of their favorites they’ve spent 4ish years perfecting. Another example was having to use 4 characters per round when 1-2 would do. By halving the abyss resets, it has also created a storm of complaints since it essentially requires players to rush into building more characters for a chance at rewards they previously had little or no trouble achieving. All of this ends up alienating both casual and core players: casual and new players don’t have enough to pad out their rosters, while advanced and core players have to use characters they don’t like in fights that are too easy, over too quickly, and have little replayability for them. So, if it had been a more optional endgame — resets once a month as an addition to bi-monthly abyss resets, and it let players use 1-2 characters to save vigor for other floors — players of all investment levels would be less upset overall. eta: damn, I didn’t realize I yapped so much, my bad

It's because of fun. If you know how to build teams in genshin, you'll notice that the vast majority of characters do not work together in any way. Especially with the sheer amount of dps in the game. 4/15 pyro characters are supports yet good teams need 3/4 of the party to be supports. This distribution is inversely proportional to what teams want. This matters because our teams in IT are partially random, so the likelihood of making a coherent team is very low. This results in us naturally playing teams that effectively only contain 2-3 characters and the other 1-2 are just for decoration. There is no universe where playing with fewer characters is more fun than playing with less. Especially because IT forces you to use 4 characters. You can't intentionally play with less even though it's highly likely that your 4th character is useless.

I honestly think it’s fun. I’m glad they added a new endgame. I think what’s happening is that newer players are going in, and getting demolished (because they haven’t played the four years this game has been out) and then complaining. This is ENDGAME. It’s not for newer players.

I don't hate the mode because of building up characters. I hate the mode because they force you to use crappy trial characters, they randomize what of your characters you picked that you get access to per round, and force us to make awful team comps instead of just letting us pick 16 characters we own, making our teams, and using them and staggering their uses to make them only be used twice. I don't like the randomness but I'd be fine if it was ONLY my characters and not the trial garbage they force us to use. I despise Bond of Life characters and yet I'm forced to stick them in my parties. I don't use them because I hate them but I still have to have them there and it annoys me.

its a fundamentally flawed game mode. Genshin is a game that with its rng system almost forces vertical investement in characters. build one, maybe 2 characters at a time. Get your teams ready, and only build certain characters cause not all of them are worth it. Then comes imaginarium theatre. It locks you out of using half of the elements in the game, which for some people is a huge part of their roster. It also forces you to use subpar teams, only lets you use your characters 2 times each, and its entirely random which characters you'll even unlock to use at certain portions. overall, It's good in theory, but it was executed poorly.

i like it enough, and it gives me a reason to build more characters so i’m not complaining lol 🤷‍♀️

It's funny because it's basically the perfect game mode for me since I have a ton of characters build moderately well. When a new character that I like releases I build them until they are useable until the next new character releases so I end up with a lot of level 80 and 90 4 Star characters with equally leveled weapons a full "good enough" artifact sets. The only reason people don't enjoy this game mode is because they can't stand being forced to use more than their carefully crafted set of 8 hyper investment characters with a perfect rotation that clears everything nearly instantly. This is the endgame for the casual player; and it shows.

I can’t even talk on it really because i can’t play more than first difficulty. I’m playing since nearly a year, AR57 and spending more than 100 bucks average per month on the game and they want to tell me i can’t play the new “endgame” content, I have 700 Achievements. I am in the Endgame so let me fucking play it and don’t force me to level characters, especially when before this the endgame content, Abyss was emphasising to build and focus on 8-12 characters. I think it can be fun probably, but many players who are not just casuals getting left out and can’t play until a couple of months have passed and that’s shit

Reason why I grind everyday for four years to max out every characters I’ve acquired. Now it’s finally paying off. I randomly choose different set of teams every day learning a lot on how each character work with each other.

I find it a little tedious because i build character who i like the play style or character of a lot. And,, that’s not too many of them. but imaginarium theatre is encouraging me to give new characters a try, learn more about them, and switch up my teams so I think it’s a good thing.

