The Event Discourse Has Come Full Circle

tl;dr The event discourse has come full circle as all discourse relating to gameplay does with people strawmanning or dismissing the criticism

Realm of Tempered Valor is the first event in a long while to come with a name card. Unlike previous event name cars however, this one is locked behind a combat event and a comparatively harder one at that.

I’m not here to talk about whether or not this was good dev balancing to compensate for our stronger characters though. I’m here to talk about the discourse regarding the difficulty.

The event clearly favors very specific characters, as was evident in Day 1 heavily favoring Mavuika, Day 2 favoring Mavuika, Hu Tao, Arlecchino and Xiangling (to an extent) while somewhat working against characters like Wriothesley, Day 3 favoring Chasca (though Wanderer and Xiao also benefit somewhat) and Day 4 favoring Arlecchino and Clorinde. Of course Mavuika’s premiere team is capable of brute forcing regardless.

I don’t think anyone is arguing that this isn’t the case. What has happened is that people have begun to sensationalize and strawman the criticism, as has happened regarding dialogue bloat and Natlan’s character design.

Several people have posted Floor 20+ clears without using Mavuika, Citlali, Xilonen or Kazuha. Most of the time they instead use other DPS with low cons/signature weapons and/or characters with extremely invested artifacts. This is used to refute the idea that this event “shills” Mavuika, that this is a “Mavuika only event” or that you need Mavuika to clear. These statements misrepresent the reality that Mavuika and the other Natlan characters make this event significantly easier. The floor for her teams is simply higher than other’s.

These posts using hyper-invested characters that are infeasible for a large amount of the combat-focused players, and most of the player base in general, prove rather than disprove the notion that this event gives significant advantages to the Natlan characters and those who have them. The only point they refute is the hyperbolic idea that “the event is impossible without Mavuika” which is something I’ve never seen been argued in good faith or seriously.

It is a simple fact that someone using Mavuika will have an easier time than someone not using her unless Day 5 has Pyro immune enemies. You can skirt by with less investment in a Mavuika team and a Mavuika team will perform better than an equally invested alternative.

Personally I think the name card should be at 95 total floors to be consistent with the other combat events and that it would make even more sense to put it at 75 to be consistent with the event requirements in general but I know that 100 is a very nice number and 20 is a nice, even number to start the rose gold medals at.