I definitely can see the argument, but there's also another side to it. the small pool of A ranks allows players to quickly C6 them, and I am sure you are aware C6 A ranks in ZZZ are incredibly viable. next, players who have a lot of A ranks on C6 may actually prefer the residual signals, which are not to be underestimated, either.
this is true. i saw the writing on the wall as early as jane doe banner. after 2 or 3 banners i managed to c6 almost all of them i only have billy and corin left to c6 and i like it cause it gives me free pulls whenever i do standard banners. and when they do add 4 stars and i know they would, it will be easy for me to c6 them as well.
I feel u brother, back in 1.2 with burnice I wanted to just max out my 2 support a rank engines and accidentally got Burnice engine, and now I have her engine for noone to use...😢
@@Soundwave1900 becuase meta is a waste of time in zzz. pull for characterrs you like I have been pulling for s ranks they could add a few more A ranks but I don't want too many characters like genshin you have a million characters and they get their 5 seconds of fame and on to the next. zzz actuals builds the characters and with skins we will see more of the same characters in the future.
Real, no character in this game is B or C rank they're all viable, though some WAY more than others Currently I'm anomaly maxxing :P will be setting my sights on Yanagi and Astra, then going from there
The reason is simple: unlike GI or HSR, the Rank-A agents have a solid story and a place in the world of ZZZ, you can find a lot of A rank Characters in Genshin impact and you couldn’t know who tf are they because they had like 1 dialogue in all the game and they’re trash in game, in ZZZ you can find utility and a solid personality in almost every Rank-A agents. Also, we all know most players didn’t pulled Burnice at first for her Abilities, so i don’t think people will enrage if they release a character who does the same as her but worse.
The A rank issue honestly is a multi layered issue. Simply because A ranks here have a lot more effort put into them than other games. But I will be the first to say Zhu yuan felt like a breath of fresh air in comparison to agents like lighter who out-right replace agents when their gameplay is just the prior agents gameplay but are advanced enough to be "limited". I do think we should have more A's but considering agents like Nicole and Lucy that's alot of effort. But as long as they fit a different mole like Nicole and Seth, idm if they are "replaced". That's all for me.
@@WikiNiijima I am ashamed to admit that I downloaded the game and got Burnice before I even knew what she did. I just had BURNICE BURNICE BURNICE BURNICE BURNICE BURNICE GO GO stuck in my head and next thing I know I’m getting a scratch card from a dog every morning
If I'm being entirely honest, i thought burnice would be an A rank. I paid no attention to the promotions or whatever they're called. I just saw Burnice and Ceaser during one of the events. Thought Ceaser would be the S and Burnicr would be the A. Same with Miyabi and Muramasa.
The problem is probably on the resources and effort it takes to develop a character. This game has some of the best, most worked and detailed animation I have seen in quite a while for example, and each character has a billon different animations for each attack, movement, combo, etc etc. Doing all that takes a very good deal of time, and thats only animation. Previous to that you have to design, model, rig, texture, and afterwards comes all the vfx animations, all the scripts for the many affinity missions, and lets not forget the voice acting, which comes in quite a lot different languages. A new character in this game is way waaay more than just a png you deploy on some static battlefield. If you add that to the amount of new stuff they are bringing with each patch, they probably have their hands quite full and very little time to create new characters that are not going to be the "shiny new toy" and probably not sought after by most.
I dont believe its a resources issue cause if we look at PGR a game thats in a similar vain to zzz every other update the devs release an a ranks which are in my opinion more detailed in regards to animations than zzz character for now. I dont believe a company thats part of the top 10 richest companies in the world lack funds to make a ranks while others are doing it with much lower budgets. Here is a basic comparison between neko and bambi(a rank): ruclips.net/video/Kd0UoMrN1tE/видео.html Here is an s to s rank comparison if u interested miyabi counterpart: ruclips.net/video/UGANbeRG3Hg/видео.html Its not believable that hoyo of all companies cant afford to make A ranks
Need? No. Characters currently out are able to clear everything. It's still a bit of a hole in roles, which is kinda dull. For example, i still haven't gotten S11 and lost Burnice, so a Fire dps would be stellar since i can't really use my koleda ben lucy at the moment, so they are just sitting there. Now i lowkey HAVE to pull evelyn just to have some fire. An A rank Fire dps would have been great here, so i didn't HAVE to pull Evelyn if i wanted Fire.
that's what I've been saying. i like having more characters but having that 10% rebate on pulls is big and adds up. people are gonna want the s-ranks more anyway.
There's also an other reason to add A-rankers: teasing next faction and S-rank. I remember pre-1.3 that I didn't know who Lucy & Piper were and wonder how they tied to the story, same with Soukaku, which help me fall in love with Son of Calydon and Yanagi the way I couldn't have if they haven't been tease with their A-rank. Plus, you could use them as a way to tease S-rank. Instead of a toned down Caesar post 1.3, Think a bit like Soukaku & Miyabi an A-rank that boost the S-rank you're planning to release. Since you've invested in the A-rank, you are forced to take the S-rank
Sons of Calydon didn't even exist in Beta so people who play in Beta were surprised when they announced in their livestream that there are 2 new unfamiliar faces added in the game.
The available A rank in ZZZ is actually very crucial and viable. Nicole with DEF shred, Soukaku with her 30s ATK buff, Lucy + Piper = god tier duo, etc. I think just a few more would be nice, especially when players like to test on different team comps to flesh out the most of their abilties
@@Raikos100as of right now getting ether a ranks would work as a lot of people(including me) came during 1.4 and missed Zhu Yuan, so having 0 ether dps is pretty bad
yo.. I just finished the in-game survey and that's what I put in the recommendation. "More usable and well-designed (aesthetically and kit-wise) A-rank agents please". Just even for those specific roles in attributes that we don't have yet (i.e. Phys Stunner, Phys Support, Ether Anomaly, Ether Stunner, etc.)
I always write that weapon banners should be 100%, mindscapes should be obtainable through hard ingame challenges over a long period (with a note that it wasn't bought in the profile) in the survey and that there should be a choice banner, where the player choses a limited character to pull from each patch cycle. We all have dreams man.
@ man a 100% guarantee on w-engines. And I've lost on Yanagi's w-engine banner too so I know how shitty it feels losing that 75/25. One can dream indeed.
@Luftgitarrenprofi I respect your optimism but mindscapes being grindable is definitely never gonna happen for 5 stars, they already make a lof of money from people summoning and that would stop a lot of revenue. This isn't just me thinking that it's fine for them to do it but they would have to stop giving out a lot of free stuff if this was the case because of such a large revenue drop and many people most likely wouldn't be able to grind enough to even get 5 stars every patch anymore. I like the other things though
3:27 Pullin an A-Rank which u already have max copies of, u will gain more points for the shop to use them for additional pulls or S Motors. So it's still a win
I don't think it's really that bad to have weaker version of S rank agents as long as they have a different play style. Like I am not complaining if I finally get an A rank agent that can extend the stun window but just don't make that agent a diet lighter gameplay wise.
I think the fact that the A ranks are really good in this game they always feel like they have the same amount of quality and work put into them as s ranks the only real difference between a and s ranks is mostly damage im fine with the ability to get more value out of those characters through their mindscapes but i do think that we are overdue for a new a rank
I think the long term difference is that an M6 A rank is about as good (if not better in some cases) than an S rank M0/M1. The tradeoff with with S ranks is that they require a lot of pulls to get, but you typically don't NEED to invest in them more than their initial pull.
I think it has to do with the time they have to work with for each version of the game than it being an oversight by the developers. I imagine they have likely gotten a lot of suggestions to add some more. As they have said they put around the same amount of complex animation modules into each character, like for Seth who has a lot of interconnecting attacks, likely even more so than Caesar or Nicole who has an alternate circle input. So, they are essentially putting the same amount of time or even more for creating A ranks as S ranks which many games don't go out their way to do. They have also mentioned after the release of the game they have to work with a tighter schedule to create and develop characters and the team ultimately came up with a way to get characters out at their high standard. Seth was likely already being worked on early on. So, I think they prioritize having the double S-rank agents and when they find the time they will put in a A-rank agent. I highly doubt this team wants to lower the quality of their A-rank agents just to get them out as from the way the speak they have high expectations and standards of themselves and what they create in the long term and players do as well. I think a lot of the A-ranks are pretty good rn like Nicole, Soukaku, Lucy, Seth, Ben and even Anby. I think the team clearly has a lot they want to include like combo attacks like Ben and Koleda, the potential catalyst which essentially add animations to already existing characters giving them more utility like Ellen, even A ranks like Billy which they wanted to show off in 1.4, etc, but with the animations that probably are more complex than they look on surface level for a mobile game, I think they are prioritizing the long run and taking their time rather than producing something they would regret in their product in the future. As for this game in terms of combat they want each character to feel active on field and have some uniqueness to them. I think future factions like the Angels will have an A rank and likely one or two of the Mockingbird. (gouhuo.qq.com/content/detail/0_20241223172912_sSKi1mBxn )
If I may provide a counterpoint I'd venture that the initial set of A characters will always be there, so the new players can use them to clear the story content while they start to build their S teams. As for the veterans with maxed A agents, they get an average > 10% discount on their pulls thanks to the high return in residuals. Incidentally I'm also a day 1 HSR player and the situation there is exactly the same as I only miss 2 eidolons on the whole 4* cast! That said thanks for the interesting vids! 👍
Tbh, veterans will also rarely use their A characters even after maxing. But they are solid stepping stones and replacements till you manage to get an appropriate S rank. A ranks are mostly guaranteed, easy to get, while S ranks are not, they require a lot of currency investment. If you could easily get S ranks, yeah, A ranks would make way less sense.
@@Raikos100 I use Lucy and Nicole daily and would have built soukaku by now if it weren't for Astra so no, I don't think no veteran will use A ranks in the future. All and all they are actually pretty solid characters with universal kits there's always going to be a place for them in the meta unless they directly powercreep them (just make a character with the same utility but better multiplayers, essentially) which Hoyo is not fond of doing. They always add at least one minor tweak that makes each character have their advantage over another in different scenarios and place in the meta. Look at how fricking Bennet is still viable in Genshin, 4 year into the game's livespan. Or how Yelan was thought to be a direct powercreep to Xinqiu but ended up having slightly slower application than him at C6 so they ended up being preferred in different comps.
I agree it would be nice to have more A ranks, but you have to understand the characters in this game are much more complex than genshin. They all have their own combat style. I'd rather have less characters that feel unique than a bunch of characters that are very similar to existing characters
There’s some major details that should have been considered on this. One of them is the free Bangboos system. They’re pretty cute and fun and help support and make teams better at filling in the gap compared to other gacha team building games. I think this is probably an important boost to the typical A Rank mechanic gacha stuff. Also A rank characters in most gacha games feel like they’re not very viable for end game content until they’re on dupe 6 - but this game is considered much easier than those other games so I feel like the A Rank stuff isn’t as mandatory. More A rank characters would be awesome- BUT I personally think a Gacha game that’s easier and less A Rank dupe difficulty dependent is more fun. Also the game feels quite more generous with free currency than their other games, which helps too.
I think you’re the first person I’ve seen talk about how bangboos (regardless of rank) fit into a similar niche to A-rank characters, and it’s an interesting insight especially since we’ve been getting a pretty steady stream of new ones
I've never thought of A ranks being the same as S ranks, that's really dumb. Zzz has A ranks do something different with all of them and even the closely related ones like piper and jane are different, with piper applying consistent disorders with physical anomaly while jane does far more damage with critted anomalies. Also A ranks will be for every faction with 1-2 so you have to give them time to actually release the new factions with the A ranks.
I think it's perfectly fine for now and that we really don't want the massive diluted pool of useless A ranks like genshin has. All it does is make it harder to get the A rank you want as well as making it easier to miss out on the free pull you get when you pull a dupe on a M6 A rank character.
@@lindthechaoticheretic8708 In Genshin as well, they know exactly the poor state of most 4 stars because stronger characters like Bennett/XL/XQ, Fischl, Chevy, Sucrose all rerun way sooner than most 4 stars.
I think what new players is actually saying when they "don't have previous character to fit in the team" is either they don't like a specific character in their team (say they like Miyabi but they hate Piper for example), or they saw so many social content that constantly implying "if you don't have X character, screw you, you can't play that team" (ex: miyabi must go with yanagi, lycaon, burnice... or else she's just mid, some shit like that). So the solution for them is either they have to accept the current team that they're having and be happy with it for a long while until reruns, or the content creators have to make more videos on f2p teams more often so that they can be proved otherwise ("hey, maybe Miyabi Koleda Lucy is still solid"). I actually believe that ZZZ is going in the direction of having less A rank characters and focus on the power of S rank and the faction as a whole. So my pulling decision relies on who do I like and try to get all of them (like if I intend to pull for Evelyn, I must pull Astra as well because of their synergy and they're the same faction). So for new ZZZ players, my advice is to go for the whole squad in the future rather than picking one piece and try to stick it to another and hope it works.
miyabi must go with xxx🤣lmao! Miyabi can solo every contents by her own in M0 she don't really need anyone else. I wonder which brilliant guy said that, does he really play this game🤣
playing since day 1 here, i think this is better for those that want to get s ranks, as if you have max mindscapes for the a ranks, copies turn into refunds, so it alleviates the investment in banners
Thats my other big dissagreement with this "problem", im actually happy that i have all my A-ranks at M6 (almost thanks to anton and seth being party poopers) because it means more free pulls for me. I get more excitment out of seing those 20 residual signals than a copy of an A-rank that im not gonna build in a looooong while.
I don't think it's a problem just yet. Because all up till now we got A-ranks that introduced us to the 1.0-7 factions. That path was basically mapped out in advance. But what they do starting Astra and Evelyn, now that's gonna be a huge indicator of how they're planning to deal with this. And I do agree that Seth is an great 4-star because of his niche utility. If we see more 4-stars like that, it would be fantastic.
