#and if i stare too long at this im gonna nitpick it to the end of time

[cozymochi]

HAHA TY!! I'm happy you like my art and PFP!! Lol if I had to request, I would request anything Jack. From what I saw, you have earned the "Jacked Jack" award, holy moly, the way you drew him??? GORGEOUS

aAAWAAhhh thank you! 😭💕👊 im horribly validation starved

[shamblessm]

Im just gonna put what I commented on this post and add some other details.

I wish these gacha-like games (Wuthering Waves is what I'm currently looking forward to) have more diverse character designs, or in a miracle GENSHIN has more said designs. Don't get me wrong, people were very happy seeing Yun Jin sing Chinese opera, Nilou dancing and Gaming being pronounced the Cantonese way in voiceovers (gaa-ming) and not the Mandarin way ("jia-ming"), and I'm very happy for these people. The sceneries are GREAT. They do pull off good representation in terms of the sceneries, cutscenes and lore, and I appreciate that, despite not being someone from one of the inspired countries in their regions, because there will be a Genshin player out there that's from that region and they will be happy seeing the architecture or lore. I just wish they weren't... you know. Pasty white like 95% of the time.

Though my massive nitpick is that said diverse character designs are often locked behind NPCs. Just take a look at the buffer NPCs in the open world - Wagner and Master Zhang.

If you want to take from other games, take that one Wuthering Waves NPC for example, he's got medium-length parted hair that fades from black to white and even is depicted muscular (well, not Jebrael-kind of muscular, I'd say similar to Alhaitham considering their model restrictions, you can just look him up on Twitter and you'll see what I mean), a scar on his right eye and a beard. Oops! Too bad he's an NPC!

Similarly, Oleg from Honkai Star Rail (same devs as Genshin mind you!) is one of the key NPCs in the game especially in the first planet/part of the game - old man, left eye scar, facial hair, darker skintone, hell, he's even described as "muscular" in Natasha's character stories, BUT NOOOO lets just keep him as an NPC and make clean shaven twinks as playable characters.

I mean, fine, I guess, they're not for the target demographic for Chinese players yadda yadda yadda but can they really not try? Will they really have any financial loss if they release Varka as a jacked dude with facial hair? Hell, I'm gonna take from another game again, Reverse 1999, despite not being Genshin-esque in gameplay (have fun staring at a chibi 2D rendition of your husbando every time you play, the only time you get to see him in human proportions is by either looking at his official renders or... "art"... of him hehehe) I commend it for starting to make characters that aren't pale as fuck with Shamane. You better not be a buff? dude with matching melanin of country of origin, has facial hair that is actually PLAYABLE. Oop, he actually is playable! What baffles me is R1999 is also from, you guessed it, Chinese developers, but I don't know if Shamane or other darker characters like Centurion, Black Dwarf and Leilani sell well there.

That said I don't plan to play R1999 - my personal preference is that if I summon a character I would rather be able to move around and fight as them rather than staring at a 2D chibi rendition of them, and thats what makes Genshin very fun for me despite being grindy and using a gacha monetization system. I've been typing for too long ranting so Imma end it here.

I’m so happy more genshin-like gatcha games are coming out (I understand they are very different from Genshin blah blah blah we have had this conversation don’t try and murder me), as that means the developers for Genshin have to try a little harder to compete with them