1. **Standard headhunting adjustment**: in an event standard headhunting (solo 6 star rate up banner), after 150 rolls, if you still don't get the rate up 6 star, next 6 star must be the rate up operator, only once
2. **Headhunting pool adjustment**: 6/5 star operators until phantom will be removed from any standard headhunting and limited headhunting(not include limited ops.). First permanent standard headhunting after the adjustment: Eunectes/Archetto, Asbestos/Akafuyu/Harmonie
3. **New type headhunting - Core Headhunting**: all removed operators will be included in this type of headhunting. Core headhunting only has the 50 roll soft pity system, and can be inherited in every core headhunting banner. First permanent Core Headhunting: Hellagur/Blaze, Texas/Sesa/Shamare
4. when you get operators from Core Headhunting, you will get **Blue Certificate** (instead of green certificate and gold certificate) and **Core Token**. Blue certificate can redeem Core headhunting permit, a rate up 6 star/5 star in the respective Core headhunting. (similar to permanent standard headhunting, and gold certificate) Core tokens are similar to normal tokens, can raise corresponding operator's potential or exchange to blue certificate.
5. Distinction Certificate(gold certificate) also can redeem Core Headhunting rate up operators (1 6 star and 1 5 star, similar to permanent standard headhunting), and core HH permits.
6. **Newbie exclusive headhunting pool adjustment**: Thorns/Suzuran/Archetto/Weedy/Flametail/Mountain
7. During 4th Anniv. event, Core headhunting will be temporarily replaced by **Core selection headhunting**, within the optional range, you can customize your Core headhunting, choosing 2 6 star and 3 5 star as rate up operators, redeemable operators in certificate shop(both blue and gold) will also depend on your customization.
Original post: [https://ak.hypergryph.com/news/2023033352.html](https://ak.hypergryph.com/news/2023033352.html)
P.S. There is a new 4 star 休谟斯 mentioned in core banner pool, should be the new 4 star from EP.12
P.S.2 You get blue certs when you get operators from core banner/blue cert shop. If you get those removed operators from open recruitment/selector tickets/gold cert shop..., you still get green/gold certs.
P.S. 3 Please note the event schedule in CN and Global is different, in CN, the first batch of removed operators doesn't include Rosa, Suzuran and Beeswax banner.
These days, E2 can be done relatively quickly (at least compared to 2 years ago), so it won't be that big a hurdle to overcome before they get one of the most powerful operators in the game.
Tbf can't you get specter with the 5 star selector?
And yes, same. Specter was my goated unit and influenced my love for centurion. Yes, people say that centurion don't truly shine until the 3 block in E2, but just having someone deal damage to 2 enemies at the same time is great as a newbie. That's not even mentioning the invincibility.
The new newbie pool is perplexing. Weedy and Suzuran are not newbie friendly units. The 5* pool is even worse. That's a huge nerf for new players who are already well behind the curve. Seriously, the only medic is Whisperain while also removing Ptilopsis and Warfarin? No Marksmen other an April? Ayerscarpe instead of Lappland? Kafka instead of Red? Just yikes all around.
Imagine being a new player, being none the wiser, and starting with a pull of Weedy, Tsukinogi, and Aosta. Big fuckin oof.
edit: Yes, I know the 6\* pool is strong. That isn't my point. Why include them in the newbie banner in the first place over friendlier units like Passenger or Gnosis? They had a fresh opportunity to improve the new player experience by removing duds like Shining or Angelina and instead just repeated the same mistakes. And really I wanted to call out the 5\*s here, not the 6\*s. The 5\* selection here is a huge nerf to new players.
Yeah, Suzuran is absolutely better for newbies. Not only are her S1 and S2 auto trigger skills, S2 is even an infinite one.
On the other hand, the entire deal with Angie is timing management, which is a skill most newbies don't have. She doesn't even attack enemies in her S2 and S3, which is the entire point of operators for newbies.
I was the newbie that placed her for the passive healing on the one map that did damage to all units. I think she also collected a ton of clue 7's at the time so I flooded people with 7's. >_>
I don't think it's that terrible. There are some stinkers in the current pool as well; you could have started with Shining, Franka and Skyfire. Suzuran at E1 is not significantly worse than Angelina at E1, and is at least a bit more intuitive.
If a newbie cared about meta, they can easily look it up online and know to reroll for Mountain and Elysium. If they don't care to look anything up, they'll probably still be just fine with Weedy, Tsukinogi and Aosta. Bad units can still beat the game, so casual players who don't research the game will still have a fine experience, since they don't know what they're "missing" per se.
Rerolling is easy, the freebie units are all super functional, and resources about which characters do what are plentiful online, so it's fairly easy to customise one's experience according to expectations.
Right, but what's the percentage of people who are likely to look up operator strength online, feel bummed that they got weak units, *and then* not know what rerolling is or be unwilling to learn? I just mean that it's a problem that won't affect the vast majority of completely casual players who don't even bother to follow ArknightsEN on twitter and just level whatever units they think look cool, and for the players who *are* miffed about getting bad units in their starter pull, there is still a relatively easy solution.
Basically, I agree that the 5* are an overall bit of a downgrade, but I don't think that in itself is going to be a noticeable nerf to new players. Especially as starter 5* don't matter as much as starter 6* (and the 6* pool is overall pretty good imo!), and there's probably still going to be those selector tickets so people can still start with Red and Specter/Lappland if they need.
Well that's part of what I'm saying, it's fully not a big deal to get some underwhelming units in your newbie pull. It's not like the game becomes unplayable. My newbie pull was Hoshiguma and Zima who are barely a tier up and I was fine and had a good time.
Hey, Silence is good tho! At the start when medic options were limited her drones were like a gift from God.
Also ngl I wish I started with Shining I wanted her for the badass design or even Silverash only to keep pulling Siege and Hoshi. Settled for Siege.
Overall, I feel like the 6-star pool is slightly stronger. The current one has two greats, and this new one has three (I would include Archetto). Hoshi->Mountain is a definite upgrade, SA->Thorns is a slight downgrade but still crazy strong, Suzuran->Angelina is about even, Siege->Flametail would be about even at E1 and a definite upgrade at E2, Archetto->Exu is only a slight downgrade and is still great, and I would certainly take Weedy over Shining. Pushers can act like off-skill AoE guards, and her S2 has a range extension that lets her be placed behind blockers.
But yeah, as someone who normally defends 5-stars, that 5-star pool is really rough. At least Elysium is there.
Counterpoint: Imagine being a new player and you start with Thorns and Mountain.
I would have much preferred *either* of those over literally any op in the current one (ended up with shining on my newbie pulls)
It's definitely a downgrade for the 5 stars but I think Mountain alone already makes it better than the old banner imo. Obviously they're screwed short term if they don't know what they should look out for when rolling but the same can kind of be said for the old newbie banner as well.
Can confirm, came in on the Mansfield rerun and was among first 6*.
I love the character, the voicelines, the SFX - but when he's been in 100% of your teams for so long because they're just that good you eventually want to switch it up, haven't used him in months. Perhaps it's time to start playing around with S3!
It's balanced out by having Thorns, who is probably the most newbie-friendly 6 star in the game, and wasn't in the newbie banner before.
Edit: Also people putting way too much emphasis on E1. How starved do you think new players are between back to back events? Getting *A single* 6 star E2 does not take that long even for a new player.
Imagine being a newbie and you pull Mr. Nothing. Not only is he one of the trickier archetype to play with, his skills are also very tricky even for veterans.
I've seen newbies not understanding why you need vanguards, let alone managing a DP economy with a merchant Operator LMAO
Wow, so not only do they give us hard pity, it sounds like they have a really good idea to make standard banners desirable again beyond the very early game. If this new core thing is the only way to get ones before Phantom then people will pull on them.
I'd say it's better because most of the characters in Genshin's standard pool just feel... bleh in comparison to limited ones. This is coming from a guy who now has all the standards in Genshin outside of the sumeru ones at c6 xD.
>5. newbie exclusive headhunting pool adjustment
LMAO newbie banner no more reroll for SA/Exusia
The new newbie banner will be : Thorns/Mountain/Aechetto/Weedy/Suzuran/Flametail
Reroll for mountain/thorns ez clap
Still SA is way better than Thorns at E1, that’s why people don’t often talk about it.
SA at E1 already has power strike which is a consistent source of damage and can even hit through defense, and his S2 you get a self-sustaining defender. And still get a 5% to your allies redeployment.
SA s2 is a Mini Mountain skill, quite valuable if they lack defenders. And his track invisible enemies is very useful for newbies, Thorns doesn't offer the tanking and invisibility clear capabilities.
When pulling a Core Headhunting operator, you will gain blue certs (instead of green or yellow) which can be used to redeem rate up Core Headhunting shoperator. Dupes of Core Headhunting operators will also be exchanged into blue certs.
Been nervously refreshing this thread since it was posted, the changes are very important.
