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[cripterion]

These past years , I got more out of Hoyoverse games than any other game be it F2P, B2P, MMO, GaaS, you name it...

Same thing with my kids, they rather play Genshin Impact than Zelda.
The games get a lot of flak cause of the gaccha system, just have some restraint and play the damn game for free without hitting your wallet.

 

[Danjin44]

Danjin44 I Just remembered that you like tasty food in games. Here's some Seafood Noodles from Zenless Zone zero.

Like Shift Up if one day they decide to make proper offline SP game then I will gladly buy it.

 

[stickkidsam]

This game doesn't require you to spend $70 for a character though. So unless you have a severe case of FOMO and "need" that shiny new SSR character right away, you can simply unlock it by playing normally (progressing through story, leveling up, doing side-activities, doing daily/weeklies, etc.), especially if it's in the permanent banner.

Anyway, I've played 13 hours so far, and I have obtained all the available SR characters (e.g A-rank agents) except for one, as well as one SSR character (e.g. S rank agent).

That’s really cool.

I’ve got the game downloading because the animation alone had my interest. Finding out it was a free to play gacha game definitely put a damper on my excitement, but all the good impressions are stoking the hype back up!

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

That’s really cool.

I’ve got the game downloading because the animation alone had my interest. Finding out it was a free to play gacha game definitely put a damper on my excitement, but all the good impressions are stoking the hype back up!

The game will take you slowly somewhat since there's a bunch of systems that unlock gradually as you progress through the game as the devs don't want for new players to get overwhelmed. For some people this can be boring, but if you stick with it and once you unlock a few more characters that combo well together it gets a lot fun. The combat itself is flashy and easy to get into since it's a F2P game that has to run on mobile after all; the chain combos, perfect parries and dodge have a really satisfying feel though, and you can train/exercise so you can pull these off consistently.

As an aside, the urban location which you'll spend a lot of time in it reminds me a bunch of Persona 5. They even have an Arcade place with a couple of really fun mini-games; plus there's so many little random interactions with NPCs and side activities to do around the place you're in.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Like Shift Up if one day they decide to make proper offline SP game then I will gladly buy it.

Tbh, I can see this game doing great as an offline experience in case it gets EoS in the future (end of service) since it's very story focused. It's kinda a weird mix of Persona 5 with DMC like combat (much less complex though) with great production values.

Check out these 2 short videos with this character's badass entrance (posted these earlier, but I know you won't check the rest of the replies in this thread anyway).

 

[Danjin44]

Tbh, I can see this game doing great as an offline experience in case it gets EoS in the future (end of service) since it's very story focused. It's kinda a weird a mix of Persona 5 with DMC like combat (much less complex though) with great production values.

I heard these devs make lot of money. I’m just asking one….just fucking one offline SP game.

Shift Up and Cygames did it, why can’t they?

 

[Icymanipulator]

Like I explained above, my problem, not with ZZZ since it's apparently different and I haven't tried it, but with Genshin Impact, wasn't really the gacha pull, it was other things tied to the usual "mobile" design of these games. The daily tasks, the stamina (resin in genshin) system, things like this that really remind you that you are playing a free to play / mobile game, and not your typical single player experience.

In Genshin it was particularly horrible because of the heavy RNG to upgrade your gear. You had to grind for artifacts, it could take weeks to get the right artifacts you wanted, and once you got it, you had to level it up (by sacrifying other artifacts), and the upgrade could end up being horrible because it was random, making your artifact that took weeks of grinding, now totally worthless.

There are some very frustrating and limiting barriers that make everything a lot more tedious than it would be in an offline paid game. The stamina systems are really one of the worst aspects for me.
I ended up not pulling for any characters anymore at some point because I just didn't want to re do this whole grind loop for new characters for several weeks again.

I never paid for anything in Genshin, never put money in it, so I don't have any money trauma or something. I just find the systems too tedious.

Artifact farming never bothered me, but then again I don’t go for 100% perfect sets.

