I think the biggest problem for tv mode to me was that its so hand holdy in the main quest, i love some of the tv mode side quests in ZZZ, but in the main quest have some of the most brain dead objectives made for the lowest common denominator. besides that sometimes the controls are clunky, like why do i need to wait for the animation to finish before I can move to the next square. Less tv but higher quality is definitely good
I can't tell you how many times I immediately wanted to turn the game off once I encountered a puzzle, and then was immediately interrupted and told the answer to it before I was allowed to even try to figure it out for myself. Pretty much every TV segment outside of the main story is decently well done, but for some reason they made it almost completely unenjoyable to play it in story mode.
Same. I like thr gemeplay but you can tell most of the story was tutorial after tutorial for a gimmick you'll see twice outside of the main story. Like playing level 1-1 of mario bros for every level in each new world but now here is the tutorial for springs and ice physics but it's still level 1-1. They should focus now on doing TV mode that actually requires using what was learned. That's why it felt wasteful. But I liked how they convey the story during tv, except text would quickly disappear sometimes. This is worse for people who.play in japanese but don't speak it, cause they gotta read and text is gone in a blink
I don't understand why they didn't just remove the long animation before trying anything else. Cut off dialogue is harder problem but it's ALSO a problem in combat and... Just having a log would go a long way...(wouldn't solve the issue but definitely remedy it for now)
I personally didn't have the feeling that wise and Belle weren't there when I played. I kinda knew in my mind that they were there. I feel the better question is: why didn't they interact via their Bangboo with the Calydon Crew while in the hollow? I feel the writers just made them quiet.
They were quiet because they weren't given the space to be part of the story. Phaeton and Fairy were pretty much taking a backseat the entire time and that made their role to the story almost irrelevant. They were so important that the Sons of Calydon went out their way to contact Phaeton and offer a deal. And yet, name one thing that Phaeton and Fairy did that was so integral, so important to the goals of the Sons of calydon during this chapter? If you can't name more than the mission where they collected hollow data, then you got the answer as to why they were quiet the entire time. It's not that they didn't have dialogues. There just weren't opportunities to begin with
I think that the Phaeton role is really undeveloped since the beginning of the game. It's agents who do the fighting, right? And proxy is supposed to navigate them through the Hollow - and TV mode doesn't feel like navigating anything, I'm afraid. Even in missions like Save hacker Rain, where we were going through the Ballet Twins (TV mode heavy), only cutscenes with Eous were a reminder that there's a proxy somewhere. But from the storytelling point of view it's absolutely ok - Phaeton serves as a tool to bind others' stories together - they don't have to be a part of these stories. For example they could've just been bartenders, listening to agents' stories. I don't think that I like it a lot though, because the whole Proxy-Agent thing doesn't work for agents from NEPD, nor Victoria, nor Soldier 11 - they're not mercenaries like Cunning Hares - meaning this aspect of storytelling is just completely broken. Uh. Idk what my point is. Maybe it's that ZZZ may have some nice characters, but it doesn't do a good job in creating a good story - but maybe I want too much from a waifu gacha game (still like it tho)
I am taking classes to learn how to make 3D assets for games rn, and one thing I can say for sure is that TV mode is a godsend for storytelling and the story missions will become very boring without it. The TV mode allowed the writers to get creative with the locations and the obstacles that the characters face during story missions. I know for a fact that it is impossible within 6 weeks between updates to create entirely bespoke custom rooms with puzzles and uniquely designed or animated encounters. People will complain about TV mode being tedious now, but how is a series of empty room -> combat -> hallway -> repeat, going to be less tedious in the long run. I think chapter 3 is a great example. With TV mode they were able to create a spooky atmosphere, play around with light and darkness as a puzzle mechanic, and create the layout of an abandoned theater full of ghosts to explore; all without ever creating any new 3D models or environments. Plus, as other people have pointed out, you actually get downtime to hear the characters speak and banter, rather than all the dialogue and character development being crammed into endless text boxes like genshin. The voice acting and implementation of the story through tv mode and cutscenes is what has actually made me care about the story in this game where other mohoyo games have failed. I mean the cinematics are great as always, but they are undermined by depriving us of the opportunity to spend time with the characters. And for people who only care about gameplay, realistically the only interesting gameplay we got in 1.2 was
imo it also kills the immersion of playing story mode for most people (majority that didn't like TV mode). Examples, when there's a quest supposed the ballet twins dancing gracefully but because of the limitation of TV mode it just looks like they going left and right and not actually dancing. Besides, the tension between the enemies and allies doesn't exist at all in main story and u just see two screen TV with simple animation that showed they are arguing and fighting.
@@DANNYWEEBS Yeah I agree, but I’d rather have a an implication of something happening where you imagine it for yourself than have nothing happen at all. Simply put, they can have a scene of two characters arguing and the ballet twins dancing using tv more, but they cannot do that in a real 3d rendered scene. There is just not enough time to model and animate all that. They would have to take away time and effort from the cutscenes to do it and you’d end up with more stuff of lower quality across the board.