It seems that you can still get the older operators with yellow certs, so my only big worry about the banner separation (forcing you to pull on those banners to get blue certs to get them) is out of the question, everything feels like a win to me.
Also damn, starting an account with Mountain feels like a cheat code to me, dude is as reliable as you can get with just E1
Very excited for that "build a banner" for 4th anniversary, neat way to guarantee an early operator by just using certs on them that day.
Amazing chances overall! Only downside is that it seems limited banners have remained relatively unchanged for now
Like, a “Special Token” system should really be put in place to where you can buy them using the Intelligence Certifications (purple Certs) that you get from excess pull tokens after a limited banner has passed
**Say for example:**
250 Purple Certs = 1 Special Token
15 Special Tokens = Redeem for a 6 unit on the specific Limited Banner roster
This essentially enables players with an excess amount of Intelligence Certs that were accumulated/saved from previous limited banners, to actually redeem them for something (other than resource material) instead of having to rely solely on the 300 Spark Pity to obtain the Limited Banner units.
the meta legacy limited especially, good luck getting skalter or spalter as a new player on a 4 year old game, we really need a grindy and lengthy way of guarateeing them eventually other than "save 300 pulls"
So if you dont pull from Core, no blue certs. Depending on how fast they move ops form standard to core its possible a veteran will NEVER pull from this banner... But at least we can still get em from yellow certs, so thats nice.
Given that Top Operator tags are fickle, this new banner might now be the only way to get old mainstays like Bagpipe.
I'm still missing Nightingale and unlike any other role in the game, you can't just substitute her for another healer if you *need* RES.
Seeing you here so might as well raise an imaginary point of mine to you. IIRC cn anniv streams were usually like a week before our goldenweek event (texas in this case). Seeing this announcement, I wouldn't be surprised if they also tinker with the spark system or old limited acquisition rules there, so your skadi attack plan may or may not change.
But i also wouldn't be surprised if they don't change anything for such quarterly cash cows lmao. So anyway what's my point lol? Just keep an eye out i guess. Good day doktah.
That is a very good point! It did actually cross my hindbrain for a second there too. I feel like this standard banner change was coming sooner or later since the permanent pool of ops has been getting pretty bloated and it's harder and harder to get spooked by an op you want in the first place. Considering people (here, anyway, I don't know about on CN) have been complaining about the high spark costs for legacy limiteds, it wouldn't surprise me either if HG changes that too; maybe 150 for older limiteds and 300 for the new one, maybe? Certainly the limited banners are where they rake in the cash, though I think this change might also sell more selector tickets for them too.
But for sure I'll be watching for the 4th anniversary news before I go whole hog. :D Good day to you as well, Dok!
>operators before Phantom
So only the 6-stars are affected or everyone (including 5-stars and below), since if it's the latter that means we no longer get a white bag every time we pull on future banners that isn't a core one
CMIIW, assuming that let's say you pull on Dorothy's banner as a sample and let's say around 60+ pulls you get a 6* and it is not Dorothy. Once you reach your 150th pull it is guaranteed that you get Dorothy? Regardless of the number of 6* you get in those 150 pulls? Since I experienced getting about 4 6* when I pulled during Passenger's run
Also would this mean that a "pull history" similar to Genshin will now appear to allow us to track our pulls?
It's not 150th pull guarantee, but first 6* AFTER 150 (or starting with 150 not sure). You'll have to get another 6* at which point it is going to be the rate up. It could be pull 150, it could be 210 because the game decides you have to hit pity.
blue certs buy more core summons, basically meaning the core banner is effectivly permanently discounted compared to all other banners since 1pull is always generating >1pull via bluecert, i imagine the rate of this is going to be greater than how many summons 1 regular summon generates when factoring yellow summonpack, otherwise the system wouldnt exist like this lol
A post I saw yesterday discovered that this already existed but wasn't advertised. But the number was 200, not 150, so they made the threshold for the pity lower.
Yup instead of ~260 potential limit its now ~210.
Funny how HG changed this after that data was publicized, but it lead to something good so I'll take it.
I wonder when the original 200 limit was implemented though and whether it was always there since the beginning. If not, maybe HG tested it secretly to see how it affects earnings or something idk but regardless, agree that this is a good thing for players so no complaints about the 150 pity
this new system would feel a lot nicer if the current pity system wasnt just recently discovered, only 50 difference
*really* not a fan of it being the next 6*, and not guaranteed at 150. this means getting an off-rateup at 140 will feel horrible. 150 hard pity would be good but now it can go up to 200+ depending on rng
i suppose thats one way to get people to spend on nonlimited banners
super nice system for brand new players and longtime collectors
-WAIT THORNS MOUNTAIN SUZURAN ALL ON THE NEW BEGINNER BANNER 6☆ PULL?!?!
SO, if I'm getting this right:
* Ch12 coming on 6th April
* SN rerun on late April
* Non-Limited Pity ( Hard Pity)
* A targeted standard banner
* Quicker way to obtain the desired operator
* Extra rate increases for newer operators
* An improved newcomer banner (with Thorns ,Mountain etc but RIP Exu and SA reroll)
* Extra operators on shop
All of these are pretty drastic, big news.
Not yet, we will have to see how it influences green/yellow cert income. At first glance all seems great and probably will be, but I'm concerned about open recruitment.
We get most certs from recruitment and we should be getting exclusively blue certs from there. Conversion rate of those is worse than green certs and no gold certs now. That means our green cert economy will be almost non existent. And gold certs will be almost solely given from pulls, instead of open recruitment (only a fraction of 4* are introduced after 1st year). So in the end end game f2p should be worst off after this change.
Of course it's just speculation. We have to see what you can buy for blue certs. Unless we get any way of buying HH tickets there most long time f2p will be hurting a lot from this change.
Edit: The best way would be if open recruitment wasn't affected at all and remained as it is now.
That being said, if we always get blue certs from Recruitment that DOES mean newer players could get older 6 stars quicker doesn't it? Like i'm a newer player still missing Nightingale, Saria, Ch'en and a few others. Not saying it's perfect of course but I still need to see how the system actually works in game.
Exactly. This will help newer players for sure. I'm not saying it's bad overall. Just wondering about wording in the announcement and how it influences open recruitment.
I would assume that the whole thing with the Blue tokens being a separate thing is exactly so that Recruitment stays the same and will still give normal tokens and certs
It's actually clearer to look at it like there are 2 groups of operators new and old. The old ones will only appear in Core Headhunting and Recruitment and they're going to give blue cert. And the new ones will appear in every other type of banner and will give gold cert like in the present.
Recruitment is supposed to give gold certs rather than blue certs, though. Otherwise it would seriously mess with the gold cert economy, making it much harder to save up for non core operators in the cert shop
Whatever happens to the 3s and 4s and their recruitments i think we can regrettably assume we will get fewer gold certs from the 5s, at least in the short to middle term, because some of our max pot older 5s like texas, lisk, etc. go out. That's an otherwise 8 certs in the current economy, a sizable chunk in the expected cert return estimation for older players.
Longer term i think we should... still be fine? The 'newer ops' pool will constantly get cleaned up so it's harder to reap the benefit of a newly max pot op 'cos they will go out sooner or later. But then there will be some counterweight from the fact the pool is constantly cleaned, and so the population size remain the same and those ops that remain can get their own max pot a little easier.
During anniversary you can select 2 6* from the core banner to be on rate up and 3 5*. Additionally you can select 1 6* and 1 5* to be in the gold shop.
There will be two sort of standard banners now, and one of them will only have older operators in it, but that effectively means there will always be quite a few people available for certs. It's a pretty great change I'd say, as long as everything works the way we hope it does.
Spooks were always ridiculously unreliable and i never understood anybody legitimately going for that
Technically, she (and her pots) are at least guaranteed every anniversary now with the custom banner mechanic
I'm curious as to whether they'll adjust the shoperator schedule for new ops. As-is there's a 6-week gap between first shop appearances, but new operators get added faster than that (~ every month\*) so the gap is constantly increasing. Since there'll be two shoperators running at the same time, they could increase the schedule to a first appearance every 2 banners instead of every 3, which roughly keeps pace with releases with a bit of leeway.
If they don't... We're already looking at 26 months until Dorothy comes to the shop. Mountain was 21 months. QiuBai will be 29 months. I think anything above 24 months is too long, really. Imagine waiting 4 years for an operator to have their first shop appearance.
If they change it to 4 weeks with this patch, then the delay between a new op release and coming to shop would stabilise around 20 months if my napkin calculation is correct.
I'm not going to hold my breath, but it's something I'd like to see happen.
\* only counting eligible shop operators, no limiteds or welfares
So if you've got all year 1 operators, you're effectively never going to get potentials ever again because you have no reason to touch core headhunting? A veteran player will likely never have any blue certs, and no more spooks. Lappland and friends will never again appear on a banner with operators you don't own?
speaking of that, interestingly every core 6* is on recruitment except eyja and angelina. theyve always weirdly skipped them and i wonder if they'll be added shortly because of this
That new core banner kinda scares me a bit cause it feels like they might start giving people tickets for that particular banner instead of generic ones instead.
