Am i the only guy who likes what they did with the TVs in chapter 2? with the piledriver sending you down a level in the hollow and later you have to manipulate the other two machines into position (that's not happening in 3d btw, if you want anywhere near reasonable dev times)? Like, i feel more of that stuff is what the TV mode needs. It needs the map to shift and change, to not feel like a constant under your feet but more like the floating tiles in the distortion world (pokemon platinum). As a proxy maybe you get some warning markers and can anticipate the stuff happening before it does, but you don't control it per se, you react to it. Or you have to control your agents and/or tools remotely and move them into position yourself, from a distance (remote-control-ception, remote controlling eous to remotely direct your agents)
What are your thoughts about stages where you have to simultaneously (ish) control agents in a overworld and have eous fiddle around on a TV stage? I feel like it might be interesting if hard to manage, probably a side story thing. I don't mean swapping like Automata's hacking, but rather literally split screen so you gotta keep them both moving and juggle it. Maybe it'd just end up being swapping but worse...
Appreciate having a space to have an open discussion on the TV puzzles / dungeons. Here's my thoughts 1) Why the TV gameplay is important I believe it is part of the core identity of ZZZ. If you take that away, you end up with a "team of 3" action game too similar to Honkai Impact 3rd and it's contemporaries. The TV mode is the devs answer to making their game distinct and different. If it's taken away, something will have to replace it. I do not think ZZZ will fare better without a unique pull 2) When the TV mode is at it's best The world of ZZZ centers around dangerous hollows which are basically impossible to get out of without the assistance of a navigator, and they will eventually corrupt you the longer you're in them, until you turn into a monster TV gameplay works the best when it reflects this feeling. For me, my favorite time playing ZZZ was during the 2nd beta, where there were commissions in which you were up against the time pressure of being corrupted, and had to make different strategic decisions to complete whatever the commission asked of you. When ZZZ has the confidence to let you figure it out by yourself, and make your own mistakes, but you're able to get by with the skin of your teeth; that's when the game truly shines. This isn't necessarily exclusive to the Hollow Zero mode either. Anytime those feelings and level of engagement is tapped into, no matter what the commission itself is; I would consider that "peak" TV mode content 3) What's happening with the TV mode The core issue, after some reflection, is that I do not think the TV mode is being utilized in a way that shows off its strengths. Players feel that TV mode is intrusive, or hand-holdy, or it's not snappy enough. (All of these, and others too, are valid criticisms) I would add that other than the one-off, out of the way commissions, a good chunk of the main "critical path" commissions have TV gameplay that fail to convey that sense of danger, or let you make impactful decisions. Many of them have a gimmick that's introduced, and then the gimmick is gone before there's time to do anything substantial with it. It definitely smells of fledgling dungeon / puzzle designers with a shaky foundation, but improving as they go. Unfortunately, it may be the case that we never get to see the true realized potential of the TV mode, which would require time for the puzzle designers to perfect their craft 4) How this can be addressed As someone who personally vouches for the TV gameplay, I want to see more of it, but I want to see *quality* TV content. I understand that a majority of players did not like the mode, and they have good reasons too. For now, it's probably a good choice to reduce the amount of it for main story content, and work on getting real good TV mode commissions for the optional side stuff you aren't required to do. All said and done, we'll ultimately have to see these changes shake out Thanks once again for letting us speak on this. Peace ✌️
The hollows are definitely meant to be "labyrinthine," and that's what carrots and proxies are for; they shift and mutate over time, so you need someone to guide you through these shifts. But in the gameplay, the actual terrain only responds to enemies and the player, 99% of the time. There's no phasing in or phasing out on the map aside from what the player or enemies themselves cause, which is odd when people say "the carrot data will expire soon." Like, you can move back and forth 100 times and yet the map doesn't change, wdym "soon"? So that's one big way to improve the TV mode, make it feel like you're doing things; environmental hazards and map-scale gimmicks that only you as the proxy can predict and guide your crew around Whether this means stuff like Into the Breach hazards (map falling away or everything on a tile being annihilated on a schedule) or distortion world sections where areas of the map phase in and out of existence or move on a cycle, or even "rifts" kinda stuff where enemies (or more map sections) pop out of an area (up to a maximum so you don't swarm people too hard, and they can still take time to plot how to close the rift optimally), we need stuff that makes the environment feel alive, monstrous even.
@@pallingtontheshrike6374 If we take Hollow Zero as an example, I think the ZZZ devs interpret "the hollows shifting around you" by going through floors or progressing the stage. When you complete a floor and a new layout emerges, or you get to the end of the Construction Ruins HZ (a specific example), and a new set of TVs show up to navigate, that _is_ the hollows shifting and being a maze. (From how I interpret what the ZZZ team gave us from a gameplay / ludonarrative sense) That being the case, you don't see much of that at all during the Agent (in-game combat) gameplay at all. Other than the TV sections, you only see it visually in the CG cutscenes (sometimes). It also could be expressed in a more direct way in the TV mode itself too. The corruption meter is already a mechanic, but it would be cooler and more impactful if the TV maps themselves actually change if you stick around in one spot too long. My overall feeling is that the Hollows don't _feel_ as dangerous as they are supposed to be in-universe, and considering how much of that is up to the TV mode to properly convey that experience, I want it to be conveyed better. Now, does the _rest_ of the community want that? Is that what the ZZZ devs want to do? Will they even be able to do it? Food for thought
@@superbro6413 The thing is, "portals"/"floors" in ZZZ behave more like "new rooms" than the hollows actually having spatial/topographical anomalies, it needs some real-time or turn-based spatial distortion. As for 3d parts, that's tough because a map shift like that is basically equivalent to a short prerendered scene in workload, it'd probably be better to actually modify the engine to handle "up is not up" and then warp the map into various shapes. But if they haven't laid the technical foundation for that it'll take a while As for the community, the marketing was off for global, and the devs have been paying the price for these few months. But they ultimately decide who stays in the community and who doesn't, by how they change up the gameplay. If they really wanna compete, they're gonna have to bring more to the table than only combat.
@@pallingtontheshrike6374 Agree on all fronts there. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. If a vision can be seen from the gameplay experience we have now, Hoyoverse has the ground laid to really make something special. It's gonna be a difficult path to get there though
You absolutely nailed it in the issues being: not seeing the agents, staring into a black void, and the Constant "handholding." All of that combined to take me out of the experience. I actually liked the TV sections in the beginning, but by the end of 1.0 I found myself checking out and losing interest which then made it difficult to keep caring about the story.
Removing the TVs also had an impact on the overall perception when it comes to Etherals. In older stories, they DIDN'T want to encounter them unless they add a good reason like for the Butcher suppression, that's why the fight were scarce. Etherals are extremely dangerous so it's better to avoid encountering any if possible. In 1.2, they are reduced to meaningless trash you kill by dozen every minute, which imo is so much worse from a story telling pov.
Not really. Trash they are. If they keep the danger of the hollows they'll still be relevant. Also. No one cares about ethereals in the story. They canfar more about the agents they spend money for.b
100% agreed. Just make players decide which perspective they want to play : agent (unga bunga), or Eous (unique tv system) I don’t want to do the same thing over and over again.
I agree with everything. TVs should complement the action, not distract from it. A great example of when these two modes complement each other is the story of Zhu Yan and Qingyi.
One of the main problems when TVs was removed from the main story was that when in combat, there’re some dialogues appears in the top right, but because we’re concentrating in the combat, we usually miss those and can’t be seen anywhere unless replaying the whole stage. Those dialogues usually important to understand the depth of the characters relationships
this right here is the big problem that the devs need to solve asap, this is ruining the flow of the story and makes a lot of people ignore the dialogue because it's so far away from the action, the simplest fix to this is put it in the bottom center
One other thing i feel we can add to improve is the tv mode gameplay on the phone. On phone, you can just tap the tv screen you want to go to. While it feels ideal at first, it become tiring in the bigger board in the tv especially if it's the dark area where i have to tap 1 tv at the time to go because of the limited vision. The other thing is when you drag your finger to move the camera to see other area on the tv board, more times than none you can accidentally tap on the previous tv and make you lose the camera control just to see eous move to the tv that you accidentally tap and have to in a hurry tap the nearest tv to stop eous. One solution that i think will help is to add a joystick or a d-pad control like the one in the arcade games for helping the movement in the tv. That way while you still can tap the tv to automatically move to that space, you also can move it by taping or holding the d-pad to move eous manually.
I actually fee the same way during 1.2, I felt that the proxy was not needed at all. I enjoy the TV system and actually I try not to engage in battles and if I can skip encounters on the previous missions, I do so because I want to just stay in the TV and get to the end battle only not worry about trash mobs
I hate tv system but also don't want this thing completely disappear , yeah you're right the main problem is we're can't see our agent in tv system and the tone of tv system is so plain , for short time mission maybe feels fine but if it come to more than 30 minutes tv system feels boring , just make it more colorful and flip the portion of tv system will help
I personally feel that if the devs want to remake the TV from the story before 1.2 and better integrate TV mode into the storyline in the future, they should aim for brevity while making it engaging, similar to a somewhat simplified approach in Rina's story quest. Just because the protagonists are proxies doesn’t mean any TV content should be completely justified. It’s like introducing a niche game to a wider audience, the goal isn’t just to present the 'niche game mode,' but to make it appealing to more people. Aside from a few exploration commissions and some story quests, it seems the dev team might be a bit too caught up in their own preferences when it comes to TV mode. Before the ZZZ dev team gathers enough comprehensive feedback and creates a TV mode that appeals to the majority, they should harness HOYO’s traditional strengths to attract more players with their impressive development pace and stunning art and design, just like they did during Genshin versions 2.0 to 3.0, from Enkanomiya to the Chasm to GAA2. That level of production capacity is truly unmatched
I think it would be interesting to make part of the TV mode interactive, allowing players to control Eous to solve puzzles (in non-TV mode scenes) that assist the agents, or to switch perspectives between Eous and the agents. However, this might take up too much storage, so I’m not sure if it’s feasible
This is like, my fourth attempt to make my thoughts sound coherent, so bear with me a bit. I think my biggest issue with the TV system genuinely does come down to the puzzles and the exploration not being engaging enough. You point out how the stuff we do in 1.2 is technically less involved because all we do is stand around a pillar, but imo standing around a pillar and solving the world's easiest puzzle before moving five blocks down aren't really that dissimilar to one another. At least, with the way they currently exist. Standing around pillars sounds boring on paper, but what made it enjoyable genuinely was that ZZZ's combat is fucking fun. When I'm participating in that activity, I'm not thinking "all I'm doing is standing around waiting for a meter to fill up" I'm engaging with the main appeal of the game. TVs mode's puzzles, in contrast, just aren't good enough on their own to create the same type of experience. They often aren't complex enough to warrant much, if any, thought at all. Traversal is so scripted throughout the entire thing it never feels like I'm actually exploring. When I'm in the TV mode I *am* thinking "I am just moving Eous in a pre-meditated path until the game decides to give me more story." Despite being technically more player-involved, it feels more tedious because the gameplay just isn't engaging enough. The combat in ZZZ is inherently variable to a degree. No one person is going to approach fighting those trash mobs in the same way. Whether because of a difference in combat style preference or the characters they own, it's easy to find your own fun during those moments. But TV mode is just. a visual novel spliced between some busywork. And don't get me wrong, I LOVE visual novels, it's why I genuinely adore HSR's dialogue-heavy, slow-paced main story quests, but imo TV mode offers the worst of both worlds for that type of storytelling rn. I do hope I'm not coming across as too accusatory or anything here. I do really like ZZZ's story and I don't hate TV mode. I just think it can be vastly improved from what it is now. I do think moments like chapter 3's light puzzles and Rina's story show the potential, and I do want the TVs to stay, genuinely, but I can't say I'm all that surprised or upset to see this version of the TVs get axed. Hopefully whatever the team comes up with in the near future is able to satisfy enough people while not taking away from those who already enjoyed it.
imo the TV mode needed to take more from stuff like Into the Breach and Distortion world (pokemon platinum), the environment feels super fucking dead despite hollows being this thing where you have to "have up-to-date carrot data or risk getting lost." Like, literally having it so that every once in a while a random batch of tiles will just phase out or a route will close off, and another batch of tiles phases in (and obviously you get warning beforehand cuz you're the proxy) and bam, suddenly walking around the dungeon isn't just "spam left" or "click tile super far away" Or simulate gas vents where a corruption cloud spouts out, or have walls drop in via rifts, or... you get the idea, just have hollows have gimmicks that do things aside from the player and enemies, make the labyrinth actually feel like "the belly of a (small) beast"
you see, the TVs are an amazing way to let us have more diverse stories and sections of quests that tell more complex stories, with minimal effort. removing the TVs on the new cheesetopia event, for example, made so that every quest was just talking to NPCs or fighting low level ethereals over and over on practically the same map. imagine the number of different routes they could've taken with the TV, having different puzzles and occurences through the quests, instead of all of them being FIGHT MOB. WALK. FIGHT MOB AGAIN. WALK. FIND ITEM. FIGHT LAST MOB. END.
Id rather fight stuff and use my characters than do boring puzzles. I don't mind talking to NPCs, at least I get to see how they are part of that world, which is much more immersive.
They could add the tv part when the story requires the proxies to provide new route when they get blocked in the hollow by getting encrypted keys, or turning on/off a mechanism by hacking through different machines/computers. In this way majority of the story is combat and the TV will only appear if its needed. Oh you mentioned what I said midway through the video.