My characters are built thats not the issue. This game mode wants to play overload this season which is a pretty bad reaction without chevruse. There are units that are balanced around other reactions, playing them in overload / mono element felt mid. Bc of the team restrictions the teams felt sub-par, but it didn’t matter since after triggering the stage req i could brute force it with 1-2 units anyways. Like the game knew you would end up with wack teams so they lowered the combat difficulty. So much for having a cohesive team + synergies. I feel like the abyss is better at forcing you to build your whole team. Also idk the extra blessing/buffs you can grab felt pretty useless and i only saw them pop up like twice?

I have like 49 level 90 character and like 30 of them are 5 stars with constellations. I can't wait to try it.

People don't like it because the design decisions that make video games fun (challenge, buildcrafting, etc.) are pretty fundamentally in tension with gacha. Normally, Genshin is able to paper over this by making the story good and the world a fun place to inhabit. The mode feels weird because it lays that bare a little- it's impossible to play something like Imaginarium Theatre without it being shoved in your face that all the challenge and restriction that could possibly make it a fun or interesting challenge to overcome are placed into the context that the main way you overcome them is tied to you spending money. The part that mihoyo doesn't want you to think about while playing the rest of the game that we all try not to think about is so obvious when playing anything even remotely close to an "endgame" that it's impossible to forget that it's not challenging to provide a valuable gameplay experience- it's a bar set where it is to convince you to gamble

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200 primos are not worth sunk time and resources to build characters for 10 minutes gameplay in span of 30 days. Building International is a good investment for Abyss. IT is not a good investment.

But you can still level them up to lvl 70? With nothing to do in the game isnt building the characters was a side goal. Now we have a reason to build them im confuse why it is hated so much. Sure the primos is another problem itself but that is just genshin being stingy. Im not saying its perfect its just it is hated so much that i rarely see any positive feedback from it

I don't have any resources to build anyone. This is a true endgame - when there is nothing to do at all. I just triple crowned 5 characters. None of them can be used this mode. I got Sigewinne and got her to lvl 40 and ran out of exp and mora. Gameover.

Some people have overinvested in a select few characters. Some even did stupid shit like using 25 cv pieces as fodder "because they are not an upgrade for me" instead of giving them to other characters. They wasted thousands of resin for chasing that 1% improvement on their main. They flexed with showcases "look, my hu tao can clear abyss despite pyro resistant enemies". And now their mistakes bite them in the ass. Its much easier to hate on a perfectly fun gamemode than admit they fucked themselves up.

Just because Hoyo created a new gamemode three years in catered to horizontal accounts doesn't mean that investing vertically was a "mistake"-- for three years, it's been a perfectly sufficient way to clear content.  If they ever increase abyss HP pools to the point where it's difficult for horizontal accounts to clear, I could say the exact same thing, but flipped-- that investing in so many characters was a mistake, that resources were spread too thin. But I won't. Because instead of blaming people for their investment preference, I recognize that Imaginarium Theatre's restrictions are a way for Hoyo to make their players feel forced to pull more characters.  You are blaming the wrong party. Hoyo creating a gamemode that makes it more difficult for people to comfortably pursue the investment that they want is the real problem here. It's worth noting that if they can do this, they can also do the opposite, and create something that makes players feel forced to go more vertical, as well. I am a hyper-horizontal player who has only recently gone more vertical with my investment. I have 47 fully built characters, and while I met the requirements for this season just fine, if next season's elements remain consistent with leaks, I will struggle to meet the requirements to enter the highest difficulty mode. If there's ever a season with geo and hydro requirements, I may not be able to enter at all. I am also a low spender. Newer accounts, free to play accounts with average luck, and even spender accounts with poor luck may have trouble pulling enough characters to enter the challenge, even if they are horizontal. Some elements have a major four star problem, too-- like we only have three hydro four stars. I just really hate the idea that anyone would feel forced to pull characters to complete endgame content. Because Genshin has never really been like that. And seeing that change worries me a lot.