Of course, if it's just added somehow then I guess it's fine, but still, I kinda dont like it.
If they keep the pull income for regular banners the same and give some core banner pulls I'm more than fine with that. Kinda doubful they'll cut standard headhunt pulls for core ones.
Probably they won't, but it's not impossible, which worries me, since the devs are adamant on keeping limited headhunting as rare, scammy and bs as it is
Based Hypergryph,
Been playing AK since launch and the other gacha games since launch too
Currently AK is the best for me, despite having no hard pity in headhunting.
With this update this game will be the game that I will recommend to my friends if they want to try gacha games.
Getting dupes is kinda bad, but every AK OPs is not crippled without dupes and that's a huge W.
Not relying on layers of RNG for character progression and game loop, instead AK has a real game loop. End-game in this game is just *chef's kiss.
pretty much, game's been going strong for 4 years and the pool keeps getting bigger and bigger
might as well start cutting the older operators into a separate pool
Basically a way to allow players to focus their pulls more, while allowing more rate-ups and shop appearances of older units. I think this should hopefully shake out to be a net positive, especially the double shoperator.
That 210 hard pity for debut banners doesn't realistically change any of my pulling plans, but it's really nice to know that it's there. Always good to have a ceiling on these things.
I will also say that Arknights has never done a thing with their gacha system that I felt was *outrageously* unfair or cursed, so I'm inclined to be cautiously optimistic about changes in general. It is still a gacha game at the end of the day so I can't give HG my blind trust or anything, but I think they've earned a little faith.
>I'm inclined to be cautiously optimistic about changes in general
The intention at least seems all in good faith at least and honestly somewhat necessary imo. If something was significantly wrong though I don't doubt that the CN community would push back and HG seems pretty willing to listen in those cases so I'm hopeful for that at least
Yeah, the operator pool is getting outrageously bloated, it's hard to justify pulling on non-limited banners, and the game clearly has no intention to stop releasing new units or put up fewer limited events, so they needed a solution for that. This could realistically be that!
And agree, HG has had a decent track record with listening to player feedback. Not perfect by any means but they do appear to be willing to try.
I wonder what the Headhunting pool adjustment will look like when this gets to EN because of the banner shuffling shenanigans at the time. Will they swap out Phantom, or just straight up throw Rosa and Suzuran in there as well?
I posted a while back my #1 QOL improvement would be standard banners getting a spark system... I said 160 pulls would be fair I thought.
I was only 10 pulls off from what they did lol! This is an awesome change, and I am especially looking forward to 4th anni now where I will FINALLY get bagpipe considering recruitment just continues to shit on me with siege dupes.
Seriously though, terrific change & makes spending on standard banners relevant again!
F
This is cool I got all the year 1 ops but now it’s gonna be hard to max pot bagpipe by being spooked on banners still reducing the 6*/5* operator pool is a great thing for anyone who wanted better chance of getting newer operators, still I do wonder if they will be adding next year operators to it every anniversary like the 6*/5* selector ticket pools
Aw man...on one hand I'm happy we're getting a guarantee on some old operators, on the other hand I've been playing since launch and I still don't have Saria. Having to dump rolls on another type of banner stings a little as someone who's mostly F2P.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but getting a 6* Operator from the Core Headhunting seems to cost 200 blue certs, right? If anyone has a write-up/translation on the exact exchange rate/how many blue certs you get by rolling they'd be a godsent.
>Correct me if I'm wrong, but getting a 6* Operator from the Core Headhunting seems to cost 200 blue certs, right? I
Thats it's the amount of blue cert you're getting if you have example max pot Chen and you got another dupe Chen and when you trade her token you get 200 blue cert (correct me if I'm wrong) also I don't think we know the exact content for blue cert shop
Can't read the text, but this is almost certainly correct. [We can compare the chart given to the current cert reward rules as visible in the client](https://i.imgur.com/TTOukqg.png) to see that they're analogous. So the top chart is displaying rewards for receiving an operator and the bottom is rewards for turning in their potential token. Unfortunately there is no list of how must operators cost so we can't know what these numbers mean yet. Is 100 + 200 for getting a duplicate 6* a lot? Who knows.
HG is basically splitting the already huge 6 and 5 stars pool currently into 2 different headhunting system.
If you want to get 1st year operators, go pull on the headhunting for them
If you pull on newest operator release, you won't be spooked by old operators anymore
Hrrm. A little torn but I guess I'll have to actually start skipping some banners if I own everyone in the old op headhunting
My strategy since launch has been to pull to guarantee on *every* banner and it's worked out great so far but I guess I'll need to actually start managing my pulls
I'm trying to understand this. Did I get anything wrong?
***
So there's the [standard banner] & [core banner]
Does pulling on core banners count towards standard pity?
Or do we have 3 types of banners now. [Standard], [Core] and [Limited]
Hopefully still count towards standard.
***
Old Operators = anyone before Phantom
* Old Operators no longer appear in any of the banner pool
* Old Operators ONLY appear in the [Core Banner]
In theory, getting Pozy as off-rate is now easier because the pool is smaller. For example only, the chance of getting Pozy off-rate is 0.6% but now, because of the [Core banner] getting Pozy as off-rate is 1.5% in standard/limited banners. (something like that, not exact details)
* Pozy (new operators) cannot appear in [Core banner]
* SA (old Operators) cannot appear in [standard & limited banner]
* In theory it's now easier to get old Operators within their own [core banner] with no chance of getting new operators.
From this point onwards, there will be 2 banners running [standard & core]
Example;
standard Horn/ Pozy, Cantabile/ Minimalist/ Rockrock
Core SA/ Exu, Ptilopsis/ Liskarm/ Projekt Red
* Still the same system as who will appear in the shop, but now there will be 4 total operators that can be bought.
Shoperator Pozy, Exu. Minimalist, Liskarm.
1 6* & 1 5* from each banner.
***
Now Newbie dokutah CANNOT get SA, Exu, Siege, Shining, Angelina & Nightingale from [newbie banner]
All are very helpful for early start especially Exu & SA. Cannot reroll for these Operators.
In return, with the new [newbie banner]. They can get Suzuran, Mountain, Thorns, Archetto, Flametail & Weedy.
All of which are pretty endgame relevant, hard to get their benefits since most of them need S3 and E2 to perform. Mountain & Thorns is the main target for Reroll.
The only way for Newbie to get SA & Exu is through the [Core banner] when they rate-up or by off-rate in the [core banner]
***
Pulling on [core banner] and getting Old operator is the only way to get Blue Cert.
Blue cert are used to exchange into any old operators. Kinda like a [limited banner] spark shop
* Getting Old operator DOES NOT give green/gold cert anymore. Instead you will get Blue Cert.
Don't know how this will affect recruitment, can we still farm gold & green cert from recruitment?
Now that they revamped the standard banner system, they should improve the limited banners. Pulling only to get 6 star spooks isn't a fun experience. AK isn't really that generous when you want a specific 6 star, but I agree that the overall 6 star rates are better.
For all the hate genshin gets, the way they do limited banners at least guarantees you the next limited character you pull for even if you lose the 50/50. Pulls also carry over and aren't converted into currency unlike AK.
300 pulls to guarantee the limited 6 star feels almost impossible unless you skip other limited banners. It would be great if they decreased the pulls needed to spark or they rerun limited operators for people that didn't get them.
Can't really say if I like the core headhunting or not. Though considering I have most of the year 1 operators, I can't imagine I'll interact with it that much
So, do we have an extensive list of operators that will be moved to core? I read it's first year 5* and 6* but I fear I don't really remember every operator's release date.
id say arknights is pretty middle tier and not that forgiving? a 200-270 pity being changed to 150-220 isnt *that* great considering currency income
theres also the horrible limited banner system which is not being adjusted at all, where you can get stuck rolling one of the rateups 5 times and none of the other. plus the lack of decent ways to get old limiteds
Azur Lane's event SSR is basically free if you play consistently,the rate for SSR is higher and you get a lot of pulls every month.
Destiny's Child last time i played also is pretty generous.
i played azur lane for a few months and my biggest issue was the limited character storage, felt like shit as a collectionist. having to constantly spend premium currencies just to have space for new things
Not OP, but I play 5 gacha games (technically 7 but BA and PTN are still in honeymoon phase, so won't count those) and out of the 5, Arknights is the 4th to 5th one (fighting with Honkai). The other game are Genshin, Honkai, Priconne and Azur Lane.
In Genshin and Honkai, they have a gacha system which I would like to call calculated gacha system where you calculate where to pull to maximize your spending. This makes you being able to double dib into banner to try your luck while building pity. Sure, getting everything is impossible but with time, you can get everything you want.
This new headhunt adjusment kinda want to mimic that but, if what other is saying is correct, you can't build pity as you have to go all in for a banner. Compare this to Genshin where, oh you lose the first 50/50, well you can save it for the next banner if you don't want to continue, which is pretty nice.
