I think the devs should start focusing more on improving outside of battle animations and quest experience (long post)

I'll lay down examples as to where the added effort in making a completely new animated action would have been not only a good addition to players' immersion but also efficient

1. Castorice coughing - if they decided to actually have made an animation for this then it would have really helped with the immersion and it would have also been cost efficient because for one, Castorice coughs a LOT during the story so it's not like the effort would be going to waste, or just make a coughing action in general, a character coughing is not really something rare and there are so many instances that could result for a character coughing, like actual coughing btw not just some poorly done cough animations.
2. A new animated action of showing concern, quite frankly I do believe that the "put hand on chest and make a sad face" has lost it's effect due to it being so overused at this point, and imo making a new variation isn't even technically needed, sometimes the action itself is just really not needed in most cases? A character can show concern without putting their hand on their chest, if they just zoomed in their sad expression or just made the character have a sad expression without the hand action then I feel like a lot of scenes would feel much more natural. Circling back to what I said about making a new variation of characters showing concern, it's going to be used a lot as well so it's putting effort into something that will last in the long run.

that's what I can think of at the top of my head, I'm sure the community can give some plausible suggestions as well

my reasoning for making this post is, character in-gameplay are so animated, and I understand that characters during gameplay are very different to just putting them in a quest storyline but the thing is it's there, the expressive expressions IS THERE so I characters should be able to show some very unique facial expressions, March 7th is a very expressive character with a lot of exaggerated facial expressions and I just think with how big this game is this kind of effort should be plausible

I know it's work and it's not something that some people will appreciate, but ZZZ and Wuthering Waves are games where characters can really be shown to have such expressive moments and I genuinely believe star rail could achieve something similar, obviously not to the same extent but this is a turn based game! a lot of the budget SHOULD be focused on improving the animations and stuff especially because the models here can get away with clipping

I mean when the game released we have this really neat thing where if while moving forward and we move back, our whole body actually turns and moves in a natural way, and we were all very happy and impressed by it. Because it's something small and simple that just makes the characters feel natural in a way

https://reddit.com/link/1i6in34/video/vfooyrsfkcee1/player

like I can give them credit for where credit his due with Mydei's model having really great muscle definition

But I really feel like it's a shame that didn't bother making more of little things like these that really make the game feel so much more alive and natural

cuz I know the game is definitely capable of becoming so much better but I feel like the quality of hsr has become quite stagnant? at least in terms of character animations (obviously not in gameplay but I think for a turn-based game improving quest experience should have been a priority as well no?)

I don't know if anyone really agrees but I genuinely would prefer if more effort is given towards to making animation updates or new sets of interaction animations rather than putting in all of the effort in Planets, this game is a turn based game and while I do adore how great our planets look it's just really not what the main focus should be tho right? because if the characters are a lot more animated in quests then I feel like that in of itself goes a long way in making so many players able to enjoy the story (I'm not saying make half-assed planets but this is not an open world game where the region should be that much of a focus because let's be honest maxing out a planet isn't something that takes long to do so after maxing it out then generally there really is nothing left to do in the planet)

It's sort of like an anime with good writing can still be unenjoyable if the animation is atrocious while an anime that has bad writing will at the very least be entertaining to watch because it has good animations