discussion around H Kai stl's aggressive rate of output for new characters has been growing steadily ever since version 2 up until now each version has featured two five-star characters while certainly a lot lower in frequency compared to some other gachas which tend to release multiple SSRS with every version the price tag and pole rates for hoo's titles are not quite as accessible pretty much evening out the pace of acquiring new characters notably many of the game's newest releases have been placed in the upper tiers of the meta and occurrence that shows no signs of stopping given the very ostensible increase in power sealing of this game something that's been on my mind for a while though is that the output of new four stars does not match five stars all that much so far in version two there have been 10 confirmed five star characters Black Swan Sparkle Acron aventurine Robin Boon Hill Firefly Jade yunle and jeloy yet there have been only three confirmed fourstar characters Gallagher Misha and March 7's new imaginary form unless you consider Harmony Trailblazer a quote unquote fourstar honai starl has measurably more five-star units than four stars 31 to 23 bear in mind version one had only seven five-star characters nine if we include zala and genuine and 13 four stars I count Trailblazer as a singular four-star regardless of which one meaning in the year and change the game has been out for we've had only 10 new fourstar units come out compared to 22 new five stars given the absence of play style as a result of the game being turn-based action sequences there's a lot more competition between four and five stars since you're evaluating them strictly on the basis of what they do per turn not how fun they are to play today I want to discuss why there are so few four-star characters being released in relation to five stars and what are some potential long-term consequences of it for all the criticisms I have towards kinch's power five I can at least give them credit for serving as a reliable and strong foundation for team building SE beneficial shling and sugr can all be useful in a wide number of situations giving players of all types whether free to play or pay to win an easy solution for the game in recent years hoyo has also managed to release new four-star characters that have just as much of an incentive to be used as them such as yaoya chevis shinobu Faron and so on of course for every one good fourar they release they're accompanied by a bunch of underwhelming ones but the point is effort is still being made to release give or take one new fourstar of De version resulting in a fairly equal spread of four and five star characters as it should be starl on the other hand puts more emphasis on five star units as evident by the sheer volume of them G done double five stars continuously up until 1.3 where in 1.4 they released no new five star and in 1.5 and 1.6 they brought out only one each Ula and kasaha respectively in 2.0 and 2.1 they went back to double five star release with ayakai and Yia then Shogun and kokami but for the remainder of version two they released just one five star or sometimes none at all meanwhile from the very beginning of its release honai staro consistently put out two new five stars per version all the way from 1.0 to 2.4 while it's not obligatory to pull for all of them the Temptation and pressure to do so has prompted both serious and non-serious discussion over players chain reserves being spread too thin five stars are naturally made stronger than four stars on account of the higher price tag associated with them having four stars be equally as strong as them defeats the purpose of spending however many tens if not hundreds of dollars it takes to acquire them so it makes perfect sense for them to on average perform much better than four stars however it's important to give players access to a service ible lineup of four stars in order to accommodate those who lack the wherewithal to obtain all the shiny toys in essence while five stars are obviously going to outperform their lesser counterparts the ladder should still be close enough in either practicality or availability the game did a fairly competent job at finding viable use cases for fourstar units throughout version one while Bron was considered the best support in the game tingyun had comparable market share as well putting the two in close contention for most of the first year of the game trailing behind her was Pala a de before ended support who was used every so often but found long-term employment with the release of qu in 2.1 at least for now ly was seen as a direct upgrade to Natasha and while nowhere near the level of laa and Hua was a perfectly capable healer and support with equal deployment value to japar and Bou overall damage-wise Chinta rage inducing as she might be was a four-star with deceptively competitive DPS potential at the time while inconsistent she was roughly on the same playing field as that of cila Blade and senu which made her an extremely popular option for Budget or free-to-play players the damage overtime Department had a robust selection of four-star units to go well with Kafka making her one of the more cost effective teams out there as you run her plus any dual combination of sample Luca gu and what have you her to found a forever home in piction where she Remains the most useful character in that department to this day it was inevitable for there to be a couple Duds though Dan Hong Arland and hope to name a few have never managed to Garner meaningful Headway in relevance but all in all while hoil wasted no time pumping out tons of feature units the four stars held their own in market share being widely used amongst the player base since version 2 onwards however things have begun to really shift away from them as mentioned earlier we've had 10 five-star characters in version 2 so far but only three fourstar Gallagher Misha and March being a damage