Didn't know you could actually view dialogue history in TV mode, so yeah def lots of room for improvement there It's funny you mention in the beginning that people don't really complain so much about the dialogue in HSR because people absolutely did, at least during Penacony in 2.1 and 2.2
@tactaillike Oh yeah, there were definitely people that complained, just not nearly as much as compared to what the TV mode is getting (especially in terms of CC'S)
@@AzrialVanity The dialogue complainers were there from the beginning and they are still with us. You must be forgetting about all the people who are crying to have a skip button, the same ones that praised wuwa for adding one. It's just hsr/genshin devs are fully ignoring that crowd. Technically you could just mash tap skip the dialogues, but with TVs, you have to actively engage with the board
I'm about 5 minutes in and will listen to the whole thing, but I want to get this off my chest and say we need to give the developers time to let them cook. It's very obvious this was a last minute decision and they need time to figure out how to implement the stories they want to tell through gameplay, especially one from Phaeton's perspective. It's very clear they did not make this decision lightly and the feedback against the TV system was overwhelming. Rolling back the decision now seems foolhardy. I will comment again once I listen to everything. I appreciate someone actually opening discussion and not making this an "us vs them" situation like many others have.
Oh, one more thing. This is not directly related to TV, but it is about the support of the game on the phone. They really need to improve this part. Seriously, or they will lose a lot of mobile players in the future. In my country, to play this game, you need a phone that costs more than 10,000 baht, or about 307 US dollars. It is very expensive compared to HI3, GI and HSR, which do not need to rely on phones of that level to play the game comfortably. If it is difficult to play, just adjust the settings. But not for ZZZ, this game cannot even be downloaded to the device. So I would like to be another voice calling for the developer to improve this part as soon as possible. I like this game. I like its story. I think TV is interesting and unique. But now the reasons for me to play this game are getting less and less every day.
@topthch That's totally valid, and I should have mentioned an improvement to mobile in the video. Hopefully, as the game continues, they can find ways to optimize it to better run on mobile devices
For the “handholdyness” part, they should implement two modes, “story” and “challenge”. Challenge mode removes all of the panning that regards new doors opening and stuff, only keeping the panning for narrative events. Or they could call it “Fairy’s Enchanced Perception Mode” and have it be enabled by default. I’d simply like to get into the character of a Proxy, having to remember the labyrynthine paths across the hollow.
@@AzrialVanity No! It needs to be pick and choose. People who want an immersive narrative that makes them feel like they’re Phaeton aren’t necessarily the most skilled fighters, and vice versa, people who play for the gameplay aren’t necessarily the brainiest of the bunch. Combining Challenge Mode for combat witb Challenege Mode for exploration is a recipe for puzzle-loving people dropping the game due to the Twins kicking their ass, or for the people who eat Pompey for breakfast to drop the story alltogether after looking for a vault door for 10 minutes straight. Sidenote: The few well-done TV segments made really feel like I was the Proxy, and it’s such a great thing that can’t be allowed to disappear.
@@emberthecatgirl8796 On launch it could've gotten away with being tied together, if it's introduced now it definitely should be separate because of hindsight. main story TV segments imo need to have more environmental hazards. Now, to be clear, i have a bias towards environmental hazards (into the breach, FTL are among my favorite games) in games, but like. Imagine, if part of your job as guide was to forsee and navigate around sudden ether jets or falling boulders or a friggin hollow wildfire spewing noxious fumes. Or if the hollow was particularly unstable and shifted regularly and you had to know the cycle to get to where you wanted to be. I know some of this stuff is in side stories but like, it needs to be in the main story segments. There's just so much cool design space to work with, and none of it is being utilized...
Haven't play zzz 1.2 story but I think in genshin and hsr, camera angles switching and focusing on different characters and scenery adds to the story experience too
I think the TV isn't bad at all IF it doesn't lock my camera to explain some boring stuff like push a box into this or do this and that. The target demographic for this game is adults, gameplays can be dumbed down for people who aren't too good at the game but you can't expect me to sit through a tutorial for 5yo's without letting me speed through it.
the TV is an excellent narrative device, if you actually care about the story, you'll appreciate the value of TVs; it just so happens that a lot of people don't care about the story and they skip the entire thing to get to fights as soon as possible. my say is, fk what they want, go play an overworld game if you want to play an overworld game. The main reason why these people complain is because they spam the skip button and have zero idea of what's going on so TVs feel like a waste of time, you can skip story in Genshin so you are forced to listen and watch; if you are going to experience a story it's better to experience the entire thing than half of it even if you hate the story. Because TVs are used as a narrative device, if you are already skipping half the story, the other half seems redundant. It's like being allowed to skip the first 2 episodes of a tv show then being forced to watch episodes 3, 6, 7 and 12: Without the surrounding context those episodes feel pointless and redundant.
Trying to make broad assumptions about people who weren't fans of TV mode is not how you're going to prove it was good, no matter how much you ramble. Completing ignoring the negative aspects of how TV mode HURTS the narrative and attacking the critic instead, is not going to convince anybody to switch sides.
I wonder if the "agents in the overworld" thing would have offset the TV hate to an extent. As it is, you only see your agents in the combat gameplay, and the menus. If you could run around as who you own, as well as see them in combat... maybe it just wouldn't feel as egregious. We don't know right now since that's coming in 1.4. But the main story TV changes to previous story are also planned for 1.4 right? :(
I'm just ctrl+c ctrl+v from the stream's VOD, large amounts of text do be warned ⚠ ⚠ First of all I am a TV Enjoyer, second this is a list of all the points I caught were mentioned by chat and Azrial with my feedback and opinion attached to each of them, if you would like to copy this format and use it to give your own go ahead :D the .1 points are just the continuation of my feedback and opinion as well as my own conclusion. Also please don't comment if you don't have anything of value to say... Things like "Ain't reading that" "HOLY YAPPING" are fun as memes but stop the conversation from naturally flowing in the comments. And Azrial if you would like to ever use this comment and its responses to further expand the topic in a new video that would be great! 1.- Speed Up cuts off dialogue: Yes it does and it was mentioned in the Face to Face so they are working on it. 2.-Base Speed Increase: In theory it was already increased. 3.-Animation/Zoom Speed/Oversaturation: YES, this has been an issue from the beggining and I saw almost no one mentioned, things like Fairy asking if you want to open doors, recollecting Data, opening chests, etc. have no reason to be displayed EVERY SINGLE TIME after the "tutorial" so just get rid of it after that. 4.- Movement Speed too slow: This is imo not the issue, but instead point 3, no matter how fast you can traverse TVs if animations stop you in your tracks all the time. 5.-TVs being too hand holdy/easy: Here I think we can see the first point of conflict between people who tolerate/enjoy TVs and those who hate it, if you make the TV puzzles harder then TV haters will still complain, as they don't want to be stopped in any way from rushing things and entering combat, they simply don't like TVs no matter how they are implemented. 6.-TV Layout can have way more variety depending on which setting you are in: Extremely fair point, not only does this change make immersion better but it also just straight up makes TV more appealing to look at. 7.- TV Exploration vs Agent Exploration: While a major factor is the ability to see and use your Agents the main difference I find is the amount of work you have to do in order to move along the story: In TVs you have a gameplay style that may or may not be enjoyable (regardless of optimization) that you can't avoid, in 3d exploration you just need to walk from point A to point B to get to the combat 7.1.- In summary, people get into ZZZ expecting to enjoy combats since the game advertised itself as an Action Game, but then one of the major aspects players find thrown at their face and forced upon them since the beginning is TV mode, a mode that has NOTHING to do with combat and thus turns them away from the game since they didn't get on board to do mini games / puzzles and yet they are forced upon these mechanics that let's be honest do take a lot of time compared to combat aka the main aspect of an Action Game, not neccesarily that the TVs take fights away but that they are too many and too long in between fights (Not inherently a bad thing imho since I enjoy them, but from the PoV of someone who straight up joined due to sheer hype of having a game centered around it's combat I can see why they hate them) 8.- Balance between TVs and Combat: As of 1.0 TVs did take a ratio of 80-30 with the scarce fights that were thrown at us being 30 seconds long with TVs lasting several minutes in comparison (Massive ratio disproportion that I will elaborate further in point 8.1). Then as of 1.1 TVs take the first major step back with Jane's story being completely removed from it (Now arguably this was a side story that didn't involve Phaethon and thus made sense to not have it). Then finally we get to 1.2 where we are reintroduced to Phaeton's story and surprise surprise: TVs are not there finally confirmed to be removed and even introduced optional modes to Hollow Zero making TVs completely useless and funnily enough I think that was the only instance where I personally would have removed TVs since it's meant to be a sort of grindy mode that you do WEEKLY and it burns you out really fast whereas all the story TVs were unique and you are only meant to experience them "once" and then move on to new TV mechanics from their respective chapters. 8.1.- What people fail to realize is that Zenless combat is extremely simple COMPARED to other Action Games, be it gachas (PGR, Wuwa to an extent) or mainstream (Bayonetta, Devil May Cry) and thus becomes repetitive and monotonous real fast IF it's not engaging aka A CHALLENGE: Point in case, combat during story mode is extremely dull when it comes to a challenge as it's literally designed for casual players to be able to clear it by even giving trial characters in case theirs fall short... And here is where TV mode came in: It provided a way for non stop combat similar to 1.2 to not become dull and repetitive due to how low the difficulty is during the story. Now let me ask you something: Was the combat enjoyable during 1.2? For me it was the most tedious content TO DAY since I've already tried both Shiyu Defense Modes that require you to not get downed once and the combat even distracted me from dialogue during 3D exploration since I have to either focus on my gameplay or on the text on screen... This mind you didn't happen to me once during 1.0 and 1.1 (The latter to an extent since Jane's story was a side story of which most dialogue was blabbering between her and npcs) so take it as you wish. To finish this I want to add my own perception of this issue: There are 3 kind of people right now which are TV enjoyers, TV haters and TV neutrals. Most TV Enjoyers jumped into the game already expecting TV mode alongside combat making their reception incredibly positive, most TV haters jumped into the game expecting a game HEAVILY focused on combat and how can we blame them? Hoyo did nothing to market the TV aspect of ZZZ outside of betas which made said TV haters even more displeased with TVs as their feedback was ignored in their eyes when the game launched with their inclusion being a major aspect... But I am going to have to be the devil's advocate here and tell TV Haters this: Devs have every right to choose which feedback to follow and which to ignore, and most feedback regarding the TVs during betas was "Remove it" and not "Improve it" :/ Devs had a vision and they stuck true to their guns which I really admire since I believed they achieved their objective: To grab a small loyal new audience unique to ZZZ (A mix of Dungeon Crawler and Action Combat, two already niche genres). Sadly that's not what Hoyo as a company was expecting and thus resulted in this change in an attempt to lure back the more mainstream kind of players that left due to the presence of a niche gameplay, sadly I doubt that's ever happening at this point and many of the loyal players who stayed because they loved what ZZZ devs accomplished might now be leaving the game. That's it, I never intended to say who's wrong or correct, just to share my thoughts and real dissapointment as one of said loyal players, I will continue to support Zenless as I believe firmly these are the best Devs any gacha game could ask for and can't wait to see what they do in the future :D And to quote these genius dev team "Well, in terms of feedback actually a player's feedback often times isn't necessarily what they really want".
As this content creator said. The TV mode should have a skip option. Hoyo should find a creative way to put a summuray for those story enjoyers that hate the TV Mode.
@@onelasada1707 there's a lot of logistical issues with putting in skips in a story-focused game... for starters, that means you'll have two wildly varying paces and playtimes to account for, which throws the design for a loop. There's asymmetry then, where if you can skip TV why can't you skip combat? at which point you might as well make two separate games. There's event stuff where maybe it's better to display an impactful cutscene in TV for narrative or budget reasons, but people who skip TV routinely just won't understand it. sounds easy to "just add a skip option," but the more involved and invested you make the TV mode the more this becomes... just bad. Not to mention wasting development time on a portion that apparently "people will just skip." It's not a combat engine you build once and only make minor modifications to, these are entire dungeons that have to be designed and tuned each time.
@@pallingtontheshrike6374 This might be the reason for their decision to removed tv mode in the story going forward. Im curious what are the reduced tv mode looks like on earlier chapters, when version 1.4 comes out.
@@onelasada1707 Yeah unfortunately that nukes the character of ZZZ, and i feel like it might keep numbers higher in the short term but it'll scrap the game's main story quality in the long term.
@@pallingtontheshrike6374 I am beginning to think that ZZZ should have been a premium game rather than ftp game. At least at premium, they dont need sustaining player engagements and they will keep their artistic version (tv mode.
Nah, my feedback on TV sections is completely opposite than what you got. I don't mind TV sections replace combat. I don't even mind the handholdy problems or the TV zooms. The problem is that it sucks at telling the story because of the environmental design. This is always a problem you're going to get with overhead type perspectives because it means you're pulled out of the action to a certain degree, but it's especially bad when the TV design provides another level of abstraction and it feels like you're disconnected from what's going on. Like, to give an example. At some moments, the characters are supposed to be in danger, right? Well, how are you supposed to tell that through a TV mode? The character expressions don't change, the TV mode makes it hard to get more than a vague sense of distance between characters in the scene, you can't feasibly depict reactions to the situation besides just some up-right-left-down movement. It's impossible to get any sense of what's happening besides the characters just saying "X is happening", and the perspective doesn't even focus on said dialogue. If you can't depict urgency because of it being turn-based, fine, but there should be a sense of perspective for other ingredients of tension, right? Well, Ch. 3, the part you put as a counterexample, had that exact problem. Regardless of how "cool" the movement/puzzles are, it feels like padding because you're so disconnected from the reason that you're going out to go hit lightbulbs from how it was presented. If the devs feel they need to break up combat with non-combat sections, I'm all for it. But it needs to actually do something that evokes a reaction out of the player. Basically, the only point of feedback I actually agree with is some of the graphical things like changing the borders of TVs, etc.