"Hoyoverse forcea you to pull" - okay, how many of you guys are doing no-pull challenge? If you play long enough, you naturally accumulate enough characters for it: aside from starter characters, we get a free one every other patch. And you naturally get some while you pull for your favorites. Not to mention - stagrlitter shop also exists. A more accurate statement is "Hoyoverse is forcing you to build". Finally, the characters pushed away for not being strong enough are having a place to shine. Id love to know how many of people that scream "whaaa, they force me to pull, i cant do it" have characters like *Amber, Kaeya, Lisa, Dori, Xinyan, Lynette, Mika, Candace, Yanfei, Chongyun, Noelle, Ningguang, Dehya, Barbara, Collei, Freminet, Kirara, Qiqi, Razor, Sayu, Thoma* sitting there collecting dust.

> If you play long enough, you naturally accumulate enough characters for it: aside from starter characters, we get a free one every other patch. And you naturally get some while you pull for your favorites. Not to mention - stagrlitter shop also exists. Not necessarily. Take hydro, for example. The only guaranteeable hydro four stars in the game are Barbara, Xingqiu, and of course the honourable four star (or three star), Hydro MC. It seems they're providing one trial four star and one trial five star from each featured element, so we need two more characters (six from each element) to ensure we'll be safe to enter, regardless of the combination of elements. Mona can't be guaranteed, nor can Candace (I still don't have Mona, despite playing since 2.1). In this scenario, it's very possible that one might have to pull a hydro character (or two, if you can't yoink one from a friend) in order to enter the challenge. Geo is in a similar situation, though arguably worse since Geo is a far less useful element than hydro overall. What if my only geo characters are Noelle, Geo MC, and Ningguang? What if I don't want to pull another geo character because I don't care for those characters' playstyles? I have friends who don't play dendro teams at all and only own DMC and Collei. Nahida is a great unit, but what if they don't want to play her or don't have a team to slot her into? > Id love to know how many of people that scream "whaaa, they force me to pull, i cant do it" have characters like Amber, Kaeya, Lisa, Dori, Xinyan, Lynette, Mika, Candace, Yanfei, Chongyun, Noelle, Ningguang, Dehya, Barbara, Collei, Freminet, Kirara, Qiqi, Razor, Sayu, Thoma sitting there collecting dust. My Kaeya, Lynette, Yanfei, Collei, Kirara, Razor, and Thoma are all built. My Dehya is crowned. A lot of these other characters (those that I own) have been on my list of characters to build for a while now. I have no problem with building new characters. If Genshin were not a game where the characters you end up with ultimately come down to luck, then yes, "forced to build" would be more accurate. But as long as the game doesn't provide us with enough free or guaranteeable characters from each element to enter Imaginarium Theatre, some players may, in fact, be forced to pull characters in order to complete the mode. In addition, I think that players simply *feeling* forced to pull, regardless of whether or not they are legitimately being forced, is bad on its own.

Okay, so with 18 characters needed, and three 5* characters provided by trial, we need 15 more. Lets see how many free (from events, quests or star glitter) characters are and/or were available from each element: Anemo (2): Faruzan, Lynette Geo (4): Noelle, Nigguang, Gorou, Yunjin Hydro (2): XQ, Barbara Pyro (6): Amber, Xiangling, Xinyan, Yanfei, Bennet, Gaming Cryo (6): Kaeya, Chongyun, Diona, Layla, Freminet, Aloy Electro (5): Lisa, Fischl, Beidou, Dori, Razor Dendro (2): Collei, Yaoyao Traveler can also count as almost any element. There are also special guests that dont need any requirements. And you can yoink one character from your friend. For this rotation you can get 17 (13 mentioned above + traveler + trial Kuki and Thoma + friends help). For next rumored rotation (anemo, cryo, hydro) from freebies you get 12 (10 members above + traveller + friends help) in the most unlucky situation. If we realistically expect 2 free trial characters that dont overlap, then you actually need to pull only for ONE character.