There is such a thing as diminishing returns. If you have about ~80% of the power a particular set could give then yes, farming for months for that last 10-20% will feel like a nightmare, and it’s absolutely not needed.

There have been some great videos breaking down gacha math, this one in particular is really good.



Be mindful of your time. Plan ahead.
But know that in general artifacts / relics whatever are going to need to be thought of on larger time scales, weeks and months, not days and hours.
That’s just the nature of RNG. You either like it and enjoy the daily grind or you don’t.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

I heard these devs make lot of money. I’m just asking one….just fucking one offline SP game.

Shift Up and Cygames did it, why can’t they?

I'm sure they will eventually since apparently some of the big shots at MiHoYo/HoYoVerse (Genshin, Stair Rail, Zenless Zone Zero devs) are big Nintendo fans.

 

[Danjin44]

I'm sure they will eventually since apparently some of the big shots at the studio are big Nintendo fans.

Then when they do, I will gladly buy it.

 

[Mossybrew]

This game is a little too talky-talky for my tastes but for an anime theme game it seems to have very little cringe and is pretty cool. Still figuring out all the systems and weird currencies but I could see myself playing this for a while.

 

[Aenima]

Just a reminder that this game take a good amount of time to unlock all the game modes and activities you can do. Im Lv 22 and i still have game modes locked.

 

[Icymanipulator]

I pulled Rina as my five star and I barely use her. I went back to using the main default team. lol

Not only do they all seem powerful, but they’re all part of the same faction so they get some kind of action bonus or something like the smiley face lights up lol and I really like Nicole and Billy’s design and while I’m not the biggest fan of Anbys design I like her like personality and character and I like how she plays.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

I heard these devs make lot of money. I’m just asking one….just fucking one offline SP game.

Shift Up and Cygames did it, why can’t they?

Record-breaking kind of money. They will diversify in the close future, I'm pretty sure of it, but first they want to keep a certain dominance in their main market, cos there's very strong competition from China and Korea. They will because that competition is already making console/PC games at retail price, it's the next logical step.

There are no words for how dumb Sony has been not exploiting the FGO franchise, which keeps being very strong in Japan, a market where Sony is losing ground.

 

[mayham2199]

Like I explained above, my problem, not with ZZZ since it's apparently different and I haven't tried it, but with Genshin Impact, wasn't really the gacha pull, it was other things tied to the usual "mobile" design of these games. The daily tasks, the stamina (resin in genshin) system, things like this that really remind you that you are playing a free to play / mobile game, and not your typical single player experience.

In Genshin it was particularly horrible because of the heavy RNG to upgrade your gear. You had to grind for artifacts, it could take weeks to get the right artifacts you wanted, and once you got it, you had to level it up (by sacrifying other artifacts), and the upgrade could end up being horrible because it was random, making your artifact that took weeks of grinding, now totally worthless.

There are some very frustrating and limiting barriers that make everything a lot more tedious than it would be in an offline paid game. The stamina systems are really one of the worst aspects for me.
I ended up not pulling for any characters anymore at some point because I just didn't want to re do this whole grind loop for new characters for several weeks again.

I never paid for anything in Genshin, never put money in it, so I don't have any money trauma or something. I just find the systems too tedious.

This same thing will happen in ZZZ once you get enough characters and have to start building a second team. I don’t have a problem with it but some people do.

 

[Agent_4Seven]

This entrance by Miyabi was so fucking baddass. The direction in some of these action scenes is unbelievably good.

I fuckin' love her dezign
Hopefully we'll be able to get her via story Missions or something.

Ellen is pretty strong but i hate her retarded design. It looks like she has a Shark stuck in her butt. Was always an easy skip for me.

I mean, it doesn't make any sense for sure, but other than that she's very strong in combat and I want her in my party. Speaking of which....