It's possible to depict units in danger from a top down mode. but it's more "Environmental" or large scale danger than normal enemies. in xcom when a sectopod charges its deathbeam (actually kinda a shitty move, it's better off moving at you and shooting you twice, but that's beside the point) or the Hunter (wotc) uses tracking shot, you get a spoopy animation of the thing taking aim and the tiles you're on (and the ones around it) all getting marked red. Turn based. for the most part top down/isometric. But if you see at the end of the corridor a big shining dot at the end of a barrel, pointed at you, you know very VERY well you're in danger. Alternatively, take stuff like walking bombs, or falling boulders, it's perfectly possible to represent them in top-down and feel the danger, you just need good sound design (and maybe a bit of screen shake).
I really enjoyed this video. I would consider myself mostly amongst the group mentioned around 20:20 who want to skip the tv section but still receive the storytelling. I agree that TV Gameplay CAN be very powerful in the right circumstances (Chapter 3, Rina's story), but I think the majority of what is currently in the game is not compelling. It's also true that Hoyoverse did not advertise the TV mode, and I think that it's a big problem that players have to play through a lotttt of mediocre TV mode gameplay before they reach the examples that most everyone agrees are good. Players should ideally feel EXCITED when engaging the tv system, because it should mean that we're doing something compelling there that can't be communicated to us another way, but I don't think that a majority of people who have tried ZZZ feel that way, and it could take some time and consistently high-quality TV gameplay to get to that point. I agree that Belle and Wise should be kept at the center of the story (especially after THAT 1.2 lore drop scene, wow), and I think that 1.2 was probably initially written with more story for our proxies specifically inside the tv section, but I think that they can probably keep our proxies as prominent players in the story without them having to physically guide the playable agent characters in TV mode gameplay - they just haven't been trying to write it that way up to this point so far. Great video, great discussion, and I'm certain that the game will continue to improve as more feedback (from both sides of the TV system issue) is understood and implemented in the game.
They way I always looked at it was that Belle and Wise are basically computer hackers so the TV array is coming from their computer screen or perspective of what they are seeing as they guide the Agents through the hollows and helping them get in and get out which is actually pretty unique and fun :) What they could also do is just make like a TV mode game and put it inside the arcade. That way it would be like a whole seperate game mode and people could polay through it and get more of the game's story and lore that way. Just an idea LOL!!
I’m probably in the minority but chapter 3 is my most hated tv mission and when you describe what that would be without the tv it’s sounds exactly the same as what we did with the tv we moved around in the dark and pressed f a bunch and if a ghost touched us we got sent back the visuals are different but the gameplay is the same But overall I like the idea of swapping the tv over world ratio that sounds like a good fix for both sides
The only issue i have with tvs are the loading screen it causes when switching from tv to battle multiple times in a mission because i have a not that great pc so like think of a more efficient way to incorporate them but i love the tvs otherwise
Out of topic here but can I ask how to hide ui/dialogue bubble especially in comic mode because sometimes I wanna grab a screenshot but the dialogue is in the way of the cg/comic For me I play zzz primarly based on vibes and half part of that is the tv mode so I really hope they get the best outcome for tv mode (sry for bad en)
@sunglassfrog89 unfortunately they don't have a hide UI button yet They added on specifically for the scene with the MC at the chasm but it would be nice to have a hide UI button for sure
The only problem I see on the TV system is amount of time it takes in the process. they fix this with a fast forward option. and it was actually a good fix. but I still feel like it's too time consuming. and I figure the reason why it still feels that way is the amount of time you need to read some things, like reading 3 resonias, or reading other option when interrupted something else. and you can't really do anything on that part. the only way they can fix those is by making a design system in which it is easier to pick something without reading the text, such as adding icons for card related to an elements or add recommended/suggested tag for you to easily pick the best rosania
I solved that part by not reading them and picking whatever have my dps/stunner element on its name/first lines. It's not like I need them anyway, I compensated the lack of characters by investing all resources in two teams that can clear even when the enemy isn't weak to their elements.
I think so too. The TV mode sometimes has too complex systems you have to keep in mind. It should be quick, simple and do something that the normal gameplay mode cannot do. I feel like most people also have an issue with the TV mode because of the amount of reading you have to do. Reduce the complexities so people dont have to stop and read a paragraph to understand something. What to do next should be intuitive just by looking at the screen and the icons. Reduce the amount of micro animations that happen so that everything feels quicker. Fairy interrupts too frequently at times, a genius artificial intelligence should know when to shut up.
how about a fairy auto mode, for tv sections, this provides an optional solution for tv haters just to look at the screen and see fairy autoplaying the tv sections
No, it isn't going to save my time. I want to skip/delete it instead... It's not like they have to remove it, but honestly I hate it, I only enjoy combat and I deeply hate any puzzle, any long conversation and all useless "exploration" things where you just run in circle to waste your own time. And I hate these things on Genshin as well. I like the skip for a very simple reason: when I don't care, I can skip. Sadly I can't skip the whole dialogue on tv mode, nor skip all pointless linear exploration, nor avoid puzzles, which are things that stress me and I want to relax killing stuff... I don't play to stare at the screen waiting for the end of a monologue, nor to stress myself thinking.
@heymeowcat as @nanakomatsu7425 mentioned, the players that would utilize the skip button would rather skip the whole thing then watch fairy auto complete it on screen due to the skip actually saving time.
Just wanted to note that I've been enjoying myself a lot without the TVs currently and the story is better for it as well. Being able to interact with things on the rallye stages has been much better and more immersive.
Something I've been thinking about since your stream is we did focus a lot on what was bad about the TV system and whilst it was needed getting rid of the bad wont make people like something unless there is some good underneath, conversely alot of bad can be overlooked if the good is just that good. Also I dont think the lack of TV in the marketing is an explanation. What this argument is really saying is that people wouldnt complain as much if they knew before hand that doesnt make the TV system good/better.
@GhostEmblem Talking about what makes the system is good is very important as well, which why I tried to mention at the start why I think it's important to keep. I could have gone into more detail but I wanted to keep the video somewhat shorter in length to stay digestible. As for the marketing conversation, I wasn't necessarily saying the marketing would have made the TV system better, but it would allowed the crowd who didn't like it to not even try the game. But now there are tons of players that started the game and got invested story wise but dislike the TV system and now we have such a huge split on haters/enjoyers. So less of marketing would have made it "good" and more like it would have brought in/kept away a more consistent crowd.
I think Tv mode needs to be a safe space in cases of emergency + breathing rooms and so on with also combats too, I'll explain. On hollow zero, as of now the most polished tv system, you have the risk/reward between the use of gear coins, health, corruption and resonias present, all of them impacting on combat, where it helps on to have breating rooms + preparations between short battles, elites bosses and at the end the final boss. This formula may need a change since gameplay wise it can even be interchangable as of now by the new mode where you can only play combat. This I think is due to the combat + all of their complements being towards combat itself making it more attactive in regard of the place where all the focus and bonuses are in, when at the end if you end up just practicing all day non stop, the skill ceilling will be reached when is already at some cases creative, not on par with the issues some people had with TV mode which has a big potential + also is realistic as the part job encommended between proxys and agents on a mission, cause if its all agents, then our protagonist would be left even so they have all this built up lore that has between their studies, relations and motivations of being proxies, the complexity of being there + being safe of ether corruption, something that it is not nice and can be a very serious issue. Lorewise, TV mode needs to be a place where we have a big purpose with other storytellings where agents are not present unless they are stated to have similar skills to us. Both being an onfield agents + proxy has its risk, so maybe there should be also a kind of skill ceilling to attrack at first glance that the TV system is more complex that it is, since its mostly very simple + is mostly fun, when in reality there are lots of vulnerabilities and exposure of being an agent + netrunner/proxy on the job. We already now the risk of being on combat since if we risk it too much, we may end up with knocked out teammates, which only can be revived with either if already onfield having a heart revive (probably some of eous bonuses found on TV mode too), but us as Eous we don't have any risk of being there, rather than just disconnecting with the agents on mission, which is still something that is still not impactful since we asume we will always be able to connect to them again (chapter 1 for example when they got hacked). There must be some risk on 1. storywise being a proxy, also to incorporate some heavy stuff where if not handle properly you could screw your agents, but also viceversa where agents need to keep on eous too, since its valuable on the mission cause if not with him, their route would be lost. Mostly rambling right now, but would probably need to incorporate a more cruesome + more risky way of showing the gameplaywise atractiveness of boing a proxy so to motivate to us to be able to have motivations to go threre and have the comfort of being a proxy, maybe even get events on story + limited or with currency to improve even more the TV experience so to feel like we also have a direct impact on improving the TV system, not only provided by devs and to have the ilussion of being proxies, since the ilussion of the tension in combat is already done and is good too. Where as the upgrades of the TV system, rolewise would be needed to have a big + comfortable space to improve on and make it personal, since its mostly us as belle/wise and could focus on even making them more appealing characters appart from the agents you pull for gacha. Even if possible if you could multiplayer explore a TV space would be cool since on the world there are supposed to be various proxies already, so it can even mean so to help feel like Belle/Wise are not the only ones there taking commisions and have a more marked identity as Phanteon on the Inter-Knot, since it needs to help to complement the combat + give an insentive for players to come back to zzz and say "today I want to do some TV commisions" also having Arcade (the new gamemode is awesome too feels more bigger the world by having that + helps to make the world feel alive since it is real to release new games on the game's arcade), combat commisions and works at hollow zero to complement. Actually lorewise there are 4 to 5 spaces or more where as Agents/Proxys are involucrated respectively. Balance will be a virtue to keep in hand and mantain TV mode, hope it stays. Also to please hope the devs have more media inspiration via games or other media where they could explore the gameplay relation and mix between a Job done of Proxy(netrunner/hacker/eous) + Agents on field. will comment till this since I burned my mind trying to explore creatively how to develop TV mode and its impact on lore so to have a bigger purpose as of why is being used in the first place in a Proxy's bussinesses plan.
Without TV, this game is like any other ARPG, aside from having 'retro vibe'. There is absolutely no reason to play it for combat alone, when WuWa exists and has a strictly better version of this combat. TVs added so much soul to the game and made it unique. There were many solutions to fix it, but they axed it instead, since they're mainstream and a 'lowest common denominator' doesn't even want to solve a simple puzzle before 'combat'.
This is a follow-up to my previous comment now that I watched all of your video. First, I appreciate the open discussion. Again, the sudden influx of people defending the TV system often operates on bad faith and that goes nowhere. Short Version: Just make TV Mode more meaningful to combat. Long Answer: I like the TV system. The best part of the game me was Chapter 3, and a large part of that was due to the atmosphere, music, and banter during the TV system. However, there's a lot about the TV system's design that is very hit or miss. When it's fun, it's very fun. But when it's boring, it's torturous. It's a very polarizing experience to play in the TV system. I would say I'm in the middle of this, who enjoys the TV system for what it is, but the overall execution has been very poor. When you say at 10:13 that there has to be a compromise, I feel this isn't actually the case. As you've noted, there has been two years worth of hate on the TV system, but I think it's important to say it has only gotten larger since the release of the game. The Zenless team has tried to rebalance the frequency of TV Mode in the past. Perhaps they didn't take the problem as seriously as it should have during that time, but they did try. Since then, it's only gotten worse. The primary issue brought up in the video regarding the Agents' presence isn't even actually true. There's a story mission where you use Anton to one-shot enemies in TV Mode in order to solve a puzzle, and there's a lot of the agents' presence in multiple main stories where you see them doing stuff, you just don't see the character models in place. So maybe I'm missing the context of the actual stream conversations, but the argument here feels off. With that out of the way, I want to strike at the heart of the matter. Here's the thing that MUST be acknowledged: Zenless Zone Zero is a combat/action focused game. To say it isn't would be intellectually dishonest. People went into Zenless expecting the game to be combat focused. So when people say the TV System "gets in the way" of combat, it may be objectively nonsense, but the important thing to take from this is the sentiment. The general audience wants to play combat. TV Mode, as it is right now, is completely divorced from what you do in combat. They are completely separate modes, yet they share equal importance. This is extremely polarizing no matter how much you slice it. Sure, you can do a 70:30 split or even a 90:10 split, but that doesn't fix the underlying issue that TV Mode has NOTHING to do with the action-focused aspects of the game whatsoever... ...Except in Hollow Zero. I think what I find interesting that when people complained about the TV system, they often state that the rogue-like mode is actually fun, and I believe the strongest reason for that is because what you do in the TV Mode within Hollow Zero directly affects your agents for combat. This is the missing puzzle piece here, and it's something Zenless is already doing. Just make TV Mode more meaningful to combat. That's literally the answer.
First I appreciate you taking part in the discussion! It's the only way we can get solid feedback to the devs. The reason I say there has to be a compromise is as I said in the video they are a company that wants to make money so they are going to try and appease/retain as many players as they can. They have already backtracked on saying they will remove the TV system from main story and stated that instead of removing they will enhance it slowly. As for the agents being present, Yes, they do have moments where the agents show up in the TV and do something but it does not happen OFTEN enough, and not in a way that players feel like they are actually doing something. They want to SEE the actual character not just an image of the character on the TV as it moves around. That was like the largest feedback is that they want to see the characters. You are correct that the modes are very different and will still be polarizing no matter what the split is, but allowing the split to be more Rally style will appease more players overall. As far as it "getting in the way of combat" again when compared to other games the amount of actual "combat" you are getting in the story is around the same, the presentation of the story is just different. It FEELS like a combat section is being taken away when in reality it's not. I do agree that yes the TV should make an impact to the combat sections and that's why I think the method listed would work, they could not only have the small TV sections open up path for the agents but could find resonia along the way or something to impact the agents more making it feel more cohesive.
