HoYoverse has been releasing new Honkai Star Rail updates on time, except for some occasional hiccups. However, the fandom is not very content with this direction and is finally losing patience. Over the years, the overall quality of the title has been going down bit by bit, including mediocre story missions, power creep, and more.

While Honkai Star Rail has the potential to be an exceptional gacha title, the devs are holding it back. Read on as we further discuss this matter.

Note: Some aspects of this article are subjective and reflect the author’s opinions.

Honkai Star Rail fandom is not happy about the title going downhill

If you have been playing Honkai Star Rail since launch, you’ll know the game isn’t the same as it used to be. In earlier patches, the story actually mattered and was engaging. Although some bits and pieces were a little depressing, players looked forward to the update’s story missions. The Penacony Arc was the best storyline released by HoYoverse. Compared to the aforementioned Arc, the Amphoreus Arc was a little boring, as each update featured long quests.

However, the story missions were still engaging, especially the version 3.4 quest, which was probably the best of all 3.x updates. With version 3.8’s release, everything started going downhill and didn’t stop, even after HSR 4.0’s release. Although the aforementioned update was delayed by two weeks, Planarcadia’s story is exceptionally mediocre.

Besides mediocre story quests, the lack of events in Honkai Star Rail has played a huge role in the title going downhill. After the update’s release, you will get access to the patch’s flagship event, which requires a couple of hours to complete. When you are done, there’s nothing to do until the second half starts. When it does, the phase two event is also not very engaging and can be completed in mere hours. This means during the majority of the update, all players have nothing to do except Daily Training.

On top of that, the powercreep in all endgame activities is worth noting. Most of the bosses have an exceptionally large HP pool, forcing everyone to pull all the meta-defining characters. Most of the recent 5-star units require other premium characters to unleash their full potential, such as Silver Wolf LV999 and Sparxie. Since casual/free-to-play players won’t have an endless supply of Stellar Jade, it’s exceptionally hard for them to pull these characters, which prevents them from fully clearing the endgame modes.

Going back to the topic of endgame activities, the devs have been increasing all bosses’ HP to make the mode challenging. However, it’s not very enjoyable, as you’ll just spend a bit more time clearing that particular stage.

Since Honkai Star Rail is a gacha title, its main revenue source is the Warp banners. While overall banner sales have been somewhat stable, Himeko Nova didn’t do well, considering the Warp event lasted the whole patch. As mentioned, Phainon is a version 3.4 character. His Warp event only lasted for 3 weeks. As you can see in the picture above, Himeko Nova only generated roughly $25 million, while Phainon’s banner garnered almost $44 million. These amounts are estimates from Sensor Tower, a legitimate source for app revenue data.

Besides that, many players are also fed up with SPs becoming more and more common in Honkai Star Rail. This somewhat kills the excitement of an upcoming patch, as a version of that particular unit already exists in the game.

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