This is such a braindead move by Hoyo, honestly. Like, what are new or casual players actually supposed to do here?

I’m currently in Inazuma, and Hoyo basically expects me to hit Quick Start and skip four entire nations just to finish the 7.1 Archon Quest before 11/03. Are you kidding me?

Obviously, nobody is going to pass up a free limited 5-star. That’s literally $100 to $200 worth of pulls. But putting a strict deadline on it and locking it
behind the latest story patch is just pure, dirty artificial FOMO. It forces you into the dumbest lose-lose situation either you completely butcher your own
story progression, spoil years of plot twists, and ruin the pacing of the game, or you miss out on the best reward they've ever given.

Just imagine being a new player and getting dropped into 7.1 with zero context just to grab a character. It's so stupid.

And before people jump into the comments saying, "Oh, none of these characters are meta anyway, so you can just skip it," you're completely missing the point. It’s not about whether they're meta or not. The issue is gatekeeping an anniversary gift behind hours of main story quests

I really didn't want to bring up the other games, but Hoyo leaves us no choice
here

  HSR gave out characters who weren't even top of the meta straight to the event tab without forcing you to touch the main quest, their anniversary literally comes with zero BS attached.

  ZZZ handed out a character who is still meta along with their signature weapon just for logging in. No hiding it behind a forking main quest.

I seriously don't understand what is going on in the Genshin team's heads. How do they manage to keep messing up anniversary rewards year after year?

Why is Genshin the only game that constantly pulls this gatekeeping crap for anniversary rewards? Just drop the selector in the in event tab or tie it to
AR 20 so people can actually enjoy the story at their own pace.

For anyone else who's still in earlier nations, what are you even planning to do? Are you actually going to skip through half the game for this, or just take
the L and miss out?

TLDR: Locking a free limited 5-star behind the 7.1 Archon Quest is artificial FOMO. It forces anyone not caught up to either skip 4 whole nations and completely butcher the story, or miss out on a $150+ character. It doesn't matter if they're "meta" or not HSR and ZZZ literally drop their free limited characters via mail/login with zero story-gating BS, and Genshin needs to stop fumbling anniversary rewards.

Hoyo really expects us to skip 4 whole nations of story for a free 5-star?