@@AzrialVanity Thanks for the quick response, and sorry that I didn't respond sooner, I got busy as soon as I was done posting this. Before I respond to anything else, can you tell me where they backtracked their decision?
@HeroMysticLYX They posted it on Twitter! x.com/ZZZ_EN/status/1839209107171008690?t=UEHo3olW1jCuxK0GL6xgRA&s=19 The only mode in which they said it was being "removed" was main story and now they said "INSTEAD" of removing they will improve. So it will be in main story again.
@@AzrialVanity Nice, thanks for that. I guess this is what I get for hating Twitter and not wanting to be on it. 😆 This changes my stance then. I almost entirely agree with what you've said on the video since the Zenless team hasn't given up on this. I do think your approach can work, but I really think taking Hollow Zero's approach and doing something similar in story missions would work better. An example I thought of is during a TV mode section, correctly solving optional puzzles would provide benefits to your agents when it's time for combat. Maybe they'll get status buffs, or maybe it weakens a wave of what would otherwise be overpowered Elite mobs. Providing the players a choice to play as Phaeton or your agents for a mission can also be a fair approach. Doing the mission as agents gives you a Rally commission where Phaeton's gameplay is minimal, but doing the extra objectives would be harder, while playing as Phaeton would be BAU.
Aside from making tv mode more combat friendly, there's the alternative option (imo) of making it more lore-friendly and pulling in actual exploration value. Sure, zzz is advertised as a combat game, but many games have components that aren't the forefront of the advertisement and yet are still liked, because they *bring enough other value.* There's no pokemon battles or wild pokemon in the Distortion world aside from giratina (i haven't kept up to date with new gens so you'll just have to deal with the old example), and the puzzles there are pretty unique, but because it's so jarringly different, and it goes hard on the exploration side, it gets a pass. Of course it helps that the distortion world is a one-off thing and the payoff for a game-long setup, but still. It has impact, so players stick through it (afaik anyways). TV mode as of right now mostly only reacts to what you as the player, or a small number of key enemies/adversaries do. Which means it's just bog standard 2d dungeon crawl and not really the good kind like spelunky or proper roguelikes (not roguelites). But there's design space here, specifically carved out by the lore; hollows are supposed to morph and shift and have various gimmicks and "illogical" stuff in them. So, the TV space should reflect that, beyond just waiting for the player to press a button or go past a checkpoint. Tiles should phase in and out, walls should freely break or move, hazards should abound all over (ether "dustclouds," random-warp fissures, rockslides, fires, etc etc etc etc). Full-map/aura based environmental effects should be active, including but not limited to stuff like corruption. Maybe enemies could be inactive until various levels of "ether activity," increased by stepping next to enemies, or on 'unstable tiles' that shift around. And then there's the option of just bombing the shit out of certain tiles every X turns like Into the Breach does (lmao), or setting up buildings that you have to defend by remotely manipulating two teams, or... well, you get the idea. ZZZ can't compete with ALL the other team action games on the market right now with just its combat alone, and the initial marketing being so focused on the combat was kinda justifiable on the CN side (flashy low-floor high ceiling combat does what it needs to for CN audience) but doesn't fit the bill for the kind of story and design they want as far as western audiences would interpret it (the slight lost-in-translation isn't helping). Imo, trying to hunker down on the combat aspect is sunk cost fallacy, it's better to cut off the hardcore combat focus on the marketing and shift to more general "dungeon rpg" with a side of combat and develop the TV mode into it's own thing.
I believe that the TV feature in the game could have been more extensive. I disagree with the game designers' decision to remove the TV feature, as I think it had a negative impact on the game. In the story update, the TV system was there to break up the constant fighting in the game. Therefore, I agree with the game designers when they mentioned that sometimes gamers don't know what they want, but I want to emphasize the word "sometimes". The TV system was originally integrated into the game, but the main characters we play as do not interact with it in the story now. What's the point of use now? It feels boring and pointless.
I think what's unique to zzz is how we can play as phaeton to navigate through the dynamics of the hollow. It doesn't have to be the current tv mode I hope they can replace it with something better, not an empty map like in this version because obviously most players want the tv back now
My problem is that it feels really clunky. Movement feels laggy to me. You mention that you don't like sections with needless walking from A to B... and the TV mode feels like that's 80% of the "gameplay" there. There are a lot of old school square-grid turn-based dungeon crawler games, and they work because they have a lot more going on - items, treasure collection, and more than one solution to a given problem. TV mode right now is 100% on rails, and as a result there's nothing in there that requires any skill whatsoever. There's a lot of times where you're stuck moving one square at a time on the phone and it's just tap-tap-tap with nothing actually happening. A lot of the puzzles are way too simple, which is fine for content that you need all players to be able to clear, but they need to put in some optional puzzles that are actually difficult. I find "solving" trivial puzzles about as engaging as Chutes and Ladders. There's a lot of potential here, but there needs to be more going on, and it needs to be fluid.
I liked TV mode in theory, I love dungeon crawlers. My problem with the mode is that it is way too repetitive and tedious. A lot of slow repeated animations, lots of repeated dialogue for every single gear coin door, etc. Even just the basic movement felt clunky, like you couldn't move as quickly as you should because the TV transition animation needs to complete. Add to that, there was way too much of it. It's TV mode for main story, TV mode for half of all side quests, TV mode multiple times every week for Hollow Zero. That's too much for a mode that already feels tedious and repetitive. The "dungeon crawler" aspect is also a lie, since Hollow Zero isn't nearly as randomized as it should be (map layouts are the same). Personally, I like the way the story was presented in 1.1 and 1.2. I'm fine with the main story being combat against trash mobs-that's literally what I am here for, the entire appeal of the game is the stylish combat. Ideally I'd like TV mode to be a compliment to the combat, but as it was in 1.0 it felt more like it was a distraction. The idea of the "rally" mode being the base gameplay with sections of TV mode for narrative/puzzle solving sounds really nice.
TV system is...visually unpleasant, and very sluggish to get through. If it's supposed to be an abstraction of the Hollow, it should have more visuals to reflect the sort of environments we're in. I know that's expensive from a development angle, but it would do a lot to make these areas feel more acceptable to play through. What I hate about the TV systems overall is how long they distract me from the combat. Some TV puzzles can be fun and even challenging, but it's not the reason why I play an action game like ZZZ. I feel like at least they could actually take away some of the animation flourish from the bangboo in order to make them get from point A to point B faster.
A couple issues with the TV. It breaks the flow of the story and combat. You can't see the agents, you can't interact with the environment, the TV mode is the illusion of interaction. It's telling us rather than showing us. Dialogue and instructions are way too easy to miss. While I don't think TV mode should fully disappear, I'd much rather guide eious or a cured belle and wise being able to go in the hollows themselves without issue. To go in myself rather than point and click it on TVs. And if you need to do the super hacker thing us a TV mode as a minimal and a toggle to hack. I do prefer genshin and honkai star rail's way of doing things. Another issue is TV mode is sluggish and really slows down the pacing. Add that to the slow character progression. It breaks immersion a lot.
If y'all didn't like the TV gameplay then just go play HI3, it's practically the same core gameplay mechanics, heck it's somehow much more elaborate than ZZZ.
"You can't tell the story without TV mode" I find flawed due to believing that somehow it's the ONLY way to tell the story, when it's purpose is to abstract what is actually happening. "Chapter 3 couldn't happen without the TV system," You're trying to tell me that the biggest gacha developer in the world can't model ghosts and lightbulbs to physically encounter? C'mon. TVs are a very conservative method of representing a scene, much like a set of stage directions for a play being performed for the actors. It's best benefit is it's efficiency as a script. That's also it's biggest problem; TV mode is playing the script, and people want to play the Play itself. It's not a lack of desire for narrative that so many defenders are trying paint criticism, quite the opposite; it's about having narrative not bogged down in disruptive analogy, events not being simplified into icons on a board that abstracts too much of the vibrant setting these moments are happening in.
this is definitely not the consensus lol, an abstracted board can absolutely tell stories just fine or else people wouldn't fucking watch DnD or other board game playthroughs (gloomhaven, frosthaven, etc). The TVs just aren't being used anywhere near their maximum potential, in ways where their strengths actually shine, not enough anyways (rapidly and continuously shifting maps, large environmental gimmicks, large map shifts).
Just like what you said and everyone said, so in my personal opinion, the problem is: 1. It's Unique but also too less of creative content and interaction that you can do in there. Especially in the main story, for example: - stage/level of difficulty - buff and debuff - puzzle For me, this game is not Rogue like game anymore since CBT2 because they just remove all stage of buff in the main story. I remember that we also can replay the Story stage in CBT1 till CBT2 not just Cutscenes, Manga and Visual novel in terms of story telling but they are just remove it in next CBT till the game release. Now It becomes Action RPG Hacked & Slash Puzzle game, just like HI3 but Fighting and Pary mechanic more than Complex Combo QTE. 2. It's Interesting but also waste of time, balance between TV, Battle and Story its not that good. If the Dev keep doing that, it can turn good to worse and eventually its gonna be less and less of interesting. What they do now I think it's the best decision they can come up with to improve it. But the cost is what we have right now until 1.4 or maybe more than that. I'm gonna be honest, if I have to play this game without TV, I'm better replay every chapter of HI3 or I better create another account to replay every Open World mode like APHO part 1-2. Seriously, it's much much better than this. I just hope that they will eventually found the good and better way to improve it. Thanks for this good video bro
The TVs will never truly work in the main story for one simple reason: puzzles In order for the TVs to not be railroaded sections just there to bog down speed they need to be actual puzzles. At that point they'd be engaging and interesting and it would feel like they have a real reason to be there. The issue is the average player can't handle more than square peg in square hole as a puzzle, so hoyo will never implement real puzzles in the main story or it with progress block a huge portion of the playerbase. Complex TV sections for side quests and events? Go hogwild, i would love that. But for the mainstory it's just never going to work.
Fairy will literally handhold you through the puzzle section right now if you still are too brain dead. This is a non-issue if the team actually had puzzle game designers on hand (which they appear to since some side content actually has passable puzzles). Even then, you can add a separate difficulty toggle to have fairy give hints or not give hints and let the player scratch it out themselves.
This... I don't want to read hours of monologue on TV mode, I already suffer for its puzzles... I want to disable tutorials as well, since I don't read them anyway.
The main problem is that the genre gap is too large. If it was a fullfledged dungeon crawler with action and everything that makes it fun, it wouldn't be so bad but currently it feels very disconnected. From 3D fully animated fast action to 2D "turn based" slow puzzle is just very painful for me. Imo they need to get rid of the boring TV grid and create a nice looking Map that you can freely walk around on as the characters you play, kinda like in bizarre brigade. (Check out Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX, I imagine it kinda like that.) I'll be real the way TV is rn I wouldnt even want it to be 1% of gameplay but I think if they work on the gameplay and visual presentation it might not be a lost cause.
I think people who don't enjoy the tv mode are just people who've never played any DS games as a child or are just casuals who only play one type of game lmao. I enjoy it alot, though I do agree it can be optimized and made harder and more engaging. Hollow Zero is a good example, the rouge like system is very fun to me. The new blitz mode is so boring without tv mode, there's no real like edge, I enjoy doing Hollow Zero and doing like 1HP runs, gaining pressure and losing health for Resonium.
First the developers said: - We will hear you and remove the TVs. Then the developers said: - Your opinion is not important, we will return the TVs. Useless mechanics, like the people who like it.
Well the removed it entirely and now its just discount honkai. Boring as hell. Honkai battlesuits are lightyears ahead in terms of kit complexity as well. Zzz characters feel like it was made 10 years ago compared to hi3. Well done devs. The game is permanently ruined and the proxies. they should be removed from the game. Now your MC is pointless and doesnt matter. The game is now for basic ass andy's who see flashy characters, drool and think the game is amazing.
There's a cool thing that us, Poxies, and Fairy is doing to the hollows(and tvs) - making them linear. Maybe they could emphasize the randomness of the hollows from the Agent's perspective so that the role of the player is elevated. I think that feeling is currently missing and ot was only hinted at during the prologue.
yeah, this! having sections of map just phase in and phase out (we get to see green and red markers of course as a preview) would emphasize way more that the world is shifting, add in cycles that we as the proxy have to catch and that would help a *lot.*
Handholding in games needs to happen after the player tried and failed, not before. That's a thing that all the Hoyo games are failing at. Think of the latest GoW, but a bit tonned down. Let the player play around the puzzle, then give them a hint. Give them a TV puzzle, if they are moving stuff around and not getting it for more than a minute, let the sibling give a hint, then an option for fairy to solve it automatically for the TV haters out there.
Please provide any feedback you have on the system as a whole and what you think about my yap session. stay civil
Am i the only guy who likes what they did with the TVs in chapter 2? with the piledriver sending you down a level in the hollow and later you have to manipulate the other two machines into position (that's not happening in 3d btw, if you want anywhere near reasonable dev times)?
Like, i feel more of that stuff is what the TV mode needs. It needs the map to shift and change, to not feel like a constant under your feet but more like the floating tiles in the distortion world (pokemon platinum). As a proxy maybe you get some warning markers and can anticipate the stuff happening before it does, but you don't control it per se, you react to it. Or you have to control your agents and/or tools remotely and move them into position yourself, from a distance (remote-control-ception, remote controlling eous to remotely direct your agents)
What are your thoughts about stages where you have to simultaneously (ish) control agents in a overworld and have eous fiddle around on a TV stage? I feel like it might be interesting if hard to manage, probably a side story thing.
I don't mean swapping like Automata's hacking, but rather literally split screen so you gotta keep them both moving and juggle it.
Maybe it'd just end up being swapping but worse...
Appreciate having a space to have an open discussion on the TV puzzles / dungeons.