As of right now, we can only pick 3 characters for missions, but I think it'd be great if they'd implemented a few slots for different squads so that you can freely switch between them before starting a mission. I mean, it's not like it's tiresome to switch around characters, but a bit more convenience would hurt.

Danjin44 I Just remembered that you like tasty food in games. Here's some Seafood Noodles from Zenless Zone zero.

Oh, man, the food shop.... I love the animations so much! Not only the food looks good, but it's like you can feel the smell and it makes you wanna eat it all up

 

[Icymanipulator]

It’s shiny and new so I’m hella biased, but damn if this game doesn’t have its hooks in me.

Nicole is far and away my favorite lol
Love the way she looks at her nails while walking up to fight kills me every time. Definitely got that queen aura for days.

Also some of the art coming out is nice, there’s a ton, but this AI image caught my eye, shit is getting insane.

 

[navii]

 

[Doom85]

I actually like her shark inspired design, and also her 'no fucks given' attitude, but I also understand if people don't resonate with any of that. Her character teaser was pretty cool, too.

I opened the banners and saw the first limited banner and the character image: a maid, her hand on her hip, and her looking down at me with a bit of attitude.

I slammed that “10 pulls” button so fast you’d think I had entered a button-mashing sequence.

Really didn’t even notice the shark tail at first, but eh, it’s not a plus for me but it doesn’t bother me, much like Holo (from the anime Spice and Wolf) and her tail.

Besides, as Honkai Star Rail taught us, how could we not pull? After all, only good things can come from it.

 

[Hoho for breakfast]

Got Soukaku on my very first wish of the game. Then on the standard I managed to get 2 of the same damn weapon (Starlight Engine Replica) which really annoyed me. I was just about to turn this crap off but on my very last free wish got Ellen Joe at about 20 wishes in.

So I guess I'll give the game a shot now. I've done 30 wishes on the standard banner but no 5 star there yet. Hoping for Lycoan or whatever his name is but as long as I got EJ I'm happy for now.

 

[Agent_4Seven]

So, it looks like we can't get characters via story missions. I was hoping to get Nekomata, but I guess I have to get her via channel search, oh well.

Spoiler

I actually found one timer and it's related to the battery which you can't even figure out what it's for until much later. Anyway, there's this VR Training you can do to get good EXP and things to level up and promote agents, their skills, W-Engines and such, well, since there's a lot you can get by doing that, I guess they had to find a way to prevent us from overpowering our agents too early. You can restore 60% energy by drinking coffee and it'll get restored to full charge in 20+ hours.

Also, leveling up characters to level 10 doesn't cost much, but after that you really need to think on which character you're willing to spend resources cuz it'll cost quite a lot to level them up to level 20 and there's also W-Engines to think about. Some missions also require characters to be level 16 etc. so there's that to consider as well. And believe it or not, there's even more battle pass-like things which'll get unlocked the more you play, not to mention the main hub area gets more populated and feel alive, there's time of day cycle with side missions you can do and all sorts of other things and all of this is sill in the prologue.

Oh and...

Spoiler

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

You don't really have to think about leveling that much early on, as long as you keep playing you'll get a lot of character leveling resources, I currently have two at 40 and the rest is at 30/20; you can still kill things that are way above your level, try it in the vr training, I beat a lvl 40 dullahan at level 15, the level matching only really comes into play when doing timed challenges.

Anyway I may have underestimated how much free game there is here, hit level 30 after almost 30 hours and a whole new hub opens up with a new introduction of characters, and since it's called chapter 2 intermission/interlude there seems to be a good deal of chapter 2 left still; this is definitely the most solid '1.0' release of any free game ever imo and if they can give us 8-10 hours of content for every update that would be great.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Have 3 of my A rank agents at lvl 30, but some of the boss fights in Hollow Zero are getting pretty sweaty.

These perfect parries are still very satisfying though. The feedback on them reminds somewhat of Sekiro Danjin44

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

Maybe it's good I lost the 50/50 on ellen, zhu yuan is best girl no contest.

