u/Available-Suit3472

i will never forget downloading this game for the first time and seeing how expressive and immersive Xavier’s scenes were. genuinely floored that something this polished was being made specifically for women. i loved the guys, loved that the MC actually has a combat identity, loved that there was real action content to sink into.
but this game has just stopped trying. they’re raking in massive money every day, in China and everywhere else, and i genuinely don’t know where any of it goes. the main story barely updates, new animations are few and far between, and if you watch closely you realize the same handful of expressions and motions get recycled endlessly. meanwhile they never stop pushing new gacha banners to get you to spend, but they won’t touch the free content that doesn’t make them anything. is this actually a company operating under China’s system? because somehow it feels greedier than half the capitalist companies out there.
and i’ve heard the CN playerbase has been pretty vocal lately about their issues with Valco. not trying to weigh in on that, people in different regions just want different things. but it’s pretty clear this is a company that has zero interest in actually listening to player feedback, and they just let the community tear itself apart constantly. honestly the discourse and drama in this fandom has more substance than the actual game content at this point. and i kinda think that’s on purpose — keeping everyone fighting each other generates way more engagement than they’d ever get from actually animating a new story chapter, and it costs them nothing.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

been thinking about this for a while. i feel like the obsession with making every shooter esports-ready has completely killed the fun of the genre.

i miss early valorant when half the roster had borderline busted abilities, or old cs where you could just run dumb strats with your friends. now, every patch note reads like a legal document. "decreased smoke duration by 0.15 seconds," "adjusted spray pattern by 2%." devs are optimizing all the chaos out of their games just to keep the top 1% of pros happy.

every match now feels like a second job. if you don't know the exact pixel lineups or play the strict meta, you're throwing. it's exhausting.

lately i've just been retreating to arcade modes or messing around in dead/obscure shooters (tried this weird one called fragpunk recently) just to experience a match where horribly unbalanced bullshit happens and nobody cares. it honestly made me realize how tired i am of the sterile, hyper-balanced loop of modern tac shooters.

curious if anyone else is feeling this balance patch fatigue. what do you guys play when you just want a shooter that doesn't feel like a spreadsheet?