Here's my thoughts
1) Why the TV gameplay is important
I believe it is part of the core identity of ZZZ. If you take that away, you end up with a "team of 3" action game too similar to Honkai Impact 3rd and it's contemporaries. The TV mode is the devs answer to making their game distinct and different. If it's taken away, something will have to replace it.
I do not think ZZZ will fare better without a unique pull
2) When the TV mode is at it's best
The world of ZZZ centers around dangerous hollows which are basically impossible to get out of without the assistance of a navigator, and they will eventually corrupt you the longer you're in them, until you turn into a monster
TV gameplay works the best when it reflects this feeling. For me, my favorite time playing ZZZ was during the 2nd beta, where there were commissions in which you were up against the time pressure of being corrupted, and had to make different strategic decisions to complete whatever the commission asked of you.
When ZZZ has the confidence to let you figure it out by yourself, and make your own mistakes, but you're able to get by with the skin of your teeth; that's when the game truly shines.
This isn't necessarily exclusive to the Hollow Zero mode either. Anytime those feelings and level of engagement is tapped into, no matter what the commission itself is; I would consider that "peak" TV mode content
3) What's happening with the TV mode
The core issue, after some reflection, is that I do not think the TV mode is being utilized in a way that shows off its strengths. Players feel that TV mode is intrusive, or hand-holdy, or it's not snappy enough. (All of these, and others too, are valid criticisms) I would add that other than the one-off, out of the way commissions, a good chunk of the main "critical path" commissions have TV gameplay that fail to convey that sense of danger, or let you make impactful decisions. Many of them have a gimmick that's introduced, and then the gimmick is gone before there's time to do anything substantial with it. It definitely smells of fledgling dungeon / puzzle designers with a shaky foundation, but improving as they go. Unfortunately, it may be the case that we never get to see the true realized potential of the TV mode, which would require time for the puzzle designers to perfect their craft
4) How this can be addressed
As someone who personally vouches for the TV gameplay, I want to see more of it, but I want to see *quality* TV content. I understand that a majority of players did not like the mode, and they have good reasons too. For now, it's probably a good choice to reduce the amount of it for main story content, and work on getting real good TV mode commissions for the optional side stuff you aren't required to do.
All said and done, we'll ultimately have to see these changes shake out
Thanks once again for letting us speak on this. Peace ✌️
The hollows are definitely meant to be "labyrinthine," and that's what carrots and proxies are for; they shift and mutate over time, so you need someone to guide you through these shifts.
But in the gameplay, the actual terrain only responds to enemies and the player, 99% of the time. There's no phasing in or phasing out on the map aside from what the player or enemies themselves cause, which is odd when people say "the carrot data will expire soon." Like, you can move back and forth 100 times and yet the map doesn't change, wdym "soon"? So that's one big way to improve the TV mode, make it feel like you're doing things; environmental hazards and map-scale gimmicks that only you as the proxy can predict and guide your crew around
Whether this means stuff like Into the Breach hazards (map falling away or everything on a tile being annihilated on a schedule) or distortion world sections where areas of the map phase in and out of existence or move on a cycle, or even "rifts" kinda stuff where enemies (or more map sections) pop out of an area (up to a maximum so you don't swarm people too hard, and they can still take time to plot how to close the rift optimally), we need stuff that makes the environment feel alive, monstrous even.
@@pallingtontheshrike6374
If we take Hollow Zero as an example, I think the ZZZ devs interpret "the hollows shifting around you" by going through floors or progressing the stage. When you complete a floor and a new layout emerges, or you get to the end of the Construction Ruins HZ (a specific example), and a new set of TVs show up to navigate, that _is_ the hollows shifting and being a maze. (From how I interpret what the ZZZ team gave us from a gameplay / ludonarrative sense)
That being the case, you don't see much of that at all during the Agent (in-game combat) gameplay at all. Other than the TV sections, you only see it visually in the CG cutscenes (sometimes).
It also could be expressed in a more direct way in the TV mode itself too. The corruption meter is already a mechanic, but it would be cooler and more impactful if the TV maps themselves actually change if you stick around in one spot too long.
My overall feeling is that the Hollows don't _feel_ as dangerous as they are supposed to be in-universe, and considering how much of that is up to the TV mode to properly convey that experience, I want it to be conveyed better.
Now, does the _rest_ of the community want that? Is that what the ZZZ devs want to do? Will they even be able to do it?
Food for thought
@@superbro6413 The thing is, "portals"/"floors" in ZZZ behave more like "new rooms" than the hollows actually having spatial/topographical anomalies, it needs some real-time or turn-based spatial distortion.
As for 3d parts, that's tough because a map shift like that is basically equivalent to a short prerendered scene in workload, it'd probably be better to actually modify the engine to handle "up is not up" and then warp the map into various shapes. But if they haven't laid the technical foundation for that it'll take a while
As for the community, the marketing was off for global, and the devs have been paying the price for these few months. But they ultimately decide who stays in the community and who doesn't, by how they change up the gameplay. If they really wanna compete, they're gonna have to bring more to the table than only combat.
@@pallingtontheshrike6374 Agree on all fronts there. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. If a vision can be seen from the gameplay experience we have now, Hoyoverse has the ground laid to really make something special.
It's gonna be a difficult path to get there though
You absolutely nailed it in the issues being: not seeing the agents, staring into a black void, and the Constant "handholding." All of that combined to take me out of the experience. I actually liked the TV sections in the beginning, but by the end of 1.0 I found myself checking out and losing interest which then made it difficult to keep caring about the story.
Removing the TVs also had an impact on the overall perception when it comes to Etherals. In older stories, they DIDN'T want to encounter them unless they add a good reason like for the Butcher suppression, that's why the fight were scarce. Etherals are extremely dangerous so it's better to avoid encountering any if possible. In 1.2, they are reduced to meaningless trash you kill by dozen every minute, which imo is so much worse from a story telling pov.
Not really. Trash they are. If they keep the danger of the hollows they'll still be relevant.
Also. No one cares about ethereals in the story. They canfar more about the agents they spend money for.b
good ol' SC2 hybrids syndrome
100% agreed. Just make players decide which perspective they want to play : agent (unga bunga), or Eous (unique tv system)
I don’t want to do the same thing over and over again.
Actually a good idea, since they already gave the option for Hollow Zero with the addition of Blitz mode.
I agree with everything. TVs should complement the action, not distract from it. A great example of when these two modes complement each other is the story of Zhu Yan and Qingyi.
One of the main problems when TVs was removed from the main story was that when in combat, there’re some dialogues appears in the top right, but because we’re concentrating in the combat, we usually miss those and can’t be seen anywhere unless replaying the whole stage. Those dialogues usually important to understand the depth of the characters relationships
this right here is the big problem that the devs need to solve asap, this is ruining the flow of the story and makes a lot of people ignore the dialogue because it's so far away from the action, the simplest fix to this is put it in the bottom center
That was always there even when tv mode was still around.
@@TheKingofHonoredOnes Sure, but I could stop and read the dialogues, I can't do that while engaging in combat now can I?
One other thing i feel we can add to improve is the tv mode gameplay on the phone. On phone, you can just tap the tv screen you want to go to. While it feels ideal at first, it become tiring in the bigger board in the tv especially if it's the dark area where i have to tap 1 tv at the time to go because of the limited vision. The other thing is when you drag your finger to move the camera to see other area on the tv board, more times than none you can accidentally tap on the previous tv and make you lose the camera control just to see eous move to the tv that you accidentally tap and have to in a hurry tap the nearest tv to stop eous. One solution that i think will help is to add a joystick or a d-pad control like the one in the arcade games for helping the movement in the tv. That way while you still can tap the tv to automatically move to that space, you also can move it by taping or holding the d-pad to move eous manually.
I actually fee the same way during 1.2, I felt that the proxy was not needed at all.
I enjoy the TV system and actually I try not to engage in battles and if I can skip encounters on the previous missions, I do so because I want to just stay in the TV and get to the end battle only not worry about trash mobs
Really glad you made this video after the discussion we all had in the stream.
This is the best and most complete critique of the tv system I've seen. I known it's unlikely but i hope someone at hoyo sees this
Great points. I agree with having something like 30% of main story be tvs where the mc can actually act like a "legendary proxy"
I hate tv system but also don't want this thing completely disappear , yeah you're right the main problem is we're can't see our agent in tv system and the tone of tv system is so plain , for short time mission maybe feels fine but if it come to more than 30 minutes tv system feels boring , just make it more colorful and flip the portion of tv system will help
I personally feel that if the devs want to remake the TV from the story before 1.2 and better integrate TV mode into the storyline in the future, they should aim for brevity while making it engaging, similar to a somewhat simplified approach in Rina's story quest. Just because the protagonists are proxies doesn’t mean any TV content should be completely justified. It’s like introducing a niche game to a wider audience, the goal isn’t just to present the 'niche game mode,' but to make it appealing to more people. Aside from a few exploration commissions and some story quests, it seems the dev team might be a bit too caught up in their own preferences when it comes to TV mode.
Before the ZZZ dev team gathers enough comprehensive feedback and creates a TV mode that appeals to the majority, they should harness HOYO’s traditional strengths to attract more players with their impressive development pace and stunning art and design, just like they did during Genshin versions 2.0 to 3.0, from Enkanomiya to the Chasm to GAA2. That level of production capacity is truly unmatched
I think it would be interesting to make part of the TV mode interactive, allowing players to control Eous to solve puzzles (in non-TV mode scenes) that assist the agents, or to switch perspectives between Eous and the agents. However, this might take up too much storage, so I’m not sure if it’s feasible
This is like, my fourth attempt to make my thoughts sound coherent, so bear with me a bit.
I think my biggest issue with the TV system genuinely does come down to the puzzles and the exploration not being engaging enough. You point out how the stuff we do in 1.2 is technically less involved because all we do is stand around a pillar, but imo standing around a pillar and solving the world's easiest puzzle before moving five blocks down aren't really that dissimilar to one another. At least, with the way they currently exist. Standing around pillars sounds boring on paper, but what made it enjoyable genuinely was that ZZZ's combat is fucking fun. When I'm participating in that activity, I'm not thinking "all I'm doing is standing around waiting for a meter to fill up" I'm engaging with the main appeal of the game.
TVs mode's puzzles, in contrast, just aren't good enough on their own to create the same type of experience. They often aren't complex enough to warrant much, if any, thought at all. Traversal is so scripted throughout the entire thing it never feels like I'm actually exploring. When I'm in the TV mode I *am* thinking "I am just moving Eous in a pre-meditated path until the game decides to give me more story." Despite being technically more player-involved, it feels more tedious because the gameplay just isn't engaging enough.
The combat in ZZZ is inherently variable to a degree. No one person is going to approach fighting those trash mobs in the same way. Whether because of a difference in combat style preference or the characters they own, it's easy to find your own fun during those moments. But TV mode is just. a visual novel spliced between some busywork. And don't get me wrong, I LOVE visual novels, it's why I genuinely adore HSR's dialogue-heavy, slow-paced main story quests, but imo TV mode offers the worst of both worlds for that type of storytelling rn.
I do hope I'm not coming across as too accusatory or anything here. I do really like ZZZ's story and I don't hate TV mode. I just think it can be vastly improved from what it is now. I do think moments like chapter 3's light puzzles and Rina's story show the potential, and I do want the TVs to stay, genuinely, but I can't say I'm all that surprised or upset to see this version of the TVs get axed. Hopefully whatever the team comes up with in the near future is able to satisfy enough people while not taking away from those who already enjoyed it.
imo the TV mode needed to take more from stuff like Into the Breach and Distortion world (pokemon platinum), the environment feels super fucking dead despite hollows being this thing where you have to "have up-to-date carrot data or risk getting lost."
Like, literally having it so that every once in a while a random batch of tiles will just phase out or a route will close off, and another batch of tiles phases in (and obviously you get warning beforehand cuz you're the proxy) and bam, suddenly walking around the dungeon isn't just "spam left" or "click tile super far away"
Or simulate gas vents where a corruption cloud spouts out, or have walls drop in via rifts, or...
you get the idea, just have hollows have gimmicks that do things aside from the player and enemies, make the labyrinth actually feel like "the belly of a (small) beast"
you see, the TVs are an amazing way to let us have more diverse stories and sections of quests that tell more complex stories, with minimal effort. removing the TVs on the new cheesetopia event, for example, made so that every quest was just talking to NPCs or fighting low level ethereals over and over on practically the same map.
imagine the number of different routes they could've taken with the TV, having different puzzles and occurences through the quests, instead of all of them being FIGHT MOB. WALK. FIGHT MOB AGAIN. WALK. FIND ITEM. FIGHT LAST MOB. END.
Id rather fight stuff and use my characters than do boring puzzles. I don't mind talking to NPCs, at least I get to see how they are part of that world, which is much more immersive.
They could add the tv part when the story requires the proxies to provide new route when they get blocked in the hollow by getting encrypted keys, or turning on/off a mechanism by hacking through different machines/computers. In this way majority of the story is combat and the TV will only appear if its needed.
Oh you mentioned what I said midway through the video.
bro is actually saving the game
Didn't know you could actually view dialogue history in TV mode, so yeah def lots of room for improvement there
It's funny you mention in the beginning that people don't really complain so much about the dialogue in HSR because people absolutely did, at least during Penacony in 2.1 and 2.2
@tactaillike Oh yeah, there were definitely people that complained, just not nearly as much as compared to what the TV mode is getting (especially in terms of CC'S)
@@AzrialVanity The dialogue complainers were there from the beginning and they are still with us. You must be forgetting about all the people who are crying to have a skip button, the same ones that praised wuwa for adding one. It's just hsr/genshin devs are fully ignoring that crowd. Technically you could just mash tap skip the dialogues, but with TVs, you have to actively engage with the board
I'm about 5 minutes in and will listen to the whole thing, but I want to get this off my chest and say we need to give the developers time to let them cook. It's very obvious this was a last minute decision and they need time to figure out how to implement the stories they want to tell through gameplay, especially one from Phaeton's perspective. It's very clear they did not make this decision lightly and the feedback against the TV system was overwhelming. Rolling back the decision now seems foolhardy.