 

[Agent_4Seven]

These perfect parries are still very satisfying though. The feedback on them reminds somewhat of Sekiro Danjin44

Oh, fuck yeah! The sound feedback you're getting from those are insanly satisfying, visually too. I'd even go as far as to say that go for perfect parries instead of dodging where you can.

I think they need to give us FOV option - more often than not, the camera just gets in your way cuz you can't see much and narrow FOV makes it even worse, so of course you'll get hit and those arrows not helpting much tbh. It's not like a huge problem, but it's there. At least 10-15% more wider FOV should be enough I think

 

[Icymanipulator]

Ugh… I stayed up until 3 am playing… I can’t even remember the last time a game sucked me that hard.

Have the default 3 up to 30, and their skills and equipment capped as far as it can go for my IK level.

Also decided to level up Lucy for a fire character and Soukaku for ice, but also because I’ve gotten 2 copies of her + the free one the game gives you.

There’s even stupid shit I like, like unlocking more video tapes for the movie store. The details and little touches everywhere are killer.

And has anyone talked about the music yet?
There’s this track that plays on 6th street sometimes, and it’s so relaxing and chill. I left the game for BGM while I ate dinner lololol good shit.

 

[Comandr]

Game's a lot of fun so far. Starting to get pretty challenging. I'm at Inter-Knot level 27. Have almost all the agents so far. Haven’t spent a dime.

My main group, Nekomata, Billy, and Corin are starting to run into trouble though. Some of the challenges where certain enemies are weak to certain elements are definitely becoming more apparent. Upgrading everything possible, W-Engines, Discs, Skills, Rank and Level are really crucial to squeezing as much oomph out of them as you can. Perfect parries build an enormous amount of stagger, the problem I'm running into is that the fights are getting really really long as I'm starting to lose footing on a attack power.

Where do you get more discs anyway? I'm guessing maybe the music store- I haven't unlocked that yet. The discs themselves seem to refer to music in their titles. Disco, electro, etc.

 

[Icymanipulator]

I just got 28, haven’t done much with discs other then what I’ve picked up along the way, don’t want to invest too much in low tier items, so I’m just letting it rock. Haven’t had too much problems so far, even the hard mode stuff for chapter 1 has been pretty easy.
I just have people at 30 with skills capped as far as they can go, and weapons leveled up as well.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

Just past the first boss, the game is picking up pace. I like the TV stuff, it fits very well in the story.

The music and sound design are fantastic but they won't get any nominations just because.

And again, what a difference it makes having MCs that talk and interact like human beings. Mihoyo made a mistake with the mute characters in Genshin and HSR.

 

[Icymanipulator]

TV stuff isn’t bothering me that much, people made it sound horrible.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

My main group, Nekomata, Billy, and Corin are starting to run into trouble though. Some of the challenges where certain enemies are weak to certain elements are definitely becoming more apparent. Upgrading everything possible, W-Engines, Discs, Skills, Rank and Level are really crucial to squeezing as much oomph out of them as you can. Perfect parries build an enormous amount of stagger, the problem I'm running into is that the fights are getting really really long as I'm starting to lose footing on a attack power.

Where do you get more discs anyway? I'm guessing maybe the music store- I haven't unlocked that yet. The discs themselves seem to refer to music in their titles. Disco, electro, etc.

Where you are, you really don't need to be upgrading anything, since as you said, you haven't even unlocked the music store yet, all you need to upgrade is character level and W-engine a little bit.
What you're running into is your bad team composition, you literally are using 3 attackers and all 3 are physical, you need variety on the team.
Attackers are good at dealing consistent damage, but you're gonna miss out on chain attack loops (stunners) and applying status/buffs(anomaly/support), which is where all the giant burst dps comes from.
When I was where you were I literally only had my main at level 30, and was using two supports at level 20, but I was still able to do big damage consistently through chain attacks and status build up, since my main is a stunner, not an attacker.

