the big 3.0 immersive expansion, a new planet, and a new playable Path. The hit title has also continued to lessen the tedious character-building grind with helpful boons to grind more often or create custom relics.

Given the nature of gacha games, HSR has fallen into power creep and is arguably the worst of the HoYoverse games. Though something like Zenless Zone Zero can still avoid power creep, HSR is too deep to reverse it. That is not to say that past characters are pointless, as they can still be fun and relatively strong. However, newer content continues to be focused more on new characters and the ever-growing damage numbers they can produce.

Honkai: Star Rail Looks To "Buff" Old Characters

An Acknowledgment Of Failings

In a blog post on the official HoYoLAB website, the developers of Star Rail gave a short update on how they are looking to strengthen old characters that feel less viable in the ever-increasing difficulty of the endgame content. To some extent, this can be linked to the story, where some of the boss battles are more tuned to newer characters rather than old ones. However, this can be offset somewhat by the recent trend of getting trial characters in story missions.

"In addition, issues close to Trailblazers' hearts, including difficulty deploying older characters on the battlefield and the strengthening of these older characters, are already on the schedule."

This is becoming increasingly needed due to how power creep has worked its way into Star Rail. The main issue is that newer characters continuously dish out more damage, which makes it hard for older characters to keep up. Even someone like Jing Yuan, who has been indirectly buffed by new character releases multiple times, cannot keep up. The other issue is endgame content like MOC, Shadows, and Pure Fiction being tuned to the new release specialties like Break or specific characters like The Herta and her best builds.

How Star Rail Could Learn From Genshin Impact

A Previous Solution

One avenue Star Rail could take for buffing old characters has already been seen in Genshin Impact. The Imaginarium Theater has a set cast of "ongoing characters" for every update that receives buffs of some kind. These buffs are not exclusive to the game mode and carry into the regular world.

Star Rail could do something similar where certain older characters receive a temporary stat buff every season to bring them in line with new characters. This is a good option as it doesn't prevent HoYoverse from making money, as newer characters will still be slightly stronger and have more longevity. However, it still allows for past characters to see some limelight on a rotational basis.

How Star Rail Can Break The Gacha Buff Rule

Breaking The Mold

The other option, albeit highly unlikely, would be for Star Rail to break the gacha tradition and start buffing characters. These buffs are unlikely to be anything major or have kit reworks, but it would scale the numbers up. Even just scaling the numbers would make past DPS units feel like they can compete with newer options.

The problem here is that gacha games essentially never buff old characters. The only time HoYoverse has done it was with Zhongli, whose shield was relatively weak on release. Even then, the likely reason for this was that he was an Archon who would make them a lot of money the stronger he was. At this point, past characters won't make HoYo any money unless the buff is aligned with a rerun date, so buffing them would be purely to sate audience disappointment.

The likely outcome of this announcement is something closer to what Genshin Impact did. This is because it would be easier for the developers since the groundwork is already there, and it wouldn't hurt the business side of things as much. Regardless of how HoYoverse ultimately approaches the endeavor, it should be a good thing that old characters that players invested heavily in will be able to see valuable usage again if Honkai: Star Rail buffs old characters.

Source: HoYoLAB