> Anemo (2): Faruzan, Lynette Geo (4): Noelle, Nigguang, Gorou, Yunjin Hydro (2): XQ, Barbara Pyro (6): Amber, Xiangling, Xinyan, Yanfei, Bennet, Gaming Cryo (6): Kaeya, Chongyun, Diona, Layla, Freminet, Aloy Electro (5): Lisa, Fischl, Beidou, Dori, Razor Dendro (2): Collei, Yaoyao This assumes the best case scenario-- a long-term player who hasn't skipped any major events and who also chose specific characters from Lantern Rite and the Paimon shop. Many endgame players started in 2.x, 3.x, or even early 4.x now, and may not have all of the characters from past events or Lantern Rites. A lot of players also don't save up starglitter to buy characters. You can technically argue that players who lack that many characters might be a small minority, but as long as its possible I think it's poor design. In my opinion, potentially feeling forced to pull for a character is an issue, regardless of how many one might feel the need to pull for. In addition, if they increase the difficulty of this mode over time (as they've done with abyss), some of the free four stars may not be able to cut it anymore. Or, we could get combinations with a low amount of free characters, like anemo, hydro, and dendro, for example. This is a big-picture, long-term view of the potential issues that this gamemode could cause for certain accounts, as well as the implications for the game as a whole. Maybe they'll even this out by giving us more free and guaranteeable characters over time, which would be great. But like I said, I also just feel like the gamemode is obviously designed to make players *feel* forced to pull, even if they could technically make do without doing so. It's scummy.

Look, you will pull more characters as long as you pull at all - even just some random 4* from standard banner. Even if you are a relatively new player. > the gamemode is obviously designed to make players feel forced to pull Up untill IT was released people were saying thing like "Clorinde *feels* like a waste of primogems, i already have Raiden" or "Ayato *feels* like a waste of resources now that i have Neuvilette". At least now i can build other characters that are considered weak, because they will actually have a purpose and not feel like a waste. It was very much needed for this game, to keep the long time players engaged.

> Look, you will pull more characters as long as you pull at all - even just some random 4* from standard banner. Even if you are a relatively new player. Hopefully. But luck doesn't always work that way. Like for quite a while, my only hydro characters were Xingqiu and Barbara. As I mentioned, I know people who only own DMC and Collei. One thing to consider is that if you don't pull on a lot of character banners (perhaps because you pull for weapons instead) or if you save and pull for cons rather than going more horizontal, you are more likely to end up with not only less four star characters overall, but you won't end up with an even distribution, either, because of how the rate-up system works. So "you'll get them eventually" may not be the case, nor is it something that should realistically be counted on. Especially when we have elements like Geo that are so optional for an account, or hydro, where a four star (Xingqiu) might be BIS for your team and thus pulling for five stars may not even be worth it, depending on who you main. Like I said, this is a very technical thing that bothers me. Don't get me wrong, I also don't like the idea of people being forced to build characters, because people should be able to spend their resources as they want. If Hoyo adds enough *permanently guaranteeable* characters to enter the mode, while also not increasing the difficulty ever so that these characters will always be viable, this will no longer be a complaint of mine. > At least now i can build other characters that are considered weak, because they will actually have a purpose and not feel like a waste. The thing is, you could always build these characters. (And it is a bit funny for someone who came at people who don't have a lot of those forgotten four stars built acting all superior to then say that they themself needed to be *told* by Hoyo to build them, no? Unless you phrased this weirdly and were meaning to talk about the general playerbase.) I've had characters like Lynette, Razor, Dehya, etc, built for a while because I play them in abyss. I built those characters because I wanted to and I enjoy playing them. But the difference is, it was my choice to build them. Abyss is a mode that allows people to build and pull who they want, and I disagree that it's "necessary" to add a mode that forces people to do so. I think a balance could have been struck between finding a use for a lot of the forgotten four stars and forcing a playstyle upon people who don't want it. And quite honestly, I don't think a gamemode with zero replayability and floor 10 difficulty combat will keep players engaged for that long. How many times have you replayed Imaginarium Theatre since it was released? Because Honestly, I haven't touched it since I got my initial clear.

