Why I Build My Action Game Teams With Whimsy, And You Should Too

Like a lot of people, I spend a portion of my downtime doom-scrolling my way through Reddit. And, since I play games, a lot of that time is spent looking at the subreddits for the games I play. This means I’m staring at a lot of memes and fan art about games like Genshin Impact and Hokai: Star Rail. I also get to see a lot of chatter about team composition – something I’m fairly relaxed about.

In fact, my methods of putting teams together often involve thought processes like, “Do these two characters have some sort of interpersonal conflict going on? That’s the team I want.” Or, I’ll completely ignore what are widely considered some of the best characters to have in a team because I find their personality irritating. Other times, I’ll want something like “Team Dragon Boy”. I can’t wait to get Human-Durin to go with Zhongli and Neuvillette in Genshin Impact. (Yes, yes. I know Zhongli has never been declared a dragon, but he at least has a dragon form. That’s good enough for me.) Come to think of it, I could probably add Ifa too, since Cucucu's with him.

And in all cases, I always have the main character in the team. I realize this doesn’t take advantage of a lot of the benefits of roaming the world as characters with useful abilities, and a lot of the time, the main character is not optimal for other reasons. But, for story reasons, I like to see the character I’m supposed to be on the ground. It’s a thing. So, all builds typically have to work around that.

It’s not that big of a deal to me, for the most part. That is, as long as I can get through the story content. That’s not to say it hasn’t caused me some issues. My decision to build a defense-heavy team in Honkai: Star Rail has resulted in some ridiculously long fights. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else, but as I’m the only person dealing with my choices, it’s fine.

And the reason it’s fine? I have Welt and Luocha together because, again. For some reason, I really like putting characters that irritate each other together. That’s the reason Lycaon and Hugo are on the same team in Zenless Zone Zero.

Of course, it has its drawbacks. Completing more serious content, like the various weekly challenges each of the games has, can become incredibly difficult. Suddenly, the elemental requirements that you ignore in open world content and (in my case) even boss fights matter. No matter how relaxed you are about the games, sooner or later, you’re going to look at your roster and decide you need to have at least one of every element to get some things done.

That said, I’m still pretty relaxed about it. It’s pretty unlikely I’ll remove the main character from any of my lineups. Not when I can swap their elements before taking on different challenges. Granted, that’s easier to do in some games than others. I’d love to not have to nation hop to change my elements in Genshin, and I’d love for all the games to remember what gear I had set up for each element. But at least I can change the elements.

Why am I talking about this? Because I sometimes feel like people let the game systems get to them a bit too much. Not just these systems, but others as well. If I scroll through subreddits for various MMOs, I see a lot of things that people are frustrated about that can be fixed by approaching them with the idea that, at the end of the day, we are still playing games.

Although, with games like Genshin Impact or Wuthering Waves, that’s probably a bit easier to achieve due to the fact that you don’t have to deal with other players if you don’t want to. With MMORPGs, there is the player factor. And, depending on the players in question, that can be the real challenge. Although, even some MMORPGs have decided to make the player experience more independent for those who want to play that way. Not fully independent, of course. You’re not going to one-person massive raids. But that content is typically optional if you’re not the most hardcore of players. And if you are super hardcore, you already know what to do and aren’t slacking off like me.

But even to those players, I’d like to suggest sometimes just going with vibes. Be a little silly. Build teams that amuse you. Have fun with the games and don’t take them so seriously; you’re stressing the numbers all the time. It’s not like you can’t work on your stats while still enjoying the moments of whimsy, after all. And that’s what it’s really about, enjoying the games.