Honkai Star Rail Version 2.1 “Into the Yawning Chasm” is nearly here, and some of the preliminary patch notes for this update have Trailblazers excited.
Not only is the game getting a bunch of new content and new characters, but keeping with tradition, HoYoverse is also adding some much-appreciated quality-of-life features to the game on top of that.
The rate at which Honkai Star Rail gets quality-of-life updates and other additions compared to HoYoverse’s main cash cow, Genshin Impact, has become a heated point of debate for fans of both games. Despite only being around for a year at this point, HoYoverse has supplied Honkai Star Rail with multiple quality-of-life features that Genshin Impact fans have been begging for since the game launched nearly four years ago.
While Version 2.1 of Honkai Star Rail is only adding the ability to redeploy all of your daily assignments with a single button press instead of manually dispatching them one by one every day, this tweak is emblematic of a larger divide between Star Rail and Genshin Impact.
Genshin fans have been begging HoYoverse for a Resin overflow system for ages, while the Reserve Trailblaze Power system was added to Honkai Star Rail just four months after release. Honkai Star Rail’s Battle Pass lets players level up past the usual cap of 50 to earn bonus Relic materials and Credits, while Genshin’s Battle Pass is still locked at its cap.
The event system in Honkai Star Rail is also much friendlier to all types of players, archiving old events (and a limited set of rewards) permanently for newcomers and busy people to enjoy at their leisure. Genshin barely got the ability to auto-consume enhancement materials when leveling up characters, too, while this feature has been available in Honkai Star Rail since launch.
HoYoverse is also incredibly generous with Honkai Star Rail’s gacha system compared to Genshin Impact’s gacha, offering players a 5-star character selector after making a certain number of pulls and providing players with tons of free pulls and Stellar Jades with every new patch. A free 5-star character was even given out to all Honkai Star Rail players within a year of release, too.
These are all minor gripes in the grand scheme of things, but these little things add up. Genshin Impact does have a ton of stuff that Honkai Star Rail doesn’t have, but the rate at which quality-of-life features and tweaks are getting added to Star Rail makes it feel like HoYoverse is hearing the fan feedback for Genshin Impact, but just not listening to what they have to say.
It’s an unfortunate and frustrating situation, and while things have been looking up for both games, it looks like Star Rail will continue to receive these updates at a faster pace for the foreseeable future.