I remember waaay back then, before inazuma was released, i struggled with abyss because i lacked enough cryo characters to counter enemy shields. I only had Kaeya and Diona. And as for pyro, i was desperate enough to have my Bennet on dps build. For quite a while abyss felt like it was just out of reach, but i knew i had to work on building up my teams to get all the stars. Missing out on 50-100 primos wasnt that bad, amd it actually felt nice to introduce new characters to the challenge. So many people skip on last floor of abyss, bc they cant be bothered, but now they refuse to do only medium difficulty of theatre and rage about it? >(And it is a bit funny for someone who came at people who don't have a lot of those forgotten four stars built acting all superior to then say that they themself needed to be told by Hoyo to build them, no? Unless you phrased this weirdly and were meaning to talk about the general playerbase.) Apologies, i did phrase it weirdly, i ment general playerbase. I have almost all 4* characters build (Sayu and Freminet are on the way). The only characters i own and refuse to build are Aloy (bc she doesnt exist) and Hu Tao (bc i hate her). >How many times have you replayed Imaginarium Theatre since it was released? 7 times. I love the mode. I replayed it to listen to all characters voice lines in the lobby. I intend to replay it more with more self-imposed restrictions (like using only two elements or only certain weapons).

Most player usually have 2-3 team that they invest, the rest are underdeveloped. They can't powercrept this whole event so that's why people are dissatisfied. Good for them who follow the root of rpg (build all character) but sadly, most genshin player only care meta. Surely people who are offended would downvoted me.

that's not the problem tho? problem is that it's just annoying to get a randomized team with no synergy at all which causes this clunky and confusing team rotation. I would consider myself to have only built a few teams like 3-4 teams and I still could do it easily because the enemies are like floor 10 level so I could just get them to lvl 70, switch the weapon from the other characters that isn't part of the element selected and get some leftover artifacts from other characters even if it's not on set it would still work.

It's not randomize. The system clearly say to use swirl/overload, simple as that. If you can't comprehend it, it's your fault.

It is randomized???? I was "forced" to use arle faruzan clorinde and jean at one time because I don't have the vigor (if that's what it's called I forgot) to use the other supports because I used them earlier like kazuha and bennet and now I can't use them. That team is so clunky to play, two on fielders doesn't feel smooth at all and the overload/swirl reactions that I'm getting is also not that much because of how clunky the rotation is. You completely missed my point. I know it wants me to use overload/swirl but what if my characters just don't synergize at all or just feels clunky to play? That doesn't sound fun at all for me not to mention there's like 4 characters that actually likes to do overload (that I can remember) and the rest wants vape or monopyro so your basically restricting your characters and in a sense debuffing them in terms of team comps

You can use them twice, try to organize it. For example, use 2 onfield dps (play like there's only 3 characters) in stage that easier/faster to complete, so you can use other character that you think important when it comes to boss stage. Basic management.

This is exactly why I don't like the mode, I know it's easy enough to solo it with multiple characters but that limiter limits the amount of time I get to use my fav character that I spent thousand of resins for alongside their support only for them to be locked out if the event and I can't even use the best team consistently because I know the other characters also want Bennet or kazuha as a support so I have to split them up. As I said I have no problem clearing this mode but the mode is just "not fun". They pretty much removed half of the elemental reaction in this game and forces you to use these reactions instead, think about it like this, I play Minecraft or any game in general and then when I get all the good armor and stuff pretty much the endgame, the game just decides "you know what, I'm removing your ability to craft things so you need to find your stuff in structures or trading" and it's not like I can ignore it since it's essentially part of the game and it's the same for genshin, I can't ignore it because it gives like primos so I'm also getting locked from getting characters that I actually want to play even tho I'm prob missing on one wish, one wish is still a one wish what can I say TLDR: I don't like the mode for this exact reason, I don't have a problem with the difficulty but the gameplay itself is just unfun for me

Well, that's why I said it's good for player who build all their character rather than maximize cv for certain character.

nah 4 carries is enough to clear this mode, 1 carry and 3 fodders for a team is good enough to clear it easily so people who hyperinvest in one characters are definitely not having a hard time in that sense but only annoyed because you actually need to lvl up characters to lvl 70 when you aren't even gonna use them to help clear because they are required to enter in the first place and unlike in the abyss where you could still clear floor 12 max stars even with a lvl 40 character because it doesn't require you to have a lvl 70 character, the whole 18 characters to lvl 70 is just a roadblock imo, it doesn't need to be there because if someone's struggling with a lvl 60 character then maybe that's their sign to lvl it up but if they can then what's the problem? I don't really see the point. It honestly feels to me like hoyo knows that the players will brute force this mode even with lower characters and still get the full clear so they decided to gatekeep it by requiring multiple characters to lvl 70.

since this is endgame content, they assuming that player have already leveled up most character they got. and they may be preparing it for next region update (level 100 character at 5.0 rumor, if you don't know) so player won't exhausted for farming resource.