I completely agree! Exploring the Ballet Twin in combat mode with full spookiness would have been awesome, but given the time constraint, TV mode is the best method to deliver it. It leaves so much for the player's imagination while building tensions. The combat mode maps feels repetitive very fast. The TV mode creates the illusion it is a lot bigger.
the thing is that the also marketed the game as an action game for the most part. The reaction towards the tv mode is understandable when the audience they attracted is the action game audience not the puzzle one. The comms felt fine to me since the story was about the SoC for the most part. It was like in Chapter 2 with belobog. The belobog characters did most of the talking in those quests because it was about them.
The only reason I started playing zzz is the combat and character designs. I actually had no idea the puzzles were in the game till I played it for the first time.
I think ZZZ needs to start doing actual puzzles that challenge people with alk the gimmicks they already introduced. It felt like endless gimmick tutorials but I want the tv gameplay to stay and be what it really should be. I'd even like some of it in a roguelike enviroment that gives us some more boss scenarios to tackle for rewards. I'd play that endlessly. I really like hollow zero but there's not much variety there anymore so it's now mostly Z-merits and repeat
If the temporary removal of TV mode means better and especially harder puzzles in TV mode, I could celebrate it. That said, 1.2 doesn't fill me with confidence. One was good (the Steam World Dig-ish exploration mission) and one was dreadful (the extremely generously described 'maze' bike exploration mission) and the biggest problem both had was they were too easy. Which grinds my gears cause they are clearly willing to put in hard content not everyone is going to be able to clear (see some of the new battle missions and Shiyu Defense, and the high difficulty blitz hollow zero
yeah, need stuff like other dungeon crawlers where if you hold a button, then any directional input takes you to the end of the corridor super fast (maybe pausing for pickups or new rooms)
I am relieved to see the TV mode changes- it isn’t that I don’t enjoy the TV mode in general, I just don’t like doing it ALL the time. I still felt like the twins were present during the 1.2 story quest, but I do agree that I would have liked a few additional lines from them. Although I don’t think the TV mode makes me feel more connected to them, personally.
Removing the TV mode from the story not only removed the problems that came with it, it also removed the benefits it provided for story-telling. Downtime, exposition, dialogues and banters. These were the things that felt missing during chapter 4. The entirety of the story, we didn't get any downtime at all. We just kept moving and moving, not really giving the story the space to breathe and figure itself out. That ended up with things either ending too abruptly or too fast, leaving us with bad pacing overall. Looking back at my experience of the main story, we went from Act 1 to Act 1 to suddenly finding ourselves in Act 3. There is no Act 2 in this chapter. We weren't given time to gather ourselves, we weren't given the opportunity to further get to know the setting nor the characters beyond their introductions, we weren't given space to approach the foreboding conflict. This led to the payoffs and setups of the story to be rather lacking in impact. The only real setup we got was the Sunflint story that foreshadowed Caesar's dive into the lake. And yes, that part was masterfully done. But anything beside that? If you can't think of one, it's because there were barely anything beyond that. This is made it feel like a large chunk of the story was missing even when the story itself was supposed to be this grand event. It didn't feel grand at all. Because again, we weren't given downtime to explore and learn about the place. Not even a scouting mission or anything. We just went from.. looking for parts and collecting data to.. immediately leaning how Lucius was sabotaging us. Despite its flaws, the TV mode did provide these things. If you are someone who simply don't like the experience of TV, then that's perfectly fair. But if you also assert the idea that TV doesn't provide any narrative purposes, then you'd be deadass wrong. What made TV a key tool for the storytelling of ZZZ is that it provided us a place to slow down and breathe. It given us space to learn about characters through dialogue and banters while trudging through TVs. It gave Phaeton and Fairy time to converse with each other and contextualize the application of their expertise inside a Hollow. More importantly, TV was integral in both showing and telling the story through the eyes of us, the Proxy. You know, the two people that we actually want to care about because they're the ones driving this story. Without TV, as a tool for storytelling, we actually lose out on these things. And the fact that people would rather remove the TV for simple inconveniences that could easily be fixed and completely abandoning the numerous upsides of this feature is severely shortsighted. I really hope people could understand that you don't remove a problem by deleting them, you fix them. The TV had problems but these are things that can be fixed, can be adjusted and can be changed. Edit: to preface, i personally enjoyed the story and actually loved it for what it is. that said, my love for this chapter is not a good enough reason to completely ignore the parts that soured my experience. i am critical of this chapter not because i'm a hater or a TV lover or whatever. I am critical of this chapter because i genuinely love and enjoy ZZZ for what it is and I'd rather be honest about the things that i enjoy. If I'd rate this chapter, it's an above average 6.5/10. The ideas and themes of this chapter was top-notch but the execution of the beginning and the middle was borderline messy. I loved every character that we got to know through this chapter but at the same time, this chapter left me feeling like we could have gotten to know them more better had we been given proper time to do so. If I were to consider the Cheesetopia as a continuation of the main story, then I'd rate it 8/10 because we did learn more about the Sons of Calydon in this event. But the fact that an event outside of the main story is what bumped my enjoyment of this chapter is indicative of the flaws the persisted in the story.