Well, in Genshin there is an opposite issue - they added too many niche characters who has absolutely zero relevance to the story. Very few players are using them. The only thing they achieved - they diluted character pool so now it's even harder to get a character we want.
Meanwhile I'm still a Seth main, and can't imagine any team functioning well without him. Well, Billy and Soukaku also lead their own teams of S-Rank teammates for me too.
To me it could just be that ZZZ devs don't have characters that are less important in the narrative to them yet, and since A ranks don't get an Agent Mission that would mean A ranks have to be linked with S rank characters so they can shine in eather the story or in S ranks's Agent Missions, so as we get more factions and time passes we'll eventually get more A ranks, I mean one of the Virtual Idols is definitely gonna be an A rank, since they're 3 and I don't think we'll get 2 updates on them, there's also Pulchra and Big Daddy, they could be A ranks too.
@@xrosslegends1279 But at least the male characters we got, are all top quality. And there's Hugo Vlad on the horizon. The A rank "problem" came to my mind but i was like: "they put so much work on every single character, so it is fair to just chill and let them cook slowly". I am not really sure how do they decide to give the A rank to a character, i mean, for what it's worth, every single character feels S rank quality... And now with costumes in mind, they are doing the extra work (the costumes have alt mindscape art).
Also having a smaller A rank pool means the higher chance to max out ACTUALLY useful A rank agents. Like in gi, that game has a lot of 4*, sure, but most of them are garbage or not function properly in c0, I've seen accounts about AR50 having no bennett, xingqiu, fischl but filled with dogwater 3.0 4* characters, and that sucks a lot
the A-ranks that we have, some of them are even free like Nicole, are top tier. Piper is up there too, then there's Lucy and Soukaku. I honestly like that they focus on quality over quantity. Plus, the game has been very generous with polychromes that even I, as an F2P, already has 10 S-Rank agents. 5 limited, and 5 standard. Some even has their signature weapons.
There is an upside to this. I have all my A ranks maxed out and when you draw duplicates, you get more points for the store so I’ll be able to get all my S ranks engines quicker and when I get all my engines, I can use the points to get more poles and more characters
@DantoriusD hsr and gi don't have faction abilities though, the 4 stars could be random people while in zzz they have to be a part of a faction and unless a faction is full of all A ranks you won't be seeing as many. Especially when their kits are also heavily more developed since zzz is basically a fighting game with real combos compared to those 2 where a basic kit was just fine.
@madmanof2016 You dont need Fractions. Look at S11 who works fine while being lonely as only Orbol Member. Thats why the Bonus is either Fraction required OR Requires a Specific Type of Squad Member. Also im pretty sure sooner or later they get rid of the entire Fraction requirements. Look at Astra or Evelyn. Both doesnt have a Fraction requirement anymore. Astra just requires a Attack or Anomaly Char while Evelyn requires a Support or Break Character.
@@DantoriusD ya can't compare fricken hsr where u NEED more units in general to play the game, it's a turn based game... Obviously, they get more faster.
@@SleepyMockii dude why so cocky? Its totally BS. Why do you NEED more characters? You can play the Story with a 4* Starter Team just fine. If you talk aboit endgame shouldnt that be the total oposite? ZZZ requires 9 Characters for Deadly Assault while HSR needs only 8. And pls spare me with all the "Powercreep" BS im so tired of that topic.
I dont think we need a lot more a ranks. We only need 6 character to clear content. The current pool of a ranks could use another DPS or two, so the issue imo is more about diversity than quantity.
I mean in Zenless, main reason as to why we do not have many A ranks is because they are built to be on par with S ranks unlike the other Gachas Hoyo has made or generally Gachas, I imagine A ranks have a track record of having one per faction and the exception is Obols as Obols squad is more of a slow build up rather than an immediate introduction unlike the new factions like the Stars of Lyra and Mockingbird. I imagine 2.0 will give us new A ranks for both factions as well as whatever is in 1.7, possibly I can see an idea of 2.0 even having a new stable channel like 1.0 for a plethora of new A ranks and some S ranks given leaks have confirmed Hoyo has 31 characters finished, set for the 2.0 era which if we were to get 9 versions in 2.0 that would mean there would be 18 bound banner characters. I honestly expect it will be similar to 1.0 where there will be going to just to a point where the story makes sense to pause to allow for more factions to be introduced for 3.0 as they build up too it either way new A ranks are inevitable and perhaps a second Stable channel for nonlimited S ranks to add to the pool.
Maxing A Ranks translate into a free ticket. Thus, churning your account quicker to the S rank. Honestly, I'm happy to churn faster to the S rank's personally. I'm actually more screwed in HSR. I started on Sparkle Re-Run and my 4 Star extra copies are in the trash. I essentially have had to SLOWLY climb because ALL I can count on is 5 stars. What you think is a problem is actually the reserve for me in a different game.
You really lost me on the explanation about why the "A rank version" of S ranks would be a bad thing. On your own exemple, i'm a 1.0 player, but i skiped Ceasar. I would love to have A Rank Ceasar to cover this gap. I even leveled my Seth because i'm in such a desperation for shields at time. You said that it's not reasonable to roll in every banner, and i agree, but it's contradictory if you said it but act like every old player will have every single S rank.
I started playing zenless zone zero a month after Ellen’s banner was over. I was having alot more fun playing with the different types of agents not just cause for variety but also their personality. After Jane doe’s banner released, I began to just use only teams that work with the upcoming agents such as lighter, burnice and recently; Miyabi. If the banners onwards includes another s rank or even new a-rank agents, it would feel much better. I can’t sadly give a super thanks but your video was great! ❤
I can't agree that A rank absences is a big problem in this game. I mean 38% of ZZZ characters is A rank vs 35% in HSR and 45% in Genshin (but a lot of 4-star characters in genshin is trash) so it's almost equal. They should add more A-rank but it's better be characters like Sokaku or Lucy then Ben. Quality over quantity. And also about adding A-rank that is lesser version of S-rank: if they share similar mechanics they mustn't share similar roles. I mean in Genshin Yelan didn't replace Xingqiu so it's possible that new character that can apply anomaly off filed as Burnice mustn't be worse then Burnice. Or if we will receive character that gives shield it's not necessary must be Caesar 0.5
when you said “a lot of 4-star char in genshin is trash” like bennett, kuki, xiangling, xingqiu, fischl, beidou they are not trash, like i get it some 4 star char are trash but at least some of them are useful and supportive anlike HSR where all 4 star char got powercreep that makes all 4 star suck stingky butt
@@themightysketch2815 Oh wow, It's cool that 99% of the characters you named are in Genshin from 1.x. And now, I'll remind you, it's already version 5.x Genshin hasn't created a single 4star in that time, or maybe the point is that they are mostly garbage and worse than 1.x 4stars? Btw, its funny when people whine about powercreep in HSR, but actually Gallagher, Pela, Tingyun (yeah, 4star version still good), Moze, Asta, Guinaifen, Herta and Lynx is still very good. In some cases, you can also use Luka, Sushang, Xueyi. Oh, somehow it so happened that I named even more characters than in your glazed Genshin. And all of the characters I've named are good in one way or another. It's amazing that "powercreep" game that every Genshin kid whines about nowadays has a lot more useful 4stars than Genshin did in 5.x.
@@themightysketch2815Mate, you mentioned the literal top 1% of 4-stars. It is undeniable that every other 4-star are borderline unusable without SIGNIFICANT investment. You're like taking the richest of the rich out of 60% of a country's population below the poverty line and call it good. That's not how this works.
@@broccoli5176 The majority of 4* in Genshin are at least valuable without needing cons. Gallagher, Moze, Asta, Gui, Herta, Qingqui should never even be built, if you don't have multiple of their Eidolons. Also Ororon and Kachina are both good characters. Not game-changing, but not bad either, especially because both work great as support for Natlan characters AND can hold the support Natlan artefact set, which is amazing. Also, Genshin has released many broken 4* even AFTER 1.x: Yaoyao, Kirara, Kuki, Gaming, Chevi, Layla come to mind right away.
The game has barely been out for 7 months, have we forgotten this? As of today, there are 10 A-rank characters. Sure, Genshin had 16+ by the time they got to their half year mark-except 14 of them existed on day one. I'm sure the opposite problems occur now for newer players in Genshin-where the character list is so inundated by so many 4-star characters it's hard to get the ones you want. Complaining about character variety when it hasn't even been a single year is absolutely wild.
I don't think it is a problem, is a minor inconvenience for new players but it eventually goes away as they pull for more characters an diversify their roster, is not like they can't choose what A ranks they get either, so in a way having less A rank gives more chance of getting the ones you want, that's a big problem for genshin as there are many good 4* but also many mediocre ones. For everyone else a few less A rank is more positive, as you get max cinemas, you get more pull income, which means you get more S ranks There's also the more "subjective" point in that, A rank agents get less attention, so if someone likes an A rank there's a big chance it isn't going to be the big focus of the patch OR people would rather the character be an S rank and get proper focus and attention.
I have some mixed Feelings about A Rank Agents. Do we need more??? Yes absolitely. But i think we need more in the right direction. Look at all the 4* Chars in HSR and even on Release the 4*s were barely used because they didnt fit into a specific Roster or we didnt had Characters yet that supported the Playstyle. The only 4* that are heavily used till these Days are the Supports. Pela,Tingyun,maybe Lynx. With 2.0 HSR got way less 4*s but all of them were a absolut Banger....Aside of Misha who released in 2.0 but at that Point was heavily overshadowed by Jingliu and today he isnt even good anymore. But we also got Gallagher who is amazing. Hunt March even E6 for Free who is the best f2p Option for Follow Ups. We got Moze in Feixiaos Banner who is also a really good Alternative for Follow Up. And even the MC is considered as a 5* ingame we got a free E6 Char who opened a complete new Archetype. Because of the Small amount of A Ranks in ZZZ we have good Alternatives for Teambuilds especially as a New Player cause a M6 A Rank is a really valid Option. So long Story Short i dont need 1 new A Rank every Patch but dunno maybe every 3 Patches?? Also arent the Idols supposed to be released in 1.6? Since there 3 in Total i could immagine one of them might be an A Rank.
I don't know if I entirely agree on the similar versions point. If Deadly Assault is anything to go by, having agents do similar things as each other can be a benefit in a situation where you use up one of the agents on one team and are barred from using them in another team that needs them. If more niche modes like Deadly crop up that limits your agent use, having similar agents doesn't seem like such a bad thing.
Them dont add them cuz their characters not like in genshin or HSR, every new character has so much attention in story and them also has like insane desight. You just cant add side character for 5 mins like Heizo from Genshim. He has almost 0 story time. ZZZ character is another level. We dont need more.
As a veteran, I personally don't feel punished for having all A-rank characters at M6, because I look at it as every A-rank Agent I get is an extra pull towards pity. I think it's a matter of perspective, and I try to see the brighter side of it. I wouldn't mind a few more A-ranks though.
100% agree that zzz has a bit of A rank problem, but as a counter argument to the whole they shouldn't add mini versions of pre-existing characters thing, I pulled on Burnice because I really liked Burnice as a character 1st and because she's a great off field anomaly character 2nd so I wouldn't care if a mini A rank Burnice got added later because that new character isn't actually Burnice. I highly recommend pulling for "waifu" over pulling for "meta" in zzz specifically at least because as it stands the difficulty of the content isn't to a point yet where you need like a certain character/team comp to get all rewards, and adding mini A rank versions of the limited S ranks would be great because it would further incentivize that mindset which would be awesome because then you would only really have to care about what characters you like the most personally and not really about meta what so ever which I think is probably what most people would want. For example, say you really like Miyabi and you want to make her stronger by using the best team comp for her, but you really don't like Yanagi like at all and you don't want to waste pulls on a character you don't like, then instead you'd be able to use some A rank character who can fill that role of Yanagi to a lesser extent but who is still really good and synergistic with Miyabi, and the people who pulled for Yanagi would have pulled because they love Yanagi herself 1st and the fact that she's bis for Miyabi is secondary or just a nice bonus for them you know? Now obviously Meta wise Yanagi would still be better than the A rank but that only matters at this point if you're like a hyper sweat who only cares about the best, but at that point its on them and honestly for that reason they probably also wouldn't care if there was an A rank alternative or not anyway right? Now I understand that its a "after the fact" sort of issue right, which was your point, so like in the case of Yanagi people already may have pulled for her for the sole reason that she'd work well with Miyabi right, so adding an A rank like her after the fact would make some people angry/disappointed right, where as for someone like Seth if they added a new S rank who increases the teams AP value now it wouldn't matter as much because Seth already exists, so in other words its fine if the A comes before the S, but its not if the A comes after the S. My argument is that yes many people who were pulling for meta before will feel disappointed/angry about it and it does suck a lot for them in the short term, but overall I feel that this would be better for the future of the game in the long run, and yes it'll feel pretty shity for those people at first, but at least now they know that they don't have to pull for meta moving forward now. Also I personally feel that overlap like that is bound to happen eventually anyway, this a personal feeling of mine so I have no actual proof and could be completely wrong, but for example I feel like its pretty much inevitable that there will be some supportive S rank character who increases AP/AM/ anomaly damage/ buildup rate or whatever who will basically kill of Seth specifically "meta" wise, or a character who buffs Crit rate/damage who kills Ben "meta" wise, or hell we've already had Qingyi who kills anby in her niche of electric stunner right so imo the overlap is most likely gonna be there anyway, so might as well just go all the way with it because I really do feel that it'd be a net positive overall in the long run even it will suck a bit for some people now, but that's just my opinion. Anyway holly yap sesh like my god, there aint no way most people are reading allat but I just had a lot of thoughts on this subject I wanted to get off my chest.