dealer Misha unfortunately Falls victim to getting overshadowed by the vast majority of five stars purely for his lower stat line as for Gallagher following tremendous expansion on his Niche being break teams his market share is substantially increased making him one of the more valuable four stars in the game at the moment so I'm not implying four stars haven't received any updates whatsoever Gallagher is a significant step up from lyns for sure and soon in the near future when March's hunt form comes out we'll see if she can change things up a bit though so far hunt four stars have not been that successful all the same the four-star category in its entirety has been losing Equity at a rather alarming rate I should clarify that it's not because four stars have gotten nerfed or Worse per se more so that five stars have gotten so much better the current situation with honkai starl is that while the game has most certainly powercraft that's only endemic to the upper ceiling of the game not so much affecting the power floor if that makes sense so I'm not saying four stars are Suddenly unviable by comparing the game's current op characters acon Black Swan Sparkle Robin aventurine Firefly and so on with the Old Guard of version one Sila ginan BR La apart the difference is noticeable furthermore though stl's difficulty hasn't yet scaled to the point where older units are no longer usable it has certainly become more challenging the total HP pull of enemies in memory of chaos and piction has been steadily Rising on average demanding players to optimize their parties more and more for those that have been able to obtain half or more of all the new five stars the difficulty Spikes have been close to unnoticeable but that's because there's been such a massive jump and strength from version 2's characters compared to most of version one players of the Holy Trinity runme Robin and Sparkle or teams like kopus Swan and Acron hyper carry will face zero issues achieving 0 to1 cycle clears in mlc or 80k in pure fiction but what about for those who don't have the funds to obtain every five star that's the current problem with stl's four-star units or should I say lack thereof while a number of four stars have received indirect Buffs the aformentioned galagher with break teams p with Acron and I guess maybe shre with break teams as well four stars altogether have not kept up with the rapid acceleration of hsr's power creep right now there isn't a single Four Star unit in the Apex tiers tingyun was the closest but she's been effectively pushed down a tier by the harmony Trio and by attackers zoning energy only out performing them is specific teams like chinan or lunai tanan chinga has definitively lost her status as a top medic character by this point while people always saw her as a gimi caling back in the day was so good that you can make it work through sheer force alone but now the bar has been raised far past the point where it's worth investing into her for a perspective players Black Swan may as well seduce kavka alongside ARA taking over that teams and consequently pushing Alca sample and G II for the record I'm not saying these fourstar units are no longer usable it's just before they were competitive options but now that so many new units have come out that supersede them they've been relegated from being optimal choices to being storebrand options stuff you go for when you don't have or can't afford the name brand stuff for lack of a better way to put it roughly every top meta team has become gentrified most teams in this game have exclusively five stars for the best in slot the only main exceptions are right now Acron with Pala Harmony MC with Gallagher which extends to Boon Hill and Firefly and lunai danhong with Contin that's it every other four-star character at this point has been replaced by a five star unit give or take and the main reason for that is we're not getting any new fourstar characters for this new stage of power creep Gallagher and Harmony MC received almost as much attention as Arron for being strong affordable units because of how rare fourstar I've gotten unless March defies all preconceptions of fourar DPS characters I don't know how much her inclusion will really affect things I can think of a few factors behind Ho's aversion to making fourstar units good ones in particular no thanks to st's extremely linear combat they've done a Vang of job making a diverse roster of units across a broad spectrum of niches that being said the game is still constrained by its one-dimensionality it's a turnbas game with very digestible rudimentary mechanics making it more likely for units to eat into each other for market share let's draw a parallel to genin for a moment right now the four best electro units are yo Shogun Fishel and shinobu with genin being a real-time action RPG it's easier for the four characters similar may be to Edge out in value in one situation or another when factoring in team composition for example if you want to build a hyperboom team but your party needs a Healer then shinobu would be more valuable over Shogun in that scenario you want to build a hyper bom team that can run kokami then Shogun beats a Shino there's also Elemental reactions adding more separability between the characters some Electro units prefer Quicken While others are for hyperb theoretically the same can apply to HSR Gallagher huo and laa all of the respective gimmicks but there aren't quite as many gameplay circumstances that distinguish parties from each other all that much especially now with the way they're making so many hybrid units throughout my recent meta discussions for starl I touched on the blurring between paths multiple times like how we have units who can do two or three jobs at the same time a tank who can also debuff and fall up attack a support who can turn Advance a rebuff and followup attack a damage dealer who can ignore weakness type A Healer who can also