They’ve done a lot of quality of life additions recently (with so many characters it’s nice to get a bit of help building them) but they lost the music guy and they must have lost a character designer as well because a lot of the Natlan designs and some of the Fontaine designs are bad.
The “make a relic” is more expensive than in other Hoyo games but you also get a couple of sub-stats.
I feel like there are fewer players. Like fewer requests to enter world. But I don’t know for sure. Lots of stuff I really, really liked in Fontaine. Less so in Natlan.