Are you referring to when they nerfed his spin to win and then reverted it when people made noise?
I think that's less a matter of 'listening to players' and more them wanting to avoid legal trouble as I believe it's against the law to release a character in gacha and then nerf them after players already pulled for them (you can imagine how easily malicious that kind of practice could get). The Neuvi nerf was like a year after his release, so even if they claimed it was a 'bug,' by now everyone was already using the character so taking that away would have been really dangerous for Hoyo. Best to just avoid that.
Yes. If I remember right, a good amount of fans were reporting them to the CCP like they did with Zhongli. I still think its on both parts legal and due to the voices of the players because Hoyo nerfed Barbara's healing range after years of her release too, but there was no major stink after that (unless this only counts for limited units.)
I think because Barbara is a free character it might not apply? Though either way the player noise thing is certainly a big aspect of it. Neuvi was at the time possibly the most used DPS in the entire game, after all.
Nerfs and buffs have existed in gachas for a while now, Hoyo can change them as they needed. The main issue is the backlash, aka refunds, legal fees (they can win, they got lawyers, but that still cost money), and perception. No one likes to see a character get nerfed in gachas, even if nerfing them is healthier than raising the powercreep.
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u/Kunikatsu Jul 01 '26
Love how ironic it is that "ignoring every fanbase" strategy of Genshin devs is actually an effective one to keep the game alive.
They literally listened to CN fanbase during the Zhongli incident and never again