Good news though, the record shop opens at like level 28 or something, but I haven't used it much yet since getting the materials uses stamina, which I'd rather use on character upgrades.

 

[Comandr]

Where you are, you really don't need to be upgrading anything, since as you said, you haven't even unlocked the music store yet, all you need to upgrade is character level and W-engine a little bit.
What you're running into is your bad team composition, you literally are using 3 attackers and all 3 are physical, you need variety on the team.
Attackers are good at dealing consistent damage, but you're gonna miss out on chain attack loops (stunners) and applying status/buffs(anomaly/support), which is where all the giant burst dps comes from.
When I was where you were I literally only had my main at level 30, and was using two supports at level 20, but I was still able to do big damage consistently through chain attacks and status build up, since my main is a stunner, not an attacker.

Good news though, the record shop opens at like level 28 or something, but I haven't used it much yet since getting the materials uses stamina, which I'd rather use on character upgrades.

Welllllllll I tried following your advice and spent an enormous amount of resources getting Grace and Nicole leveled up and their W-Engines leveled up. Their attack was less than half of my other team members so I spent even more resources leveling up all of their skills and discs to the point they were at least in comparable levels to my Neko Cor Billy team.

And…. My dps went way down. I was landing every parry and using my special abilities as soon as I was able, and I actually failed to meet the time requirement on some challenges. Went back to my original team and passed them.

Idk I fail to see the actual benefit of having a “well composed” team of support and in my case, anomaly characters.

With 3 attackers I am constantly getting ASSAULT and doing THOUSANDS of damage every time it goes off.

Nekomata hits like a fucking truck, Corin and build stagger extremely quickly and her special shreds bosses, and Billy is extremely good at clearing out large groups mobs.

TL;DR: I tried following your advice and I’m doing much worse now.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

TL;DR: I tried following your advice and I’m doing much worse now.

That's odd, since corin and billy aren't very good at applying daze or status, they might just be riding along with nekomata since she's better at it, gets a buff when assault procs and is just very strong in general, probably the strongest of the standard s ranks. Having another physical with her is fine, but she'd work much better with someone who can apply the status much quicker.
To illustrate the differences:

full daze in one set of full ex bar usage, only about 60% status though

full status in one full ex bar usage, ~50% daze

meanwhile corin:

gets a little better in a full combo, but you'll generally get interrupted because it takes too long.

Billy isn't doing much better

This is what combat generally looks like for me, I'm just putting enemies in constant daze so I can chain attack them over and over so they can do a few attacks at most before being in daze again


Now that I think about it, anby and piper would probably work pretty well together, since assault lowers daze resistance and increases daze build up

 

[Comandr]

That's odd, since corin and billy aren't very good at applying daze or status, they might just be riding along with nekomata since she's better at it, gets a buff when assault procs and is just very strong in general, probably the strongest of the standard s ranks. Having another physical with her is fine, but she'd work much better with someone who can apply the status much quicker.
To illustrate the differences:

full daze in one set of full ex bar usage, only about 60% status though

full status in one full ex bar usage, ~50% daze

meanwhile corin:

gets a little better in a full combo, but you'll generally get interrupted because it takes too long.

Billy isn't doing much better

This is what combat generally looks like for me, I'm just putting enemies in constant daze so I can chain attack them over and over so they can do a few attacks at most before being in daze again


Now that I think about it, anby and piper would probably work pretty well together, since assault lowers daze resistance and increases daze build up

I appreciate your thoughtful and detailed response. I don’t personally think the video example is very good… Anby doesn’t seem very strong and they are taking ages to daze. I’ll see if I can record some footage in a bit and you can tell me what your thoughts are from there.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

Anby doesn’t seem very strong and they are taking ages to daze.

When exactly? lucy does around 20 daze, then soukaku does 30 and then anby comes in to do 40+ and puts him in daze; after the first chain attack is over, anby comes back in and does 70 daze with a single combo + ex, then soukaku just puts him back in daze after a single counter, so that's daze, chain, stun, daze, chain, stun with only one attack in between.
The chain and stun multipliers are high so that's where all their damage comes from.