I will comment again once I listen to everything. I appreciate someone actually opening discussion and not making this an "us vs them" situation like many others have.
Yes! I agree with the switching back and forth in real time.
Oh, one more thing. This is not directly related to TV, but it is about the support of the game on the phone. They really need to improve this part. Seriously, or they will lose a lot of mobile players in the future. In my country, to play this game, you need a phone that costs more than 10,000 baht, or about 307 US dollars. It is very expensive compared to HI3, GI and HSR, which do not need to rely on phones of that level to play the game comfortably. If it is difficult to play, just adjust the settings. But not for ZZZ, this game cannot even be downloaded to the device. So I would like to be another voice calling for the developer to improve this part as soon as possible. I like this game. I like its story. I think TV is interesting and unique. But now the reasons for me to play this game are getting less and less every day.
@topthch That's totally valid, and I should have mentioned an improvement to mobile in the video. Hopefully, as the game continues, they can find ways to optimize it to better run on mobile devices
For the “handholdyness” part, they should implement two modes, “story” and “challenge”. Challenge mode removes all of the panning that regards new doors opening and stuff, only keeping the panning for narrative events. Or they could call it “Fairy’s Enchanced Perception Mode” and have it be enabled by default.
I’d simply like to get into the character of a Proxy, having to remember the labyrynthine paths across the hollow.
@emberthecatgirl8796 they do already have the "hard" mode option for story so they could add that as a part of the hard mode!
@@AzrialVanity No! It needs to be pick and choose. People who want an immersive narrative that makes them feel like they’re Phaeton aren’t necessarily the most skilled fighters, and vice versa, people who play for the gameplay aren’t necessarily the brainiest of the bunch.
Combining Challenge Mode for combat witb Challenege Mode for exploration is a recipe for puzzle-loving people dropping the game due to the Twins kicking their ass, or for the people who eat Pompey for breakfast to drop the story alltogether after looking for a vault door for 10 minutes straight.
Sidenote: The few well-done TV segments made really feel like I was the Proxy, and it’s such a great thing that can’t be allowed to disappear.
@@emberthecatgirl8796 On launch it could've gotten away with being tied together, if it's introduced now it definitely should be separate because of hindsight.
main story TV segments imo need to have more environmental hazards. Now, to be clear, i have a bias towards environmental hazards (into the breach, FTL are among my favorite games) in games, but like. Imagine, if part of your job as guide was to forsee and navigate around sudden ether jets or falling boulders or a friggin hollow wildfire spewing noxious fumes. Or if the hollow was particularly unstable and shifted regularly and you had to know the cycle to get to where you wanted to be. I know some of this stuff is in side stories but like, it needs to be in the main story segments.
There's just so much cool design space to work with, and none of it is being utilized...
Haven't play zzz 1.2 story but I think in genshin and hsr, camera angles switching and focusing on different characters and scenery adds to the story experience too
I think the TV isn't bad at all IF it doesn't lock my camera to explain some boring stuff like push a box into this or do this and that. The target demographic for this game is adults, gameplays can be dumbed down for people who aren't too good at the game but you can't expect me to sit through a tutorial for 5yo's without letting me speed through it.
challenge mode needed to just turn off all the handholding (maybe even turn off all the hints entirely), not doing that was a big mistake.
the TV is an excellent narrative device, if you actually care about the story, you'll appreciate the value of TVs; it just so happens that a lot of people don't care about the story and they skip the entire thing to get to fights as soon as possible. my say is, fk what they want, go play an overworld game if you want to play an overworld game.
The main reason why these people complain is because they spam the skip button and have zero idea of what's going on so TVs feel like a waste of time, you can skip story in Genshin so you are forced to listen and watch; if you are going to experience a story it's better to experience the entire thing than half of it even if you hate the story. Because TVs are used as a narrative device, if you are already skipping half the story, the other half seems redundant. It's like being allowed to skip the first 2 episodes of a tv show then being forced to watch episodes 3, 6, 7 and 12: Without the surrounding context those episodes feel pointless and redundant.
couldn't have said it better myself
Ahh the classic defense of "people that don't agree with me are story skippers".
Trying to make broad assumptions about people who weren't fans of TV mode is not how you're going to prove it was good, no matter how much you ramble.
Completing ignoring the negative aspects of how TV mode HURTS the narrative and attacking the critic instead, is not going to convince anybody to switch sides.
The problem isnt the story telling elements its the gameplay elements.
It's not the story it's the boring gameplay and the awful visual presentation.
I wonder if the "agents in the overworld" thing would have offset the TV hate to an extent. As it is, you only see your agents in the combat gameplay, and the menus. If you could run around as who you own, as well as see them in combat... maybe it just wouldn't feel as egregious. We don't know right now since that's coming in 1.4. But the main story TV changes to previous story are also planned for 1.4 right? :(
I'm just ctrl+c ctrl+v from the stream's VOD, large amounts of text do be warned ⚠ ⚠
First of all I am a TV Enjoyer, second this is a list of all the points I caught were mentioned by chat and Azrial with my feedback and opinion attached to each of them, if you would like to copy this format and use it to give your own go ahead :D the .1 points are just the continuation of my feedback and opinion as well as my own conclusion. Also please don't comment if you don't have anything of value to say... Things like "Ain't reading that" "HOLY YAPPING" are fun as memes but stop the conversation from naturally flowing in the comments. And Azrial if you would like to ever use this comment and its responses to further expand the topic in a new video that would be great!
1.- Speed Up cuts off dialogue: Yes it does and it was mentioned in the Face to Face so they are working on it.
2.-Base Speed Increase: In theory it was already increased.
3.-Animation/Zoom Speed/Oversaturation: YES, this has been an issue from the beggining and I saw almost no one mentioned, things like Fairy asking if you want to open doors, recollecting Data, opening chests, etc. have no reason to be displayed EVERY SINGLE TIME after the "tutorial" so just get rid of it after that.
4.- Movement Speed too slow: This is imo not the issue, but instead point 3, no matter how fast you can traverse TVs if animations stop you in your tracks all the time.
5.-TVs being too hand holdy/easy: Here I think we can see the first point of conflict between people who tolerate/enjoy TVs and those who hate it, if you make the TV puzzles harder then TV haters will still complain, as they don't want to be stopped in any way from rushing things and entering combat, they simply don't like TVs no matter how they are implemented.
6.-TV Layout can have way more variety depending on which setting you are in: Extremely fair point, not only does this change make immersion better but it also just straight up makes TV more appealing to look at.
7.- TV Exploration vs Agent Exploration: While a major factor is the ability to see and use your Agents the main difference I find is the amount of work you have to do in order to move along the story: In TVs you have a gameplay style that may or may not be enjoyable (regardless of optimization) that you can't avoid, in 3d exploration you just need to walk from point A to point B to get to the combat
7.1.- In summary, people get into ZZZ expecting to enjoy combats since the game advertised itself as an Action Game, but then one of the major aspects players find thrown at their face and forced upon them since the beginning is TV mode, a mode that has NOTHING to do with combat and thus turns them away from the game since they didn't get on board to do mini games / puzzles and yet they are forced upon these mechanics that let's be honest do take a lot of time compared to combat aka the main aspect of an Action Game, not neccesarily that the TVs take fights away but that they are too many and too long in between fights (Not inherently a bad thing imho since I enjoy them, but from the PoV of someone who straight up joined due to sheer hype of having a game centered around it's combat I can see why they hate them)
8.- Balance between TVs and Combat: As of 1.0 TVs did take a ratio of 80-30 with the scarce fights that were thrown at us being 30 seconds long with TVs lasting several minutes in comparison (Massive ratio disproportion that I will elaborate further in point 8.1). Then as of 1.1 TVs take the first major step back with Jane's story being completely removed from it (Now arguably this was a side story that didn't involve Phaethon and thus made sense to not have it). Then finally we get to 1.2 where we are reintroduced to Phaeton's story and surprise surprise: TVs are not there finally confirmed to be removed and even introduced optional modes to Hollow Zero making TVs completely useless and funnily enough I think that was the only instance where I personally would have removed TVs since it's meant to be a sort of grindy mode that you do WEEKLY and it burns you out really fast whereas all the story TVs were unique and you are only meant to experience them "once" and then move on to new TV mechanics from their respective chapters.
8.1.- What people fail to realize is that Zenless combat is extremely simple COMPARED to other Action Games, be it gachas (PGR, Wuwa to an extent) or mainstream (Bayonetta, Devil May Cry) and thus becomes repetitive and monotonous real fast IF it's not engaging aka A CHALLENGE: Point in case, combat during story mode is extremely dull when it comes to a challenge as it's literally designed for casual players to be able to clear it by even giving trial characters in case theirs fall short... And here is where TV mode came in: It provided a way for non stop combat similar to 1.2 to not become dull and repetitive due to how low the difficulty is during the story. Now let me ask you something: Was the combat enjoyable during 1.2? For me it was the most tedious content TO DAY since I've already tried both Shiyu Defense Modes that require you to not get downed once and the combat even distracted me from dialogue during 3D exploration since I have to either focus on my gameplay or on the text on screen... This mind you didn't happen to me once during 1.0 and 1.1 (The latter to an extent since Jane's story was a side story of which most dialogue was blabbering between her and npcs) so take it as you wish.
To finish this I want to add my own perception of this issue: There are 3 kind of people right now which are TV enjoyers, TV haters and TV neutrals. Most TV Enjoyers jumped into the game already expecting TV mode alongside combat making their reception incredibly positive, most TV haters jumped into the game expecting a game HEAVILY focused on combat and how can we blame them? Hoyo did nothing to market the TV aspect of ZZZ outside of betas which made said TV haters even more displeased with TVs as their feedback was ignored in their eyes when the game launched with their inclusion being a major aspect... But I am going to have to be the devil's advocate here and tell TV Haters this: Devs have every right to choose which feedback to follow and which to ignore, and most feedback regarding the TVs during betas was "Remove it" and not "Improve it" :/ Devs had a vision and they stuck true to their guns which I really admire since I believed they achieved their objective: To grab a small loyal new audience unique to ZZZ (A mix of Dungeon Crawler and Action Combat, two already niche genres).
Sadly that's not what Hoyo as a company was expecting and thus resulted in this change in an attempt to lure back the more mainstream kind of players that left due to the presence of a niche gameplay, sadly I doubt that's ever happening at this point and many of the loyal players who stayed because they loved what ZZZ devs accomplished might now be leaving the game.
That's it, I never intended to say who's wrong or correct, just to share my thoughts and real dissapointment as one of said loyal players, I will continue to support Zenless as I believe firmly these are the best Devs any gacha game could ask for and can't wait to see what they do in the future :D And to quote these genius dev team "Well, in terms of feedback actually a player's feedback often times isn't necessarily what they really want".
As this content creator said. The TV mode should have a skip option. Hoyo should find a creative way to put a summuray for those story enjoyers that hate the TV Mode.
@@onelasada1707 there's a lot of logistical issues with putting in skips in a story-focused game... for starters, that means you'll have two wildly varying paces and playtimes to account for, which throws the design for a loop. There's asymmetry then, where if you can skip TV why can't you skip combat? at which point you might as well make two separate games. There's event stuff where maybe it's better to display an impactful cutscene in TV for narrative or budget reasons, but people who skip TV routinely just won't understand it.
sounds easy to "just add a skip option," but the more involved and invested you make the TV mode the more this becomes... just bad. Not to mention wasting development time on a portion that apparently "people will just skip." It's not a combat engine you build once and only make minor modifications to, these are entire dungeons that have to be designed and tuned each time.
@@pallingtontheshrike6374 This might be the reason for their decision to removed tv mode in the story going forward. Im curious what are the reduced tv mode looks like on earlier chapters, when version 1.4 comes out.
@@onelasada1707 Yeah unfortunately that nukes the character of ZZZ, and i feel like it might keep numbers higher in the short term but it'll scrap the game's main story quality in the long term.
@@pallingtontheshrike6374 I am beginning to think that ZZZ should have been a premium game rather than ftp game. At least at premium, they dont need sustaining player engagements and they will keep their artistic version (tv mode.
Nah, my feedback on TV sections is completely opposite than what you got. I don't mind TV sections replace combat. I don't even mind the handholdy problems or the TV zooms. The problem is that it sucks at telling the story because of the environmental design. This is always a problem you're going to get with overhead type perspectives because it means you're pulled out of the action to a certain degree, but it's especially bad when the TV design provides another level of abstraction and it feels like you're disconnected from what's going on.
Like, to give an example. At some moments, the characters are supposed to be in danger, right? Well, how are you supposed to tell that through a TV mode? The character expressions don't change, the TV mode makes it hard to get more than a vague sense of distance between characters in the scene, you can't feasibly depict reactions to the situation besides just some up-right-left-down movement. It's impossible to get any sense of what's happening besides the characters just saying "X is happening", and the perspective doesn't even focus on said dialogue. If you can't depict urgency because of it being turn-based, fine, but there should be a sense of perspective for other ingredients of tension, right?
Well, Ch. 3, the part you put as a counterexample, had that exact problem. Regardless of how "cool" the movement/puzzles are, it feels like padding because you're so disconnected from the reason that you're going out to go hit lightbulbs from how it was presented.
If the devs feel they need to break up combat with non-combat sections, I'm all for it. But it needs to actually do something that evokes a reaction out of the player.
Basically, the only point of feedback I actually agree with is some of the graphical things like changing the borders of TVs, etc.
