My thoughts on game design

Here's yet another of my rambles that I've taken upon doing. For this one, I want to have a more focused line of thought throughout it, and as per the title, it'll be about game design. There are many forms of game design that can be discussed such as pieces from fighting games, shooters, exploration-based games, etc. Recently I've been playing Genshin Impact and I'd like to talk about the design that was put into that game as it is one of the only games of its kind with Breathe of the Wild as the big one.

First I want to talk about where the main source of enjoyment is in Genshin Impact is. From the amount of time I've invested, I found the combat seems to be the biggest thing for the game as little thought was actually put into the movement system. BotW, on the other hand, derives its main enjoyment from exploration and there are many systems to promote this which Genshin includes without much thought on why they worked. While I will say that Genshin has a better combat system it does fail to truly capitalize on its exploration.

Before I move onto how I would try to improve Genshin's weaker points first I would like to explain why I like the combat in the game itself. Currently, the game works on a more RPG-esque system where artifacts can augment how the characters fight. Such as with Archaic Petra turning the crystallization from Geo into a damage bonus instead of just a shield or with the Thundering Fury set that relies on causing elemental reactions to reduce cooldowns. For the lower level players, this is still somewhat present such as with the Traveling Doctor set that lets the Burst attack double as healing. This kind of freedom of choice lets people experiment and see what insane combinations could work which lends itself to making different encounters rather unique. Now all this is just the design of how out of combat activities can affect actual combat. As for what things are like once a character has actually engaged in a fight is a little weaker admittedly.

As for the actual combat itself, it works on the basis of elemental reactions to cause a diverse range of effects. Some being more focused on AOE with Electro hopping between Hydro afflicted enemies, Super Conduct stripping down defense, Pyro burning away shields, or even something as simple as freezing enemies in place. Elemental Resonance can make it so sometimes limiting what reactions you can cause will boost the reactions you have left such as having double Pyro units boost ATK by 25%. This series of constant moving and micromanaging a situation keeps combat active constantly managing a variety of cooldowns and positioning. Fairly similar to old school MMOs in this way it also has its fair share of hack and slash elements. Because of the variety of weapon types, even the basic attacks can influence the battle in different ways, doubly so with some artifacts like the Instructors set on Casters. Because of how open this system is both in and out of combat the only thing left to top it all off is the enemy design, with such a thought-out system what do they challenge the player with to utilize it?

While I praise the freedom of choice and how there's constant experimentation some of the enemy's design takes this away. A basic example that'll you have seen often in the overworld and even in Dungeons/Domains are the Slimes that are immune to their own element. The very fact they're entirely immune makes the choices a player can make limited. Not only are they the most common enemy they're also the most poorly designed where they don't even need to touch you to inflect your character with their respective element which causes problems when a Cyro or Electro slime covers you with that element and then you apply Hydyo to yourself. This often leads to stun-locking which is never a good thing in games. Bluntly put the most well-designed enemies are the Treasure Hoarders and the Hilicurls with their various shamans and giants allowing for a variety of different approaches without making it so there's only one answer to beat them. Depending on the places you go Treasure Hoarders can be fairly rare so they are a slightly more stimulating encounter than generic punching bags like Hilicurls usually are.

I could continue on to talk about the Fatui, but I'll move on from the enemy design and focus on the elemental reactions and how they are turned against the player. As mentioned before there are times where you can get stun-locked by enemies and I propose a solution. Remove the freeze mechanic and instead turn it into a slow mechanic where movement speed and attack speed get lowered instead of just halted. Halting attacks in their entirety has actually caused problems where a character is frozen before a skill can actually anything and when they're unfrozen the skill is counted as already being used and is on cooldown without doing anything. This should not happen at all especially considering how easy it is to occur. One more fix is making it so the electro damage doesn't flinch the player and just drains their health so they can still at least move and/or attack to try and remove the affliction or push through it. Making the main source of enjoyment in the game hard to enjoy can be very detrimental unless it was worked into the core design of the game, Dark Souls works because this sort of thing only happens if you don't know what you're doing. In this game, stun-locking can occur by just standing next to a Cryo and Hydro slime. Doesn't matter if you can avoid getting hit or anything it'll help which takes away control unnecessarily from the player.

Now let's talk about one more issue with the element system, Geo. Geo is supposed to be the defensive element that has its foundations built on shielding to improve survivability and allows them to mix in with any kind of team as just easy support. The idea behind it is solid, its implementation was not. The main issue of this element is two things, one, it can't react with itself so protection against Geo is impossible, two, shields don't stack meaning that Geo's crystallization doesn't ever help at all unless you're playing Ningguang cause she's the only Geo unit that doesn't make a shield for herself. That's also saying if she is paired with the other none Geo units that make shields like Diona or Xinyan. A simple fix to this makes it so crystals can't stack and picking up a new crystal will just destroy and replace the previous crystal while shields made by characters can be stacked with the lower health shield being the first to take damage.

Now that I've finished praising and pummeling the combat system time to move onto the general movement/exploration that the game has to offer. Currently, the general map design isn't too bad with some really nice visuals in Liyue and a few nice spots in Mondstadst despite how generic the place is, but generic doesn't always mean bad just not all that interesting. Exploration wise the game does reward it pretty nicely with various reputation rewards, stamina boosters, and just classic chests. However, movement is very slow and exhaustive with stamina being extremely tight and climbing taking up a lot of your time. Everything in the movement just has a whole lot of nothing. The game just ripped what was from BotW and just expected it to work without knowing why it worked. Hell BotW had a horse cause it knew that running everywhere would've been awful. People like moving fast, but instant teleportation makes it so no exploration actually happened, there were no sights to see or detours. The horse was a good in-between for quick movement and limited movement to where the horse couldn't always be utilized. The Glider in BotW worked as a way to gate the player from leaving the beginning area and required a tool to safely descend the cliffs and there are various other tools in the game that worked similarly to explore the world.

Now, what could possibly fix the mobility issue without causing a separate issue? The answer is fairly simple because they've already implemented it in an event as a temporary thing. Improve the wind glider to move fast and give it a more robust system. Currently, all it does is float around but in the event they allowed it to have a cooldown to make it fly higher in the air and have rechargeable stamina to boost itself. These features on the glider are only activated when you start the time challenge so it can't be accessed in normal exploration which is a real shame. I could see what they implemented for the event worked into just the general environment. They already have waypoints fixed to high places so the wind glider can be used so why not make the wind glider more rewarding as an essential part of the navigation. One more thing I'd change is making it so running doesn't consume stamina unless a fight has started. That's more a quality of life change to remove that minor annoyance since there's really no reason to manage stamina outside of combat.

Conclusion
Genshin Impact is a fairly well-constructed game with a variety of issues plaguing the game. Many of these issues having fairly simple fixes that should be addressed but likely won't as people will simply grow used to it. Its combat is the high point with rewarding exploration but an awful movement system.