 

[Mossybrew]

I'm still enjoying the game and its style but the amount of gametime spent on talking/walking somewhere to talk to someone/playing the tv overgame thing compared to the actual gameplay segments confined to these super tiny arenas....eh.

 

[Agent_4Seven]

I'm still enjoying the game and its style but the amount of gametime spent on talking/walking somewhere to talk to someone/playing the tv overgame thing compared to the actual gameplay segments confined to these super tiny arenas....eh.

Have you played Persona games (and Tokyo Mirage) before to completion? I think it is inevitable that with time, not only talking and stuff becomes somewhat a routine, but combat as well. I think it all comes down to whether you like the world, the atmosphere, story and characters to power through.

I think what they did with the gameplay stuff and combat is better than in Persona games, moreover, the combat here is so good that it just never gets old and you're fighting stuff for at best 8-10 min in missions. Now, compare that to any ATLUS game and see the drastic difference in terms of just how much you fight stuff and how many hours you're spending doing that, not to mention that they're always info dump you all the time and repeating the same plot points every time you'll get the new character, there's nothing like that in ZZZ.

There's also far more stuff you can do in ZZZ than in any ATLUS games and it even takes notes from Platinum's excellent Astral Chain. I mean, I get if it all can be daunting and overwhelming, but nobody is forcing you to do stuff you don't care about. Anywho, to say the game is HUGE in terms of content and stuff is to say nothing, so if you feel like it's too much or feel fatigue from how the game works.... take a break, play or do something else and come back to it later, that is if you don't have a giant FOMO

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Corporate catgirls down the street; now I think I have seen it all.

 

[Davevil]

f2p waifu

 

[navii]

 

[Agent_4Seven]

The greatest F2P Waifu!?

Speakin' of which....

Spoiler

Finally unlocked Hollow Zero and it's way more fun than regular missions with some cool stuff you can do and shit, plus it looks like there's some sort of raid with huge bosses who had to be taken down over the course of multiple missions and there's regular bounties there as well. I had a lot of fun in the introduction mission and can't wait to dive deep into the rest of the shit down there. The research area is also pretty cool visually.

Spoiler

It's just unbelievable how much stuff they've packed into this game and how much of it is still locked etc.

 

[mayham2199]

Welllllllll I tried following your advice and spent an enormous amount of resources getting Grace and Nicole leveled up and their W-Engines leveled up. Their attack was less than half of my other team members so I spent even more resources leveling up all of their skills and discs to the point they were at least in comparable levels to my Neko Cor Billy team.

And…. My dps went way down. I was landing every parry and using my special abilities as soon as I was able, and I actually failed to meet the time requirement on some challenges. Went back to my original team and passed them.

Idk I fail to see the actual benefit of having a “well composed” team of support and in my case, anomaly characters.

With 3 attackers I am constantly getting ASSAULT and doing THOUSANDS of damage every time it goes off.

Nekomata hits like a fucking truck, Corin and build stagger extremely quickly and her special shreds bosses, and Billy is extremely good at clearing out large groups mobs.

TL;DR: I tried following your advice and I’m doing much worse now.

That is strange. I have Neokmata as well but she seems like she does less damage than the electric drill guy or at least comparable at best. I'm having trouble triggering assault though so that might be why. Think I met set her to the side for now until I can figure out a better team for her. We will need to two eventually anyways.

Speakin' of which....

Spoiler

Finally unlocked Hollow Zero and it's way more fun than regular missions with some cool stuff you can do and shit, plus it looks like there's some sort of raid with huge bosses who had to be taken down over the course of multiple missions and there's regular bounties there as well. I had a lot of fun in the introduction mission and can't wait to dive deep into the rest of the shit down there. The research area is also pretty cool visually.

Spoiler

It's just unbelievable how much stuff they've packed into this game and how much of it is still locked etc.