It's possible to depict units in danger from a top down mode. but it's more "Environmental" or large scale danger than normal enemies.
in xcom when a sectopod charges its deathbeam (actually kinda a shitty move, it's better off moving at you and shooting you twice, but that's beside the point) or the Hunter (wotc) uses tracking shot, you get a spoopy animation of the thing taking aim and the tiles you're on (and the ones around it) all getting marked red.
Turn based. for the most part top down/isometric. But if you see at the end of the corridor a big shining dot at the end of a barrel, pointed at you, you know very VERY well you're in danger.
Alternatively, take stuff like walking bombs, or falling boulders, it's perfectly possible to represent them in top-down and feel the danger, you just need good sound design (and maybe a bit of screen shake).
I really enjoyed this video. I would consider myself mostly amongst the group mentioned around 20:20 who want to skip the tv section but still receive the storytelling. I agree that TV Gameplay CAN be very powerful in the right circumstances (Chapter 3, Rina's story), but I think the majority of what is currently in the game is not compelling. It's also true that Hoyoverse did not advertise the TV mode, and I think that it's a big problem that players have to play through a lotttt of mediocre TV mode gameplay before they reach the examples that most everyone agrees are good. Players should ideally feel EXCITED when engaging the tv system, because it should mean that we're doing something compelling there that can't be communicated to us another way, but I don't think that a majority of people who have tried ZZZ feel that way, and it could take some time and consistently high-quality TV gameplay to get to that point.
I agree that Belle and Wise should be kept at the center of the story (especially after THAT 1.2 lore drop scene, wow), and I think that 1.2 was probably initially written with more story for our proxies specifically inside the tv section, but I think that they can probably keep our proxies as prominent players in the story without them having to physically guide the playable agent characters in TV mode gameplay - they just haven't been trying to write it that way up to this point so far.
Great video, great discussion, and I'm certain that the game will continue to improve as more feedback (from both sides of the TV system issue) is understood and implemented in the game.
They way I always looked at it was that Belle and Wise are basically computer hackers so the TV array is coming from their computer screen or perspective of what they are seeing as they guide the Agents through the hollows and helping them get in and get out which is actually pretty unique and fun :)
What they could also do is just make like a TV mode game and put it inside the arcade. That way it would be like a whole seperate game mode and people could polay through it and get more of the game's story and lore that way.
Just an idea LOL!!
I’m probably in the minority but chapter 3 is my most hated tv mission and when you describe what that would be without the tv it’s sounds exactly the same as what we did with the tv we moved around in the dark and pressed f a bunch and if a ghost touched us we got sent back the visuals are different but the gameplay is the same
But overall I like the idea of swapping the tv over world ratio that sounds like a good fix for both sides
The only issue i have with tvs are the loading screen it causes when switching from tv to battle multiple times in a mission because i have a not that great pc so like think of a more efficient way to incorporate them but i love the tvs otherwise
Out of topic here but can I ask how to hide ui/dialogue bubble especially in comic mode because sometimes I wanna grab a screenshot but the dialogue is in the way of the cg/comic
For me I play zzz primarly based on vibes and half part of that is the tv mode so I really hope they get the best outcome for tv mode (sry for bad en)
@sunglassfrog89 unfortunately they don't have a hide UI button yet
They added on specifically for the scene with the MC at the chasm but it would be nice to have a hide UI button for sure
Good video bro 😊
Appreciate the video
The only problem I see on the TV system is amount of time it takes in the process.
they fix this with a fast forward option.
and it was actually a good fix. but I still feel like it's too time consuming.
and I figure the reason why it still feels that way is the amount of time you need to read some things, like reading 3 resonias, or reading other option when interrupted something else.
and you can't really do anything on that part. the only way they can fix those is by making a design system in which it is easier to pick something without reading the text, such as adding icons for card related to an elements or add recommended/suggested tag for you to easily pick the best rosania
do you think if the resonia system is simplified to be like in Bizarre Brigade where it shows icons and numbers will be better and save more time?
I solved that part by not reading them and picking whatever have my dps/stunner element on its name/first lines. It's not like I need them anyway, I compensated the lack of characters by investing all resources in two teams that can clear even when the enemy isn't weak to their elements.
I think so too. The TV mode sometimes has too complex systems you have to keep in mind. It should be quick, simple and do something that the normal gameplay mode cannot do. I feel like most people also have an issue with the TV mode because of the amount of reading you have to do. Reduce the complexities so people dont have to stop and read a paragraph to understand something. What to do next should be intuitive just by looking at the screen and the icons. Reduce the amount of micro animations that happen so that everything feels quicker. Fairy interrupts too frequently at times, a genius artificial intelligence should know when to shut up.
how about a fairy auto mode, for tv sections, this provides an optional solution for tv haters just to look at the screen and see fairy autoplaying the tv sections
No, it isn't going to save my time. I want to skip/delete it instead... It's not like they have to remove it, but honestly I hate it, I only enjoy combat and I deeply hate any puzzle, any long conversation and all useless "exploration" things where you just run in circle to waste your own time. And I hate these things on Genshin as well. I like the skip for a very simple reason: when I don't care, I can skip. Sadly I can't skip the whole dialogue on tv mode, nor skip all pointless linear exploration, nor avoid puzzles, which are things that stress me and I want to relax killing stuff... I don't play to stare at the screen waiting for the end of a monologue, nor to stress myself thinking.
@heymeowcat as @nanakomatsu7425 mentioned, the players that would utilize the skip button would rather skip the whole thing then watch fairy auto complete it on screen due to the skip actually saving time.
Just wanted to note that I've been enjoying myself a lot without the TVs currently and the story is better for it as well. Being able to interact with things on the rallye stages has been much better and more immersive.
Something I've been thinking about since your stream is we did focus a lot on what was bad about the TV system and whilst it was needed getting rid of the bad wont make people like something unless there is some good underneath, conversely alot of bad can be overlooked if the good is just that good.
Also I dont think the lack of TV in the marketing is an explanation. What this argument is really saying is that people wouldnt complain as much if they knew before hand that doesnt make the TV system good/better.
@GhostEmblem Talking about what makes the system is good is very important as well, which why I tried to mention at the start why I think it's important to keep. I could have gone into more detail but I wanted to keep the video somewhat shorter in length to stay digestible.
As for the marketing conversation, I wasn't necessarily saying the marketing would have made the TV system better, but it would allowed the crowd who didn't like it to not even try the game. But now there are tons of players that started the game and got invested story wise but dislike the TV system and now we have such a huge split on haters/enjoyers. So less of marketing would have made it "good" and more like it would have brought in/kept away a more consistent crowd.
I think Tv mode needs to be a safe space in cases of emergency + breathing rooms and so on with also combats too, I'll explain.
On hollow zero, as of now the most polished tv system, you have the risk/reward between the use of gear coins, health, corruption and resonias present, all of them impacting on combat, where it helps on to have breating rooms + preparations between short battles, elites bosses and at the end the final boss. This formula may need a change since gameplay wise it can even be interchangable as of now by the new mode where you can only play combat. This I think is due to the combat + all of their complements being towards combat itself making it more attactive in regard of the place where all the focus and bonuses are in, when at the end if you end up just practicing all day non stop, the skill ceilling will be reached when is already at some cases creative, not on par with the issues some people had with TV mode which has a big potential + also is realistic as the part job encommended between proxys and agents on a mission, cause if its all agents, then our protagonist would be left even so they have all this built up lore that has between their studies, relations and motivations of being proxies, the complexity of being there + being safe of ether corruption, something that it is not nice and can be a very serious issue.
Lorewise, TV mode needs to be a place where we have a big purpose with other storytellings where agents are not present unless they are stated to have similar skills to us. Both being an onfield agents + proxy has its risk, so maybe there should be also a kind of skill ceilling to attrack at first glance that the TV system is more complex that it is, since its mostly very simple + is mostly fun, when in reality there are lots of vulnerabilities and exposure of being an agent + netrunner/proxy on the job. We already now the risk of being on combat since if we risk it too much, we may end up with knocked out teammates, which only can be revived with either if already onfield having a heart revive (probably some of eous bonuses found on TV mode too), but us as Eous we don't have any risk of being there, rather than just disconnecting with the agents on mission, which is still something that is still not impactful since we asume we will always be able to connect to them again (chapter 1 for example when they got hacked). There must be some risk on 1. storywise being a proxy, also to incorporate some heavy stuff where if not handle properly you could screw your agents, but also viceversa where agents need to keep on eous too, since its valuable on the mission cause if not with him, their route would be lost.
Mostly rambling right now, but would probably need to incorporate a more cruesome + more risky way of showing the gameplaywise atractiveness of boing a proxy so to motivate to us to be able to have motivations to go threre and have the comfort of being a proxy, maybe even get events on story + limited or with currency to improve even more the TV experience so to feel like we also have a direct impact on improving the TV system, not only provided by devs and to have the ilussion of being proxies, since the ilussion of the tension in combat is already done and is good too.
Where as the upgrades of the TV system, rolewise would be needed to have a big + comfortable space to improve on and make it personal, since its mostly us as belle/wise and could focus on even making them more appealing characters appart from the agents you pull for gacha. Even if possible if you could multiplayer explore a TV space would be cool since on the world there are supposed to be various proxies already, so it can even mean so to help feel like Belle/Wise are not the only ones there taking commisions and have a more marked identity as Phanteon on the Inter-Knot, since it needs to help to complement the combat + give an insentive for players to come back to zzz and say "today I want to do some TV commisions" also having Arcade (the new gamemode is awesome too feels more bigger the world by having that + helps to make the world feel alive since it is real to release new games on the game's arcade), combat commisions and works at hollow zero to complement. Actually lorewise there are 4 to 5 spaces or more where as Agents/Proxys are involucrated respectively.
Balance will be a virtue to keep in hand and mantain TV mode, hope it stays. Also to please hope the devs have more media inspiration via games or other media where they could explore the gameplay relation and mix between a Job done of Proxy(netrunner/hacker/eous) + Agents on field.
will comment till this since I burned my mind trying to explore creatively how to develop TV mode and its impact on lore so to have a bigger purpose as of why is being used in the first place in a Proxy's bussinesses plan.
Without TV, this game is like any other ARPG, aside from having 'retro vibe'. There is absolutely no reason to play it for combat alone, when WuWa exists and has a strictly better version of this combat. TVs added so much soul to the game and made it unique. There were many solutions to fix it, but they axed it instead, since they're mainstream and a 'lowest common denominator' doesn't even want to solve a simple puzzle before 'combat'.
A smoother transition to combat while in tv will have such a big impact the connection loss thing is jarring
This is a follow-up to my previous comment now that I watched all of your video. First, I appreciate the open discussion. Again, the sudden influx of people defending the TV system often operates on bad faith and that goes nowhere.
Short Version: Just make TV Mode more meaningful to combat.
Long Answer:
I like the TV system. The best part of the game me was Chapter 3, and a large part of that was due to the atmosphere, music, and banter during the TV system. However, there's a lot about the TV system's design that is very hit or miss. When it's fun, it's very fun. But when it's boring, it's torturous. It's a very polarizing experience to play in the TV system. I would say I'm in the middle of this, who enjoys the TV system for what it is, but the overall execution has been very poor.
When you say at 10:13 that there has to be a compromise, I feel this isn't actually the case. As you've noted, there has been two years worth of hate on the TV system, but I think it's important to say it has only gotten larger since the release of the game. The Zenless team has tried to rebalance the frequency of TV Mode in the past. Perhaps they didn't take the problem as seriously as it should have during that time, but they did try. Since then, it's only gotten worse. The primary issue brought up in the video regarding the Agents' presence isn't even actually true. There's a story mission where you use Anton to one-shot enemies in TV Mode in order to solve a puzzle, and there's a lot of the agents' presence in multiple main stories where you see them doing stuff, you just don't see the character models in place. So maybe I'm missing the context of the actual stream conversations, but the argument here feels off.
With that out of the way, I want to strike at the heart of the matter. Here's the thing that MUST be acknowledged: Zenless Zone Zero is a combat/action focused game. To say it isn't would be intellectually dishonest. People went into Zenless expecting the game to be combat focused. So when people say the TV System "gets in the way" of combat, it may be objectively nonsense, but the important thing to take from this is the sentiment. The general audience wants to play combat.
TV Mode, as it is right now, is completely divorced from what you do in combat. They are completely separate modes, yet they share equal importance. This is extremely polarizing no matter how much you slice it. Sure, you can do a 70:30 split or even a 90:10 split, but that doesn't fix the underlying issue that TV Mode has NOTHING to do with the action-focused aspects of the game whatsoever...
...Except in Hollow Zero. I think what I find interesting that when people complained about the TV system, they often state that the rogue-like mode is actually fun, and I believe the strongest reason for that is because what you do in the TV Mode within Hollow Zero directly affects your agents for combat. This is the missing puzzle piece here, and it's something Zenless is already doing.
Just make TV Mode more meaningful to combat. That's literally the answer.
First I appreciate you taking part in the discussion! It's the only way we can get solid feedback to the devs.
The reason I say there has to be a compromise is as I said in the video they are a company that wants to make money so they are going to try and appease/retain as many players as they can. They have already backtracked on saying they will remove the TV system from main story and stated that instead of removing they will enhance it slowly.
As for the agents being present, Yes, they do have moments where the agents show up in the TV and do something but it does not happen OFTEN enough, and not in a way that players feel like they are actually doing something. They want to SEE the actual character not just an image of the character on the TV as it moves around. That was like the largest feedback is that they want to see the characters.
You are correct that the modes are very different and will still be polarizing no matter what the split is, but allowing the split to be more Rally style will appease more players overall. As far as it "getting in the way of combat" again when compared to other games the amount of actual "combat" you are getting in the story is around the same, the presentation of the story is just different. It FEELS like a combat section is being taken away when in reality it's not.
