The new Genshin Impact update can make you self-destruct, but there's a fix coming

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Environmental damage is at the center of the update controversy

Genshin Impact Childe
(Image credit: miHoYo)

Genshin Impact players have taken to the internet to draw attention to a problem with the newest update: environmental damage. In the most recent iteration, players can effectively destroy themselves - at time of writing, a Reddit post about the problem has thousands of upvotes, and a video of the new burn damage shows the player's health bar going down particularly fast in the middle of a fiery field, catching the attention of many players.

But never fear, Genshin players, as MiHoYo is aware of the problem and a fix is on the way soon. The team took to their site to provide an official notice that they're aware of the issue, wherein "the Element Reactions caused by the environment would not accurately scale up with the player's World Level." As a result, the environmental Element Damage became too high in the open world, as clearly visible in the above posted video. MiHoYo referred to the resulting issue as causing "certain non-combat actions [...] to become unnecessarily burdensome" and has "resulted in more harm than good to the player experience."

MiHoYo explained that its intentions were to increase the impact of the environment in combat and to encourage diversification of strategy when responding to the environment. It seems, however, that these good intentions have gone awry and caused some pretty chaotic results. That being said, MiHoYo is fully aware of the problem and has stated that they're currently "in discussion" about the issue and will focus on making further changes with the feedback in mind. They also threw in an apology for the negative impact on gameplay.

In the meantime, players might have more of a unique experience when it comes to dealing with burn damage. Try to stay cool, though. The team is on it. 

Kai Delmare
Freelance writer

Kai Delmare is a freelance journalist and news writer with bylines at GamesRadar+. During her time at GR, Kai focused on writing breaking gaming news and reporting on some of the biggest industry trends.