Yea you still have way more to unlock. I always though it was crazy how much Mihoyo puts into their games for free. Genshin didn't start out that way but they learned from it and applied it to HSR and now ZZZ. I remember taking a break from Genshin and coming back and being blown away by how much more they were doing.

 

[Agent_4Seven]

Yea you still have way more to unlock. I always though it was crazy how much Mihoyo puts into their games for free. Genshin didn't start out that way but they learned from it and applied it to HSR and now ZZZ. I remember taking a break from Genshin and coming back and being blown away by how much more they were doing.

I haven't played HSR, but I've played Genshin and the problem with it was that you had to wait for the story content so when I found out about it, I decided to stop playing and never came back. I haven't played much of it, maybe 5-6 hrs at best.

Clearly and with ZZZ, there's a shit ton of content at launch and even if there's a story cap in the game, I'm pretty sure that before we're going to hit it, they'll release a huge content update so we don't have to worry about.

 

[mayham2199]

I haven't played HSR, but I've played Genshin and the problem with it was that you had to wait for the story content so when I found out about it, I decided to stop playing and never came back. I haven't played much of it, maybe 5-6 hrs at best.

Clearly and with ZZZ, there's a shit ton of content at launch and even if there's a story cap in the game, I'm pretty sure that before we're going to hit it, they'll release a huge content update so we don't have to worry about.

Yea eventually you will have to wait for story content if you put in enough time. They'll add side stories and stuff like that but the main story will take break. I prefer the end game team building and taking on the harder level content as it is so I'm not worried about it. The story in this game has been far better than HSR and Genshin though. Not nearly as much wasted dialogue as HSR and Genshin and just straight simple story that's easy to follow.

 

[Icymanipulator]

Yes the story is much easier to follow then HSR, which I like but man that shit is getting convoluted lol

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

So I've just finished doing some team management, I now have 5 agents at lvl 30 covering all elements and most classes (stun, support, anomaly); have their signature w-engine where applicable at lvl 30, and also have all their skills upgraded to lvl 5-7. I've also put a disc drive into each one of them for some more stats. I think I should be good to go for a short while so now I'm focusing on the story and hollow zero.

On the other hand I've had some bad luck with the default banner, as I have like 120 pulls and just one S rank agent. I'm also saving my polychrome for now (have around 4k currently) so I can use it either on the Ellen Joe banner or maybe on the next one.

 

[RuneFactoryFanboy]

There are some very frustrating and limiting barriers that make everything a lot more tedious than it would be in an offline paid game. The stamina systems are really one of the worst aspects for me.
I ended up not pulling for any characters anymore at some point because I just didn't want to re do this whole grind loop for new characters for several weeks again.

I agree 100%, and perspectives like yours come from a place well past the honeymoon period of these games. I've echoed your same thoughts in another ZZZ thread, but here we go again lol.

The games themselves are fantastic, so beautiful, so addictive, and clearly show the developers are great at what they do. Yet, as with any kind of game, once a player invests significant time into them the real core design flaws start to show. Hoyoverse games have this "Daily Stamina + Horrible RNG" combo that hamper the long-term experience.

I play Genshin and have the exact same thoughts as you. Sitting on a mountain of free pulls, but very little desire to even get new characters because how frustrating the resin/artifact RNG systems are. It's hard to get excited for a new character knowing that before they can truly shine it's going to be months of painful RNG farming, forcefully regulated to a few minutes worth of attempts a day. I find the new pull hype wears off well before I can find a satisfying set of artifacts. It turns it into a chore, making the player feel like they have to play daily or else they are wasting opportunities to completely build a character.

Obviously I still play Genshin, and I'm thinking about trying ZZZ here, but the game design described really brings the whole experience down. Turns them from games I would happily no-life like an addictive MMO, into games I just play on the side and refuse to never spend a dime in.