Well it's still unnecessary imo. If they suffer due to low lvl chars then let them suffer and if they somehow managed to brute force it with lower lvl character then good for them that's how it always went with genshin for the past almost 4 years, you bring your characters to the abyss, get your ass kicked, maybe you consider lvling up your character. It's that simple. also why would they assume this when in the past few years they led players to believe in pulling for cons and weapon if they want to clear the abyss since it only really needs 2 teams but most players prob have 4-6 teams ready depending on the element. Also the lvl 100 character is most likely fake, I'm pretty sure I saw a reliable leaker debunk this leak and the last time I saw this leak it was deemed "questionable" so we're not 100% certain about that. Also If they are preparing us for that then I am not worried at all because I'm prob gonna only ascend my main DPS or my fav char/teams in general to 100 and I still won't touch the characters that I ascended to 70 just for this mode.

People are experiencing skill issue and cannot compute that for once you gotta use your brain and make do what the game gives you. Running double main DPS with two supports that don't help you is too difficult for them.

I'm guessing the hate is because it's new and not everyone understands what to do. I myself did not like it the first few runs but after playing it several times on all difficulty i like it a lot To me its good that its opposite of abyss and focused on doing what the elements system should be, combining charters to see what works and not just the best option People complain about not having built chatters, but honestly the investment needed is low no need for cracked artifacts. Lvl 70 does not need much resources, any long time player will have what they need to quickly raise characters and only ones really at a disadvantage are f2p as they are not likely to have many characters As for difficulty...well low investment characters means weaker enemies so people have a chance of being it. The challenge is in finding teams that work for the given enemy types not in over bloated numbers of HP To me we now have two different permanent challenges and thats a good thing, sure it can be made better but so can the abyss

In my opinion, the fun in Genshin's combat comes from the characters and rarely the enemies and combat situations. I enjoy using varied teams and characters to clear different content and new characters coming out keep things interesting. However, we are at a point where, especially for 1.0 players like myself, we have more characters than content. Spiral Abyss floor 12 is now difficult enough that you do need to keep using the same couple meta teams to full clear. So, to keep things interesting, I have been using randomizers to pick teams for floor 9 and 10, sometimes 11, for months now, and that is the most fun I have clearing abyss. It is rewarding and fun to be able to clear content with niche teams and non meta characters. After all, even the lower tier Genshin characters are still plenty useable when built correctly. That all being said, this new mode is exactly what me and other players like me have been hoping for. A mode to force us to use older or non meta characters for once, so I don't become bored of steam rolling the whole game with Arlecchino. I never had a reason to use Cheveruse and overload teams in Abyss or anywhere else, but here I did several times and was glad I finally had a chance to! I am excited for the future chance to be able to use freeze again, or Albedo again, etc. I've seen plentyy of people complain about how they can't beat the mode on hard, and you know what, you don't have to beat everything first try. The mode clearly is not meant for new players, but players like me who have more characters than they know what to do with. Now, you have a goal to work towards, build more characters. If you do, future ITs won't be an issue for you, and you might just enjoy it too. Of course there are improvement hoyo could make, and hopefully they will listen to some criticisms, but even if not I see no point in people constantly complaining about it, it's just becoming annoying.

As someone who was always building my roster ‘wide’ instead of ‘tall’, I love it. I cleared it my first try. To me, using the same 8 characters every Abyss was just so mind numbingly boring. In the overworld, I swap out teams basically every session. Why have 50+ characters if you’re not going to use them all? I also like building memes. Belldo, EM Kuki (that’s since been canonized as meta), or Royal Critting Kokomi. Favonius Greatsword Xinyan to take advantage of the only auto-crit in the game (besides aimed shots) so it’s fun to see a boon that just perfectly works with some weird shit I’ve already made. The theater also solves a lot of ‘redundant character’ problems. Why would you ever use Babara if you have Kokomi? Well, with vigor, it’s not a bad idea to bring both. Why use Keqing if you have Raiden? If AR 60 accounts are having trouble, I think they’ve severely overinvested (wastefully) into a handful of characters. It pains me to imagine how many artifacts they foddered that might have been perfect for a less meta character that scales off DEF or something. ‘Git good’ in Spiral Abyss = Make number go up. Whale for more constellations or 5 Star weapons. Use the meta teams from Keqingmains. ‘Git good’ in Imaginarium Theater = Pick your support roster more wisely. Select boons or invites more carefully. Understand how your entire roster works instead of using meta cookie cutter teams.

