If you've been keeping up with me, you'll know that I was one of many who fell in love with Genshin Impact. Like many, I first learned of the game during its release in late 2020, when the covid-19 pandemic was keeping many at home. I first played the game a few weeks after its release, and I was hooked like nothing else. It was my first gacha game, my first Chinese game, and so it gave me tons to think about, as evidenced by the previous write ups I've done on the game.
However, as I continued playing the game day after day, I began to experience a feeling many gacha players go through: burn out. I was losing interest in the game at an alarming rate, and before I knew it my motivation to play was at rock bottom. Around the middle of April, 2022, I decided to stop playing Genshin. And I did, for quite a while. I'd come back once a month just to do a few monthly things, but otherwise, I stayed away from Genshin and thought I might be done with it. For three and a half months I did not touch the game and had no motivation to.
However....I did come back. At the start of August I decided to give the game another chance and dove back in. It has now been a month since I've returned, and I've gotta say...I'm back.
So....what happened? Why did I fall out of love with Genshin Impact and potentially stop playing it for good? And why did I fall back in love? What brought me back, and why has this last month been so much better than the many months before it? If you keep up with gacha games, this experience of getting burnt out, taking a break, and coming back may be familiar to you. But it was a wholly new one for me, with this being my first gacha. So for any who are deep into the Genshin rabbit hole or are considering jumping in, let this be a cautionary tale for you. Here's my story of how I fell out of love with Genshin Impact......and fell back in love again
Part 1 - Decline
So what caused me to fall out of love with Genshin Impact at the start of 2022? I see two key factors as the cause. The first is that, simply put, I played a lot of new video games in 2022. I haven't played so many new games in a few years, and it's been a lot of fun. I played Pokemon: Legends Arceus to completion, following that up with Triangle Strategy. Afterwards I started playing Paper Mario: The Origami King, and I've now also gotten into Animal Crossing: New Horizons. As I near the end of Paper Mario, I'm looking at moving on to either Live A Live or Persona 5. Additionally, while I technically didn't play it, I also watched lets plays of Fire Emblem: Three Hopes and kept up with discussion on the game. It has been a wonderful year for my switch and has reminded me why I love being a Nintendo fan. But as I played all these games, I found it difficult to balance them all with Genshin Impact. Because Genshin is a game that demands your constant attention. You're incentivized to play it every day, so it can take a lot of your free time. This became abundantly clear to me as I tried playing other games this year, and it was frustrating, because the more I thought about it, the more I found myself enjoying these new games far more than I was Genshin, and I began to question why I was playing it.
It's not that difficult to understand why. As good as any game is, when you've been playing it consistently for a year, it starts to feel familiar, and not in a good way. The console games I was playing constantly surprised me, and I loved how new they all felt. Genshin felt so familiar and I was starting to feel bored with it. During the 2.6 patch they added a new region to explore called the Chasm. Exploring is arguably Genshin's greatest strength, so I should have been having the time of life. But I wasn't, I wasn't having fun with the Chasm at all. Why?
You see, it wasn't just the new games causing my enjoyment to decline, it was also Genshin. As much as we all love Genshin, no one generally likes the gacha mechanics. They aren't fun, they are predatory, they can tempt you into spending a lot of money, and in general, they're bad. But what I really hate about them, and what really got me, is the fomo. Fomo, or, fear of missing out, is when video games will create limited content to encourage players to play the game now rather than later. It is evil and predatory.....and it got me hard. You see, Genshin is a game that's all about wishing for new cool characters you love and want. However, to do this you need primogems, and if you don't want to spend a ton of money on each character, you have to do all the daily, weekly, monthly, and temporary events that are constantly being added and removed. It becomes impossible for you to stop playing the game if you want to get as many primogems as possible to get as many characters as possible. And that's.....what happened with me.
It likely didn't help that during Christmas of 2021, a friend and I bought each other 4 monthly passes. It would give us great daily rewards for the first four months of the year....but it meant I had to log in every day to claim all the rewards. My friend was able to handle this fine, as he has much more free time than me. But I was not, having to log in every day was stressful.
You might ask, "why not just log in and log out?" That's the thing, that's how hard Genshin had me wired and broken up, I couldn't do that. Because oh if I'm going to log in I might as well also do this daily thing that only takes a couple seconds. Oh but while I'm here maybe I'll also do my daily commissions to maximize my primogems, that only takes 15-20 minutes. Oh and maybe I'll also spend my daily resin. It was very easy to fall into the trap of losing an hour each day on Genshin even if I didn't want to. I was so compelled to maximize my time and resources that it sucked the fun out of the game for me.