The game is not even a year old. There are enough A rank characters and many teams benefit from at least one A rank or sometimes even two. And I am sure that there will be more A rank to come.
I think the lack of A ranks is probably because they don't want to just release any random one. They probably want both the S and A ranks to bring something new to the table and not be, as you said, watered down the version of other characters.
Zenless really doesn't need too many A-ranks due to having three character teams. For the current balancing, all A-ranks have a good place, and they tend to actually be included with the S-ranks that want them. In Genshin having 4 star only clears makes sense because the biggest factor is teambuilding and reactions and not gameplay and moveset. In Zenless, having a good moveset that you feel good playing with is what matters, and the buffs and interactions are much more secondary. A-rank units, especially ones made as carries/on-fielders simply saturate the roster with characters that make you feel like "they should have been an S-rank." Even in Genshin we haven't had an actual on-fielder A-rank since what, Heizou? I think it only looks like an issue because we've had two factions in a row where the A-ranks were released in 1.0, but even those A-ranks are high-impact in teambuilding. I also forgot to mention that in Genshin, 4 stars are overrated for new F2P, in a way that new F2P players will likely have at least one limited 5 star and some standard 5 stars by the time they feel like they want to play endgame. F2P is misconstrued as "only having 4 stars" when in reality it's just someone that can only pull once in a while (aka more like one limited 5 star every other patch at worst.) I reached Withering Garden with DPS Anby. At that point I had Zhu Yuan along with a guarantee for Qingyi, yet I still had a lot of non-endgame content to do.
Kaveh, Freminet, Gaming, and Sethos are all DPS characters who were released after Heizou, with Gaming probably being the best 4* DPS overall, better than some 5*s
I don't fully agree with the whole A rank not adding value to a longer term player or vet player mindset. First off you have to add the fact that people who f2p or low spending will skip other s rank characters in favor for other s ranks, so if a A rank version of s rank comes out do similar stuff with slight differences was to come out would be viable for example to help fill out roster space, especially if you take into the account that people only need to pull once at the least at a chance of getting just a copy of them, where when it comes to s rank you most likely going be pulling a bit or worse hitting hard pity just to get a single copy. Also I don't think people should feel too butt hurt if a character that does similar but slightly different was come out for the lower rank, because in most games the s rank is still going mostly out performance them at base alone even with a decent amount of investment from a A rank, and last thing we don't know when said S rank characters will come back so A rank version would be viable just for the sake convenient. All in all a good video thought, i was kind of holding off on this complaint because it was clear they were introducing the rest of the faction, I was kind of hoping with the next arc, and with some new faction introducing in the future we will get more A ranks added to the roster.
The thing i noticed with zenless is that every faction has atleast 1 A-rank , so I think hoyoverse might be cooking something up, other then that I agree that they should be more of them because of the banners and last but not least some A- rank agents are pretty good for some teams (exp: Soukaku-Ellen, Nicole-Zhu yuan,Ben-Coleda...) I've noticed the shortage of A-ranks however my guess is it was because they were introduced before their faction came out. So yeah just wanted to point that out:)
Better release one decent and cool A rank that actually works and complements their S rank faction then 3 all over the place, rushed characters that could possibly be useless or disappointing. Soukaku works flawlessly with section 6, Lucy and Piper also works great with Sons of Calidon, and Seth with Public Security. Ben and Anton works amazing with Belobog team too, they all have solid team comps. I love the work they put into those releases so you can make a whole team out of that faction and not struggle bcs they don't match at all.
Smaller A-rank pool means faster to M6 and some of these A-ranks at M6 at pretty damn good. The supports in particular (yes, even Soukaku) feel like they'll always be useful. Sucks for longtime players, but it's great for people with new accounts. At least we get cashbacks. As for why MHY isn't making new A-ranks, I imagine it has to do with cost. Do you see a stark difference in terms of design, character model detail, and animation between A-ranks and S-ranks? I don't. Since MHY is clearly not skimping on character presentation, it's no surprise they want to maximize profits with each patch. Besides, people SAY they want more A-ranks, but they'd also be mad af if their favorite new character weren't S-ranks. Can you imagine if the idols turned out to be A-ranks? Lol. The community would have a meltdown.
This is my first gacha game ever. The one thing I immediately noted is that there is a limit to character design with only 2 attack buttons and 3 relevany stats (attack, defense, status). Ive argued from the very start that this game should have been a $60 release rather than a live service game. And hearing you talk about the lack of diversity in A ranks seems to support that. There's probably not much they can do when their options are so limited.
I think they plan to have 1 A rank per faction and since the A ranks have great design and are all still usable in endgame then I'm ok having only 1 per faction.
As some people mentioned ealier, characters in ZZZ are more limited as they have more story and personal times and quests than in any other Hoyo games. The main problem lies in fact most of guides or charcter ranking is done by groups or people that have every S rank and they don`t realy play the A ranks so they don`t focus on real use and real plus and minus of characters. It`s like all the new player guides about getting Miyabi as a best start right now....and then suggesting teams with characters like Yanagi....oh great...playing game for two weeks with rather limited characters and new player guides go to character that is not even on banners and is not in any 50/50 pool so it`s a useless guide for new player. People should throw more focus on A ranks teams with added guides hot to update the team with S ranks in future, not the other way round. It`s that gacha game fake downgrade of loer rank characters by content creators.
I honestly find it odd how the only new A rank we've gotten is Seth. If Obol squad finally gets finished there's more than likely gonna be a A rank or two. And hopefully what new faction gets added has more A-ranks.
well after seeing this video, i feel like there are too little /not much new characters introduced in the game/story up until now. (compared to other hoyogame titles)
I DONT want a lot of A ranks similar to the other hoyo games. We have seen in both games that having so many of them doesn’t mean anything in the long run. Especially in Genshin where most of them are just don’t do well in the niche they are trying to fill compared to other 4 ranks or 5 stars.
I highly disagree with you in this. Especially on the "it's worse than HSR" part. ZZZ still has many A Ranks that are meta or at least viable, and even myself as a day one player cleared the last Shiyu Defense with 3 A Ranks on my two teams (in other words, half of my characters). Many A Ranks are great supports and BiS for the latest characters such as Nicole, Soukaku, Lucy, etc. In comparison, HSR has a huge 4* problem, in which most of the teams require multiple limited 5* to even function in a basic level, such as Firefly requiring Ruan Mei, many characters requiring Robin, etc. I can count on my fingers how many 4* characters are minimally viable in HSR. From the video, the only other point is that you want more gameplay variety, but I believe that's more of a personal taste, since I particularly don't mind playing with the same characters for long periods of time (for example, I'm using Zhu Yuan in every Shiyu Defense since she was released and haven't changed her team since).
I, as a new player, personally like the fact that there are less A-ranked agents because of the mere fact that building an agent is hella expensive. So having less A-ranked agents means a lot more time to build the ones that you have. I believe you just have to focus on quality at this point in the game.
But, the good thing about polychromes (ZZZ currency) is that they are pretty easy to earn actually. Zenless Zone Zero is very generous when it comes to giving away free pulls. There are many ways to earn Polychromes as well. Compared to Genshin impact, earning polychromes is definitely easier than earning Primos in Genshin.
You generally right, but this situation has pros, like now A ranks are really good and valuable. It's better to have few good characters, than ton of dead weight
3:27 You get 20 fading signals for an A rank at C6, which is equal to one pull. Given that you spend on pull to get that A rank itself, you’re basically getting a refund on your pull and decreasing your pity by 1, so you are actually being rewarded for having C6 A Ranks. And it’s not like you need A ranks to do all the work themselves; Every player will have SOME limited S ranks, especially players that have been playing the game long enough to get to content where S ranks are even remotely necessary.
Having all the A ranks at M6 is great, means it skews the gacha a little more towards your favor. -8 rolls per cycle to hit pity and considering how much polychromes hoyo throws at us in ZZZ you have a good chance to get most characters. By far the cheapest hoyo game in terms of overall cost for limited characters.
Day zero with every banner bar Rina here. The handful of A's I use are impactful and sprinkled into almost every team I have. I feel the current mix of A's is fine and given the likelihood of people maxing their copies out for banner and Wengine, they keep up fine with low investment S ranks. Keeping the A rank roster low is a deliberate tactic to pry open wallets so I'd counter that (as a F2P) by just being super selective about what you need to flesh out your 3 elemental teams for clearing content.
I will leave here my opinion that I shared on one of ALG's videos on the same topic, loved seeing your take on the matter Flossin! Pitching in my two cents as someone who doesn't really mind it, I sort of prefer to have less A Ranks that are all good and usable rather than Hoyo releasing a A rank every two patches that is just unusable ass cheeks. My opinion is not the end all be all, but I could elaborate further if you are interested to read it. From the perspective of a day one low spender veteran. This comes from quite frankly a deep, DEEP frustration I have with Genshin Impact, which Hoyo does way more A ranks (4 stars there) than here on ZZZ, and even HSR. Problem is 90% of them are so agressively ass, hard to build, unfriendly to play and all around badly gameplay designed that they might as well not exist in gameplay. (Xinyan my rock and roller beloved) Granted, that can be something endemic to Genshin, and I am willing to believe that seeing HSR and ZZZ's handling of their respective lower tier units. However I think the biggest factor that contributes to this is the more sparse release schedule of them, which beyond dev time, also save on roles because there is just so many of those to go around. I get it it's hype to get a new character to fall in love with, but, does it really make difference strictly from a gameplay perspective to get a new one if they are unusable and will be benched 24/7? Like Ben (Proud Ben Bigger Main btw) for instance? Would it really matter if we get just a bunch of "Bens" that the community won't touch with a ten ft pole? Now, I am not one to pitch a problem without trying to find a solution. So here's how I would go about it. Make A rank versions strictly kit wise of S rank Characters. For insance, make a A rank version of Burnice (let's call them Nicebur), Nicebur could be a off field anomaly aplicator, which will be worse in every single way to Burnice and will aply let's say, Ether. Now of course, Burnice is better than Nicebur and she should be better in every single instance than them at M0, but that would give us as players a oportunity to get a off field anomaly aplicator that works well with their Yanagi for instance, it would be a win for accessibility, and it could be used to tease new mechanics through A ranks. Like for instance if Ben was a tease of a agent that actually buffs crit rate for instance much better than he does, so on and so forth. Then again, this is just my two cents and no one is forced to agree with me, but I hope I added to the discussion and it was at least a good read. Love y'all and have a nice one
For a f2p player like me, A rank agents actually pretty useful since i can't back to back pulling for S rank agents. I only pull 3 exclusive banner S rank till now (Zhu Yuan, Qing Yi and Miyabi). Other than those 3 i use the standard S rank like Lycaon, Soldier 11, Koleda and else that i managed to get them from standard pull and i still use Nicole, Lucy and Soukaku as part of my main team. I can clear out almost every end game content without problem with the agent i got so far but ofc i must doin alot more work with them since they are not as effective as the exclusive S rank. I think the dev thinking about this as well since not everyone gonna pull back to back the S rank, so the A rank agent will never die. Unless ofc you are a dolphin or a whale player where you can keep pulling without worrying about your money. You just gotta be smart with who you need to pull and who you want to pull, cause sometimes i saw people pulling characters they don't need but they want it. Tho it's not wrong for doin that but that might break your account.
hey, you mock Ceaser Prince but you forget that at M6 she also provides a flat +300 AM buff, thus making it easier for any unit to trigger their respective attribute anomaly, thus giving her a different niche than her S counterpart, so she's not all bad!
Having more useless characters is really not my thing remember the only reason you have every a-rank m6 is because there are only a fue a-ranks, if it goes genshin way I'd rather have no new a-rank at all honestly most of genshin's 4 stars are useless or unusable without c6 and the few ones that are good are very hard to obtain because there is so many 4 stars, it's even more predatory for new players cause most of the good 4 stars are from 1.0 so only older players have them c6
One of the problems with Genshin is they should have continued to add 4* characters to the shop, there’s no reason to only restrict it to the original ones. This would help people get cons for characters they want to c6.
I'm just glad they are making most A ranks unique and useful in their niche, and not just spamming a character after character. But that's coming from someone who hasn't lost a 50/50 since the game release (I only missed Quingyi because I was saving my pulls).
The A-rank problems stemming from trying to strike the balance of not invalidating an A-rank to be added by making them fill a unique niche is something I have faith they will work on as they finish out the early patches and have a bunch of playstyles defined that are not already well supported. Or if they take the route of experiments with other statlines, say an A-rank Flat Pen support or an A-rank DPS that scales off of a mix of hp and impact, or an A-rank that the Ether Stunner, as a few ideas to toss around. Any amount of potentially cooler ideas can be executed on A-ranks, but finding something that naturally keeps an A-rank revelant over time is a taller order. Inversely, this could be why there are a lot of A-rank physical dps agents but no dedicated element support outside of Caesar, they could be cooking something out of that last specialty. I have belief in them, but i do hope they also dont continue to sell the subtle narrative of making Limited Characters with same element-specialty, because the fodder of "omg must pull powercreep" is a little tiring as a new player in the scene as a whole.
It’s definitely a hard spot to be in, and i agree with most comments saying less A Ranks is better than an abundance of them. I have faith the devs will go in the right direction though, they have yet to disappoint me.
