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As a live-service package, Genshin Impact is constantly kept updated with patches and updates. New characters, quests, zones, and events are never in short supply for players to enjoy; with four popular regions and 68 characters, there’s a huge amount for players to sink their teeth into. On the surface, this all sounds great. But there’s a problem. When looking at Genshin Impact character popularity over time, generally the most popular characters are the newest ones in the game. Once introduced, these new faces swell in popularity but then slowly fade away over time.
So, why is that actually a problem, then? Well, strangely enough, there’s a trend of miHoYo pushing newer content and rather ignoring the older storylines and personalities. This is obviously a bummer if you’re a fan of the characters who have been in the game for a long time. You’re never likely to see much about them once their role in the story has been filled. Notably, looking at the most recent popularity poll, Nahida was voted the most popular character in the game. No surprises, since they’re the most recently added and have the largest impact on the recent story.
Genshin Impact Character Popularity Favors New Characters
One of the best explanations for this phenomenon is how far Genshin Impact’s story moves over time from region to region. Throughout the game, the Traveler’s main story brings them on a massive adventure across Genshin’s world of Teyvat. Each section of this quest brings the player through a specific region, with its major characters and locations. However, once the section is over, players move to the next region, leaving previous zones in the past. For example, Mondstadt, the first region, has not played a role in the main story for a long time. The original characters, like the Knights of Favonius, do still come back in events from time to time. But in terms of canonical impact, this affects Genshin Impact very little. In total, it has been almost three years since some players completed the Mondstadt Archon Quests. That’s simply too long, and it’s easy to see why so many characters fade to irrelevance.
New Genshin Impact Characters Are Given More Screen Time Increasing Their Popularity
Additionally, on the opposite end of the spectrum, miHoYo is constantly pushing Genshin’s new and popular characters. Oftentimes, Genshin Impact goes absolutely ham with promotional artwork and quests, presumably to maintain interest in a particular personality. On top of this, fans themselves tend to also create massive amounts of fan art and memes that also contribute to this heightened level of interest. With the amount of constant exposure to new characters, it’s easy to see why newer characters tend to be more popular. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, seeing new characters overshadow older characters is frustrating for players such as myself. Seeing the return of characters like Zhongli and Venti in the main story would be wonderful to see.
Mixing Old And New Characters May Bring Back Hype
One obvious solution is to reintegrate older characters into Genshin Impact’s current story. Genshin Impact characters that have been constantly featured in the story, like the Wanderer, have huge levels of popularity. Perhaps adding more and more old characters to the story will create a resurgence in hype for them. Although this is partially done in events, it doesn’t feel the same as an important story quest. Plus, this gives a lot of chances for easy content, as well as exploring interesting character pairings and interactions. Like with events that bring back old characters, reintroducing characters to the story during banner reruns may be a great strategy as well.
In the end, it saddens me to see these characters lose popularity in Genshin Impact. Attempting to solve the problem will be difficult as well since there are so many characters already in the game. Even if some characters are reintroduced to the story, plenty are bound to sadly be left behind. It’s easy to see why Genshin prioritizes new characters, as it’s easy to introduce them to the story and build hype for them. But do we really want each arc to be so short and sweet? I’d love to see characters both old and new integrated into future stories equally. Hopefully, as the story progresses, a large event will happen in the story that will change the usual Archon Quest pattern. Maybe then, we will see an important clash of old and new Genshin Impact characters.