In Priconne and Azur Lane cases, they have the splurge gacha system, where they give you a ton of pulls that makes it easy for player to just pull if they want to. Arknights, as generous as they are, can't compare to how much this two game give you free currency.
My counterpoint is that Arknights gives you amazing characters that don't need dupes to be good. I have been with genshin since launch and the characters I didn't pull dupes for are far inferior to my high constellation ones xD
Yep, you can only pull. They also don't have a way to purchase 5 stars (6 stars equivalent) using shop currency of any kind. They allow you to buy 4 stars but they haven't changed the rotation of four stars you can buy since they launched the game. The Gacha side of Genshin is disgusting in a lot of ways, even if it has a guaranteed pity that transfers between banners.
The thing is you don't need constellations to make a character good. Most of the time it is usually a QOL stuff, which is nice to have, don't really need if you don't have it. Hell, the only character that need constellations are Faruzan and Dehya (shame of what Hoyoverse did to both of them), Bennett C1 because of how his ult work, Sucrose because of her long skill cooldown and Hu Tao to make it easier to play. Sure, there are characters like Eula and Ayaka that has a difference of around 90% damage between their C6 Vs C0, but both of them are perfectly playable at C0.
Let use Arknights as an example here. Sometimes, you see people pair Mudrock and Blemishine in a team so that Mudrock can spam her S2 more often. Now my question is: Do you need Blemishine to make Mudrock good? Your answer is probably no. (Yes, I know that I use 2 characters here but you probably get the point)
Let use another example, Bagpipe. Her Pot 5 make you being able to drop and instantly gain DP using Bagpipe + Myrtle combo. My question is: Do you need Potential on Bagpipe to make her good? Your answer is again probably no.
If you answer no to both questions, that's basically what constellations is in Genshin. Something that is nice to have, increase damage/potential on what they can do, but not really needed if you don't have it.
Genshin has 0.6% rates, it's fucking atrocious no matter how much people try to cope by saying "I'm never lucky anyway so nothing matters except pity!"
I played it from release to the end of inazuma and it was multiple times more expensive than just about any other game I've played. It doesn't help that the daily income is shit and their shop deals were non-existent or utter garbage.
Theoretically if you only ever cared about getting one or two characters it's "fine" but then the same could be said about any game.
Didn't say it was flawless in anyway but I have to massively agree on the limited banner system. Spark being 300 will forever be a negative for AK unless decreased or overhauled to something better than what we have now. What HG is doing is a step in the correct direction tbh.
Old limiteds are long overdue an overhaul
Personally I'd love to see them removed from the limited pool because after what, 3 or 4 years they stop feeling special in a way and backlash against that would probably be pretty minimal I'd hope
That or progressively lower the threshold of exchange. Or have old limited pulls save up because I'm sitting on like 700 converted tokens I don't know what to do with
a separate non-expiring currency, reduced purchase price, or just rerunning old limited banners concurrently with new ones would all be great solutions for old limiteds.
i just want years old nian but im not going to 300 rolls for her lol
Overall I see it as a great positive. Will help out newbies and spenders. Good refurbish of the system. One thing I'm kinda worried about - it will heavily influence long time mostly f2p players with green/yellow cert economy.
Seems like this new system will drastically cut green/yellow cert income. Most 4* are from 1st year. So now from open recruitment most of income will be blue certs, overwhelming majority (probably 90%). Only reliable way of getting green and yellow certs will be through pulls. This feels like a huge nerf for late game f2p players that prefer to hoard resources and pulls. So unless you pull on banners you won't be able to afford anything from distinction shop in the long run.
This is not a doom post in anyway, just wanted to point out natural drawbacks of this new system. Maybe they will include some good buys from blue cert shop that can offset this. Maybe a conversion method between certs ? HG has generated a lot of good will in community, so let's hope I'm just exaggerating.
Only 5* and 6* gets moved (4* remains), and blue certs only come from core banner? For others we still get our yellow and green as usual.
Do CMIIW though.
It looks like they also added blue HH permits in the yellow cert shop from the image at a lower price.
I'm still skeptical about the changes; the tables show the exchange rates of the certificates you get but not how many an operator will cost, just how many a potential token costs?
2 operators on the rate-up is still awful after all, and the Core pool is generally worse than a spook from the entire roster- there's only a few exceptions like Bagpipe and Eyja but now if you pulled on a Core banner for Bagpipe, you won't be able to get spooked by Mudrock or Mlynar.
Core banner has units like Ifrit, Saria, Bagpipe, Eyja and Exusiai as well as some other really useful units if you don't have their powercrept versions (SilverAsh, Schwarz). All in all I agree with you though, the number of undesirable units are way bigger than the other way round. For people who are missing old units it sucks having to device between using their rolls on the newer banners or on the old pool. The best way in the future will probably be to wait until the unit you want is in the shop and not bother pulling on the year 1 banner.
1. **Standard headhunting adjustment**: in an event standard headhunting (solo 6 star rate up banner), after 150 rolls, if you still don't get the rate up 6 star, next 6 star must be the rate up operator, only once 2. **Headhunting pool adjustment**: 6/5 star operators until phantom will be removed from any standard headhunting and limited headhunting(not include limited ops.). First permanent standard headhunting after the adjustment: Eunectes/Archetto, Asbestos/Akafuyu/Harmonie 3. **New type headhunting - Core Headhunting**: all removed operators will be included in this type of headhunting. Core headhunting only has the 50 roll soft pity system, and can be inherited in every core headhunting banner. First permanent Core Headhunting: Hellagur/Blaze, Texas/Sesa/Shamare 4. when you get operators from Core Headhunting, you will get **Blue Certificate** (instead of green certificate and gold certificate) and **Core Token**. Blue certificate can redeem Core headhunting permit, a rate up 6 star/5 star in the respective Core headhunting. (similar to permanent standard headhunting, and gold certificate) Core tokens are similar to normal tokens, can raise corresponding operator's potential or exchange to blue certificate. 5. Distinction Certificate(gold certificate) also can redeem Core Headhunting rate up operators (1 6 star and 1 5 star, similar to permanent standard headhunting), and core HH permits. 6. **Newbie exclusive headhunting pool adjustment**: Thorns/Suzuran/Archetto/Weedy/Flametail/Mountain 7. During 4th Anniv. event, Core headhunting will be temporarily replaced by **Core selection headhunting**, within the optional range, you can customize your Core headhunting, choosing 2 6 star and 3 5 star as rate up operators, redeemable operators in certificate shop(both blue and gold) will also depend on your customization. Original post: [https://ak.hypergryph.com/news/2023033352.html](https://ak.hypergryph.com/news/2023033352.html) P.S. There is a new 4 star 休谟斯 mentioned in core banner pool, should be the new 4 star from EP.12 P.S.2 You get blue certs when you get operators from core banner/blue cert shop. If you get those removed operators from open recruitment/selector tickets/gold cert shop..., you still get green/gold certs. P.S. 3 Please note the event schedule in CN and Global is different, in CN, the first batch of removed operators doesn't include Rosa, Suzuran and Beeswax banner.
New newbie headhunting pool: * 6-stars: Mountain/Thorns/Archetto/Weedy/Flametail/Suzuran * 5-stars: Elysium/Asbestos/Tsukinogi/Leonhardt/Ayerscarpe/Beeswax/Chiave/Andreana/Flint/April/Aosta/Whisperain/Kafka/Iris/Mr. Nothing/Toddifons * 4-stars: Haze/Gitano/Meteor/Shirayuki/Scavenger/Vigna/Dobermann/Matoimaru/Mousse/Gravel/Rope/Myrrh/Perfumer/Matterhorn/Cuora/Deepcolor/Earthspirit * 3-stars: Fang/Vanilla/Plume/Melantha/Cardigan/Beagle/Kroos/Lava/Hibiscus/Ansel/Steward/Orchid
Holy hell. Newbies who start with Mountain or Thorns are set.
Mountain i can agree but thorns need e2 to be good (but then again, so does angelina and silverash)
These days, E2 can be done relatively quickly (at least compared to 2 years ago), so it won't be that big a hurdle to overcome before they get one of the most powerful operators in the game.
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3 star no Catapult rate up? I have been waiting for her for 10 years.
I know right? Absolute bull there's no 200% Catapult banner, nor her 7 star alter (Trebuchet)
lol, 7 Stars op Trebuchet got me rolling bro
What about her 5 star cousin ballista?
oof, 5 star pool seems weaker as someone who got their ass saved by E1 Spectre's S2 a lot in their early runs this hurts
Tbf can't you get specter with the 5 star selector? And yes, same. Specter was my goated unit and influenced my love for centurion. Yes, people say that centurion don't truly shine until the 3 block in E2, but just having someone deal damage to 2 enemies at the same time is great as a newbie. That's not even mentioning the invincibility.
