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Oliver Brandt is a Contributing Pop Culture Writer based in Tasmania, Australia. Their focus is reporting on video games, film, and TV. They have extensive knowledge of video game history and communities both in Australia and abroad, animated films and television shows, and international cinema. Oliver joined Newsweek in 2024 and has previously worked at Men's Journal, Parade, and more. They are a graduate of Curtin University. You can get in touch with Oliver by emailing o.brandt@newsweek.com. You can find them on X and Bluesky @chocobalt. Languages: English.
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Times are getting interesting for players of Honkai: Star Rail, as developer HoYoverse announced intentions to buff older characters of the turn-based RPG — a first for the studio's gacha games.
"In addition, issues close to the Trailblazer's hearts, including difficulty deploying older characters on the battlefield and the strengthening of these older characters, are already on the schedule," a developer blog posted on HoYoLAB stated.
Players of the game criticized a recent trend of newer characters completely eclipsing old units, a phenomenon that is known as "powercreep" in video games. However, HoYoverse is known to never touch the power level of characters once they've been released, outside of rare exceptions or technical difficulties. Declaring its intent to buff older characters is quite a break with tradition.
There is currently no information on how these power boosts may happen. HoYoverse could go back and rework the active or passive abilities of characters directly. Another possibility is that it creates individual items that can only be equipped by certain characters, which buff their stats or grant them altered abilities — this is one way some other gacha games have handled this issue.
HoYoverse made this announcement as part of a larger response to recent player feedback. The developers also revealed changes that will allow players to customize their way of experiencing the game's story a bit more. For example, players will get the option to skip certain dialogs that explain more of the lore and background, in case they are not interested in these aspects. This goes for puzzle sections as well.
In addition, the team wants to improve the way stories are presented, making less use of the "black screen with white text" method that was heavily criticized by the community recently.
These adjustments will also be made retroactively to the content of HSR 3.0 and should be implemented by the time HSR 3.2 rolls around, the developers stated.
While the community almost unanimously welcomed the intention of buffing older characters, the reaction to the other changes were a bit more mixed. Players who enjoy the game's lore, world-building, and puzzles are afraid that HoYoverse will end up putting less effort into these aspects of the game when there are options to skip them.
HSR 3.0 is entering its second half this week with the release of Aglaea on the game's banners — check out the best Light Cones and Relics for Aglaea if you intend on getting her.
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