What we need are the missing element/role combinations. Give me ether stun, physical support, ice defense. Those can all be a-ranks, and it's been 5 months
the general trend in hoyo games is that they release a new 4 star(A rank equivalent) as a support for the newer archetypes they wish to sell. ex: Genshin chevreuse in for overloads, kujou sara for hypercarry raiden, faruzan for anemo dps like wanderer and xiao, dendro traveller for dendro teams like bloom and hyperbloom Star rail Xueyi to introduce weakness type ignore, harmony mc and gallagher for the break meta(gallagher works with debuff teams too), dr Ratio,(well hes a free limited 5 star) moze and march 7th hunt for followup atk and they releasing remembrance trailblazer which is a broken ahh support for free which works with like every archetype ahhhhh im not well versed in hi3 tho
An idea I have in mind. There are people who make the joke of seeing a Billy tier S but... *What if we make it a reality? And how to do it?* If you already get all the dupes to have the Mindscape at 6 of a tier A, then you have to accumulate more dupes to have a prestigious version (or tier S). You could accumulate 10 dupes to go from tier A to S by spending deniques, thus revitalizing tier A characters by perhaps adding a new mechanic. The problem I see with this idea is how the dupes would work in tier S. Would the buffs from the tier A dupes be kept? Or would you have to get tier S dupes to get the same mechanics but better? But the idea is there
@@xXFrikistoneXx In Genshin they almost alleviated the need for S-rank versions (SPECIFICALLY for the actual A-ranks with good movesets) or kit updates to weaker S-ranks by providing them with better teammates.
I like your point but it has been 7 months of zzz release like don't accept the devs too put A ranks and I think the same way you think to like I want new A ranks too but as I was saying it has been 7 months since it's release like for sure there gonna add some new A ranks in the game eventually
Your note about pulling maxxed out low ranks reminded me that how it was handled is something I loved about Dragalia Lost and AFK arena: when you pulled dupes of lower rank agents, it turned into something you could use to progress others, INCLUDING higher rarity agents, so pulling them felt rewarding! In Dragalia you got Eldwater which is a dual-use currency: you could use it to level up any character's skill trees AND/OR you could use it in the shop to buy new 'wyrmprints' which are basically dragalia's artifact system. So when you pulled a bunch of 3 stars you already had, it was actually pretty handy because you probably need to the eldwater for something you're working on. In AFK Arena, you 'uncap' (raising both the max level and rarity of a character) by smashing dupes of characters of the same 'rarity' together so with enough 'low rarity' characters mashed together you could actually use them to uncap higher rarity ones. The only limitations were that a) they had to be the same faction and b) some uncap levels Could only be done with a dupe of the actual character. So... to clarify with an example, if we pretend elements were the same thing as factions and this system was somehow in wuthering waves, you could uncap your rarity 5 Carlotta with another rarity 5 copy of her, or any combination of three rarity 5 Glacio characters (e.g. you could use any combination of three rarity 5 Lingyangs, Baizus, Sanhuas and Youhus to uncap your rarity 5 Carlotta to rarity 6 :D ) Not sure if I really explained that all that well, but it basically made getting any character ultimately useful in some manner, even if you never intended to ever play them :3 That said, on top of all this, whenever you pulled 'rarity 1' units (aka base foot soldiers) you could trade them into the shop for a currency that you could save up to let you straight up buy characters (and not just low rarity ones either, there was some good stuff in there :D ) Coming to Genshin after these 2 felt like a downgrade in terms of the actual gacha outcomes to me :P
I think the game is at a fine place, to play devils advocate.. if there’s less A ranks, means as soon as you hit M6 on them you essentially get rebated pulls (because it gives you 20 of the rebate currency instead of 8) thus leading to you getting the 5 star faster. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve pulled a 5 star without having to spend money just because I had already M6ed the A rank on the banner, went back used the rebate currency to buy another pull and boom, either pull into ANOTHER A rank leading into yet ANOTHER attempt at the 5 star or just getting the 5 star. It’s much easier in this game for someone who plays loyally to have mostly every 5 star they want in this game for free. Also, I know people would still say “but no new A ranks” okay, but you will get your 5 star and the 4 star weapons in this game are actually good, plentiful and very viable to use on that 5 star you got…and limited bangboos are free, so imho the trade off of not having a more diverse A rank pool is worth it lol
ZZZ is my first hoyo game I'm REALLY getting into, and so it was my introduction to how the gacha system works in these games. I'm also totally f2p because I'm a cheapskate lmao Anyway, Seth was a super great addition for me. I had luckily gotten Jane as my first banner S rank, and so I started looking for ways to implement a team with her (my main team before was Nicole, Anby, Anton. Not great). Then I saw Seth, and how he was designed to work well with Jane. I think I got him sometime in the process of getting Jane, and it was real convenient to just level him up alongside Jane to work together. So yeah, I agree that they had a great approach with making Seth and should do more A ranks like that!
Although I do agree with you on this matter, one thing I will say is this Zenless out of all the other Hoyo games makes it easier to get these kind of characters. Although I do share the same frustration with a lack of a rank. characters I imagine as time goes on and more factions get introduced. We will get more A rank characters. So give it time and you should be fine plus, I am free to play and I have most of the S rank characters.
Tbh, less A-ranks is ok! ZZZ has a focus on being able to pull more as well as skill based gameplay instead of combo based gameplay. This is not too much of an issue for me (also f2p). I do agree that using A-ranks as a way to compliment gameplay styles could be super dope though.
nah thats just your take pal, my Rank A are welt built and works, still you need a Rank S anchor to deal damage, but Rank A supports and Tanks are good, hell even Piper as a Rank A anomaly performs pretty good, plus pulling on a banner where your mindscape is already maxed gives you a 20 residual signal each time you get a rank A so, it snowballs from there to get the Rank S easier, that said, Anby and Nicole are my most used Agents, they work SO well.
Piper and Lucy are top tier. I'd rather them focus on quality over quantity. Just look at Genshin's most recent 4* characters. Just a waste of resources to build. Only Chevreuse is somewhat decent
I would like to add that it appears per faction we are getting at least 1 A rank. Cunning hares is all A, Pubsec has Seth, HSO6 has soukaku + Harumasa as an S rank for free, Calydon has Lucy and Piper, Belebog has Ben and Anton, Victoria houskeeping has Corrin. We had a lot to start out with so as we add new factions we will get more A ranks (Also Obol squad isnt finished yet hence no A rank yet)
Yes. My thoughts exactly. I think A ranks are added for lore reasons mostly. Soukaku is a day-one A rank for Section 6, but we only received the Section 6 story in chapter 5 recently. More will come on the way
I 100% agree with you! Like we don't need a shit ton of A-ranks. We need well balanced, fun characters with nice mechanics that are great in various teams. I think ZZZ is kinda going with the quality over quantity
Imagine a banner where one of the promoted A-ranks adds team attack moves to the S. Makes pulling the A’s mindscapes a lot more rewarding. Why does only Ben/Koleda have combos??
The main reason why Mihoyo don't added new A-ranker after Seth is simply the cost. Mihoyo profit only from pulling S-ranks. Basically A-ranks exists for to motivate players to pull more, as almost everything in gatcha games. But development cost of a new character is same regardless of a rank. All have full body animations, flashy ultimate and are fully voiced acted. So why create agents who don't make money when we can create one who make money? The Geshin and Star Rail are still releasing new 4-stars (A-rank equivalent) but less frequent (one for 2-3 banners)
3:18 I have a different feeling about this, if the banner features A rank agents that you already had them at m6 then it means you get 1 to 2 even 3 pulls refund each 10 pulls, and that is HUGE
zenless use faction system, each faction at least has 1 A rank agent. i think this formula that they use, i believe next faction at least has 1 A rank agent. when zzz release we already have A rank agent from Cunning hares, Victoria House, Belobog, SoC, and even the new faction in 1.4 Section 6. that's why we feel in the game we lack A rank Agent, the A rank agent for each faction already released (for Obol, idk we dont know much about this faction, most mysterious faction for now)
In my opinion, it's okay to stay like. Because tbh, even the new player would never use A ranks beside as a Filler. What I want to say is, ZZZ has something that other game doesn't. It's story mode with S rank agents that you can use even you don't have them. And new players can doing just fine until midgame. It's good if they decided to expand the A rank character in the future, but I don't think this issue are that "big". The thing with HSR or Genshin, they not using "Trials" on their story. Well there is, but not all the party. In ZZZ you can use 1 party trials and still catching up with story. Because it's sucks when you just want to play story, but you need to grind or have specific character for that.
The thing about releasing A Ranks that work like S Rank agents could still work , especially when considering that there are still sum play styles that Hoyo has yet to touch, potential Physical and Ether stunners, Ether defense units, Physical supports, Ice Defense, so on and so forth
If they add more A rank characters, they should concetrate in missing value. Example; we only have two Ether characters and barely any Ice Dps characters.
I think all we need in this situation is: patience. It’s pretty clear that Hoyo doesn’t release many A ranks on purpose. They will pump out more A ranks eventually, just very very slow. And while this is a problem as explained in the video, I’m sure there are players who find benefits in this situation too. For example, less A ranks means it’s easier for low or F2P players to max out the mindscapes and level for the already existing A ranks. In my humble opinion, while I do agree that we need new A ranks and that Hoyo has been too slow in making this happen, I don’t really care about it enough to call it a “serious problem”. Yes not having enough A ranks might be a problem, but I think having too many A ranks (like genshin) is an even bigger problem. The problem is when Hoyo tries to pump out A rank characters to meet the players’ demand, their final products tend to become lackluster. I think it’s way easier said than done for players to just claim “I want unique A ranks that aren’t just a cheap version of the S ranks but also perform well”. But putting this into practice, in reality, is very difficult as it requires a huge level of creativity and meticulous calculations, and not something you can say “Just do it”. Not to mention that as time goes on, it will get more and more difficult for the devs to create unique S ranks, left alone unique A ranks. So maybe, maybe that’s why they need more time for this. Personally, I think this is one of those situations where “less is more” and “quality over quantity”. I know the ideal scenario would be having both quality and quantity. But let’s be real. Most of the time, it’s very hard to achieve both and even if the devs can, it’s insanely difficult to maintain that balance consistently in the long run. That’s why if I have to choose, I’d rather have less but high quality A ranks than a bunch of unusable ones like in genshin. Compared to ZZZ, I think the 4-star situation in genshin is even more frustrating. Except for the OG 4-star unit, a lot of other 4 star character that come after have a 5 star version of them that make the 4 stars feel completely “useless”, so they just end up getting benched and eventually forgotten. As someone who plays for the story and characters, it honestly feels very sad.
Totally understand your point about the quality of characters! It’s tough to make A Ranks stand out while maintaining a balanced game, but I appreciate your thoughtful analysis!
There's confirm new A-ranks coming up! At least 1 has been confirm, and that's Bellum - A-rank Fire Tanker of the Sons Of Calydon!! Also, every A-ranks is currently doing great and no need for an update for them (except Anton, of course)!!
1 or 2 A ranks per faction is enough. We're only at 1.5, why the rush for A ranks? You'll have them collect dust in your roster anyways. Unless you are bored AND have the resources. Plus, A ranks in this game are better than 4 stars in both Genshin and Star Rail. So I'd rather keep that quality.
I don't see that as issue. I have every 4* in genshin, I only use 5 and three of them are from the 1.0 version. In hsr I only use two. I really don't know why you need so many 4* characters. Yeah, they are good for beginning, but as time goes, you will switch them with 5*.
Okay 2 things you need to reconsider. 1. Since the launch of the game they realistically have only released 3 factions. NEPS, SOC, and Sec 6. We just happened to get their A ranks early from their initial release to give more agents to play with at launch. 2. Pulling A rank dupes past C6 gives you more pulls towards your desired S rank
New factions in 2.x might get more A-ranks. Like the New Eridu Defense Force Obsidian Division Obol Squad. Unlike Section 6 and Sons of Calydon who had all A-ranks in the base game, the Obsidian Division is currently just one S-Rank and nobody else. New factions like Stars of Lyra might have A-ranks... hard to tell if that faction is going to expand beyond the two or if this is just a one chapter short story kind of thing with only the two agents.
I definitely can see the argument, but there's also another side to it.
the small pool of A ranks allows players to quickly C6 them, and I am sure you are aware C6 A ranks in ZZZ are incredibly viable.
next, players who have a lot of A ranks on C6 may actually prefer the residual signals, which are not to be underestimated, either.
I love residual signals, free extra pull for 1 free pity
c6 refund = more pulls = more gamba
though, it will be better if we have more choices of agents to use in our teams
this is true. i saw the writing on the wall as early as jane doe banner. after 2 or 3 banners i managed to c6 almost all of them i only have billy and corin left to c6
and i like it cause it gives me free pulls whenever i do standard banners. and when they do add 4 stars and i know they would, it will be easy for me to c6 them as well.
Yeah, I already maxed all A rank mindscape so I get free pulls every 10 pull
Moral of the story: Roll for characters you like and don't be sweaty.
That’s what I’m thinking like just enjoy the game, point blank period
What does this have to do with anything he said in the video?
I feel u brother, back in 1.2 with burnice I wanted to just max out my 2 support a rank engines and accidentally got Burnice engine, and now I have her engine for noone to use...😢
@@Soundwave1900 becuase meta is a waste of time in zzz. pull for characterrs you like I have been pulling for s ranks they could add a few more A ranks but I don't want too many characters like genshin you have a million characters and they get their 5 seconds of fame and on to the next. zzz actuals builds the characters and with skins we will see more of the same characters in the future.
Real, no character in this game is B or C rank they're all viable, though some WAY more than others
Currently I'm anomaly maxxing :P will be setting my sights on Yanagi and Astra, then going from there
Just a few more A ranks would be nice but I don’t think we need a lot more as well, there’s a balance to it
Can you guys get Flossin as a future guest in the podcast, he's really good at yapping in his videos
more stuns and more anomaly A rank
I think we probably just need 1 per faction depending on how big it is.
No not balanced "used" would be more important not too op just good enough as sub until you get that specific build
Kettei!!!
The reason is simple: unlike GI or HSR, the Rank-A agents have a solid story and a place in the world of ZZZ, you can find a lot of A rank Characters in Genshin impact and you couldn’t know who tf are they because they had like 1 dialogue in all the game and they’re trash in game, in ZZZ you can find utility and a solid personality in almost every Rank-A agents.