It dawned on me in March and April that I wasn't playing Genshin Impact because I found it fun, I was playing it because I wanted the rewards you got by completing all the temporary events and challenges. The fomo had gotten me so much that I was only playing for the loot at the end of the dungeon, with no care for the dungeon at all. This created such a stark contrast with all the switch games I was playing. Those games I played because guess what? I found them fun and engaging! Genshin was once that, but it was not anymore. I was obsessing too much about getting primogems, about maximizing rewards, that I'd lost my love for the game, and no longer found it fun.
When this realization hit me, and when the four month of daily goods ran out in April, I dropped the game. I simply did not want to play if it wasn't fun, and would rather do other things with my free time. I had officially been burnt out.
You might then ask, why not take a short break and get out of that mindset? To that I say, easier said than done. This fomo mindset that I had, it was hard to break out of. I said earlier that while I wasn't playing it, I did log in once a month. And I kept it to only that because when I logged in those few times, I felt all the fomo hitting me. Instead of playing the content that I wanted to play, I was doing all the temporary stuff. I was doing the daily and weekly quests instead of the fun permanent content that I wanted to do. So I knew I couldn't go back. I couldn't enjoy the game if I continued to have this dangerous mindset. I needed to get out of it, I needed to stop seeing Genshin as a game about maximizing rewards.
Part 2 - Magic
So what brought me back? What, after three and a half months, led me to return to Genshin Impact? I'd chalk it down to three things. First: Sumeru. Sumeru is the fourth main region in Genshin, and its launch would be a big deal. You see, Genshin has only added a new region once before, so the addition of Sumeru in version 3.0 would be the largest update since 2.0, when the third region was added (the game launched with the first two). This was a big deal, and so I couldn't help but be curious to see what the new region would be like, and how the main story would progress. They were adding a new element, the final seventh element, which was equally exciting.
But would I be able to even play this new region? Would I fall back into the fomo mindset and only do temporary stuff, leaving the permanent content for last and possibly never doing it? Well this is where the second factor comes in: The Fatui Harbringers trailer.
It's difficult to state how special this trailer is without going into the story of Genshin Impact. Suffice to say, this trailer revealed an entire league of villains that has been a part of Genshin's story since the beginning. Up to now however, we'd only ever heard talks of them, never seeing what they were like or getting an idea as to what their personalities were. This trailer revealed so much about the league of villains and it can't help but be exciting to finally have a clear idea of where the story is going and who we will be facing off against in the main story. This trailer got many, myself included, who weren't that invested in the main story of Genshin Impact, to suddenly care, and care a lot! And with the main story finally taking a big step forward with the release of the Sumeru region, well how could I not want to see it play out?
However, this was not the most important factor, for of them all, the third one is what really brought me back into Gendhin. As many might know, the covid-19 pandemic has "ended," not in the sense that we're free of the virus and don't have to worry about it, but in the sense that most people can function well enough with the virus thanks to vaccines that our governments and people in power don't seem to care about it anymore and are fine with everyone continuing to be infected by it.
.....and I'm only a little frustrated by that. Anyways, with this change many large group gatherings are returning, and one of these is conventions. I went to my first convention since covid-19 started in February of 2022, and I had a fun time. It was nice, I even bought a few Genshin prints, and saw a few cosplays I recognized, it was cool. However, at the end of July 2022, I attended Anime Revolution, the largest anime convention in Vancouver. It was incredible, so many amazing cosplays and fan arts, so many fans that shared my love and passion for all things anime and Japanese video games, it was wonderful and I had such a great time. I went to lots of panels, got some great Fire Emblem Three Houses prints, and had a wonderful time.
But the star of the convention, as I'd heard many say, was Genshin Impact. There were so many Genshin cosplays and Genshin fan art and works being sold that I couldn't believe it. It dominated, no anime or video game came close to matching the amount of merchandise and cosplays people were showcasing, and it was......honestly incredible. It was beautiful, and I couldn't help but be intoxicated by all the love people had for the characters of Genshin Impact. It reminded me why I love the game so much and love its characters. I've had so many amazing moments with them, so many highs in the character quests and epic moments in the story. I've had a lot of fun times in the year and a half I've played it. And seeing so many share in that love, to be part of a community that loves these characters so much and has so many fond memories with them, it was amazing.
