Why every person’s Honkai Star railway character, according to the designer star-news.press/wp

Chengnan AN, a lead designer on Honkai: Star RailI worked for Parent Studio Mihoyo for more than nine years, first Honkai Impact 3rdThen on the current science fiction RPG. This means that it was present in most of the company’s rise all over the world; Honkai Impact 3rd (2016) was Early With the international masses that will be crushed soon Genshin Effect (2020). However, Honkai is actually the first fantastic preparation for any Mihoyo game, it was first presented in flyme2themoon In 2011, he returned again when Mihoyo consisted of Only five developers. The Honkai world has expanded significantly since then, as well as Miwiu, which now includes more than 5,000 employees.

An familiar through Honkai’s concession at this stage, and in his current role, he contributed to designing not only Honkai: Star RailThe initial version, but also many ongoing updates, new personalities and battle systems that have been added since the game was first released in 2023.

In a long -term interview at the 2025 Games Conference, which was conducted via a translator, Chengan explained that almost every decision relates to the characters first and foremost. The game game group may be huge (grow all the time), but perfectly, each character should hit a tendon with someone, somewhere.

Personal design always comes before combat design

As a major fighting designer, I assumed that mostly wanted to talk to me about that – but in reality, in Honkai: Star RailThe character is king. “If we only think about the fighting system when we design the characters, then we really run out of Inspo quickly,” he said. “So we are trying not to use this approach to many characters in the game.” Some of the most powerful characters have “these (these) weapons are actually a kind of strange.” For example, he indicates that Dr. Reem, who has a “really heavy book that he uses to overcome people mainly”, which follows, because he is an intellectual focuses on himself often waives the uneducated. Then there is a homico obsessed with coffee, which is characterized by its final attack, which was indifferently taking it from a cup of tea with an explosion in the background.

The design team always hopes to be new characters, but on those occasions that the character did not explode with the players, he said: “We haven’t lost time thinking about it. We will only go to creating the next character.” At other times, it is clear to designers from the beginning that they have a great idea at their hands. “Herta was one of the first characters we realized that she had the ability to completely go virus even before we really called this character,” said Ann. “So Herta has this ability to continue spinning and maintain spinning without stopping. It actually becomes a kind of players or this internal jokes within the players community. In order to see this video made of fans of Hera entitled” We need to see more Herta. “

Why is every character Honkai: Star Rail always beautifully beautiful?

After spending a moment in laughing hard in this question, there was this he said: “Well, at the beginning of the creation of each character, we will have a lot of interviews with the members of our team. So after taking their notes and overcoming multiple rounds of repetitions for each character, we always find that they become more beautiful, quieter and cooler with every repetition.” (We were laughing at this point.)

But what about a more traditional appearance character – perhaps even just a cold scar? “Of course, we will not try such a character if we think that the character can be really really common,” I admit. But, if you mean ugly letters, then we do not have any ugly characters in them Honkai: Star Rail“

How to prevent fatigue

Honkai: Star Rail I went out for two years, and the old timer remained for only days or months, but the years are a huge task, and it includes the analysis and analysis of each part of the game continuously-not only the new content but also the old things that exist.

“Take the universe simulation as an example,” said AN, in reference to HonkaiGame with a game, which is designed by Herta. “So from the first version of the simulation universe, we have already created this Roguelike experience for the players, but soon we discovered that for many players, after they played multiple versions of the simulation universe, our players do not really need to put a lot of effort in the future, but we deal with it in the future, but we deal with it in the future, but we deal with it in the future. Our games.

Is the currency an effective motivation? “Different players want to get out different things from the game. For the normal player, of course, obtaining rewards may be one of the best things that will stimulate them. So combining sticker tattoo bonuses with the features of the version, or enjoyable events, of course – we would like to attract more players.

“There is no solution to the cookies clips of (fatigue). We constantly follow our players to know the percentage of players interested in a story, what are the proportions interested in playing, fighting, etc.. So we will set our game based on our research and try to make the game attractive to the entire player community.”

Inspiration for Honkai: Star Rail

“The games themselves are a form of artistic creativity, and like any form of art, they come from our daily lives, and for people, they serve people. Therefore, for the games we create, we want to add in our own experiences. Our games experiences can be, or the films we find can be very inspiring. Galaxy ExpressThat we find it very inspiring. Since you see a train traveling in the galaxy, visiting different planets, stopping in all these different places and visiting new friends, and making new friendships. “

When preventing power crawl in Hunkai’s combat design

Power Creep is a possible problem in any ongoing game that contains a “numbers rising” system; Any newly introduced characters or capabilities tend to become more powerful over time, making old mechanics ancient. According to A, it is one of the main issues that Honkai: Star Rail The team looks at now.

“Well, it’s one of the issues that we were following,” said A. “I would like to say that for our personal experiences, it is a very comprehensive experience. (…) And while we continue to expand our combat experience, it is something we will constantly work on.” In particular, I asked about the players who still use old characters to fight and do not feel that they are proportional to the current definition. He had an answer to that, too: “Yes, we are considering creating more characters for old characters. I think the official advertisement will be soon. So, yes, please adhere to.”

What about force crawl when it comes to different types of battle mechanics? “New combat systems are not alternatives to the elderly, and there is nothing better or any weaker one,” he said. “We always like to keep the frequency of our mechanisms in mind. We always want to encourage our players to mix and match different characters to get a very refreshing experience. Of course it takes a lot of time to build new characters and combat mechanics, and we always build on our previous experiences to create another.”

Do you use Honkai: Star Rail a different financial model from Gacha?

any Honkai: Star Rail The player will tell you that you can still enjoy the game without paying ten cents, but Gacha is a major part of the game-especially when it comes to canceling the strongest characters (meaning: five-star rating). And because the game designers put the character designs in the foreground and the middle in terms of priorities, it is logical that the players are excited to get these characters – even if they must open their governor to do so. It is something that American players in particular were not used to seeing it, so you were curious if someone had thought about other forms of income to make the game more attractive at the international level, such as subscription models.

“We believe that the free operation mode is more suitable for our playable novels to reach a wider audience, or to reach more players,” said Ann. “In the future, we will continue to improve experiences so that we can increase the popularity of our game.”

I asked whether he had spoken to any Western developers or players in GDC who were not accustomed to Gacha mechanics, and he said that although this specific topic did not appear already, he noticed that “players from around the world have different customs about how to try games. But throughout our journey this time, we met many passions of passionate in our game – and yes, this only made us very happy.”