Also, we all know most players didn’t pulled Burnice at first for her Abilities, so i don’t think people will enrage if they release a character who does the same as her but worse.
hard agree, another thing is in GI and HSR you have more agents/character slot but in ZZZ you only have 3
We all pulled burnice because...BURNICE BURNICE BURNICE GO
The A rank issue honestly is a multi layered issue. Simply because A ranks here have a lot more effort put into them than other games. But I will be the first to say Zhu yuan felt like a breath of fresh air in comparison to agents like lighter who out-right replace agents when their gameplay is just the prior agents gameplay but are advanced enough to be "limited". I do think we should have more A's but considering agents like Nicole and Lucy that's alot of effort. But as long as they fit a different mole like Nicole and Seth, idm if they are "replaced". That's all for me.
@@WikiNiijima I am ashamed to admit that I downloaded the game and got Burnice before I even knew what she did.
I just had BURNICE BURNICE BURNICE BURNICE BURNICE BURNICE GO GO stuck in my head and next thing I know I’m getting a scratch card from a dog every morning
If I'm being entirely honest, i thought burnice would be an A rank. I paid no attention to the promotions or whatever they're called. I just saw Burnice and Ceaser during one of the events. Thought Ceaser would be the S and Burnicr would be the A. Same with Miyabi and Muramasa.
The problem is probably on the resources and effort it takes to develop a character.
This game has some of the best, most worked and detailed animation I have seen in quite a while for example, and each character has a billon different animations for each attack, movement, combo, etc etc. Doing all that takes a very good deal of time, and thats only animation. Previous to that you have to design, model, rig, texture, and afterwards comes all the vfx animations, all the scripts for the many affinity missions, and lets not forget the voice acting, which comes in quite a lot different languages. A new character in this game is way waaay more than just a png you deploy on some static battlefield.
If you add that to the amount of new stuff they are bringing with each patch, they probably have their hands quite full and very little time to create new characters that are not going to be the "shiny new toy" and probably not sought after by most.
I dont believe its a resources issue cause if we look at PGR a game thats in a similar vain to zzz every other update the devs release an a ranks which are in my opinion more detailed in regards to animations than zzz character for now. I dont believe a company thats part of the top 10 richest companies in the world lack funds to make a ranks while others are doing it with much lower budgets.
Here is a basic comparison between neko and bambi(a rank): ruclips.net/video/Kd0UoMrN1tE/видео.html
Here is an s to s rank comparison if u interested miyabi counterpart: ruclips.net/video/UGANbeRG3Hg/видео.html
Its not believable that hoyo of all companies cant afford to make A ranks
What stops them from proclaiming some of them A ranks besides “hello, i like money”?
@@kanwar5983the keyword here is "My opinion" It ain't facts lil bro
@@rexconnorisacvck hmm true, lemme change that, 'objectively'. There fixed
@@rexconnorisacvckHoyo makes multi millions. They have the resources. They just don’t care.
Only needing to build 6 characters instead of 8 greatly reduces the need for A ranks.
Also getting 10% pull refunds is not a negative
You need to build 9. Deadly Assault
@WarBovine 50k dennies every 2 weeks is not a 'need'. To get all notable rewards you only need 6
Need? No. Characters currently out are able to clear everything. It's still a bit of a hole in roles, which is kinda dull. For example, i still haven't gotten S11 and lost Burnice, so a Fire dps would be stellar since i can't really use my koleda ben lucy at the moment, so they are just sitting there. Now i lowkey HAVE to pull evelyn just to have some fire. An A rank Fire dps would have been great here, so i didn't HAVE to pull Evelyn if i wanted Fire.
that's what I've been saying. i like having more characters but having that 10% rebate on pulls is big and adds up. people are gonna want the s-ranks more anyway.
10 precent is a scam
There's also an other reason to add A-rankers: teasing next faction and S-rank. I remember pre-1.3 that I didn't know who Lucy & Piper were and wonder how they tied to the story, same with Soukaku, which help me fall in love with Son of Calydon and Yanagi the way I couldn't have if they haven't been tease with their A-rank. Plus, you could use them as a way to tease S-rank. Instead of a toned down Caesar post 1.3, Think a bit like Soukaku & Miyabi an A-rank that boost the S-rank you're planning to release. Since you've invested in the A-rank, you are forced to take the S-rank
Sons of Calydon didn't even exist in Beta so people who play in Beta were surprised when they announced in their livestream that there are 2 new unfamiliar faces added in the game.
I really like this idea alot i would love to have that more :3
The available A rank in ZZZ is actually very crucial and viable. Nicole with DEF shred, Soukaku with her 30s ATK buff, Lucy + Piper = god tier duo, etc. I think just a few more would be nice, especially when players like to test on different team comps to flesh out the most of their abilties
It's basically Genshin all over again. The initial 4* are strong and it's hard to release new 4* to fit in the meta and not be op or too weak
@@Raikos100as of right now getting ether a ranks would work as a lot of people(including me) came during 1.4 and missed Zhu Yuan, so having 0 ether dps is pretty bad
@@roofwallplays7284 yess this, my nicole is a staple in miyabi team so i need another A rank ether..
yo.. I just finished the in-game survey and that's what I put in the recommendation. "More usable and well-designed (aesthetically and kit-wise) A-rank agents please". Just even for those specific roles in attributes that we don't have yet (i.e. Phys Stunner, Phys Support, Ether Anomaly, Ether Stunner, etc.)
Literally same, I said the game needs more A ranks
@@arkofmemry they said ether units are gonna be very rare since they are going to be units that have very important roles or something of that sort.
I always write that weapon banners should be 100%, mindscapes should be obtainable through hard ingame challenges over a long period (with a note that it wasn't bought in the profile) in the survey and that there should be a choice banner, where the player choses a limited character to pull from each patch cycle. We all have dreams man.
@ man a 100% guarantee on w-engines. And I've lost on Yanagi's w-engine banner too so I know how shitty it feels losing that 75/25. One can dream indeed.
@Luftgitarrenprofi I respect your optimism but mindscapes being grindable is definitely never gonna happen for 5 stars, they already make a lof of money from people summoning and that would stop a lot of revenue. This isn't just me thinking that it's fine for them to do it but they would have to stop giving out a lot of free stuff if this was the case because of such a large revenue drop and many people most likely wouldn't be able to grind enough to even get 5 stars every patch anymore. I like the other things though
3:27 Pullin an A-Rank which u already have max copies of, u will gain more points for the shop to use them for additional pulls or S Motors. So it's still a win
Well, at least they announced Pulchra as the next A rank agent yesterday
I don't think it's really that bad to have weaker version of S rank agents as long as they have a different play style. Like I am not complaining if I finally get an A rank agent that can extend the stun window but just don't make that agent a diet lighter gameplay wise.
I think the fact that the A ranks are really good in this game they always feel like they have the same amount of quality and work put into them as s ranks the only real difference between a and s ranks is mostly damage im fine with the ability to get more value out of those characters through their mindscapes but i do think that we are overdue for a new a rank
I think the long term difference is that an M6 A rank is about as good (if not better in some cases) than an S rank M0/M1. The tradeoff with with S ranks is that they require a lot of pulls to get, but you typically don't NEED to invest in them more than their initial pull.
Yep it's just the multipliers that differ, Nicole, Piper Lucy are all top tier design in both aesthetics and functionality
I think it has to do with the time they have to work with for each version of the game than it being an oversight by the developers. I imagine they have likely gotten a lot of suggestions to add some more. As they have said they put around the same amount of complex animation modules into each character, like for Seth who has a lot of interconnecting attacks, likely even more so than Caesar or Nicole who has an alternate circle input. So, they are essentially putting the same amount of time or even more for creating A ranks as S ranks which many games don't go out their way to do. They have also mentioned after the release of the game they have to work with a tighter schedule to create and develop characters and the team ultimately came up with a way to get characters out at their high standard. Seth was likely already being worked on early on. So, I think they prioritize having the double S-rank agents and when they find the time they will put in a A-rank agent. I highly doubt this team wants to lower the quality of their A-rank agents just to get them out as from the way the speak they have high expectations and standards of themselves and what they create in the long term and players do as well. I think a lot of the A-ranks are pretty good rn like Nicole, Soukaku, Lucy, Seth, Ben and even Anby. I think the team clearly has a lot they want to include like combo attacks like Ben and Koleda, the potential catalyst which essentially add animations to already existing characters giving them more utility like Ellen, even A ranks like Billy which they wanted to show off in 1.4, etc, but with the animations that probably are more complex than they look on surface level for a mobile game, I think they are prioritizing the long run and taking their time rather than producing something they would regret in their product in the future. As for this game in terms of combat they want each character to feel active on field and have some uniqueness to them. I think future factions like the Angels will have an A rank and likely one or two of the Mockingbird. (gouhuo.qq.com/content/detail/0_20241223172912_sSKi1mBxn )
1:58 nah corin at level 10 is crazy
If I may provide a counterpoint I'd venture that the initial set of A characters will always be there, so the new players can use them to clear the story content while they start to build their S teams. As for the veterans with maxed A agents, they get an average > 10% discount on their pulls thanks to the high return in residuals. Incidentally I'm also a day 1 HSR player and the situation there is exactly the same as I only miss 2 eidolons on the whole 4* cast!
That said thanks for the interesting vids! 👍
Tbh, veterans will also rarely use their A characters even after maxing. But they are solid stepping stones and replacements till you manage to get an appropriate S rank. A ranks are mostly guaranteed, easy to get, while S ranks are not, they require a lot of currency investment. If you could easily get S ranks, yeah, A ranks would make way less sense.
@@Raikos100 I use Lucy and Nicole daily and would have built soukaku by now if it weren't for Astra so no, I don't think no veteran will use A ranks in the future. All and all they are actually pretty solid characters with universal kits there's always going to be a place for them in the meta unless they directly powercreep them (just make a character with the same utility but better multiplayers, essentially) which Hoyo is not fond of doing. They always add at least one minor tweak that makes each character have their advantage over another in different scenarios and place in the meta. Look at how fricking Bennet is still viable in Genshin, 4 year into the game's livespan. Or how Yelan was thought to be a direct powercreep to Xinqiu but ended up having slightly slower application than him at C6 so they ended up being preferred in different comps.
I agree it would be nice to have more A ranks, but you have to understand the characters in this game are much more complex than genshin.
They all have their own combat style. I'd rather have less characters that feel unique than a bunch of characters that are very similar to existing characters
There’s some major details that should have been considered on this. One of them is the free Bangboos system. They’re pretty cute and fun and help support and make teams better at filling in the gap compared to other gacha team building games. I think this is probably an important boost to the typical A Rank mechanic gacha stuff.
Also A rank characters in most gacha games feel like they’re not very viable for end game content until they’re on dupe 6 - but this game is considered much easier than those other games so I feel like the A Rank stuff isn’t as mandatory.
More A rank characters would be awesome- BUT I personally think a Gacha game that’s easier and less A Rank dupe difficulty dependent is more fun. Also the game feels quite more generous with free currency than their other games, which helps too.
I think you’re the first person I’ve seen talk about how bangboos (regardless of rank) fit into a similar niche to A-rank characters, and it’s an interesting insight especially since we’ve been getting a pretty steady stream of new ones
I've never thought of A ranks being the same as S ranks, that's really dumb. Zzz has A ranks do something different with all of them and even the closely related ones like piper and jane are different, with piper applying consistent disorders with physical anomaly while jane does far more damage with critted anomalies. Also A ranks will be for every faction with 1-2 so you have to give them time to actually release the new factions with the A ranks.
it's like the guy wants 100 A-ranks released at version 1.4 💀
like, bro, give them time..
I think it's perfectly fine for now and that we really don't want the massive diluted pool of useless A ranks like genshin has. All it does is make it harder to get the A rank you want as well as making it easier to miss out on the free pull you get when you pull a dupe on a M6 A rank character.
@@lindthechaoticheretic8708 In Genshin as well, they know exactly the poor state of most 4 stars because stronger characters like Bennett/XL/XQ, Fischl, Chevy, Sucrose all rerun way sooner than most 4 stars.
I think what new players is actually saying when they "don't have previous character to fit in the team" is either they don't like a specific character in their team (say they like Miyabi but they hate Piper for example), or they saw so many social content that constantly implying "if you don't have X character, screw you, you can't play that team" (ex: miyabi must go with yanagi, lycaon, burnice... or else she's just mid, some shit like that).
So the solution for them is either they have to accept the current team that they're having and be happy with it for a long while until reruns, or the content creators have to make more videos on f2p teams more often so that they can be proved otherwise ("hey, maybe Miyabi Koleda Lucy is still solid").
I actually believe that ZZZ is going in the direction of having less A rank characters and focus on the power of S rank and the faction as a whole. So my pulling decision relies on who do I like and try to get all of them (like if I intend to pull for Evelyn, I must pull Astra as well because of their synergy and they're the same faction). So for new ZZZ players, my advice is to go for the whole squad in the future rather than picking one piece and try to stick it to another and hope it works.
miyabi must go with xxx🤣lmao! Miyabi can solo every contents by her own in M0 she don't really need anyone else. I wonder which brilliant guy said that, does he really play this game🤣
playing since day 1 here, i think this is better for those that want to get s ranks, as if you have max mindscapes for the a ranks, copies turn into refunds, so it alleviates the investment in banners
Thats my other big dissagreement with this "problem", im actually happy that i have all my A-ranks at M6 (almost thanks to anton and seth being party poopers) because it means more free pulls for me. I get more excitment out of seing those 20 residual signals than a copy of an A-rank that im not gonna build in a looooong while.
I don't think it's a problem just yet. Because all up till now we got A-ranks that introduced us to the 1.0-7 factions. That path was basically mapped out in advance. But what they do starting Astra and Evelyn, now that's gonna be a huge indicator of how they're planning to deal with this. And I do agree that Seth is an great 4-star because of his niche utility. If we see more 4-stars like that, it would be fantastic.