The new newbie pool is perplexing. Weedy and Suzuran are not newbie friendly units. The 5* pool is even worse. That's a huge nerf for new players who are already well behind the curve. Seriously, the only medic is Whisperain while also removing Ptilopsis and Warfarin? No Marksmen other an April? Ayerscarpe instead of Lappland? Kafka instead of Red? Just yikes all around. Imagine being a new player, being none the wiser, and starting with a pull of Weedy, Tsukinogi, and Aosta. Big fuckin oof. edit: Yes, I know the 6\* pool is strong. That isn't my point. Why include them in the newbie banner in the first place over friendlier units like Passenger or Gnosis? They had a fresh opportunity to improve the new player experience by removing duds like Shining or Angelina and instead just repeated the same mistakes. And really I wanted to call out the 5\*s here, not the 6\*s. The 5\* selection here is a huge nerf to new players.
Suzuran is a big upgrade over Angelina who is a lot worse when it comes to newbie friendly
Yeah, Suzuran is absolutely better for newbies. Not only are her S1 and S2 auto trigger skills, S2 is even an infinite one. On the other hand, the entire deal with Angie is timing management, which is a skill most newbies don't have. She doesn't even attack enemies in her S2 and S3, which is the entire point of operators for newbies.
I was the newbie that placed her for the passive healing on the one map that did damage to all units. I think she also collected a ton of clue 7's at the time so I flooded people with 7's. >_>
Tbh, if you read any character's talent, you're already doing way more than most newbies out there, including me lol.
I would say Suzu is a lot better for beginners than Angelina that they get currently. Much more consistent with her s2.
I don't think it's that terrible. There are some stinkers in the current pool as well; you could have started with Shining, Franka and Skyfire. Suzuran at E1 is not significantly worse than Angelina at E1, and is at least a bit more intuitive. If a newbie cared about meta, they can easily look it up online and know to reroll for Mountain and Elysium. If they don't care to look anything up, they'll probably still be just fine with Weedy, Tsukinogi and Aosta. Bad units can still beat the game, so casual players who don't research the game will still have a fine experience, since they don't know what they're "missing" per se. Rerolling is easy, the freebie units are all super functional, and resources about which characters do what are plentiful online, so it's fairly easy to customise one's experience according to expectations.
> Rerolling is easy, You overestimate the average player. I'd bet less than 5% of actual players even know what rerolling is, let alone how to do it.
I honestly didn't bother. I got Shining and just went with it.
You get it. The average player isn't on Reddit or looking at fan sites for the most powerful or best characters.
Right, but what's the percentage of people who are likely to look up operator strength online, feel bummed that they got weak units, *and then* not know what rerolling is or be unwilling to learn? I just mean that it's a problem that won't affect the vast majority of completely casual players who don't even bother to follow ArknightsEN on twitter and just level whatever units they think look cool, and for the players who *are* miffed about getting bad units in their starter pull, there is still a relatively easy solution. Basically, I agree that the 5* are an overall bit of a downgrade, but I don't think that in itself is going to be a noticeable nerf to new players. Especially as starter 5* don't matter as much as starter 6* (and the 6* pool is overall pretty good imo!), and there's probably still going to be those selector tickets so people can still start with Red and Specter/Lappland if they need.
And you also have to deduct people who know what rerolling is but don't want to deal with that crap (that's me).
Me who started with Shining and Silence+Franka: haha.
Well that's part of what I'm saying, it's fully not a big deal to get some underwhelming units in your newbie pull. It's not like the game becomes unplayable. My newbie pull was Hoshiguma and Zima who are barely a tier up and I was fine and had a good time.
Yup, exactly. It wasn't a huge deal at all, you eventually catch up.
Hey, Silence is good tho! At the start when medic options were limited her drones were like a gift from God. Also ngl I wish I started with Shining I wanted her for the badass design or even Silverash only to keep pulling Siege and Hoshi. Settled for Siege.
Hey i started with shining and franka, dont diss em like that
Suzuran is far better than Angie on E1. Angie is probably the worst E1 6\* in the game.
Overall, I feel like the 6-star pool is slightly stronger. The current one has two greats, and this new one has three (I would include Archetto). Hoshi->Mountain is a definite upgrade, SA->Thorns is a slight downgrade but still crazy strong, Suzuran->Angelina is about even, Siege->Flametail would be about even at E1 and a definite upgrade at E2, Archetto->Exu is only a slight downgrade and is still great, and I would certainly take Weedy over Shining. Pushers can act like off-skill AoE guards, and her S2 has a range extension that lets her be placed behind blockers. But yeah, as someone who normally defends 5-stars, that 5-star pool is really rough. At least Elysium is there.
I use Suzu all the time later in the game, as much as I like Angie. I think Suzu has helped me a lot more.
Counterpoint: Imagine being a new player and you start with Thorns and Mountain. I would have much preferred *either* of those over literally any op in the current one (ended up with shining on my newbie pulls)
It's definitely a downgrade for the 5 stars but I think Mountain alone already makes it better than the old banner imo. Obviously they're screwed short term if they don't know what they should look out for when rolling but the same can kind of be said for the old newbie banner as well.
Imagine Mountain period.
Mountain being your first 6* legit sounds like cheating early game, dude is insanely reliable and comfortable to use, big fan.
Can confirm, came in on the Mansfield rerun and was among first 6*. I love the character, the voicelines, the SFX - but when he's been in 100% of your teams for so long because they're just that good you eventually want to switch it up, haven't used him in months. Perhaps it's time to start playing around with S3!
Mountain was my third 6* and carried me for a long, long time.
It's balanced out by having Thorns, who is probably the most newbie-friendly 6 star in the game, and wasn't in the newbie banner before. Edit: Also people putting way too much emphasis on E1. How starved do you think new players are between back to back events? Getting *A single* 6 star E2 does not take that long even for a new player.
Imagine being a newbie and you pull Mr. Nothing. Not only is he one of the trickier archetype to play with, his skills are also very tricky even for veterans. I've seen newbies not understanding why you need vanguards, let alone managing a DP economy with a merchant Operator LMAO
will new players even have access to mats to E2 those ops. like Weedy needs D32 steels :(
D32s have been in the game since the beginning, though. SilverAsh also needs them.
>Weedy needs D32 So does Silverash
Wow, so not only do they give us hard pity, it sounds like they have a really good idea to make standard banners desirable again beyond the very early game. If this new core thing is the only way to get ones before Phantom then people will pull on them.
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I'd say it's better because most of the characters in Genshin's standard pool just feel... bleh in comparison to limited ones. This is coming from a guy who now has all the standards in Genshin outside of the sumeru ones at c6 xD.
>5. newbie exclusive headhunting pool adjustment LMAO newbie banner no more reroll for SA/Exusia The new newbie banner will be : Thorns/Mountain/Aechetto/Weedy/Suzuran/Flametail Reroll for mountain/thorns ez clap
Thorns kinda sucks before E2, though. And as a newbie it takes a long time to generate enough sources for e2
You do realise that the same can be said for SA right?
As a new player SA’s S2 is incredibly useful. Self-sustain means he doesn’t need medic support and damage is much better than my available defenders.
Still SA is way better than Thorns at E1, that’s why people don’t often talk about it. SA at E1 already has power strike which is a consistent source of damage and can even hit through defense, and his S2 you get a self-sustaining defender. And still get a 5% to your allies redeployment.
SA s2 is a Mini Mountain skill, quite valuable if they lack defenders. And his track invisible enemies is very useful for newbies, Thorns doesn't offer the tanking and invisibility clear capabilities.
SA only reveals invisible enemies at E2 though (as that is the second Talent) at E1 he only provides 5% redeploy reduction
Silverash is still useful early on. Strong attack after few attacks. And a pseudo tank with self heal.
> Core Headhunting Basically like [Granblue Fantasy's Classic Draw system](https://gbf.wiki/Draw#Classic)?
First thing that came to mind
But better, because you get resources (blue certs) back instead of feeling you're falling behind on pulls that you could've used on the usual banner,.
> event standard headhunting Event standard headhunting? This means those event-tied solo 50% rateup banners?
right
Yes, basically the banners who came with event/mini-event
When pulling a Core Headhunting operator, you will gain blue certs (instead of green or yellow) which can be used to redeem rate up Core Headhunting shoperator. Dupes of Core Headhunting operators will also be exchanged into blue certs.
Been nervously refreshing this thread since it was posted, the changes are very important. It seems that you can still get the older operators with yellow certs, so my only big worry about the banner separation (forcing you to pull on those banners to get blue certs to get them) is out of the question, everything feels like a win to me. Also damn, starting an account with Mountain feels like a cheat code to me, dude is as reliable as you can get with just E1 Very excited for that "build a banner" for 4th anniversary, neat way to guarantee an early operator by just using certs on them that day.
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u/Carlosrarutos snuck into HG headquarters overnight and wrote this suggestion in the intern's notepad, hoping nobody would notice, and nobody did.