 

[Agent_4Seven]

I have 5 agents at lvl 20 with all available elements, maybe 3 W-Engines at level 20, with 2-3 levels at skills, but I haven't even seen disc drives yet. Fun fact, I had like 45 resources when unlocked Bongboo store and literally got like 50+% of all Bangboos incl. one S ranked one. Just finished 2 qualification missions in Hollow Zero, collected most of the coins from the first page and finished most of the quests to get medals from a police girl in the dog costume and finished first part of the Soldier 11 story with one more available to go. As for resources, I've got like 1400 of the currency you get the most of after searching channels which I'll be saving to then buy stuff you need to search for agents (it'll refresh next month and let's just say that by the time it happens, I'll have a shit load for currency to buy stuff and then search for agents), don't have a lot of polychrome since I'm using it to search for agents when I have enough. Thick Thighs Save Lives how far I am from where you are story wise? I'm at Proxy level 22 right now.

Spoiler

Btw, unlike with Agent and W-Engine channels, Bongboo channel lets you pick which one you need and say FY! to RNG, so that next time S rank will trigger during channel search, you'll get exactly what you asked for. Now, I know that you can eventually do that with agents, but FFS, you need to search 300 times and searches in other channels don't count.

Let's be real here, there's not a huge roster of characters in the game for now, based on the characters screen where you can see which ones are left for you to collect, so why can you choose which Bangboo you need right away, but with agents you need to search 300 times? It just doesn't make sense. What also doesn't make sense is that they'll let you pick specific characters you want to unlock without RNG only in less expensive channel and by searching in this exact channel I unlocked Koleda, not the one at the top. So to me, it doesn't make sense to search in the top channel cuz it won't let you pick characters you want cuz during all the time I've played the game, I haven't unlocked S rank of anything there and the less expensive channel has even more drop rates which is at about 15% almost, and the top one is at 0,9 ffs and resources you need to buy to search ther is much less expensive

I don't remember and I can't tell right now if the less expensive channel has more searches for you to go through before A/S rank drops than the top one, but even if that's the case, drop rates are way higher there as I mentioned and you can eventually pick what you need to unlock without RNG and again - the top channel won't let you do that.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

I don't remember and I can't tell right now if the less expensive channel has more searches for you to go through before A/S rank drops than the top one, but even if that's the case, drop rates are way higher there as I mentioned and you can eventually pick what you need to unlock without RNG and again - the top channel won't let you do that.

This is only good if you are looking for one of the standard s rankers, the banner won't have limited s rankers, so ellen won't be on it, as soon as her banner is gone, she'll be unobtainable until she returns, or until the roster is big enough they start adding more to it, like they have done in genshin.

 

[Aenima]

I don't remember and I can't tell right now if the less expensive channel has more searches for you to go through before A/S rank drops than the top one, but even if that's the case, drop rates are way higher there as I mentioned and you can eventually pick what you need to unlock without RNG and again - the top channel won't let you do that.

The top channel (banner) is dedicated to 3 characeters 1 S-rated and 2 A-rated. Every 10 pulls you get 1 A-rated with high chance of being one of the character in the banner. When you reach pull 90 if you didnt got any S-rated character in that banner you garantee get a S-rated characeter with 50% chance of being the girl in the banner. If you dont get the girl from the banner, the next S-rated character in that banner will be the banner girl.

So to go for the top banner is only worth going when the characters there interest you and when you have enough resorces to do 90 or 180 pulls so u can get the banner girl.

In the beginning of the game is better to just spend the normal pulls you get in the normal permanent banner, but keep saving your polychomes to the top banners cuz thats where the new characetsrs wil be added over time.

 

[tmlDan]

I wouldn't waste leveling resources on all your characters, just level up your favs until you get closer to end game then then decide what characters you enjoy using. It's super important that you properly build your characters and spend resources on a few so that you don't struggle with later game enemies. i invest all my upgrades, daily "battery" on upgrades for characters i use frequently and always prep for levelling to the next bracket when i hit story level mission.

Currently using these as my mains: