Genshin Impact has a complicated relationship with balance changes, as they’re rarely (if ever) done in the game, with the most notable exception being Zhongli back on his release in 1.1. And it seems like Hoyoverse’s latest attempt at doing it wasn’t particularly well received either.
Fan-favorite Neuvillette was the target of said attempts, labeled at first as a regular bug correction. However, this small change ended up causing a huge backlash from players after it was finally rolled out on Patch 4.8, scaling up to the point where the company had to publically apologize for the inconvenience, after waves of displeased comments were flooding their social media.
After this disastrous attempt at changing a character directly, and even some players from China allegedly threatened to sue Hoyoverse for fraud, the changes are being officially rolled back, with a total of x1600 Primogems being distributed as damage control. This is the first time they ever gave such generous compensation, even to players who weren’t affected.
Already A Feature At This Point
Neuvillette was considered a meta-changing character immediately after his release. His sheer power was already somewhat above the usual, but he could also abuse the game’s mechanics to cover a huge area of effect with his Skill in a way no other character could do at the time by quickly spinning the camera with enhanced sensibility. People were quick to catch on to this trick, which led to the character’s huge popularity.
As the fast-spinning trick wasn’t new or anything, no one ever expected it to be considered a bug. Other characters could also do it, but none had a practical use for it as Neuvillette did. So it came as a surprise when, out of a sudden, Hoyoverse announced via in-game email that they were stripping him out of this trick.
It wouldn’t be an issue if it happened soon after its release, but it was done almost a whole year following the character’s introduction. At this point, it was already considered an integral part of his gameplay, and removing it could affect severely his performance.
Players immediately noticed how clunky the character had become after the changes, and started expressing their outrage. A Reddit user posted a video demonstrating how slow were now for the Hydro Dragon, where many other players expressed their dissatisfaction.
“His max feels as fast as the old min, and his new min feels so bad.”, said the top commenter.
And even if you weren’t into this gameplay style, you were also going to be affected in a way or another.
“I just tried it, i never did the spin tech, I get motion sickness from just watching videos about it, but this “bugfix” affected the normal gameplay too. Just turning around to hit a new spawning enemy feels way slower as a result.”, another comment stated.
Others were reminded of another unpopular “bug fix” that Hoyoverse made years ago to Yae Miko, when her Skill targeting system was altered for a brief period.
“Yae’s targeting change also happened right before Sumeru came out and if it hadn’t been reverted would have probably nerfed her in Dendro teams in AoE situations.”, mentioned another comment.
Notably, one of Yae Miko’s Constellations (which many people paid a lot to get) was severely affected by the change, which was reverted almost as quickly as it was released. And fortunately, it was the same case for Neuvillette.
The quick response and generous compensation were probably to avoid having to deal with even more trouble as they’re already under the bus with the whole Natlan drama. Supposedly inspired by South American cultures, the region is severely lacking in diversity, which has been constantly called out by fans and even voice actors during the last few days.
Related: All Revealed Natlan Characters in Genshin Impact (So Far)
“not even 24 hours go by and we get a Neuvillette rollback buttt still nothing on blatant colorism”, a commenter mentioned under the compensation announcement. Most of the comments are, funnily enough, hammering down that subject instead of actually discussing the Nerf reversion in Genshin Impact, one of the few times it has happened in the game’s history.
Other issues aside, this is very pleasing to see, as the company is also infamous for not listening to complaints or taking too long to do something about them. We hope to see more similar reactions by them in the meantime, especially regarding introducing proper diversity to the game.