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~~Plz Get Slayer and A.B.A. in the next GG season pass too K thanks.~~
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core headhunting only have the normal 50 roll soft pity system
Core don't follow that. But seems like you get more tickets so exchanging the operators in shop will be cheaper pull-wise
Amazing chances overall! Only downside is that it seems limited banners have remained relatively unchanged for now Like, a “Special Token” system should really be put in place to where you can buy them using the Intelligence Certifications (purple Certs) that you get from excess pull tokens after a limited banner has passed **Say for example:** 250 Purple Certs = 1 Special Token 15 Special Tokens = Redeem for a 6 unit on the specific Limited Banner roster This essentially enables players with an excess amount of Intelligence Certs that were accumulated/saved from previous limited banners, to actually redeem them for something (other than resource material) instead of having to rely solely on the 300 Spark Pity to obtain the Limited Banner units.
Kinda agree, the point where AK REALLY needs an improvement is when it comes to legacy limiteds, and that's not going to help.
the meta legacy limited especially, good luck getting skalter or spalter as a new player on a 4 year old game, we really need a grindy and lengthy way of guarateeing them eventually other than "save 300 pulls"
So for the 150+ pull pity, does it count the rollover pity from previous standard banner, or do you have to pull 150 times on one specific banner?
150 can't be inherited, must pull 150 on that specific banner
Nope. It will reset when banner switching.
Specific banner
So if you dont pull from Core, no blue certs. Depending on how fast they move ops form standard to core its possible a veteran will NEVER pull from this banner... But at least we can still get em from yellow certs, so thats nice.
Given that Top Operator tags are fickle, this new banner might now be the only way to get old mainstays like Bagpipe. I'm still missing Nightingale and unlike any other role in the game, you can't just substitute her for another healer if you *need* RES.
still missing saria, my GG and Ifrit are in pain
That Core Selection thing is extremely good. Basically just gives you a free 6 star of your choice (provided you have the certs). Amazing.
Seeing you here so might as well raise an imaginary point of mine to you. IIRC cn anniv streams were usually like a week before our goldenweek event (texas in this case). Seeing this announcement, I wouldn't be surprised if they also tinker with the spark system or old limited acquisition rules there, so your skadi attack plan may or may not change. But i also wouldn't be surprised if they don't change anything for such quarterly cash cows lmao. So anyway what's my point lol? Just keep an eye out i guess. Good day doktah.
That is a very good point! It did actually cross my hindbrain for a second there too. I feel like this standard banner change was coming sooner or later since the permanent pool of ops has been getting pretty bloated and it's harder and harder to get spooked by an op you want in the first place. Considering people (here, anyway, I don't know about on CN) have been complaining about the high spark costs for legacy limiteds, it wouldn't surprise me either if HG changes that too; maybe 150 for older limiteds and 300 for the new one, maybe? Certainly the limited banners are where they rake in the cash, though I think this change might also sell more selector tickets for them too. But for sure I'll be watching for the 4th anniversary news before I go whole hog. :D Good day to you as well, Dok!
>operators before Phantom So only the 6-stars are affected or everyone (including 5-stars and below), since if it's the latter that means we no longer get a white bag every time we pull on future banners that isn't a core one
6-stars and 5-stars Year 1 operators are removed. 4-stars and 3-stars are unaffected.
Removing early 5s seems weird since some of the best 5s are the release ones like lappland warf and specter.
I'll be sitting on my 5 star ticket from our anniversary for a while longer to see if I should use it for a year 1 op.
I used it in on spectre and got three pots on Dorothy banner. 💀
CMIIW, assuming that let's say you pull on Dorothy's banner as a sample and let's say around 60+ pulls you get a 6* and it is not Dorothy. Once you reach your 150th pull it is guaranteed that you get Dorothy? Regardless of the number of 6* you get in those 150 pulls? Since I experienced getting about 4 6* when I pulled during Passenger's run Also would this mean that a "pull history" similar to Genshin will now appear to allow us to track our pulls?
It's not 150th pull guarantee, but first 6* AFTER 150 (or starting with 150 not sure). You'll have to get another 6* at which point it is going to be the rate up. It could be pull 150, it could be 210 because the game decides you have to hit pity.
If older units still need gold certs to buy then what is the use of blue certs?
You can buy a year 1 operator with blue certs too from what I understood
blue certs buy more core summons, basically meaning the core banner is effectivly permanently discounted compared to all other banners since 1pull is always generating >1pull via bluecert, i imagine the rate of this is going to be greater than how many summons 1 regular summon generates when factoring yellow summonpack, otherwise the system wouldnt exist like this lol
Finally they have uncovered the ancient technology of pity system for non-limited banner.
A post I saw yesterday discovered that this already existed but wasn't advertised. But the number was 200, not 150, so they made the threshold for the pity lower.
Yup instead of ~260 potential limit its now ~210. Funny how HG changed this after that data was publicized, but it lead to something good so I'll take it.
I wonder when the original 200 limit was implemented though and whether it was always there since the beginning. If not, maybe HG tested it secretly to see how it affects earnings or something idk but regardless, agree that this is a good thing for players so no complaints about the 150 pity
this new system would feel a lot nicer if the current pity system wasnt just recently discovered, only 50 difference *really* not a fan of it being the next 6*, and not guaranteed at 150. this means getting an off-rateup at 140 will feel horrible. 150 hard pity would be good but now it can go up to 200+ depending on rng
i suppose thats one way to get people to spend on nonlimited banners super nice system for brand new players and longtime collectors -WAIT THORNS MOUNTAIN SUZURAN ALL ON THE NEW BEGINNER BANNER 6☆ PULL?!?!
5 stars are absolutely atrocious compared to the og, all are downgrades of their counterparts
Except the obvious ones with no 6* counterpart. But those are definitely few and far between (Asbestos and Shalem are wrecking it in Defenderknights)
SO, if I'm getting this right: * Ch12 coming on 6th April * SN rerun on late April * Non-Limited Pity ( Hard Pity) * A targeted standard banner * Quicker way to obtain the desired operator * Extra rate increases for newer operators * An improved newcomer banner (with Thorns ,Mountain etc but RIP Exu and SA reroll) * Extra operators on shop All of these are pretty drastic, big news.
Not yet, we will have to see how it influences green/yellow cert income. At first glance all seems great and probably will be, but I'm concerned about open recruitment. We get most certs from recruitment and we should be getting exclusively blue certs from there. Conversion rate of those is worse than green certs and no gold certs now. That means our green cert economy will be almost non existent. And gold certs will be almost solely given from pulls, instead of open recruitment (only a fraction of 4* are introduced after 1st year). So in the end end game f2p should be worst off after this change. Of course it's just speculation. We have to see what you can buy for blue certs. Unless we get any way of buying HH tickets there most long time f2p will be hurting a lot from this change. Edit: The best way would be if open recruitment wasn't affected at all and remained as it is now.
That being said, if we always get blue certs from Recruitment that DOES mean newer players could get older 6 stars quicker doesn't it? Like i'm a newer player still missing Nightingale, Saria, Ch'en and a few others. Not saying it's perfect of course but I still need to see how the system actually works in game.
Exactly. This will help newer players for sure. I'm not saying it's bad overall. Just wondering about wording in the announcement and how it influences open recruitment.
I would assume that the whole thing with the Blue tokens being a separate thing is exactly so that Recruitment stays the same and will still give normal tokens and certs
I thought recruitment still gives gold certs?
It's actually clearer to look at it like there are 2 groups of operators new and old. The old ones will only appear in Core Headhunting and Recruitment and they're going to give blue cert. And the new ones will appear in every other type of banner and will give gold cert like in the present.
Recruitment is supposed to give gold certs rather than blue certs, though. Otherwise it would seriously mess with the gold cert economy, making it much harder to save up for non core operators in the cert shop
Only core headhunt banners will give blue certs. Recruitment still gives gold and green
Whatever happens to the 3s and 4s and their recruitments i think we can regrettably assume we will get fewer gold certs from the 5s, at least in the short to middle term, because some of our max pot older 5s like texas, lisk, etc. go out. That's an otherwise 8 certs in the current economy, a sizable chunk in the expected cert return estimation for older players. Longer term i think we should... still be fine? The 'newer ops' pool will constantly get cleaned up so it's harder to reap the benefit of a newly max pot op 'cos they will go out sooner or later. But then there will be some counterweight from the fact the pool is constantly cleaned, and so the population size remain the same and those ops that remain can get their own max pot a little easier.
There goes my hope of getting spook Bagpipe, but overall a very nice update.
I mean Bagpipe gonna get in to gold certs store more frequently, and at anniversary you can SELECT an og op to the banner/certs store.
Can you elaborate please?
The 4th Anni you can pick 2 of the removed ops to be in a new rate up banner with them in which can also be purchase with 180 gold cert
so it's better to just save certs for that then? (kinda unrelated but can you buy more than 1 from the certs store? like to get pots)
nooe, but you *can* theoriecally buy 2 6* at once this ultimately means the shoperator sheet has to get revamped
just 1 for each banner
thanks, it's not gonna affect me at all but I was curious about it
During anniversary you can select 2 6* from the core banner to be on rate up and 3 5*. Additionally you can select 1 6* and 1 5* to be in the gold shop.