Well, in Genshin there is an opposite issue - they added too many niche characters who has absolutely zero relevance to the story.
Very few players are using them.
The only thing they achieved - they diluted character pool so now it's even harder to get a character we want.
Meanwhile I'm still a Seth main, and can't imagine any team functioning well without him.
Well, Billy and Soukaku also lead their own teams of S-Rank teammates for me too.
To me it could just be that ZZZ devs don't have characters that are less important in the narrative to them yet, and since A ranks don't get an Agent Mission that would mean A ranks have to be linked with S rank characters so they can shine in eather the story or in S ranks's Agent Missions, so as we get more factions and time passes we'll eventually get more A ranks, I mean one of the Virtual Idols is definitely gonna be an A rank, since they're 3 and I don't think we'll get 2 updates on them, there's also Pulchra and Big Daddy, they could be A ranks too.
or maybe we're just in version 1.4 and y'all just need to stop acting like the game's been out for 4 years and just give the damn devs time to cook 😂
@@AnneYoungHaseyo That's basically my same opinion, and same thought when the lack of male characters is mentioned.
@@xrosslegends1279 But at least the male characters we got, are all top quality. And there's Hugo Vlad on the horizon. The A rank "problem" came to my mind but i was like: "they put so much work on every single character, so it is fair to just chill and let them cook slowly". I am not really sure how do they decide to give the A rank to a character, i mean, for what it's worth, every single character feels S rank quality... And now with costumes in mind, they are doing the extra work (the costumes have alt mindscape art).
Also having a smaller A rank pool means the higher chance to max out ACTUALLY useful A rank agents. Like in gi, that game has a lot of 4*, sure, but most of them are garbage or not function properly in c0, I've seen accounts about AR50 having no bennett, xingqiu, fischl but filled with dogwater 3.0 4* characters, and that sucks a lot
the A-ranks that we have, some of them are even free like Nicole, are top tier. Piper is up there too, then there's Lucy and Soukaku. I honestly like that they focus on quality over quantity.
Plus, the game has been very generous with polychromes that even I, as an F2P, already has 10 S-Rank agents. 5 limited, and 5 standard. Some even has their signature weapons.
There is an upside to this. I have all my A ranks maxed out and when you draw duplicates, you get more points for the store so I’ll be able to get all my S ranks engines quicker and when I get all my engines, I can use the points to get more poles and more characters
we're only in version 1.4 y'all.
let's not forget 😂
By that Time HSR already got 4 new 4* ^^ infact during Version 1.0 they got a new 4* almost every new Patch. And GI got one every 2 Patches
@DantoriusD hsr and gi don't have faction abilities though, the 4 stars could be random people while in zzz they have to be a part of a faction and unless a faction is full of all A ranks you won't be seeing as many. Especially when their kits are also heavily more developed since zzz is basically a fighting game with real combos compared to those 2 where a basic kit was just fine.
@madmanof2016 You dont need Fractions. Look at S11 who works fine while being lonely as only Orbol Member. Thats why the Bonus is either Fraction required OR Requires a Specific Type of Squad Member. Also im pretty sure sooner or later they get rid of the entire Fraction requirements. Look at Astra or Evelyn. Both doesnt have a Fraction requirement anymore. Astra just requires a Attack or Anomaly Char while Evelyn requires a Support or Break Character.
@@DantoriusD ya can't compare fricken hsr where u NEED more units in general to play the game, it's a turn based game...
Obviously, they get more faster.
@@SleepyMockii dude why so cocky? Its totally BS. Why do you NEED more characters? You can play the Story with a 4* Starter Team just fine. If you talk aboit endgame shouldnt that be the total oposite? ZZZ requires 9 Characters for Deadly Assault while HSR needs only 8. And pls spare me with all the "Powercreep" BS im so tired of that topic.
Considering every group has 1 or 2 A ranks im willing to bet we are just waiting for actually new teams/obol
I dont think we need a lot more a ranks. We only need 6 character to clear content. The current pool of a ranks could use another DPS or two, so the issue imo is more about diversity than quantity.
wdym diversity?
I mean in Zenless, main reason as to why we do not have many A ranks is because they are built to be on par with S ranks unlike the other Gachas Hoyo has made or generally Gachas, I imagine A ranks have a track record of having one per faction and the exception is Obols as Obols squad is more of a slow build up rather than an immediate introduction unlike the new factions like the Stars of Lyra and Mockingbird. I imagine 2.0 will give us new A ranks for both factions as well as whatever is in 1.7, possibly I can see an idea of 2.0 even having a new stable channel like 1.0 for a plethora of new A ranks and some S ranks given leaks have confirmed Hoyo has 31 characters finished, set for the 2.0 era which if we were to get 9 versions in 2.0 that would mean there would be 18 bound banner characters. I honestly expect it will be similar to 1.0 where there will be going to just to a point where the story makes sense to pause to allow for more factions to be introduced for 3.0 as they build up too it either way new A ranks are inevitable and perhaps a second Stable channel for nonlimited S ranks to add to the pool.
Maxing A Ranks translate into a free ticket. Thus, churning your account quicker to the S rank. Honestly, I'm happy to churn faster to the S rank's personally. I'm actually more screwed in HSR. I started on Sparkle Re-Run and my 4 Star extra copies are in the trash. I essentially have had to SLOWLY climb because ALL I can count on is 5 stars. What you think is a problem is actually the reserve for me in a different game.
You really lost me on the explanation about why the "A rank version" of S ranks would be a bad thing. On your own exemple, i'm a 1.0 player, but i skiped Ceasar. I would love to have A Rank Ceasar to cover this gap. I even leveled my Seth because i'm in such a desperation for shields at time. You said that it's not reasonable to roll in every banner, and i agree, but it's contradictory if you said it but act like every old player will have every single S rank.
I started playing zenless zone zero a month after Ellen’s banner was over. I was having alot more fun playing with the different types of agents not just cause for variety but also their personality. After Jane doe’s banner released, I began to just use only teams that work with the upcoming agents such as lighter, burnice and recently; Miyabi. If the banners onwards includes another s rank or even new a-rank agents, it would feel much better. I can’t sadly give a super thanks but your video was great! ❤
I can't agree that A rank absences is a big problem in this game. I mean 38% of ZZZ characters is A rank vs 35% in HSR and 45% in Genshin (but a lot of 4-star characters in genshin is trash) so it's almost equal. They should add more A-rank but it's better be characters like Sokaku or Lucy then Ben. Quality over quantity.
And also about adding A-rank that is lesser version of S-rank: if they share similar mechanics they mustn't share similar roles. I mean in Genshin Yelan didn't replace Xingqiu so it's possible that new character that can apply anomaly off filed as Burnice mustn't be worse then Burnice. Or if we will receive character that gives shield it's not necessary must be Caesar 0.5
when you said “a lot of 4-star char in genshin is trash” like bennett, kuki, xiangling, xingqiu, fischl, beidou they are not trash, like i get it some 4 star char are trash but at least some of them are useful and supportive anlike HSR where all 4 star char got powercreep that makes all 4 star suck stingky butt
@@themightysketch2815 Oh wow, It's cool that 99% of the characters you named are in Genshin from 1.x. And now, I'll remind you, it's already version 5.x
Genshin hasn't created a single 4star in that time, or maybe the point is that they are mostly garbage and worse than 1.x 4stars?
Btw, its funny when people whine about powercreep in HSR, but actually Gallagher, Pela, Tingyun (yeah, 4star version still good), Moze, Asta, Guinaifen, Herta and Lynx is still very good.
In some cases, you can also use Luka, Sushang, Xueyi.
Oh, somehow it so happened that I named even more characters than in your glazed Genshin.
And all of the characters I've named are good in one way or another. It's amazing that "powercreep" game that every Genshin kid whines about nowadays has a lot more useful 4stars than Genshin did in 5.x.
@@themightysketch2815Mate, you mentioned the literal top 1% of 4-stars. It is undeniable that every other 4-star are borderline unusable without SIGNIFICANT investment.
You're like taking the richest of the rich out of 60% of a country's population below the poverty line and call it good. That's not how this works.
@@broccoli5176 The majority of 4* in Genshin are at least valuable without needing cons. Gallagher, Moze, Asta, Gui, Herta, Qingqui should never even be built, if you don't have multiple of their Eidolons. Also Ororon and Kachina are both good characters. Not game-changing, but not bad either, especially because both work great as support for Natlan characters AND can hold the support Natlan artefact set, which is amazing.
Also, Genshin has released many broken 4* even AFTER 1.x: Yaoyao, Kirara, Kuki, Gaming, Chevi, Layla come to mind right away.
@@緑-x6z How could u not have Herta eidolons?
The game has barely been out for 7 months, have we forgotten this? As of today, there are 10 A-rank characters. Sure, Genshin had 16+ by the time they got to their half year mark-except 14 of them existed on day one. I'm sure the opposite problems occur now for newer players in Genshin-where the character list is so inundated by so many 4-star characters it's hard to get the ones you want. Complaining about character variety when it hasn't even been a single year is absolutely wild.
I don't think it is a problem, is a minor inconvenience for new players but it eventually goes away as they pull for more characters an diversify their roster, is not like they can't choose what A ranks they get either, so in a way having less A rank gives more chance of getting the ones you want, that's a big problem for genshin as there are many good 4* but also many mediocre ones.
For everyone else a few less A rank is more positive, as you get max cinemas, you get more pull income, which means you get more S ranks
There's also the more "subjective" point in that, A rank agents get less attention, so if someone likes an A rank there's a big chance it isn't going to be the big focus of the patch OR people would rather the character be an S rank and get proper focus and attention.
I have some mixed Feelings about A Rank Agents. Do we need more??? Yes absolitely. But i think we need more in the right direction. Look at all the 4* Chars in HSR and even on Release the 4*s were barely used because they didnt fit into a specific Roster or we didnt had Characters yet that supported the Playstyle. The only 4* that are heavily used till these Days are the Supports. Pela,Tingyun,maybe Lynx. With 2.0 HSR got way less 4*s but all of them were a absolut Banger....Aside of Misha who released in 2.0 but at that Point was heavily overshadowed by Jingliu and today he isnt even good anymore. But we also got Gallagher who is amazing. Hunt March even E6 for Free who is the best f2p Option for Follow Ups. We got Moze in Feixiaos Banner who is also a really good Alternative for Follow Up. And even the MC is considered as a 5* ingame we got a free E6 Char who opened a complete new Archetype.
Because of the Small amount of A Ranks in ZZZ we have good Alternatives for Teambuilds especially as a New Player cause a M6 A Rank is a really valid Option.
So long Story Short i dont need 1 new A Rank every Patch but dunno maybe every 3 Patches?? Also arent the Idols supposed to be released in 1.6? Since there 3 in Total i could immagine one of them might be an A Rank.
I don't know if I entirely agree on the similar versions point. If Deadly Assault is anything to go by, having agents do similar things as each other can be a benefit in a situation where you use up one of the agents on one team and are barred from using them in another team that needs them. If more niche modes like Deadly crop up that limits your agent use, having similar agents doesn't seem like such a bad thing.
Them dont add them cuz their characters not like in genshin or HSR, every new character has so much attention in story and them also has like insane desight. You just cant add side character for 5 mins like Heizo from Genshim. He has almost 0 story time. ZZZ character is another level. We dont need more.
As a veteran, I personally don't feel punished for having all A-rank characters at M6, because I look at it as every A-rank Agent I get is an extra pull towards pity.
I think it's a matter of perspective, and I try to see the brighter side of it.
I wouldn't mind a few more A-ranks though.
100% agree that zzz has a bit of A rank problem, but as a counter argument to the whole they shouldn't add mini versions of pre-existing characters thing, I pulled on Burnice because I really liked Burnice as a character 1st and because she's a great off field anomaly character 2nd so I wouldn't care if a mini A rank Burnice got added later because that new character isn't actually Burnice. I highly recommend pulling for "waifu" over pulling for "meta" in zzz specifically at least because as it stands the difficulty of the content isn't to a point yet where you need like a certain character/team comp to get all rewards, and adding mini A rank versions of the limited S ranks would be great because it would further incentivize that mindset which would be awesome because then you would only really have to care about what characters you like the most personally and not really about meta what so ever which I think is probably what most people would want.
For example, say you really like Miyabi and you want to make her stronger by using the best team comp for her, but you really don't like Yanagi like at all and you don't want to waste pulls on a character you don't like, then instead you'd be able to use some A rank character who can fill that role of Yanagi to a lesser extent but who is still really good and synergistic with Miyabi, and the people who pulled for Yanagi would have pulled because they love Yanagi herself 1st and the fact that she's bis for Miyabi is secondary or just a nice bonus for them you know? Now obviously Meta wise Yanagi would still be better than the A rank but that only matters at this point if you're like a hyper sweat who only cares about the best, but at that point its on them and honestly for that reason they probably also wouldn't care if there was an A rank alternative or not anyway right?
Now I understand that its a "after the fact" sort of issue right, which was your point, so like in the case of Yanagi people already may have pulled for her for the sole reason that she'd work well with Miyabi right, so adding an A rank like her after the fact would make some people angry/disappointed right, where as for someone like Seth if they added a new S rank who increases the teams AP value now it wouldn't matter as much because Seth already exists, so in other words its fine if the A comes before the S, but its not if the A comes after the S.
