(back to the gacha culture essay collection)
gacha welfare
originally written 8 september 2025.
these are technically still leaks at time of writing, as genshin impact version luna i releases tmrw, 9 sept 2025. but i doubt this page will come out before the new version, so i'll just go ahead and say my piece.
aino fails as a welfare unit.
since i'm putting this in the gacha culture collection, let me first explain what a "welfare unit" means for the gacha collection's target audience of gacha-cluelesses: basically, as live-service games go on, the developers will inevitably run out of ideas for fresh gameplay using the existing game mechanics. as such, it's normal for them to introduce new mechanics or new niches into the meta, like how genshin added dendro in 3.0, pneumaouisa in 4.0, nightsoul in 5.0, and now lunar rxns in nod-krai.
(notice how there was no such new meta-defining mechanic in 2.0)
these mechanics enabled new reactions, were involved in puzzle-solving, were kind of bullshit ways of tanking older units' meta relevance, or reworked the fundamental dmg mechanisms involved in elemental rxns (respectively). with the release of each of these new mechanics, the genshin opened up a new permanent event which gave out a free 4* character who had access to this new gimmick, thereby granting everyone the ability to engage with every necessary aspect of the game: in sumeru it was collei (via the abyss), in fontaine it was lynette (via ar rewards, i think + she got to double-count as our free anemo, which had been traveler up until that point), in natlan it was kachina (via archon quest completion), and in nod-krai it will be aino.
(now notice how we didn't get any welfare units in inazuma. that's bc we didn't need one.)
the only problem here is that aino cannot enable the lunar rxns which comprise the core of nod-krai's regional combat gimmick. and what's even more ridiculous here is the fact that the meat of her kit is intended to buff lunar reactions! those things a player won't even have access to without rolling for a limited 5* character!! sure, you could use her suboptimally in non-lunar rxn teams, but that circles right back around to the problem she is supposed to be solving, which is giving players full access to the new lunar mechanics!
right now, all the discussions i've had w/others abt aino have had me watch as people try to redirect the conversation to her use in lunar rxn teams. like oh, she adds +1 moonsign. (so that you can get the most out of your ineffa or lauma or flins.) like thanks, but w/o lunar rxns, does that even really matter??
the thing abt gacha is that playing one involves some aspect of chance, basically no matter what. the only things you are guaranteed without either pulling out your wallet or putting in the time are the things the game gives you for free, and the only things you can guarantee everyone will have, regardless of account age, are the things that are permanently free, given to you for your own well-being: the welfare units. the low-rarity starter units, in most cases.
therefore, when it comes to questions of fairness in a game, we have to look at what all players are guaranteed to have and ask ourselves, "can a normal person succeed at everything this game asks them to do with only these free units?"
like i said, genshin luna i comes out tmrw at the time of this writing, so. technically, we do not know. but at the same time, i'm not writing this essay in a vacuum: discussions of genshin's powercreep have been getting louder and louder since about mid-fontaine when neuvillette was released, at a pace which only accelerated throughout natlan. considering how punishing natlan's nightsoul mechanics quickly became if you didn't use them in combat scenarios like the abyss and now stygian onslaught, it's a common fear circulating right now that lunar rxns and their mechanics will follow suit in nod-krai. we've already seen something similar pop up with that cactus guy local legend who needs either electro-charged or lunar-charged dmg to be killed, and one of those archetypes is a lot easier to build for consistent dmg than the other. right now, leaks say that there's an upcoming boss in nod-krai which will regenerate hp if you don't either use lunar rxns or clear a certain level of dps on it.
this is not a very big deal in everyday gameplay. in terms of endgame, theatre only really cares abt the elements you have at your disposal, and stygian onslaught has its primos kept at an easily-attainable level. the abyss, however, has long had issues with hp inflation and hosting enemies whose mechanics are biased towards current banner characters, and it has no such saving grace as theatre and onslaught where all you need to do is clear the abyss to get the primo rewards: you need to clear it in time.
i have long believed that as an ar [57, 58, 59, 60] player i should be able to clear the abyss with full stars using just about whatever team i so please, bc in the time it takes to hit those high ar levels, i should have enough highly-invested units of my liking to be guaranteed the rewards. i already put in the effort by building them. but that just isn't the case with this game, which has gone from dps checks to element checks to nightsoul checks, and sometimes it even feels like they're doing specific character checks to clear the abyss.
so to me, it doesn't matter that aino will be able to locate nod-krai specialties on the minimap, or add +1 moonsign level when she's in the active party. as of right now, it really does look like players are locked out of parts of the baseline game for her lack of lunar rxn enablement, and for that, she fails as a welfare unit.