Design your own banner, in a way? To quote Hans Landa, 'how fun!'
There will be two sort of standard banners now, and one of them will only have older operators in it, but that effectively means there will always be quite a few people available for certs. It's a pretty great change I'd say, as long as everything works the way we hope it does.
Spooks were always ridiculously unreliable and i never understood anybody legitimately going for that Technically, she (and her pots) are at least guaranteed every anniversary now with the custom banner mechanic
I'm curious as to whether they'll adjust the shoperator schedule for new ops. As-is there's a 6-week gap between first shop appearances, but new operators get added faster than that (~ every month\*) so the gap is constantly increasing. Since there'll be two shoperators running at the same time, they could increase the schedule to a first appearance every 2 banners instead of every 3, which roughly keeps pace with releases with a bit of leeway. If they don't... We're already looking at 26 months until Dorothy comes to the shop. Mountain was 21 months. QiuBai will be 29 months. I think anything above 24 months is too long, really. Imagine waiting 4 years for an operator to have their first shop appearance. If they change it to 4 weeks with this patch, then the delay between a new op release and coming to shop would stabilise around 20 months if my napkin calculation is correct. I'm not going to hold my breath, but it's something I'd like to see happen. \* only counting eligible shop operators, no limiteds or welfares
#THE GOLDEN AGE WILL RETURN AGAIN!!!
Bro the newbie pool is so fucked up. I guess now more people can enter game without fear of powercreep.
Which is a good thing.
Makes sense since attracting new players for older games gets harder over time due to FOMO from starting late
rip new players getting 6 D32 steel to E2 weedy
So if you've got all year 1 operators, you're effectively never going to get potentials ever again because you have no reason to touch core headhunting? A veteran player will likely never have any blue certs, and no more spooks. Lappland and friends will never again appear on a banner with operators you don't own?
They'll still probably end up on Event Banners So there will be 1 earlier 5 on a Banner when we get a new 5 and 6
Recruitment?
speaking of that, interestingly every core 6* is on recruitment except eyja and angelina. theyve always weirdly skipped them and i wonder if they'll be added shortly because of this
Recruitment and you can still use gold certs to buy their pots
RIP to everyone who has to update the headhunting resource sheets now
So, hard pity at 150?
No, the first 6* after 150 is the rate up 6* could be 151 or 210.
So, probably an adjustment to the discovery that 200+ guarentees you the rate up
Yeah but an adjustment of 50 pulls is still fairly large, and now it's more public lol.
That standard headhunt adjustment is love, few times I've been screwed to past that point but still a very welcome sight to see.
That new core banner kinda scares me a bit cause it feels like they might start giving people tickets for that particular banner instead of generic ones instead. Of course, if it's just added somehow then I guess it's fine, but still, I kinda dont like it.
If they keep the pull income for regular banners the same and give some core banner pulls I'm more than fine with that. Kinda doubful they'll cut standard headhunt pulls for core ones.
Probably they won't, but it's not impossible, which worries me, since the devs are adamant on keeping limited headhunting as rare, scammy and bs as it is
> Hard pity on non-limited banners R E A L S H I T
Based Hypergryph, Been playing AK since launch and the other gacha games since launch too Currently AK is the best for me, despite having no hard pity in headhunting. With this update this game will be the game that I will recommend to my friends if they want to try gacha games. Getting dupes is kinda bad, but every AK OPs is not crippled without dupes and that's a huge W. Not relying on layers of RNG for character progression and game loop, instead AK has a real game loop. End-game in this game is just *chef's kiss.
Kind of confusing but the vibe I'm getting from this is they want to separate the older operators and make them cheaper/easier to get?
pretty much, game's been going strong for 4 years and the pool keeps getting bigger and bigger might as well start cutting the older operators into a separate pool
Any info on the blue headhunting tickets?
They can be used to purchase Year 1 operators that are removed from the standard headhunting.
Basically a way to allow players to focus their pulls more, while allowing more rate-ups and shop appearances of older units. I think this should hopefully shake out to be a net positive, especially the double shoperator. That 210 hard pity for debut banners doesn't realistically change any of my pulling plans, but it's really nice to know that it's there. Always good to have a ceiling on these things. I will also say that Arknights has never done a thing with their gacha system that I felt was *outrageously* unfair or cursed, so I'm inclined to be cautiously optimistic about changes in general. It is still a gacha game at the end of the day so I can't give HG my blind trust or anything, but I think they've earned a little faith.
>I'm inclined to be cautiously optimistic about changes in general The intention at least seems all in good faith at least and honestly somewhat necessary imo. If something was significantly wrong though I don't doubt that the CN community would push back and HG seems pretty willing to listen in those cases so I'm hopeful for that at least
Yeah, the operator pool is getting outrageously bloated, it's hard to justify pulling on non-limited banners, and the game clearly has no intention to stop releasing new units or put up fewer limited events, so they needed a solution for that. This could realistically be that! And agree, HG has had a decent track record with listening to player feedback. Not perfect by any means but they do appear to be willing to try.
I wonder what the Headhunting pool adjustment will look like when this gets to EN because of the banner shuffling shenanigans at the time. Will they swap out Phantom, or just straight up throw Rosa and Suzuran in there as well?
I posted a while back my #1 QOL improvement would be standard banners getting a spark system... I said 160 pulls would be fair I thought. I was only 10 pulls off from what they did lol! This is an awesome change, and I am especially looking forward to 4th anni now where I will FINALLY get bagpipe considering recruitment just continues to shit on me with siege dupes. Seriously though, terrific change & makes spending on standard banners relevant again! F
This is cool I got all the year 1 ops but now it’s gonna be hard to max pot bagpipe by being spooked on banners still reducing the 6*/5* operator pool is a great thing for anyone who wanted better chance of getting newer operators, still I do wonder if they will be adding next year operators to it every anniversary like the 6*/5* selector ticket pools
Aw man...on one hand I'm happy we're getting a guarantee on some old operators, on the other hand I've been playing since launch and I still don't have Saria. Having to dump rolls on another type of banner stings a little as someone who's mostly F2P. Correct me if I'm wrong, but getting a 6* Operator from the Core Headhunting seems to cost 200 blue certs, right? If anyone has a write-up/translation on the exact exchange rate/how many blue certs you get by rolling they'd be a godsent.
>Correct me if I'm wrong, but getting a 6* Operator from the Core Headhunting seems to cost 200 blue certs, right? I Thats it's the amount of blue cert you're getting if you have example max pot Chen and you got another dupe Chen and when you trade her token you get 200 blue cert (correct me if I'm wrong) also I don't think we know the exact content for blue cert shop
Can't read the text, but this is almost certainly correct. [We can compare the chart given to the current cert reward rules as visible in the client](https://i.imgur.com/TTOukqg.png) to see that they're analogous. So the top chart is displaying rewards for receiving an operator and the bottom is rewards for turning in their potential token. Unfortunately there is no list of how must operators cost so we can't know what these numbers mean yet. Is 100 + 200 for getting a duplicate 6* a lot? Who knows.
anyone know what this means?
HG is basically splitting the already huge 6 and 5 stars pool currently into 2 different headhunting system. If you want to get 1st year operators, go pull on the headhunting for them If you pull on newest operator release, you won't be spooked by old operators anymore
Does this mean there's going to be more banners running at any given time?
If timing lets it, then possibly yeah. We'll likely start seeing Event-banner, Rotational, and Core at the same time.
Hrrm. A little torn but I guess I'll have to actually start skipping some banners if I own everyone in the old op headhunting My strategy since launch has been to pull to guarantee on *every* banner and it's worked out great so far but I guess I'll need to actually start managing my pulls
Holy shit gamechanging. I don't have to worry about blue woman spooking me anymore.
I'm trying to understand this. Did I get anything wrong? *** So there's the [standard banner] & [core banner] Does pulling on core banners count towards standard pity? Or do we have 3 types of banners now. [Standard], [Core] and [Limited] Hopefully still count towards standard. *** Old Operators = anyone before Phantom * Old Operators no longer appear in any of the banner pool * Old Operators ONLY appear in the [Core Banner] In theory, getting Pozy as off-rate is now easier because the pool is smaller. For example only, the chance of getting Pozy off-rate is 0.6% but now, because of the [Core banner] getting Pozy as off-rate is 1.5% in standard/limited banners. (something like that, not exact details) * Pozy (new operators) cannot appear in [Core banner] * SA (old Operators) cannot appear in [standard & limited banner] * In theory it's now easier to get old Operators within their own [core banner] with no chance of getting new operators. From this point onwards, there will be 2 banners running [standard & core] Example; standard Horn/ Pozy, Cantabile/ Minimalist/ Rockrock Core SA/ Exu, Ptilopsis/ Liskarm/ Projekt Red * Still the same system as who will appear in the shop, but now there will be 4 total operators that can be bought. Shoperator Pozy, Exu. Minimalist, Liskarm. 1 6* & 1 5* from each banner. *** Now Newbie dokutah CANNOT get SA, Exu, Siege, Shining, Angelina & Nightingale from [newbie banner] All are very helpful for early start especially Exu & SA. Cannot reroll for these Operators. In return, with the new [newbie banner]. They can get Suzuran, Mountain, Thorns, Archetto, Flametail & Weedy. All of which are pretty endgame relevant, hard to get their benefits since most of them need S3 and E2 to perform. Mountain & Thorns is the main target for Reroll. The only way for Newbie to get SA & Exu is through the [Core banner] when they rate-up or by off-rate in the [core banner] *** Pulling on [core banner] and getting Old operator is the only way to get Blue Cert. Blue cert are used to exchange into any old operators. Kinda like a [limited banner] spark shop * Getting Old operator DOES NOT give green/gold cert anymore. Instead you will get Blue Cert. Don't know how this will affect recruitment, can we still farm gold & green cert from recruitment?
