Leakers have already provided how characters will be buffed; with direct buffs to the individual characters, NOT new supports or lightcones! For instance SW’s skill will become blast type and will implant the weakness of the first character on the team, and Seele will get huge multiplier buffs to her ult and basic attack as well has have her talent activated at 50% enemy HP threshold. Etc.

I didn't even realize there was a hunger system sincei barely use consumables

Let me guess, special eidolons to pull for the "buff" or special lightcones for the "buff". Or maybe we have to use an item like the one for the artifacts but said characters will need a certain amount of that new item, taking f2p players literal months to "buff" the character

There's a gacha game that I'm obsessed with and played for about 10 years and it had this similar situation. Powercreep is so fast everyone just get used to it. So dev give buff to old unit or make it to have 'evolved' version to keep them relevant. I think that's a great move to continue sell the old characters rather than keeping them in the dust. I've seen comments that said 'it doesn't mean they listened, they just want money' ofc they want money they're running a business here so that's one of their market strategies 💀

The catch? Wait two patches lol

Bro her hair grows? She literally goes super saiyan

Words power creep xD

Arknights and gfl2 have a "module system" that buffs the character in their topic like ignoring defense or gaining more energy for skills and reducing cooldown

i hope on the fate collab they release mash as a preservation character

they either buff like genshin imeginary theater but a slight twist each patch / memori chaos reset change stat from which faction + different buff stat for each path for example faction from trailblazer and stellaron hunter only get buff hunt,erudition,destruction get atk,crit rate/dmg,spd buff. Or they put another end game content like imeginary theater only can be use 2 time for each stage

The reason why this problem is complicated is because they've been taking their characters through the mud for so long and they did powercreep so badly,I'd say even if you make Seele have double damage,she's still nowhere near feixiao in terms of overall value as a single target dps,because she is just that weak

I think my biggest concern is that doing something like this is basically Star Rail essentially "admitting defeat." They've basically declared, "Look, we can't keep powercreep in check by indirect buffs anymore. We have to do this." That being said, I think it'll be units who don't have any unique mechanics, or their mechanic is overshadowed by another's.

I agree with keeping expectations low. I’m of the opinion that this “buff” might be adding a new talent or ability to older characters. Your dragon ball example would be interesting if they decide to something similar and it’s a boost to their stats/scaling to make them stronger.

I think it’s probably going to be buffing numbers and small changes Like making certain attacks considered aoe or making some attacks apply dot.

maybe she’s ambedextirous

I doubt Hoyo is capable of implementing a real upgrade system like Dragonball. I suspect that they'll simply unlock higher level traces. It already reads like this in the E3 and E5 Eidolon descriptions. Those Eidolons raise a character's Basic Attack, Skill, and Ultimate trace levels (multipliers). But the text actually reads "+2 out of a max of 15." So currently, an E6 character can have an Ultimate trace level of 12 (because the max is 10, +2 from Eidolons), not 15. So I suspect that they'll simply allow certain powercrept characters access to trace levels higher than that. Likely, up to 3 additional levels, to hit the actual maximum of 15 at E6, or 13 at E0-2. While this might be lazy approach, the main issue with powercrept characters is that their multipliers are low and out of date. This might actually address that.

You forget fgo

wasnt expecting dokkan out of knowhere lmao, how did your anni pulls go? i got 1 copy of each so far still trying to get a copy of str gohan though

It makes sense though. If THIS Honkai game is anything like Honkai Impact 3rd, they gave systems like Augment cores, ehich completely overhauls and enhances old units into better versions of themselves, or Divine Key, which are special weapons that fundamentaly changes what a unit does. Among other things, this is how they kept their older charcters afloat for a while. I can totally see them doing something like that here. Power creep is still probably going tor be completely out of control with this games current pace. If they implement a system that makes old characters strong again, they might just also give out some of these old characters for free at some point in the future, much like HI3, the recently gave out HoH Elysia for their anniversary.

tl;dw version: no, they're not redoing old characters' kits. Most likely they're selling new characters to make old characters relevant again, like Sunday to Jing Yuan.

I think this game is also quite hard to enter as a new player. All endgame contents expect you to have 2 whole teams with current units, and personally i've been quite frustrated even as a veteran player that sometimes i feel like i need to force myself into pulling for a DPS when one of my characters begins to feel weak (rip Seele). Not only that, i feel that team building is quite strict. I dont know how Genshin or other Hoyoverse games work, but this one feels so rough to pull because your character depends on other 4 characters and it will eventually be powecrept, its extremely frustrating to the point that i almost want to quit.

The catch is they still want new charactera to absolutely dominate, dont have your hopes on seele when they are going to release Castorice on 3.2 lmao

Watch the buff being a LC buff lmao

buff older characters to sell them for 1 update cycle then immediately make them obsolete again after 3.0 comes i can already see it all those people huffing copium are flat lining

Pokemon masters has also done this before, and also has the same system you mentioned, they are stages were opposing poemon has some sort of ability that reduces damage unless its affected with a condition that the new unit can spread, or battles against characters with absurd stats but also your characters from a certian region get buffed so basically you can only use em, buffs are also given to characters but only if you duped em and while regular pool and 3-4 stars are easy to get, limited characters require you inveting on them or investing the "dupe level up" (imagine its a jack of all trades eidolon you can give to a character), im kinda worried were masters is heading

Bittersweet feeling to see Runeterra mentioned

hold up, destruction trailblazer is firefly at home, no weakness application but, I mean the ult, one blast and one single target

i think it's kinda less to counter powercreep as an overall phenomenon and moreso to counter it in regards to specific characters. I dont mean to spill too many beans, but an upcoming character seems to essentially have silver wolf's kit but better and without much to differentiate themselves. the problem here is that silver wolf performs a niche task of implanting variable weaknesses, however, that is kinda too interesting of a mechanic for hoyo to only allow one character to have; this leaves them in a situation where they could either release a new character that's doa due to being the same as sw or release a character that totally kills sw by doing everything she does but better. the way they seem to be going is to instead release a character that's better than sw, but while also buffing sw in such a way that she gains power in a specific niche and nuanced way vs the new character so that the two can more firmly be seen as sidegrades of eachother that do something similar but not exactly the same even if one of them might be still better on the whole.

