From 0 to ∞

The main appeal of the game, outside of collecting characters, is the story. The story mode lacks in progression, but in order to add depth and longevity the game also offers various modes that lack in narrative, but are fully focused on creating competitive experiences where story does not matter. These modes are called "End-Game modes" by the community, although the name is somewhat erroneous as you can access these modes quite early in the game.

All gacha games thrive on players opening up their wallets in order to buy a higher chance of obtaining the characters they like. While Star Rail is very free-to-play friendly, it also subscribes to this business model due to the nature of the genre. A business model that inevitably shapes certain design pillars, and more importantly the Boundaries and Missions that are pivotal to the design of the game. Star Rail is for people who are busy and with a job.

The Ideal Play sessions for Star Rail can be divided into 3 kinds:

1. The player logs on, does daily missions, and leaves within 5 minutes of starting the game session.
2. The player logs on a weekend. They do all the weekly bosses and special game modes and leave within an hour of starting the game session.
3. The player logs on maybe during a holiday, and they decide to relax and play as much of the main story mode as they like. These can basically go on until the player is satisfied.

How can you progress?

The Level and Ascension System

It's pretty straightforward, the higher the level of your character, the more stats they get. Every 20 levels the character is blocked from levelling up further until they Ascend the character, to a maximum of 80 levels and 6 Ascensions.

You can only Ascend if you've reached the maximum permitted level of your current ascension.

The Traces System

It's a simple skill tree divided into three different node types:

1. Special Traces (the big nodes). These unlock entirely new passive abilities for the character. They are very important, and sometimes completely change how the character's power level is perceived.
2. Ability Traces (the dark-grey nodes). These are all tied to the preexisting abilities of the character, and you can upgrade them several times up to a cap.
3. Stat Traces. These are simple: unlock this node, get +X% on a stat.

The Light Cone System

Simply put, it's the main equipment of a character. It gives stats and a special passive ability, and it can be leveled up.

The Relic System

Relics are items that you can equip on your character. Each relic piece can be leveled up and has:

1. A Main Stat, as you level up the relic it will increase linearly.
2. Up to 4 different Sub-Stats, randomly assigned to the relic. As you level up the relic these stats will also be levelled up randomly both in amount and in which gets to increase.
3. A "Set", if you combo relics of the same set, you get an extra passive effect.

The Eidolon System

The more copies of the same character you have, the more Eidolons for a character you get up to a max of 6. Eidolons unlock new passives, new abilities, extra stats and anything you can imagine.

How does this affect gameplay?

These are all pretty standard mechanics to RPGs. We can divide the systems we saw into two categories, as each category has a specific purpose relating to the overall goal and a different kind of play session.

The Kickstarting Systems: Leveling, Ascensions, Light Cones and Traces

These systems have a dual purpose. When you first start out playing the game, these are supposed to be the initial progress wall. You level up and gain stats linearly, ideally as you progress through the main story and unlock some of these systems.

The second purpose is to give an experienced player a sense of satisfaction. In the beginning, maxing out these systems on a character is a matter of months. But if you're high level it can take around a week to max out ALL these systems on a character.

The Long-Term Systems: Relics and Eidolons

These systems also have a dual purpose. If you are a low-spending player, then these serve as your very long term goals for the game. You farm the same relics in order to really min-max your character, while Eidolons are hard to get and require months of saving up in order to have enough resources to guarantee multiple copies of the same character, which is a mechanic that can keep characters that fall out of the meta still relevant.

The second purpose is to provide a joy of abundance to players that are willing to spend money on the game, as using premium currency can basically skip any long term commitment that these systems require.

Both of these purposes are towards the same goal, having characters strong enough to compete in the aforementioned "End Game Modes", where extremely tough challenges are given to the players in order to obtain exclusive rewards.

What if you removed Relics? (Dimensional Analysis)

By removing the Relic system, you remove the variability of the game. Every other aspect of progression in the game is linear and the same for every player. Relics are random, and make your character feel yours.

The incentives stay mostly unaltered until the Player hits the cap. Relics provide a nearly infinite source of potentially better gear to get, meaning that at some point you will max out your character. Removing relics basically means that the incentive has an expiration date for each character.

Emotions change completely. The absence of randomness removes a lot of the joy of long term progression that's present in the game: no longer will strong relics carry bad characters.

Game State: The meta is set in stone, and the game is much closer to being solved. Since character stats can't vary due to randomness, all encounters and combat in the game becomes solvable, guides online will appear.