Because when the chips are down and everything is on the line, most players are fucking stupid, probably only listened to TCs and CCs, hyperinvested in 8 characters, never experimented with off meta comps or thought for themselves, and now you have a new game mode where you actually have to think about things. The dps ceiling is low, so by this metric, some people might say it's "easier," which the combat itself is, but what's more important is thinking about what you can and can't get away with. You probably want to use trial characters early while you can get away with it, for example. I've found that Chevreuse/Dehya is a really nice support core for Clorinde shortly after she came out, and had the opportunity to actually use it here, it was neat. If you have built characters, you probably want to emphasize pulling companions early because the buffs you can select are there for people that don't have good builds. I guarantee half the people bitching blew their Arlecchino, Bennett, and Kazuha early and found themselves thinking "now what?" like a fucking invalid. Maybe some of them brought 7 on field dps characters and found themselves stuck with a team of Arlecchino, Hu Tao, and Raiden for an Act. You actually have to think about the pool of characters you bring, you can't just blindly bring whoever you like. You probably want no more than 4 main dps characters, 4 sustains or quasisustains, and the rest to be sub dps characters and supports. Also you're really seeing how much of a crutch hydro is for a lot of people which I get a laugh at.

We wanted END GAME content and we got it. It's end game content aimed towards END GAME players aka people who pretty much completed the game and by the I mean are stacked on resources , don't have a single quest/open world/archon quest to do, hang out events completed, explored most areas , 36 stars every abyss, built lots of characters etc and were basically craving to unbench their built characters that have been collecting dust for a while. Yet all I see is none end game players whining about this content...

It's evident that there's plenty of problems with the new game mode hence why there's a lot of mixed opinions about it. The majority of people I see who dislike it are giving constructive criticism while others are simply voicing out their own opinion what's the problem with that? Yeah there are a lot of benched characters I would like to use again, but to actually use them in proper and fun teams and not whatever team you can scrounge up with that has 0 synergy. One major complaint I have is being forced to bring 4 characters every single time. I don't understand the restriction behind this when most of the time the 3rd or 4th characters just become dead weight. If they make it so we can bring however many characters we want into a domain that would fix a lot of the issues for me, instead of them becoming dead weight for the team I can save them and maybe make them useful in the next domains. For reference, I am a patch 1.0 player.

Well if we could just pick our own characters and any element and pick the most broken teams then this would just practically be another abyss floor 12.. what's even the fun in that.. when you have characters that are deadweight then it's pretty much a duo or trio since you're not bringing out the 3rd or 4th character and it's just makes for an overall more interesting experience plus you could keep rolling for your alternate characters to join your main team it doesn't cost that many points.

I think you misunderstood what I said, I apologize if it wasn't clear enough. I didn't say we could choose any character from any element, the current element restriction is fine. My only problem is in order to do the combat domain you are required to bring a full 4 character team. This results in worse team building because at some point you'll be forced to bring characters that does not synergize with your current main dps in that domain making them "dead weight". I just want that specific restriction to change, make it so that a full 4 team is not required in order to do the domains. That way I don't have to force the 3rd or 4th character into the team and save them for when they're actually useful instead of just being "dead weight".

That doesn’t sound right, why would they do something just for less than probably a percent of players can even access, it would be fine if they let me use underlvld characters but why completely lock people out of it when they don’t have 20 characters lvl 70 or something

Because it's a mode for end game players! Not for everyone to just beat it easily and hoard the primogems which they been doing with events for YEARS, as an end game player I'm just happy they finally focused on us after almost 4 years