My argument is that yes many people who were pulling for meta before will feel disappointed/angry about it and it does suck a lot for them in the short term, but overall I feel that this would be better for the future of the game in the long run, and yes it'll feel pretty shity for those people at first, but at least now they know that they don't have to pull for meta moving forward now. Also I personally feel that overlap like that is bound to happen eventually anyway, this a personal feeling of mine so I have no actual proof and could be completely wrong, but for example I feel like its pretty much inevitable that there will be some supportive S rank character who increases AP/AM/ anomaly damage/ buildup rate or whatever who will basically kill of Seth specifically "meta" wise, or a character who buffs Crit rate/damage who kills Ben "meta" wise, or hell we've already had Qingyi who kills anby in her niche of electric stunner right so imo the overlap is most likely gonna be there anyway, so might as well just go all the way with it because I really do feel that it'd be a net positive overall in the long run even it will suck a bit for some people now, but that's just my opinion.
Anyway holly yap sesh like my god, there aint no way most people are reading allat but I just had a lot of thoughts on this subject I wanted to get off my chest.
Don’t worry i read all that 🫡 I appreciate your insight!
The game is not even a year old. There are enough A rank characters and many teams benefit from at least one A rank or sometimes even two. And I am sure that there will be more A rank to come.
I think the lack of A ranks is probably because they don't want to just release any random one. They probably want both the S and A ranks to bring something new to the table and not be, as you said, watered down the version of other characters.
Zenless really doesn't need too many A-ranks due to having three character teams. For the current balancing, all A-ranks have a good place, and they tend to actually be included with the S-ranks that want them. In Genshin having 4 star only clears makes sense because the biggest factor is teambuilding and reactions and not gameplay and moveset. In Zenless, having a good moveset that you feel good playing with is what matters, and the buffs and interactions are much more secondary. A-rank units, especially ones made as carries/on-fielders simply saturate the roster with characters that make you feel like "they should have been an S-rank." Even in Genshin we haven't had an actual on-fielder A-rank since what, Heizou? I think it only looks like an issue because we've had two factions in a row where the A-ranks were released in 1.0, but even those A-ranks are high-impact in teambuilding.
I also forgot to mention that in Genshin, 4 stars are overrated for new F2P, in a way that new F2P players will likely have at least one limited 5 star and some standard 5 stars by the time they feel like they want to play endgame. F2P is misconstrued as "only having 4 stars" when in reality it's just someone that can only pull once in a while (aka more like one limited 5 star every other patch at worst.) I reached Withering Garden with DPS Anby. At that point I had Zhu Yuan along with a guarantee for Qingyi, yet I still had a lot of non-endgame content to do.
Kaveh, Freminet, Gaming, and Sethos are all DPS characters who were released after Heizou, with Gaming probably being the best 4* DPS overall, better than some 5*s
@LegolasTN I completely forgot about Gaming and Sethos!
I don't fully agree with the whole A rank not adding value to a longer term player or vet player mindset. First off you have to add the fact that people who f2p or low spending will skip other s rank characters in favor for other s ranks, so if a A rank version of s rank comes out do similar stuff with slight differences was to come out would be viable for example to help fill out roster space, especially if you take into the account that people only need to pull once at the least at a chance of getting just a copy of them, where when it comes to s rank you most likely going be pulling a bit or worse hitting hard pity just to get a single copy. Also I don't think people should feel too butt hurt if a character that does similar but slightly different was come out for the lower rank, because in most games the s rank is still going mostly out performance them at base alone even with a decent amount of investment from a A rank, and last thing we don't know when said S rank characters will come back so A rank version would be viable just for the sake convenient. All in all a good video thought, i was kind of holding off on this complaint because it was clear they were introducing the rest of the faction, I was kind of hoping with the next arc, and with some new faction introducing in the future we will get more A ranks added to the roster.
The thing i noticed with zenless is that every faction has atleast 1 A-rank , so I think hoyoverse might be cooking something up, other then that I agree that they should be more of them because of the banners and last but not least some A- rank agents are pretty good for some teams (exp: Soukaku-Ellen, Nicole-Zhu yuan,Ben-Coleda...) I've noticed the shortage of A-ranks however my guess is it was because they were introduced before their faction came out. So yeah just wanted to point that out:)
Better release one decent and cool A rank that actually works and complements their S rank faction then 3 all over the place, rushed characters that could possibly be useless or disappointing.
Soukaku works flawlessly with section 6, Lucy and Piper also works great with Sons of Calidon, and Seth with Public Security. Ben and Anton works amazing with Belobog team too, they all have solid team comps.
I love the work they put into those releases so you can make a whole team out of that faction and not struggle bcs they don't match at all.
Smaller A-rank pool means faster to M6 and some of these A-ranks at M6 at pretty damn good. The supports in particular (yes, even Soukaku) feel like they'll always be useful. Sucks for longtime players, but it's great for people with new accounts. At least we get cashbacks. As for why MHY isn't making new A-ranks, I imagine it has to do with cost. Do you see a stark difference in terms of design, character model detail, and animation between A-ranks and S-ranks? I don't. Since MHY is clearly not skimping on character presentation, it's no surprise they want to maximize profits with each patch. Besides, people SAY they want more A-ranks, but they'd also be mad af if their favorite new character weren't S-ranks. Can you imagine if the idols turned out to be A-ranks? Lol. The community would have a meltdown.
I think at least one of the idols will be A rank since most of them are factions come with one A-rank bare minimum
This is my first gacha game ever. The one thing I immediately noted is that there is a limit to character design with only 2 attack buttons and 3 relevany stats (attack, defense, status). Ive argued from the very start that this game should have been a $60 release rather than a live service game. And hearing you talk about the lack of diversity in A ranks seems to support that. There's probably not much they can do when their options are so limited.
I think they plan to have 1 A rank per faction and since the A ranks have great design and are all still usable in endgame then I'm ok having only 1 per faction.
As some people mentioned ealier, characters in ZZZ are more limited as they have more story and personal times and quests than in any other Hoyo games. The main problem lies in fact most of guides or charcter ranking is done by groups or people that have every S rank and they don`t realy play the A ranks so they don`t focus on real use and real plus and minus of characters. It`s like all the new player guides about getting Miyabi as a best start right now....and then suggesting teams with characters like Yanagi....oh great...playing game for two weeks with rather limited characters and new player guides go to character that is not even on banners and is not in any 50/50 pool so it`s a useless guide for new player. People should throw more focus on A ranks teams with added guides hot to update the team with S ranks in future, not the other way round. It`s that gacha game fake downgrade of loer rank characters by content creators.
I honestly find it odd how the only new A rank we've gotten is Seth. If Obol squad finally gets finished there's more than likely gonna be a A rank or two. And hopefully what new faction gets added has more A-ranks.
well after seeing this video, i feel like there are too little /not much new characters introduced in the game/story up until now. (compared to other hoyogame titles)
Just started mid Yanagi banner & I did noticed that there hasn't been an new A rank agent added since.
I DONT want a lot of A ranks similar to the other hoyo games. We have seen in both games that having so many of them doesn’t mean anything in the long run. Especially in Genshin where most of them are just don’t do well in the niche they are trying to fill compared to other 4 ranks or 5 stars.
I highly disagree with you in this. Especially on the "it's worse than HSR" part. ZZZ still has many A Ranks that are meta or at least viable, and even myself as a day one player cleared the last Shiyu Defense with 3 A Ranks on my two teams (in other words, half of my characters). Many A Ranks are great supports and BiS for the latest characters such as Nicole, Soukaku, Lucy, etc. In comparison, HSR has a huge 4* problem, in which most of the teams require multiple limited 5* to even function in a basic level, such as Firefly requiring Ruan Mei, many characters requiring Robin, etc. I can count on my fingers how many 4* characters are minimally viable in HSR.
From the video, the only other point is that you want more gameplay variety, but I believe that's more of a personal taste, since I particularly don't mind playing with the same characters for long periods of time (for example, I'm using Zhu Yuan in every Shiyu Defense since she was released and haven't changed her team since).
I, as a new player, personally like the fact that there are less A-ranked agents because of the mere fact that building an agent is hella expensive. So having less A-ranked agents means a lot more time to build the ones that you have.
I believe you just have to focus on quality at this point in the game.
But, the good thing about polychromes (ZZZ currency) is that they are pretty easy to earn actually. Zenless Zone Zero is very generous when it comes to giving away free pulls. There are many ways to earn Polychromes as well. Compared to Genshin impact, earning polychromes is definitely easier than earning Primos in Genshin.
You generally right, but this situation has pros, like now A ranks are really good and valuable. It's better to have few good characters, than ton of dead weight
3:27 You get 20 fading signals for an A rank at C6, which is equal to one pull. Given that you spend on pull to get that A rank itself, you’re basically getting a refund on your pull and decreasing your pity by 1, so you are actually being rewarded for having C6 A Ranks.
And it’s not like you need A ranks to do all the work themselves; Every player will have SOME limited S ranks, especially players that have been playing the game long enough to get to content where S ranks are even remotely necessary.
Having all the A ranks at M6 is great, means it skews the gacha a little more towards your favor. -8 rolls per cycle to hit pity and considering how much polychromes hoyo throws at us in ZZZ you have a good chance to get most characters. By far the cheapest hoyo game in terms of overall cost for limited characters.
Day zero with every banner bar Rina here. The handful of A's I use are impactful and sprinkled into almost every team I have. I feel the current mix of A's is fine and given the likelihood of people maxing their copies out for banner and Wengine, they keep up fine with low investment S ranks. Keeping the A rank roster low is a deliberate tactic to pry open wallets so I'd counter that (as a F2P) by just being super selective about what you need to flesh out your 3 elemental teams for clearing content.
I will leave here my opinion that I shared on one of ALG's videos on the same topic, loved seeing your take on the matter Flossin!
Pitching in my two cents as someone who doesn't really mind it, I sort of prefer to have less A Ranks that are all good and usable rather than Hoyo releasing a A rank every two patches that is just unusable ass cheeks. My opinion is not the end all be all, but I could elaborate further if you are interested to read it. From the perspective of a day one low spender veteran.
This comes from quite frankly a deep, DEEP frustration I have with Genshin Impact, which Hoyo does way more A ranks (4 stars there) than here on ZZZ, and even HSR. Problem is 90% of them are so agressively ass, hard to build, unfriendly to play and all around badly gameplay designed that they might as well not exist in gameplay. (Xinyan my rock and roller beloved)
Granted, that can be something endemic to Genshin, and I am willing to believe that seeing HSR and ZZZ's handling of their respective lower tier units. However I think the biggest factor that contributes to this is the more sparse release schedule of them, which beyond dev time, also save on roles because there is just so many of those to go around.
I get it it's hype to get a new character to fall in love with, but, does it really make difference strictly from a gameplay perspective to get a new one if they are unusable and will be benched 24/7? Like Ben (Proud Ben Bigger Main btw) for instance? Would it really matter if we get just a bunch of "Bens" that the community won't touch with a ten ft pole?
Now, I am not one to pitch a problem without trying to find a solution. So here's how I would go about it. Make A rank versions strictly kit wise of S rank Characters. For insance, make a A rank version of Burnice (let's call them Nicebur), Nicebur could be a off field anomaly aplicator, which will be worse in every single way to Burnice and will aply let's say, Ether. Now of course, Burnice is better than Nicebur and she should be better in every single instance than them at M0, but that would give us as players a oportunity to get a off field anomaly aplicator that works well with their Yanagi for instance, it would be a win for accessibility, and it could be used to tease new mechanics through A ranks. Like for instance if Ben was a tease of a agent that actually buffs crit rate for instance much better than he does, so on and so forth.
Then again, this is just my two cents and no one is forced to agree with me, but I hope I added to the discussion and it was at least a good read. Love y'all and have a nice one
For a f2p player like me, A rank agents actually pretty useful since i can't back to back pulling for S rank agents. I only pull 3 exclusive banner S rank till now (Zhu Yuan, Qing Yi and Miyabi). Other than those 3 i use the standard S rank like Lycaon, Soldier 11, Koleda and else that i managed to get them from standard pull and i still use Nicole, Lucy and Soukaku as part of my main team. I can clear out almost every end game content without problem with the agent i got so far but ofc i must doin alot more work with them since they are not as effective as the exclusive S rank. I think the dev thinking about this as well since not everyone gonna pull back to back the S rank, so the A rank agent will never die. Unless ofc you are a dolphin or a whale player where you can keep pulling without worrying about your money. You just gotta be smart with who you need to pull and who you want to pull, cause sometimes i saw people pulling characters they don't need but they want it. Tho it's not wrong for doin that but that might break your account.
hey, you mock Ceaser Prince but you forget that at M6 she also provides a flat +300 AM buff, thus making it easier for any unit to trigger their respective attribute anomaly, thus giving her a different niche than her S counterpart, so she's not all bad!
Having more useless characters is really not my thing remember the only reason you have every a-rank m6 is because there are only a fue a-ranks, if it goes genshin way I'd rather have no new a-rank at all honestly most of genshin's 4 stars are useless or unusable without c6 and the few ones that are good are very hard to obtain because there is so many 4 stars, it's even more predatory for new players cause most of the good 4 stars are from 1.0 so only older players have them c6
One of the problems with Genshin is they should have continued to add 4* characters to the shop, there’s no reason to only restrict it to the original ones. This would help people get cons for characters they want to c6.
I'm just glad they are making most A ranks unique and useful in their niche, and not just spamming a character after character. But that's coming from someone who hasn't lost a 50/50 since the game release (I only missed Quingyi because I was saving my pulls).
The A-rank problems stemming from trying to strike the balance of not invalidating an A-rank to be added by making them fill a unique niche is something I have faith they will work on as they finish out the early patches and have a bunch of playstyles defined that are not already well supported. Or if they take the route of experiments with other statlines, say an A-rank Flat Pen support or an A-rank DPS that scales off of a mix of hp and impact, or an A-rank that the Ether Stunner, as a few ideas to toss around. Any amount of potentially cooler ideas can be executed on A-ranks, but finding something that naturally keeps an A-rank revelant over time is a taller order. Inversely, this could be why there are a lot of A-rank physical dps agents but no dedicated element support outside of Caesar, they could be cooking something out of that last specialty. I have belief in them, but i do hope they also dont continue to sell the subtle narrative of making Limited Characters with same element-specialty, because the fodder of "omg must pull powercreep" is a little tiring as a new player in the scene as a whole.
