With the nearing of Genshin Impact’s six-year anniversary, my mind was thinking about the upcoming rewards to celebrate the game. Now, nothing has been officially released so this is mere speculation, but it’s my thoughts on past rewards that will likely mirror this year’s rewards.
In the past, the anniversary gave players 20 free pulls for simply logging in during the event time and claiming the rewards. This isn’t a bad reward per se but it feels pretty lacking. It’s only a quarter of the amount of pulls needed to pull for a character banner, and this reward amount hasn’t changed in the past five years.
HoYoverse has tried to mitigate this with other rewards. The events during the anniversary tend to give Primogems for a few pulls, and with multiple events, that tends to add up to at least four pulls on a banner.
Players during this anniversary also tend to get a free four-star character since it runs alongside the Lantern Rite Festival. It’s a great reward for newer players, but it’s a little unremarkable for older players who likely aren’t interested or already fully invested in those characters and don’t need more copies.
Last year’s anniversary guaranteed a new pattern of giving a free five-star character. Now this was a reward that really spurred the community. The five-star characters were from the Standard Banner roster. It’s not a bad thing as I used this myself to get another constellation for my Diluc build. It really only left some bitterness that it took five years for this to be a reward for players (seeing as most of the characters on this banner were introduced three years, if not, six years ago, excluding Mizuki who released in 2025).
Now, I am grateful in general that players are given rewards to celebrate the game. HoYoverse could have just released a simple “thank you” and moved forward. They instead are adding rewards and creating different systems for their players like the Temper Thyself system they added last year.
There are mechanics being put in place to mitigate how low of rewards are being given in comparison to what those rewards can actually get players in the game. However, these systems run on playing the game almost daily. Players need to log in a certain number of days, complete daily tasks or exploration in the game in a certain time span, or players need to finish content they’re not interested in.
For a player who is completely F2P (free-to-play), it takes about two or three months to save enough Primogems to get a character from the banner, and closer to four/five months if they want to guarantee the character in case they lose the 50/50 odds. That takes at least three patches of updates doing everything during that patch to get rewards including logging in daily, doing daily commissions, completing the events, doing the smaller combat and mini-game events, getting as many stars possible in Spiral Abyss, completing the Imaginarium Theatre if they have the needed number of characters, and collecting the few Battle Pass rewards granting Primogems.
Through this process, they’ll likely complete the Temper Thyself cycle and get a free constellation of a five-star they already own on a roster that’s pre-determined and swapped around. They’ll likely get some four-star weapons from the event that may or may not be helpful for their account or something they want to use on their character builds. Maybe the F2P player may get a four-star character or weapon skin during that time. Not that these rewards will help them in getting Primogems for the character banner their goal of even saving Primogems is for.
With the more casual way I play the game, logging in and only doing events here and there and ignoring the daily commissions, it would probably take me about eight months to save up to even pull for a character on a banner seeing as I usually get around 1600 Primogems doing the things I do. With a new region release, that doubles to about 3200 Primogems, but that doesn’t happen every patch, so it’s not as reliable nor do I always have the time to explore a region. I don’t mind as much now as I’ve been playing for a long time with a sizable roster, but I can feel for players who lack that or want specific characters they don’t have.
For me, the greatest part of Genshin Impact is the character roster which allows for a mix of teams and combinations that players can enjoy based on how they enjoy playing the characters. Some players really enjoy using Zhongli whereas others feel like he takes up an unnecessary slot in their team combinations. The characters are one of the biggest selling points of the game.
And yet, the rewards given by the game towards this selling point is small. From an early business perspective, I can understand having lower rewards so players try different aspects of the game, find something they like, and continue their support for that aspect. From an early business perspective, I can understand stop-gapping players from easily getting certain characters, so that there’s an incentive to spend real-life money to guarantee a character pull.
From a late business perspective? It’s running its players to the ground for crumbs. There are now over 100 characters in the roster, a little less than half of them being five-star characters. Despite the growing roster, the ability for players to get these characters has stagnated. It’s unfair for newer players who see interest in the new characters but lack the ability or knowledge in how to obtain said characters. It’s unfair for older players who start seeing the process of saving as a chore or checklist to complete in order to obtain a new character they like.
The rewards granted to players for playing the game feel unbalanced as to what those rewards actually give the players in the game. What are your thoughts about the reward system of Genshin Impact? What changes do you want to see when it comes to Primogems and pulling for characters? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below or in our Boss Rush Discord!
Featured Image Source: HoYoverse
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