- In the CN server, the Trends are displayed in a style similar to that of Weibo. In the Global server, they are more similar to Facebook comments.
- In the CN server, Heart of Surging Flame preceded Operational Intelligence, but this was reversed in the Global server. In addition, Global's Part 1 was actually live after the main OF event (Part 2 in Global).
- In the original run, the Heart of Surging Flame menu sometimes played the main menu BGM briefly before the designated BGM. This was fixed in OF Rerun and after OF is added to the Terminal.
Rerun controversy
As the first rerun event of Arknights, the rerun of Heart of Surging Flame in the CN server had sparked a major controversy which focused on the Unbound Reflux headhunting banner, a lack of new rewards, and some management problems Hypergryph experienced during its early years.
OF Rerun featured Thorns as one of the six upcoming Operators teased at the end of CN's first anniversary livestream alongside Surtr, Archetto, Mountain, Saga, and Goldenglow, nicknamed "The Six Princelings/Satellites" by the CN community. However, the introduction of a new banner in an event rerun posed a serious problem: there was no more additional 
Originite Prime (aside from one from OF-ST6) for players who had already cleared the event's operations in the original run. This problem not only left many players without enough 
Orundum to pull for Thorns, but it also prevented them from purchasing the newly introduced outfits. Furthermore, OF had long been infamous for its "grinding" due to the number of operations and the complexity to earn the necessary rewards. As the result, many players were incensed to the fact that the rerun was specially designed for new players while neglecting the demands of old players, especially to free-to-play (F2P) players and those who regularly purchased the Monthly Pack.
OF rerun also revealed HG's problematic scheduling and executions. Because this happened long before Record Restoration was introduced, many players feared that they might never obtain their desired items and Operators after the rerun. A sudden flux of Operators' release resulted in players fearing HG would release as many Operators as they wished regardless of their character development as well as fooling the players' bottom line when it comes to headhunting banners. The long gap that could last for even months was another complain over HG's low productivity in which many grumbled that "reruns" were just a lazy method to create contents and prolong the game's lifespan.
The controversy was so severe that it eventually escalated to not only bashing and trash-talking on HG's social media accounts on Weibo and Bilibili as well as intentional negative ratings on the game in App stores as a protest, but also conflicts between old and new players over the necessity of event reruns. As a consequence, in light of the release of The Great Chief Returns, HG issued the following apology on their official website:
感谢大家一直以来对《明日方舟》的关注与支持。由于本次夏季活动整体设计的时间跨度过大，内容项目较多，安排不妥，活动信息介绍不全等原因，给各位玩家带来了对本次活动安排的疑惑与困扰。同时，此前发布的复刻活动【火蓝之心】的说明也不够完整。对此，我们感到十分抱歉。为了向各位玩家介绍夏季活动整体安排和复刻活动的相关规划，制作组在此增加本期通讯，为大家带来夏季活动以及复刻活动机制的相关说明。
我们一直致力于为大家提供全新的活动、玩法和游戏内容，这也是我们未来游戏研发和运营的主要目标，而复刻活动仅仅作为游戏内容的补充，不会作为主要内容提供给大家，在之后的SideStory系列复刻活动中，不会再有新的干员实装。
关于复刻活动，我们的初衷是在游戏内容更新的间隙，向大家提供活动回顾的体验。因此，所有复刻活动都会以轻量化的形式出现，这会体现在大幅缩短的游戏活动时间，大幅减少的（可能需要消耗理智的）商店兑换奖励总量、玩法奖励总量和任务奖励总量。我们希望未来的复刻活动具有相近的，轻量化的理智消耗和游戏时间，核心以内容体验为主，能够让大家在重度的主要游戏活动之余进行参与。
我们也希望通过复刻活动，给错过活动的玩家一个获得一次性奖励的机会，已经获得一次性奖励的玩家，也会获得特殊的情报凭证以兑换寻访资源和养成资源。同时我们也会尝试在部分复刻活动中加入少量剧情和故事，让游戏世界和活动故事更加完整。
今年的夏季活动中，制作组为大家准备了【密林悍将归来】和【刻俄柏的灰蕈迷境】两项活动内容作为夏季活动主体；未来我们也会以提供全新活动、玩法和内容为主要目标，希望向大家不断提供新的乐趣和游戏体验。
- English translation taken from this Gamepress article by Nightsky#3319
Thanks for your focus and support of Arknights. Due to the long period of summer events, large quantity of content and improper arrangement, we're sorry for bringing confusion to players about the arrangement of the events. Meanwhile, the description of "Heart of Surging Flame Retrospection" is not complete and detailed. In order to introduce the future arrangement of summer events and retrospection, the development team added this Dev news here to show more about the mechanism of summer event and retrospection.
We are devoted to provide brand new events, gameplay and contents to everyone and this is what we mainly focus on in our future development and operation. While the retrospective event only functions as a complement of game contents rather than the major part of the game. There will be no new Operators introduced in future retrospection events.
With the retrospection events, our intention is to provide an opportunity for players to retrospect on past game content between two new major events. So all the retrospection events will be implemented in an abbreviated form from the original, where the gaming time, total number of rewards in event shop (that may require sanity), rewards in gameplay and rewards from mission will be greatly decreased. Future retrospection events will be run in a similar abbreviated way in terms of sanity cost and gaming time, and the core of the retrospection event will mainly aim at the content.
Our goal is to provide an opportunity for new players to get the one-off rewards. For players who earned the rewards in the original event, we will provide Headhunting resources and materials in the Intelligence Certs shop. Meanwhile, we will add some new stories in retrospection events to enrich the story and gaming experience. In summer event of this year, the development team prepared "The Great Chief Returns" and "Ceobe's Fungimist" as the main part of the summer events.
Source: Arknights DevTeam News #4 on Hypergryph's official website
|
HG also offered two compensations for this issue:
- A single
Ten-roll Headhunting Permit would be given to all players when The Great Chief Returns was released.
- The rerun of Unbound Reflux would be available during RI, allowing players to pull for Thorns after obtaining new Originite Prime upon clearing RI stages.
Fortunately, due to being released long after CN, the controversy was not repeated in the Global and TW servers, although both also received the above compensations to some extent:
- The Ten-roll Headhunting Permit was given as a gift to commemorate the game downloads in the respective servers reaching the record of 100,000,000.[1][2] Such custom was eventually preserved in the JP server in which players would receive a free Ten-roll Headhunting Permit whenever they reached a new record on IOS store during major events (i.e., anniversary, collaboration).
- Unbound Reflux remained for one week longer than in CN.
The controversy also likely disrupted the schedule for the release of the remaining "Princelings" (see above), forcing HG to redesign new events around the Operators. Homecoming in Rewinding Breeze implied that Surtr would be introduced in Grani and the Knights' Treasure Rerun while A Streetcar Named Faith in Beyond Here implied that Archetto would be introduced in Code of Brawl Rerun, but both stories ended up separated as part of Story Collections. The greatest consequence was, however, the delay of Goldenglow's release for almost three years — she would only be introduced in A Light Spark in Darkness, causing players to presume that HG had forgot to release the last "Princeling".
References