Doesnt matter if they just keep buffing enemy health and damage then we just end up back to square one

Tbh would like it to be scaling buffs but also like leap skills in Punishing Gray Raven where you can buff older units buy leveling leap skills that are skills added on top or augments to their old skills

Imagine this, they indeed buff older characters, the catch is that its limited to their base stats, kekw

istg if they introduce a system like the divine keys in HI3 i will drop HSR in a heartbeat

or maybe you just want to make even more money following the path they followed on honkai impact, they release a skin for an old char to make money but that character isn't worth pulling or using anymore so they also rerun that character with a new weapon that buff and change her whole kit, that way making money from the skin, rerun pulls and weapon pulls. At the end of the day, hoyoverse just continues to prove that all of their games are just money makers with mild QoL updates every 4 patches and inconsistency between them, like how zzz and hsr have methods to get every artifact from dismantling but genshin only has the ones from the last major patch. If they truly thought about players, they would make any QoL changes that really benefits players be integrated into all of their games at least, so I don't see them buffing old characters out of love for their playerbase and for free

Dokkan mentioned.

I think they would go thw hi3rd route, where they will release a weapon or a passive that would change the way they play, like for example if seele passive triggered twice instead of once, one when an enemy is at 50% or lower or when they die, and her skill will not cost any skill points or like jinglu dealing more Damge based on how much hp she drained from her team

So that they could re-run and sell their outdated character again

This is so predictable. HSR youtuers = man they should buff old characters "hate video on why HSR bad" Hoyo = .. i mean no games do this but, fine we will. HSR youtuber = "activated my trap card of another hate video" You see making old characters stronger is bad! So pathetic.. its a never ending story with the hate.

I've had E6 Seele since day one, and she feels worse than some new 5 stars at E0

To be fair with Dokkan in this game it's easy to get a lot of "5*" characters

i REALLY hope they change some of the older characters' eidolons and some major traces

Let's ignore dokkan, which is not particularly similar to HSR. The biggest problem facing most early HSR characters is not necessarily that their numbers are just too low (that is part of the problem, but not the main culprit) IMO, the problem is that those kits are unfocused or make no sense to start with. Himeko is only really viable at all because of her Talent FuA, the rest of her kit is nonsense. Yanqing entire premise plain does not hold up as soon as you get to the Luofu and start seeing incoming Blast and AoE attacks on the regular. The 1.0 4*'s are all gimmicky in pointless ways, except for Lynx and Pela somehow. Pela is better in most scenarios than Silver Wolf, but that's not because Silver Wolf's effects are necessarily bad compared to Pela's. Silver Wolf has zero AoE effects of any kind, and her most desirable effect - implanting a new weakness - is generated randomly, instead of being based on the teammate with the highest attack, or the teammate who is first in the lineup. Bumping numbers will not fix the early characters. It won't even make them relevant in the patch they're updated in. Their kits fundamentally need to be reworked, because they were made at a time when the idea of Star Rail's combat progression was unclear, unfocused, and blatantly scared of being anything too crazy. Star Rail has gotten crazy, and its time for those kits to get crazy, too.

Ok lets do dehya next

The amount of power she holds in hi3

The only thing i want from these buffs is that they make Silverwolf better than Pela. I want to use my Silverwolf with my Acheron, but all content now requires AoE, and she only does single target debuffs. Please, Hoyo. If you do this, i'll spend even more money on your game

I feel like the strengthening of older characters can be specifically different depending on the type of character it is example being silver wolf no one is using her for her dmg they are using her for her debuffing capabilities all they have to do for her is make her ult aoe like in the mc flashback and she instantly becomes a better character

I have been playing Dokkan battle since the 1 year anniversary. I am really hoping HSR buffs are similar to eza, but I'm sure it's just wishful thinking

While they could certainly buff characters based on homeworld or faction (Lithic Spear mentioned), it’s worth noting that this is also… a pretty easy 1:1 with the DMG Type system. Not in a way where it would particularly useful nowadays, but it’s just an interesting thought that this *seems* to be what DMG Type was designed for but was quickly moved away from for… reasons?

I'm surprised they haven't made buyable cosmetics, and they can reduce the massive power creep. Especially for new players or old players that left, having the standard characters and old characters being pretty good is a no-brainer that will make everyone enjoy the game more, and I'm not just saying that cuz I have an E5 Bailu.

Personally, my favorite system for strengthening has to be Fate/ Grand Order. After hitting some very easy prerequisites, you either play through a short story segment with the character, or do a few battles which may/ may not play into the character's strengths, and then they just get their buffs. Usually they hand them out with events, or with a psuedo event specifically for strengthening where they place those units on rerun. The efficacy of these buffs vary, but usually they end up as overall improvements that make the character easier to use/ better at their niche so aside from a character you like not getting a buff out of 400+ characters it's usually not a problem. And the game is easy enough that you can get by on your favorites most of the time. I doubt HSR will take this route in favor of methods close to what we've already seen or stuff like what was shown in the video, but it would be cool if they just didn't make it complicated and make use of the character not as a stat spread.

Making old characters more interesting to get is good if they Will keep 4 characters banners