I do agree that yes the TV should make an impact to the combat sections and that's why I think the method listed would work, they could not only have the small TV sections open up path for the agents but could find resonia along the way or something to impact the agents more making it feel more cohesive.
@@AzrialVanity Thanks for the quick response, and sorry that I didn't respond sooner, I got busy as soon as I was done posting this.
Before I respond to anything else, can you tell me where they backtracked their decision?
@HeroMysticLYX They posted it on Twitter!
x.com/ZZZ_EN/status/1839209107171008690?t=UEHo3olW1jCuxK0GL6xgRA&s=19
The only mode in which they said it was being "removed" was main story and now they said "INSTEAD" of removing they will improve. So it will be in main story again.
@@AzrialVanity Nice, thanks for that. I guess this is what I get for hating Twitter and not wanting to be on it. 😆
This changes my stance then. I almost entirely agree with what you've said on the video since the Zenless team hasn't given up on this. I do think your approach can work, but I really think taking Hollow Zero's approach and doing something similar in story missions would work better.
An example I thought of is during a TV mode section, correctly solving optional puzzles would provide benefits to your agents when it's time for combat. Maybe they'll get status buffs, or maybe it weakens a wave of what would otherwise be overpowered Elite mobs.
Providing the players a choice to play as Phaeton or your agents for a mission can also be a fair approach. Doing the mission as agents gives you a Rally commission where Phaeton's gameplay is minimal, but doing the extra objectives would be harder, while playing as Phaeton would be BAU.
Aside from making tv mode more combat friendly, there's the alternative option (imo) of making it more lore-friendly and pulling in actual exploration value.
Sure, zzz is advertised as a combat game, but many games have components that aren't the forefront of the advertisement and yet are still liked, because they *bring enough other value.*
There's no pokemon battles or wild pokemon in the Distortion world aside from giratina (i haven't kept up to date with new gens so you'll just have to deal with the old example), and the puzzles there are pretty unique, but because it's so jarringly different, and it goes hard on the exploration side, it gets a pass. Of course it helps that the distortion world is a one-off thing and the payoff for a game-long setup, but still. It has impact, so players stick through it (afaik anyways).
TV mode as of right now mostly only reacts to what you as the player, or a small number of key enemies/adversaries do. Which means it's just bog standard 2d dungeon crawl and not really the good kind like spelunky or proper roguelikes (not roguelites).
But there's design space here, specifically carved out by the lore; hollows are supposed to morph and shift and have various gimmicks and "illogical" stuff in them. So, the TV space should reflect that, beyond just waiting for the player to press a button or go past a checkpoint.
Tiles should phase in and out, walls should freely break or move, hazards should abound all over (ether "dustclouds," random-warp fissures, rockslides, fires, etc etc etc etc). Full-map/aura based environmental effects should be active, including but not limited to stuff like corruption. Maybe enemies could be inactive until various levels of "ether activity," increased by stepping next to enemies, or on 'unstable tiles' that shift around.
And then there's the option of just bombing the shit out of certain tiles every X turns like Into the Breach does (lmao), or setting up buildings that you have to defend by remotely manipulating two teams, or...
well, you get the idea.
ZZZ can't compete with ALL the other team action games on the market right now with just its combat alone, and the initial marketing being so focused on the combat was kinda justifiable on the CN side (flashy low-floor high ceiling combat does what it needs to for CN audience) but doesn't fit the bill for the kind of story and design they want as far as western audiences would interpret it (the slight lost-in-translation isn't helping). Imo, trying to hunker down on the combat aspect is sunk cost fallacy, it's better to cut off the hardcore combat focus on the marketing and shift to more general "dungeon rpg" with a side of combat and develop the TV mode into it's own thing.
I believe that the TV feature in the game could have been more extensive. I disagree with the game designers' decision to remove the TV feature, as I think it had a negative impact on the game. In the story update, the TV system was there to break up the constant fighting in the game. Therefore, I agree with the game designers when they mentioned that sometimes gamers don't know what they want, but I want to emphasize the word "sometimes". The TV system was originally integrated into the game, but the main characters we play as do not interact with it in the story now. What's the point of use now? It feels boring and pointless.
I think what's unique to zzz is how we can play as phaeton to navigate through the dynamics of the hollow. It doesn't have to be the current tv mode
I hope they can replace it with something better, not an empty map like in this version because obviously most players want the tv back now
Just have to say, even though they blend in, my eyes went right to Mushroom. Sorry Vanity all the ❤haha
The Mascot!
I made sure she was there as a sort of Subway surfers distraction while I yap LMAO
My problem is that it feels really clunky. Movement feels laggy to me. You mention that you don't like sections with needless walking from A to B... and the TV mode feels like that's 80% of the "gameplay" there. There are a lot of old school square-grid turn-based dungeon crawler games, and they work because they have a lot more going on - items, treasure collection, and more than one solution to a given problem. TV mode right now is 100% on rails, and as a result there's nothing in there that requires any skill whatsoever.
There's a lot of times where you're stuck moving one square at a time on the phone and it's just tap-tap-tap with nothing actually happening. A lot of the puzzles are way too simple, which is fine for content that you need all players to be able to clear, but they need to put in some optional puzzles that are actually difficult. I find "solving" trivial puzzles about as engaging as Chutes and Ladders.
There's a lot of potential here, but there needs to be more going on, and it needs to be fluid.
I liked TV mode in theory, I love dungeon crawlers. My problem with the mode is that it is way too repetitive and tedious. A lot of slow repeated animations, lots of repeated dialogue for every single gear coin door, etc. Even just the basic movement felt clunky, like you couldn't move as quickly as you should because the TV transition animation needs to complete. Add to that, there was way too much of it. It's TV mode for main story, TV mode for half of all side quests, TV mode multiple times every week for Hollow Zero. That's too much for a mode that already feels tedious and repetitive. The "dungeon crawler" aspect is also a lie, since Hollow Zero isn't nearly as randomized as it should be (map layouts are the same).
Personally, I like the way the story was presented in 1.1 and 1.2. I'm fine with the main story being combat against trash mobs-that's literally what I am here for, the entire appeal of the game is the stylish combat. Ideally I'd like TV mode to be a compliment to the combat, but as it was in 1.0 it felt more like it was a distraction. The idea of the "rally" mode being the base gameplay with sections of TV mode for narrative/puzzle solving sounds really nice.
TV system is...visually unpleasant, and very sluggish to get through. If it's supposed to be an abstraction of the Hollow, it should have more visuals to reflect the sort of environments we're in. I know that's expensive from a development angle, but it would do a lot to make these areas feel more acceptable to play through. What I hate about the TV systems overall is how long they distract me from the combat. Some TV puzzles can be fun and even challenging, but it's not the reason why I play an action game like ZZZ. I feel like at least they could actually take away some of the animation flourish from the bangboo in order to make them get from point A to point B faster.
A couple issues with the TV. It breaks the flow of the story and combat. You can't see the agents, you can't interact with the environment, the TV mode is the illusion of interaction. It's telling us rather than showing us. Dialogue and instructions are way too easy to miss. While I don't think TV mode should fully disappear, I'd much rather guide eious or a cured belle and wise being able to go in the hollows themselves without issue. To go in myself rather than point and click it on TVs. And if you need to do the super hacker thing us a TV mode as a minimal and a toggle to hack. I do prefer genshin and honkai star rail's way of doing things. Another issue is TV mode is sluggish and really slows down the pacing. Add that to the slow character progression. It breaks immersion a lot.
If y'all didn't like the TV gameplay then just go play HI3, it's practically the same core gameplay mechanics, heck it's somehow much more elaborate than ZZZ.
devs need to see this
"You can't tell the story without TV mode" I find flawed due to believing that somehow it's the ONLY way to tell the story, when it's purpose is to abstract what is actually happening.
"Chapter 3 couldn't happen without the TV system," You're trying to tell me that the biggest gacha developer in the world can't model ghosts and lightbulbs to physically encounter? C'mon.
TVs are a very conservative method of representing a scene, much like a set of stage directions for a play being performed for the actors. It's best benefit is it's efficiency as a script.
That's also it's biggest problem; TV mode is playing the script, and people want to play the Play itself.
It's not a lack of desire for narrative that so many defenders are trying paint criticism, quite the opposite; it's about having narrative not bogged down in disruptive analogy, events not being simplified into icons on a board that abstracts too much of the vibrant setting these moments are happening in.
this is definitely not the consensus lol, an abstracted board can absolutely tell stories just fine or else people wouldn't fucking watch DnD or other board game playthroughs (gloomhaven, frosthaven, etc).
The TVs just aren't being used anywhere near their maximum potential, in ways where their strengths actually shine, not enough anyways (rapidly and continuously shifting maps, large environmental gimmicks, large map shifts).
Just like what you said and everyone said, so in my personal opinion, the problem is:
1. It's Unique but also too less of creative content and interaction that you can do in there. Especially in the main story, for example:
- stage/level of difficulty
- buff and debuff
- puzzle
For me, this game is not Rogue like game anymore since CBT2 because they just remove all stage of buff in the main story.
I remember that we also can replay the Story stage in CBT1 till CBT2 not just Cutscenes, Manga and Visual novel in terms of story telling but they are just remove it in next CBT till the game release.
Now It becomes Action RPG Hacked & Slash Puzzle game, just like HI3 but Fighting and Pary mechanic more than Complex Combo QTE.
2. It's Interesting but also waste of time, balance between TV, Battle and Story its not that good. If the Dev keep doing that, it can turn good to worse and eventually its gonna be less and less of interesting.
What they do now I think it's the best decision they can come up with to improve it. But the cost is what we have right now until 1.4 or maybe more than that.
I'm gonna be honest, if I have to play this game without TV, I'm better replay every chapter of HI3 or I better create another account to replay every Open World mode like APHO part 1-2. Seriously, it's much much better than this.
I just hope that they will eventually found the good and better way to improve it.
Thanks for this good video bro
the two exploration missions we had in 1.2 were more fun than most combat missions....
The TVs will never truly work in the main story for one simple reason: puzzles
In order for the TVs to not be railroaded sections just there to bog down speed they need to be actual puzzles. At that point they'd be engaging and interesting and it would feel like they have a real reason to be there. The issue is the average player can't handle more than square peg in square hole as a puzzle, so hoyo will never implement real puzzles in the main story or it with progress block a huge portion of the playerbase.
Complex TV sections for side quests and events? Go hogwild, i would love that. But for the mainstory it's just never going to work.
Add an option for Fairy to solve it if the player can't
Fairy will literally handhold you through the puzzle section right now if you still are too brain dead. This is a non-issue if the team actually had puzzle game designers on hand (which they appear to since some side content actually has passable puzzles).
Even then, you can add a separate difficulty toggle to have fairy give hints or not give hints and let the player scratch it out themselves.
Allow people to skip tv content like you can skip story… some people like the gameplay. And don’t care for story.
This... I don't want to read hours of monologue on TV mode, I already suffer for its puzzles... I want to disable tutorials as well, since I don't read them anyway.
gamers not beating the functional illiteracy allegations
The main problem is that the genre gap is too large. If it was a fullfledged dungeon crawler with action and everything that makes it fun, it wouldn't be so bad but currently it feels very disconnected. From 3D fully animated fast action to 2D "turn based" slow puzzle is just very painful for me.
Imo they need to get rid of the boring TV grid and create a nice looking Map that you can freely walk around on as the characters you play, kinda like in bizarre brigade. (Check out Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX, I imagine it kinda like that.)
I'll be real the way TV is rn I wouldnt even want it to be 1% of gameplay but I think if they work on the gameplay and visual presentation it might not be a lost cause.
I think people who don't enjoy the tv mode are just people who've never played any DS games as a child or are just casuals who only play one type of game lmao. I enjoy it alot, though I do agree it can be optimized and made harder and more engaging. Hollow Zero is a good example, the rouge like system is very fun to me. The new blitz mode is so boring without tv mode, there's no real like edge, I enjoy doing Hollow Zero and doing like 1HP runs, gaining pressure and losing health for Resonium.
First the developers said: - We will hear you and remove the TVs.
Then the developers said: - Your opinion is not important, we will return the TVs.
Useless mechanics, like the people who like it.
edgelords are really everywhere, wow
Well the removed it entirely and now its just discount honkai. Boring as hell. Honkai battlesuits are lightyears ahead in terms of kit complexity as well. Zzz characters feel like it was made 10 years ago compared to hi3. Well done devs. The game is permanently ruined and the proxies. they should be removed from the game. Now your MC is pointless and doesnt matter. The game is now for basic ass andy's who see flashy characters, drool and think the game is amazing.
TV's are good, y'all are just tweaking
It was hated since Beta, you just want to be a contrarian.
@@Jellomancy Nuh uh
There's a cool thing that us, Poxies, and Fairy is doing to the hollows(and tvs) - making them linear. Maybe they could emphasize the randomness of the hollows from the Agent's perspective so that the role of the player is elevated. I think that feeling is currently missing and ot was only hinted at during the prologue.
yeah, this! having sections of map just phase in and phase out (we get to see green and red markers of course as a preview) would emphasize way more that the world is shifting, add in cycles that we as the proxy have to catch and that would help a *lot.*
Handholding in games needs to happen after the player tried and failed, not before. That's a thing that all the Hoyo games are failing at. Think of the latest GoW, but a bit tonned down. Let the player play around the puzzle, then give them a hint. Give them a TV puzzle, if they are moving stuff around and not getting it for more than a minute, let the sibling give a hint, then an option for fairy to solve it automatically for the TV haters out there.
Someone send this to Hoyo HQ, please...
For the marketing - not a single trailer in HSR showed a second of turn based combat, this isn't really an issue