It’s definitely a hard spot to be in, and i agree with most comments saying less A Ranks is better than an abundance of them. I have faith the devs will go in the right direction though, they have yet to disappoint me.
What we need are the missing element/role combinations. Give me ether stun, physical support, ice defense. Those can all be a-ranks, and it's been 5 months
wdym? im using many A ranks on my team. max mindscape means you get to have FREE pull. you really call yourself veteran.
We just finished all base game factions besides Defense Force due to them not being story relevant. I don’t think we are having this issue
the general trend in hoyo games is that they release a new 4 star(A rank equivalent) as a support for the newer archetypes they wish to sell.
ex:
Genshin
chevreuse in for overloads, kujou sara for hypercarry raiden, faruzan for anemo dps like wanderer and xiao, dendro traveller for dendro teams like bloom and hyperbloom
Star rail
Xueyi to introduce weakness type ignore, harmony mc and gallagher for the break meta(gallagher works with debuff teams too), dr Ratio,(well hes a free limited 5 star) moze and march 7th hunt for followup atk and they releasing remembrance trailblazer which is a broken ahh support for free which works with like every archetype ahhhhh
im not well versed in hi3 tho
An idea I have in mind. There are people who make the joke of seeing a Billy tier S but... *What if we make it a reality? And how to do it?*
If you already get all the dupes to have the Mindscape at 6 of a tier A, then you have to accumulate more dupes to have a prestigious version (or tier S). You could accumulate 10 dupes to go from tier A to S by spending deniques, thus revitalizing tier A characters by perhaps adding a new mechanic.
The problem I see with this idea is how the dupes would work in tier S. Would the buffs from the tier A dupes be kept? Or would you have to get tier S dupes to get the same mechanics but better?
But the idea is there
@@xXFrikistoneXx In Genshin they almost alleviated the need for S-rank versions (SPECIFICALLY for the actual A-ranks with good movesets) or kit updates to weaker S-ranks by providing them with better teammates.
I like your point but it has been 7 months of zzz release like don't accept the devs too put A ranks and I think the same way you think to like I want new A ranks too but as I was saying it has been 7 months since it's release like for sure there gonna add some new A ranks in the game eventually
Your note about pulling maxxed out low ranks reminded me that how it was handled is something I loved about Dragalia Lost and AFK arena: when you pulled dupes of lower rank agents, it turned into something you could use to progress others, INCLUDING higher rarity agents, so pulling them felt rewarding!
In Dragalia you got Eldwater which is a dual-use currency: you could use it to level up any character's skill trees AND/OR you could use it in the shop to buy new 'wyrmprints' which are basically dragalia's artifact system. So when you pulled a bunch of 3 stars you already had, it was actually pretty handy because you probably need to the eldwater for something you're working on.
In AFK Arena, you 'uncap' (raising both the max level and rarity of a character) by smashing dupes of characters of the same 'rarity' together so with enough 'low rarity' characters mashed together you could actually use them to uncap higher rarity ones. The only limitations were that a) they had to be the same faction and b) some uncap levels Could only be done with a dupe of the actual character.
So... to clarify with an example, if we pretend elements were the same thing as factions and this system was somehow in wuthering waves, you could uncap your rarity 5 Carlotta with another rarity 5 copy of her, or any combination of three rarity 5 Glacio characters (e.g. you could use any combination of three rarity 5 Lingyangs, Baizus, Sanhuas and Youhus to uncap your rarity 5 Carlotta to rarity 6 :D )
Not sure if I really explained that all that well, but it basically made getting any character ultimately useful in some manner, even if you never intended to ever play them :3
That said, on top of all this, whenever you pulled 'rarity 1' units (aka base foot soldiers) you could trade them into the shop for a currency that you could save up to let you straight up buy characters (and not just low rarity ones either, there was some good stuff in there :D )
Coming to Genshin after these 2 felt like a downgrade in terms of the actual gacha outcomes to me :P
7:12 STOP FORGETTING KOLEDA PLEASE WHY DOES IT FEEL LIKE EVERYONE IS? I know she's not an A-rank but she is f2p (kinda)
I think the game is at a fine place, to play devils advocate.. if there’s less A ranks, means as soon as you hit M6 on them you essentially get rebated pulls (because it gives you 20 of the rebate currency instead of 8) thus leading to you getting the 5 star faster. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve pulled a 5 star without having to spend money just because I had already M6ed the A rank on the banner, went back used the rebate currency to buy another pull and boom, either pull into ANOTHER A rank leading into yet ANOTHER attempt at the 5 star or just getting the 5 star. It’s much easier in this game for someone who plays loyally to have mostly every 5 star they want in this game for free.
Also, I know people would still say “but no new A ranks” okay, but you will get your 5 star and the 4 star weapons in this game are actually good, plentiful and very viable to use on that 5 star you got…and limited bangboos are free, so imho the trade off of not having a more diverse A rank pool is worth it lol
ZZZ is my first hoyo game I'm REALLY getting into, and so it was my introduction to how the gacha system works in these games. I'm also totally f2p because I'm a cheapskate lmao
Anyway, Seth was a super great addition for me. I had luckily gotten Jane as my first banner S rank, and so I started looking for ways to implement a team with her (my main team before was Nicole, Anby, Anton. Not great). Then I saw Seth, and how he was designed to work well with Jane. I think I got him sometime in the process of getting Jane, and it was real convenient to just level him up alongside Jane to work together.
So yeah, I agree that they had a great approach with making Seth and should do more A ranks like that!
Although I do agree with you on this matter, one thing I will say is this Zenless out of all the other Hoyo games makes it easier to get these kind of characters. Although I do share the same frustration with a lack of a rank. characters I imagine as time goes on and more factions get introduced. We will get more A rank characters. So give it time and you should be fine plus, I am free to play and I have most of the S rank characters.
Tbh, less A-ranks is ok! ZZZ has a focus on being able to pull more as well as skill based gameplay instead of combo based gameplay. This is not too much of an issue for me (also f2p). I do agree that using A-ranks as a way to compliment gameplay styles could be super dope though.
nah thats just your take pal, my Rank A are welt built and works, still you need a Rank S anchor to deal damage, but Rank A supports and Tanks are good, hell even Piper as a Rank A anomaly performs pretty good, plus pulling on a banner where your mindscape is already maxed gives you a 20 residual signal each time you get a rank A so, it snowballs from there to get the Rank S easier, that said, Anby and Nicole are my most used Agents, they work SO well.
a rank char that we have are still reliable, like piper lucy etc. No need to add if its going to be useless
Piper and Lucy are top tier.
I'd rather them focus on quality over quantity. Just look at Genshin's most recent 4* characters.
Just a waste of resources to build.
Only Chevreuse is somewhat decent
I would like to add that it appears per faction we are getting at least 1 A rank. Cunning hares is all A, Pubsec has Seth, HSO6 has soukaku + Harumasa as an S rank for free, Calydon has Lucy and Piper, Belebog has Ben and Anton, Victoria houskeeping has Corrin. We had a lot to start out with so as we add new factions we will get more A ranks (Also Obol squad isnt finished yet hence no A rank yet)
Yes. My thoughts exactly. I think A ranks are added for lore reasons mostly. Soukaku is a day-one A rank for Section 6, but we only received the Section 6 story in chapter 5 recently. More will come on the way
nekomata crying in a corner
@@plvto1 Billy is stronger that her ironically
@@wits_end. ik lmaoo
I 100% agree with you! Like we don't need a shit ton of A-ranks. We need well balanced, fun characters with nice mechanics that are great in various teams. I think ZZZ is kinda going with the quality over quantity
Imagine a banner where one of the promoted A-ranks adds team attack moves to the S. Makes pulling the A’s mindscapes a lot more rewarding. Why does only Ben/Koleda have combos??
The main reason why Mihoyo don't added new A-ranker after Seth is simply the cost. Mihoyo profit only from pulling S-ranks. Basically A-ranks exists for to motivate players to pull more, as almost everything in gatcha games. But development cost of a new character is same regardless of a rank. All have full body animations, flashy ultimate and are fully voiced acted. So why create agents who don't make money when we can create one who make money? The Geshin and Star Rail are still releasing new 4-stars (A-rank equivalent) but less frequent (one for 2-3 banners)
3:18 I have a different feeling about this, if the banner features A rank agents that you already had them at m6 then it means you get 1 to 2 even 3 pulls refund each 10 pulls, and that is HUGE
zenless use faction system, each faction at least has 1 A rank agent. i think this formula that they use, i believe next faction at least has 1 A rank agent.
when zzz release we already have A rank agent from Cunning hares, Victoria House, Belobog, SoC, and even the new faction in 1.4 Section 6. that's why we feel in the game we lack A rank Agent, the A rank agent for each faction already released (for Obol, idk we dont know much about this faction, most mysterious faction for now)
In my opinion, it's okay to stay like. Because tbh, even the new player would never use A ranks beside as a Filler. What I want to say is, ZZZ has something that other game doesn't. It's story mode with S rank agents that you can use even you don't have them. And new players can doing just fine until midgame. It's good if they decided to expand the A rank character in the future, but I don't think this issue are that "big".
The thing with HSR or Genshin, they not using "Trials" on their story. Well there is, but not all the party. In ZZZ you can use 1 party trials and still catching up with story. Because it's sucks when you just want to play story, but you need to grind or have specific character for that.
The thing about releasing A Ranks that work like S Rank agents could still work , especially when considering that there are still sum play styles that Hoyo has yet to touch, potential Physical and Ether stunners, Ether defense units, Physical supports, Ice Defense, so on and so forth
If they add more A rank characters, they should concetrate in missing value. Example; we only have two Ether characters and barely any Ice Dps characters.
I think all we need in this situation is: patience. It’s pretty clear that Hoyo doesn’t release many A ranks on purpose. They will pump out more A ranks eventually, just very very slow. And while this is a problem as explained in the video, I’m sure there are players who find benefits in this situation too. For example, less A ranks means it’s easier for low or F2P players to max out the mindscapes and level for the already existing A ranks.
In my humble opinion, while I do agree that we need new A ranks and that Hoyo has been too slow in making this happen, I don’t really care about it enough to call it a “serious problem”. Yes not having enough A ranks might be a problem, but I think having too many A ranks (like genshin) is an even bigger problem. The problem is when Hoyo tries to pump out A rank characters to meet the players’ demand, their final products tend to become lackluster. I think it’s way easier said than done for players to just claim “I want unique A ranks that aren’t just a cheap version of the S ranks but also perform well”. But putting this into practice, in reality, is very difficult as it requires a huge level of creativity and meticulous calculations, and not something you can say “Just do it”. Not to mention that as time goes on, it will get more and more difficult for the devs to create unique S ranks, left alone unique A ranks. So maybe, maybe that’s why they need more time for this.
Personally, I think this is one of those situations where “less is more” and “quality over quantity”. I know the ideal scenario would be having both quality and quantity. But let’s be real. Most of the time, it’s very hard to achieve both and even if the devs can, it’s insanely difficult to maintain that balance consistently in the long run. That’s why if I have to choose, I’d rather have less but high quality A ranks than a bunch of unusable ones like in genshin. Compared to ZZZ, I think the 4-star situation in genshin is even more frustrating. Except for the OG 4-star unit, a lot of other 4 star character that come after have a 5 star version of them that make the 4 stars feel completely “useless”, so they just end up getting benched and eventually forgotten. As someone who plays for the story and characters, it honestly feels very sad.
Totally understand your point about the quality of characters! It’s tough to make A Ranks stand out while maintaining a balanced game, but I appreciate your thoughtful analysis!
I feel like we won't be getting any new 4* till Obol squad or that streamer faction and tbh we're not in need of any new ones for now
But the dev DO planning to add more A rank agent pulchra physical stun and one of the idol group are also A rank
Bro if they add Pulchra to the roster I’m gonna M6W1 her and buy any skin they make for that character.
Aye my Soldier simp I know you seen them new 1.6 agents come join the hype patiently waiting to see your reaction and thoughts
I'm cooking up something for you guys don't worry about it
There's confirm new A-ranks coming up! At least 1 has been confirm, and that's Bellum - A-rank Fire Tanker of the Sons Of Calydon!! Also, every A-ranks is currently doing great and no need for an update for them (except Anton, of course)!!
1 or 2 A ranks per faction is enough. We're only at 1.5, why the rush for A ranks? You'll have them collect dust in your roster anyways. Unless you are bored AND have the resources.
Plus, A ranks in this game are better than 4 stars in both Genshin and Star Rail. So I'd rather keep that quality.
I don't see that as issue. I have every 4* in genshin, I only use 5 and three of them are from the 1.0 version. In hsr I only use two. I really don't know why you need so many 4* characters. Yeah, they are good for beginning, but as time goes, you will switch them with 5*.
Okay 2 things you need to reconsider. 1. Since the launch of the game they realistically have only released 3 factions. NEPS, SOC, and Sec 6. We just happened to get their A ranks early from their initial release to give more agents to play with at launch. 2. Pulling A rank dupes past C6 gives you more pulls towards your desired S rank
New factions in 2.x might get more A-ranks.
Like the New Eridu Defense Force Obsidian Division Obol Squad. Unlike Section 6 and Sons of Calydon who had all A-ranks in the base game, the Obsidian Division is currently just one S-Rank and nobody else.
New factions like Stars of Lyra might have A-ranks... hard to tell if that faction is going to expand beyond the two or if this is just a one chapter short story kind of thing with only the two agents.
I think we might get a bunch of A ranks at every major update. (2.0, 3.0 etc) If we get like 5-10 A ranks in these intervalls i'm kinda ok with that.