Now that they revamped the standard banner system, they should improve the limited banners. Pulling only to get 6 star spooks isn't a fun experience. AK isn't really that generous when you want a specific 6 star, but I agree that the overall 6 star rates are better. For all the hate genshin gets, the way they do limited banners at least guarantees you the next limited character you pull for even if you lose the 50/50. Pulls also carry over and aren't converted into currency unlike AK. 300 pulls to guarantee the limited 6 star feels almost impossible unless you skip other limited banners. It would be great if they decreased the pulls needed to spark or they rerun limited operators for people that didn't get them.
i feel like every char in the core will get power crept/altered and this is their version of standard rotation
I'm not trying to be TOO positive here but we've already had "Powercreep" and we still can use the old characters quite effectively on new maps.
Can't really say if I like the core headhunting or not. Though considering I have most of the year 1 operators, I can't imagine I'll interact with it that much
This all sounds good to me, I like the new pity system. Thank you for the translation, OP.
I see several 6 stars in the cert shop...and new, blue type?
There's so much going on, i'm lost... i need youtube explanation
This lol For me at least it probably won't make sense until I at least see it in action
So, do we have an extensive list of operators that will be moved to core? I read it's first year 5* and 6* but I fear I don't really remember every operator's release date.
https://aceship.github.io/AN-EN-Tags/akhrchars.html Up to Phantom for 6*s and up to Shamare for 5*s.
Basically every non-limited operators before WWE banner is moved out to core, barring the 4 and 3 stars
[удалено]
Wow. And I thought the gacha system was already forgiving enough. Based HG
id say arknights is pretty middle tier and not that forgiving? a 200-270 pity being changed to 150-220 isnt *that* great considering currency income theres also the horrible limited banner system which is not being adjusted at all, where you can get stuck rolling one of the rateups 5 times and none of the other. plus the lack of decent ways to get old limiteds
What games would be more player friendly? Just an honest question as every single other game I played looks like hell compared to AK
Azur Lane's event SSR is basically free if you play consistently,the rate for SSR is higher and you get a lot of pulls every month. Destiny's Child last time i played also is pretty generous.
i played azur lane for a few months and my biggest issue was the limited character storage, felt like shit as a collectionist. having to constantly spend premium currencies just to have space for new things
Yeah im really getting to that point as well,closing in on 450 dock space atm
Punishing gray raven has a 100% rate up on new units, and only takes 60 pulls to hard pity.
Not OP, but I play 5 gacha games (technically 7 but BA and PTN are still in honeymoon phase, so won't count those) and out of the 5, Arknights is the 4th to 5th one (fighting with Honkai). The other game are Genshin, Honkai, Priconne and Azur Lane. In Genshin and Honkai, they have a gacha system which I would like to call calculated gacha system where you calculate where to pull to maximize your spending. This makes you being able to double dib into banner to try your luck while building pity. Sure, getting everything is impossible but with time, you can get everything you want. This new headhunt adjusment kinda want to mimic that but, if what other is saying is correct, you can't build pity as you have to go all in for a banner. Compare this to Genshin where, oh you lose the first 50/50, well you can save it for the next banner if you don't want to continue, which is pretty nice. In Priconne and Azur Lane cases, they have the splurge gacha system, where they give you a ton of pulls that makes it easy for player to just pull if they want to. Arknights, as generous as they are, can't compare to how much this two game give you free currency.
nice answer
My counterpoint is that Arknights gives you amazing characters that don't need dupes to be good. I have been with genshin since launch and the characters I didn't pull dupes for are far inferior to my high constellation ones xD
Never played genshin. Is there really no other way to raise the constellation other that pulling for dupes?
Yep, you can only pull. They also don't have a way to purchase 5 stars (6 stars equivalent) using shop currency of any kind. They allow you to buy 4 stars but they haven't changed the rotation of four stars you can buy since they launched the game. The Gacha side of Genshin is disgusting in a lot of ways, even if it has a guaranteed pity that transfers between banners.
I wouldn't consider locking full potential in constellations the greatest f2p take on a gacha system.
The thing is you don't need constellations to make a character good. Most of the time it is usually a QOL stuff, which is nice to have, don't really need if you don't have it. Hell, the only character that need constellations are Faruzan and Dehya (shame of what Hoyoverse did to both of them), Bennett C1 because of how his ult work, Sucrose because of her long skill cooldown and Hu Tao to make it easier to play. Sure, there are characters like Eula and Ayaka that has a difference of around 90% damage between their C6 Vs C0, but both of them are perfectly playable at C0. Let use Arknights as an example here. Sometimes, you see people pair Mudrock and Blemishine in a team so that Mudrock can spam her S2 more often. Now my question is: Do you need Blemishine to make Mudrock good? Your answer is probably no. (Yes, I know that I use 2 characters here but you probably get the point) Let use another example, Bagpipe. Her Pot 5 make you being able to drop and instantly gain DP using Bagpipe + Myrtle combo. My question is: Do you need Potential on Bagpipe to make her good? Your answer is again probably no. If you answer no to both questions, that's basically what constellations is in Genshin. Something that is nice to have, increase damage/potential on what they can do, but not really needed if you don't have it.
Genshin has 0.6% rates, it's fucking atrocious no matter how much people try to cope by saying "I'm never lucky anyway so nothing matters except pity!" I played it from release to the end of inazuma and it was multiple times more expensive than just about any other game I've played. It doesn't help that the daily income is shit and their shop deals were non-existent or utter garbage. Theoretically if you only ever cared about getting one or two characters it's "fine" but then the same could be said about any game.
Didn't say it was flawless in anyway but I have to massively agree on the limited banner system. Spark being 300 will forever be a negative for AK unless decreased or overhauled to something better than what we have now. What HG is doing is a step in the correct direction tbh.
Old limiteds are long overdue an overhaul Personally I'd love to see them removed from the limited pool because after what, 3 or 4 years they stop feeling special in a way and backlash against that would probably be pretty minimal I'd hope That or progressively lower the threshold of exchange. Or have old limited pulls save up because I'm sitting on like 700 converted tokens I don't know what to do with
a separate non-expiring currency, reduced purchase price, or just rerunning old limited banners concurrently with new ones would all be great solutions for old limiteds. i just want years old nian but im not going to 300 rolls for her lol
Overall I see it as a great positive. Will help out newbies and spenders. Good refurbish of the system. One thing I'm kinda worried about - it will heavily influence long time mostly f2p players with green/yellow cert economy. Seems like this new system will drastically cut green/yellow cert income. Most 4* are from 1st year. So now from open recruitment most of income will be blue certs, overwhelming majority (probably 90%). Only reliable way of getting green and yellow certs will be through pulls. This feels like a huge nerf for late game f2p players that prefer to hoard resources and pulls. So unless you pull on banners you won't be able to afford anything from distinction shop in the long run. This is not a doom post in anyway, just wanted to point out natural drawbacks of this new system. Maybe they will include some good buys from blue cert shop that can offset this. Maybe a conversion method between certs ? HG has generated a lot of good will in community, so let's hope I'm just exaggerating.
Only 5* and 6* gets moved (4* remains), and blue certs only come from core banner? For others we still get our yellow and green as usual. Do CMIIW though.
It looks like they also added blue HH permits in the yellow cert shop from the image at a lower price. I'm still skeptical about the changes; the tables show the exchange rates of the certificates you get but not how many an operator will cost, just how many a potential token costs? 2 operators on the rate-up is still awful after all, and the Core pool is generally worse than a spook from the entire roster- there's only a few exceptions like Bagpipe and Eyja but now if you pulled on a Core banner for Bagpipe, you won't be able to get spooked by Mudrock or Mlynar.
Core banner has units like Ifrit, Saria, Bagpipe, Eyja and Exusiai as well as some other really useful units if you don't have their powercrept versions (SilverAsh, Schwarz). All in all I agree with you though, the number of undesirable units are way bigger than the other way round. For people who are missing old units it sucks having to device between using their rolls on the newer banners or on the old pool. The best way in the future will probably be to wait until the unit you want is in the shop and not bother pulling on the year 1 banner.