Cyrene should have been the free 5-star this year, not DHPT

Disclaimer: I am not a marketing specialist so take this whole post with a massive grain of salt, but I’m a little confounded about her release and wanted to chat with other fans about it. Amphoreus has been (up to the patch that just dropped, I have not played the most recent update yet) a pretty solid story with honestly exceptional characterization of the current cast. I want to break down my argument into two parts: narrative and financial.

To begin with, narrative. Honestly Hoyo has done an excellent job at fleshing out each character we’ve met in Amphoreus. Based on my own experience, what I see here on reddit, and what I’ve seen on YouTube, it feels like it’s pretty common to have a favorite unit or character amongst the demigods available for play. Cyrene has been there the whole time and while we have seen her grow from a gibbering pokemon Paimon lite to a much more eloquent young-looking lady, I still feel like the game is going out of its way to force-endear her to us. A lot of it seems like Cyrene just kind of gently indicating to us that she has a crush on us(?) and we as players are expected to pick up on that and immediately build an intense parasocial bond with her. In practice, it feels like pandering. If Cyrene is so dedicated to caring for the trailblazer, wouldn’t it make more sense for her in her full form to want to come with us now wherever we go? Then, since a lot of current players have pulled on an Amphoreus-based character they really enjoyed, it would make players feel even more rewarded for doing that as now they can see their fave unit doing even more cool stuff! I know if I got a free decent support unit for Evernight, or Castorice that “unlocked their true potential” it would feel SO fulfilling and I wouldn’t feel as bad for pulling for a character that only works specifically really well with other remembrance units. On that note too, seeing Cipher, Mydei, Anaxa, DHPT, and Tribbie expressing enhanced versions of themselves would be sick if I already had them!

On the financial side of things too, if Cyrene was given out for a limited time for free, would that not giga-boost people’s interest in trying to get other Amphoreus characters they had maybe held off on because they didn’t really have anyone they could pair them with? If I had a new account and was given Cyrene with the current banner, that would incentivize me to get at least one if not more Amphoreus units so I could use her to her max potential. We’re already seeing that E0 Cyrene is tough to utilize with her ult system, so Hoyo could make the buy-in getting more eidolons for her to smooth out her gameplay and more Amphoreus units to play off of. Am I completely stupid on this? I’m also just straight ignoring the bizarre $300 bow skin/ult enhancement incentive, as I know people who stopped playing because of that alone. As a company Hoyo could have kept that and maybe it wouldn’t have done as much damage to the community as it did if everyone was just going to get her free anyway? Maybe I’m just not understanding business in general, but this whole thing feels so weird and unbalanced. Idk rip me to shreds in the comments, I’d love to hear any thoughts people have.

Side note: absolutely nothing against DHPT here either, I think my boy is a sick unit especially for follow-up teams, but that’s not what Hoyo seems to be interested in approaching right now. Since Evernight wasn’t free, either, it just feels like a very odd choice to me idk idk