Because ultimately, that's one of the big reasons why I stuck with Genshin so long, the one big advantage gacha games have: the community. Sure, I had a lot of fun with Pokemon Legends Arceus, and got to discuss it with many friends. But not a single friend of mine completed Triangle Strategy and got as invested in it as I did.....and only one friend of mine had completed Paper Mario: The Origami King. None of my friends who liked Fire Emblem Three Houses were interested in Three Hopes, and I also don't know any who are interested in Live A Live. As much as I loved those games, loved playing and reading about them, there was a part of me that wished I could discuss them more, that I had friends who had the same experiences I had and wanted to discuss them. Genshin has a massive community that is constantly pouring out incredible works of art, analyses, videos, discussions, and more. It makes the game so fun to discuss with friends because well.....I have friends that still play Genshin and keep up with it.
That's the appeal right there. I can talk about it. I can go online and find so much discussion and art and fun content that people have created with Genshin. It's that community, that large evolving community that makes it such a special game that I kept coming back to for so long. Sure maybe I don't love the characters as much as those of Three Houses, the story doesn't compare to that of Triangle Strategy, and the exploration is fantastic, but not on the level of Breath of the Wild, and I'd even say Origami King does exploration better. But the community that I can continue to keep up with, to build connections with, that's what I love about Genshin, and going to Anime Revolution reminded of that. I bought tons of Genshin prints that I'm now ready to fill my wall with, and I took so many photos of amazing Genshin cosplayers, because gosh I love this game and its characters.
Part 3 - Redemption
So with all that, I decided to come back to Genshin Impact in August of 2022. But I was going to play it differently. Being well aware of what caused me to fall out of love with it, I had to change things. I was going to stop myself from getting stuck in the fomo mindset of maximizing rewards. I would not force myself to play every day, and only do so if I wanted to. And even then, I would be fine not doing the daily commissions and skipping them. I would be fine skipping the temporary events in favor of the permanent content like exploring Sumeru.
I would not force myself to complete weekly events, and most of all, gasp, I would stop putting so much pressure on clearing the Spiral Abyss every cycle with maximum stars. Spiral Abyss is Genshin's end game content, and nets you the best rewards if you can consistently clear it.
How would I limit myself? Well it's been telling myself things. It's been looking at my roster and saying "Hey, you've played Genshin pretty consistently for one and a half years. You have a pretty amazing roster of characters already, it's fine if you don't get that many new ones, right?" So I've been limiting myself in wishing, I'm no longer trying to get that many characters. I'm shrinking my desire and attempting to simply be content with the characters I have and getting new ones with less frequency.
And so far.....it's been great! I'm fine skipping most of the new characters, and only grabbing a select few. And because I'm not focusing on getting new characters, it's much easier to miss temporary rewards and content. I don't mind, especially since I now know I only have so much time to give Genshin, and I'd like to continue playing Switch games alongside Genshin. I don't want to put all my time into one game, so I'm not going to be devoting a huge amount of time to Genshin anymore.
When I came back to Genshin it was for the update just before Sumeru. The big event going on had an interesting story and premise, and I'll admit I really wanted the costume reward you got for doing much of the quest before it ended. Thankfully the duration of the quest was the entire update, so I had most of August to complete it. It was.....fun! The story content was some of the best I've seen in Genshin, and the way it revealed more of each character's backstory was really cool and gave me lots to think about. There were tons of other rewards I could have gotten if I played the event more, but I chose not to. Instead I focused on fully exploring The Chasm, that new area that released when I dropped the game and I wasn't having fun with. I got back into it and......had a lot of fun! It was a really satisfying area to explore, had some nice story bits, and I didn't obsess over finding every treasure chest and maximizing my primogems.
It's been a little over a month now since I came back to Genshin, and I've had a blast with it. The new region of Sumeru has been a joy to explore, and the main story has been surprisingly amazing. The new element has been fun, and while a lot of the new characters look great, I'm content only getting one or two, and otherwise dealing with the weaker free characters you're given. After all, if I don't have to worry about clearing the Spiral Abyss, I don't need to worry about getting the best characters and being super strong, most content in Genshin is quite easy.
And that.....that's how I fell back in love with Genshin Impact. I've almost caught up on all the big new content added in the 3.0 update. I'm thinking after I do, I will take a break from the game for a few weeks and come back when permanent content I'm interested in releases. I've successfully been able to play Genshin much more casually. I don't play it every day and sometimes take breaks, and I don't worry about doing that. I've successfully transitioned from a hardcore meta player to a casual player, and I have to say I'm enjoying the game a lot more now. I've gotten over my burn out, and hope to casually continue playing Genshin for as long as it gets great updates and its community continues to be amazing.
Thank you so much for reading this, I hope you can take something away from it, and have a good rest of your day. Cheers!
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