buff and battery with there being so many multi-roll five stars in the game it makes it increasingly more difficult for them to release fourstar units who otherwise could fill in those niches Shi was once that DPS character who could ignore weakness types making her a potentially viable Rogue strategy for players who don't want to deal with type coverage but then Acron came out I know the two aren't exactly one to one and that sh e more for breaks not specifically ignoring weakness type but there still was overlap Haya was the SP generated character but Sparkle took over that Niche all the D characters got Friend oned by kakka because of Black Swan hell five stars are power creeping other five stars let alone fourstar characters previously acon has torn through the ceiling of starl and there have also been talks of firefly pushing the goal poost even more as much as I hate when I get comments in my genin videos going well actually you can't compare Candace and shinga because they don't do the same thing even though ultimately the goal is hydro application from both of them yes if we're being extremely technical Candace does have her own Niche so if they had a boss that strictly demands mainly Hydro basic attacks that's one thing she can do that Shino cannnot the problem with STL at coping with technicalities doesn't get you very far it's a turn-based game and though there are varying game modes that incentivize different types of characters all of them can be cleared with high enough numbers how this prevents four stars from being good is the fundamental basis of stats versus Rarity four stars are easier to obtain and so they're weaker they used to get away with being the only option but with the five stars being pumped out faster than thirst traps on Instagram every Niche is being filled up and or made irrelevant both in the damage dealing and support department leaving for stars a few options to truly make their own a possibility for why hoo doesn't release many four stars for HSR is because they only want to make units that have a chance of being used in ginin they have a tendency to just release whatever regardless of how they function in The Meta that's why there are so many quote unquote junk four stars in ginin they can do that though since players can develop a motivation for playing a character for non-practical reasons the five Saum Maines out there who play for a roly poy skill but there's no overall exploration in starl it's all combat subsequently while they're still Wu over meta most are primarily motivated to pull for practical value not for their play style or for the sake of fun so unless they want to release a bunch of forgettable four stars they'll have to make them competitively viable if they release too many though that can take away interest from the five stars in the same Niche aventurin and fushen are two of the most valuable units in the game because there's no four-star tank literally there's no four-star tank and don't say fire Trailblazer they're the fakest tank in the game but that doesn't mean they should just ignore it once again not every player can get every five star filling every niche in the game with only five stars can alienate those who either join the game late or free to place obviously five star should be at the top of the pecking order but there still has to be enough four stars to at least form functional teams that can keep up with the meta ideally it should entail a healthy balance of like 6633 with four stars taking at least 1/3 of the market share in teams there needs to be more attention given to four stars purely for the sake of accommodation I know you don't have to have every five star in the game to clear everything comfortably but when it feels feel like all that's being made available for future content on fly Stars it's perfectly understandable why players feel squeezed out right now honai starl places heavy emphasis on team coverage having a wide variety of teams to account for a wide variety of circumstances the irony though is that even though genin has virtually no need for party diversity they have a bunch of top tier four-star characters anchoring the player base which helps reduce the pressure to B for every five star between the two games it would make more pragmatic sense to have a power five in starl given the more prolific endgame content not a single fourstar character has come close in equity to G bit Shino or shanglin I'm aware that fourstar DPS units are forever cursed with a lower power budget but even for supports there are only a few of them who are best in slot for teams having to settle for a downgraded version of a team even if set team can still clear the game is a terrible feeling knowing you can get so much more out of your favorite unit if only you had this or that they have to release more four stars preferably relevant four stars to fit in teams they don't have to be benon or shincho levels of busted but just make more units like Gallagher who are strong budget friendly characters I have no problem with them sending us two5 Stars per version what I do take issue with is them sending only five stars especially considering they're advancing the game's power scaling along with it eventually even the best four-star supports like tenun and Pala just won't be enough for the game tldr give us a four-star tank I can't believe we've gone this long without a single four-star tank for that matter I want to ask you guys what are some niches that can potentially be filmed with a fourstar feel free to share your ideas in the comments down below that's all for today though so if you enjoy the video it would be great if you could leave a like And subscribe don't forget to follow me on Twitter @ vars join join my Discord server and check out my other homecast sty discussions if you haven't yet but until next time thanks so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you again soon take care [Music]