Yeah, I liked the story of Chapter 4. But the whole thing was just "go go go," which is a pacing problem. Fixing that pacing without ballooning the cutscene budget will involve a lot of "stand still and talk" moments, whereas TV mode lets you "walk and talk."
This is what I felt missing in this Chapter, in TV mode I can focus on the dialogue between characters... I don't have time focusing on dialogue while I'm in combat all the times. Plus I know more bout Belobog and Victoria member just from story with TV mode
i feel its because they were experimenting with the let you explore as a character thing like they did with the jane sub plot. Technically that moment where you use Caesar for exploration was downtime
Apart from the motorcycle event, every trip into the Hollow in the latest patch felt like an anticlimax. Get teleported into an irrelevant environment. Fight a couple of waves of straightforward enemies. Done. I already do that every day to spend my fuel, it's hard to get enthusiastic about doing it more. TV mode was the build-up, combat was the pay-off. You can't get rid of one without cheapening the other.
@@Some1The4Got10-n6nagreed, they even advertise this as an action game, that's why I'm so glad that they made changes to this one. I know that this T.V. mode is unique to this game, but it feels so boring if you're playing this anytime, it's like you're playing a mini game all day.
I think it was very unnecessary for them to remove the TV mode this much. And I'm saying this as someone who enjoys the combat much more. I get toning down the frequency a bit, but I think it adds a lot of variety to the gameplay along with just more stuff to do, and like you mentioned it gives more significane to Belle and Wise's roles.
That's one of my concerns with a dev team that's very willing to listen to its playerbase. They might start listening to the wrong groups of people and make the game move in the wrong direction. Non-players should really just f**k off since they're not qualified to give any constructive criticism.
Please don't talk about people on X they are OVNI 👽 from planet stupid. Imagine GI fans are attacking ZZZ. For the WuWa side is ok. It's a nother game sharing the same genre and from another company, but ZZZ whinch is from the same company this is totaly absurd. 🤨 I'm PGR, HI and AG. I love it, I don't the need to roast it just because PGR, HI3 and AG were there fiest. Instead I'm happy for Hoyo (not a big fan). Played and leave it just because of the TV mode only. But it's a great game in my opinion. 😢
TV mode removal was not made because of X complaining. This change was plan since the last beta. Devs got complains from all Content Creators and Players who played the Beta and that is why they could shift away from the TV mode so fast. Patches in this game are always made 3 or 4 months in advance before they hit the beta test.
There were some instances where the TV mode felt fun and interesting, like Camelia Golden Week, and the towers with the ghosts and the bulbs, but it was poorly implemented and felt disruptive throughout a lot of the story. For example, I really disliked being stuck twiddling my thumbs while Wise was explaining something obvious instead of being able to move while the dialog ended. Boy, was that annoying, TV mode tutorials were BAD. Oh, and the TV mode got really old for me FAST on Hollow Zero, I actually have fun there now with the new mode. I don't think the TV mode should disappear as it can actually be pretty fun, but they shouldn't add it just fort the sake of it being there. I'm all for more entertaining and inventive ways to use the TVs, but I'd be lying if I said they didn't feel like a chore 70% of the time.
And with the new fixes to the animation speed it could work now. So removing it after fixing the pacing seems like a waste. At least for people that already finished everything tv related so far. For newcomers it'll be a better experience overall.
I can't imagine doing Prophet mission without TV mode.. it prob gonna take more than an Hours. But yeah I think they just need improve the quality of TV mode
They need to make it so challenge mode just yeets away the handholding tutorials, and instead in challenge mode fairy just says one comment on how to interact and you have to figure out the rest
My issue with TV mode is they don't leverage the dungeon crawler aspect. Hollows are supposed to be weird otherworldly corrupted places and you don't get that feeling in the story section except for cut scenes where I think it should matter. Items, collectables, and safe zones, they exist in the game, but where supposed to be a wacky group of hollow raiders trying to get through a world that's trying to twist you inside and out. Removing TV mode removes that aspect of it and removes a chunk of the games soul. Was it well implemented? Of course not. It was bare bones at best, but the side stories, hollow zero, and the various events show how goofy, fun, and challenging it could be if done right
TV mode had issues, but the complete removal of it in 1.2 is absurd, they should have improved it, implemented it better and iterated on it going forward. Hopefully now that this fiasco has happened in 1.2 that is what they will be doing. Hope it comes back strong in 1.3 and beyond!
It’s a shame, it felt like the identity of the game. The story felt bland in 1.2 because of the lack of puzzles and fun interesting non-combat interactions. Which sucked cause I love Caesar and the sons of calydon! But what I got instead was “go here, kill things, start next mission, kill more things”
It was the most well received update by a landslide apparently. we got more cutscenes, more comic book scenes, more actual interactions with the characters. The story was a good pace that care about peoples time. The game has only been out for like 3 months, the identity can always change for the better, they are clearly seeing what works and what doesn't. TV mode clearly didnt hit the mark... and if they gave you the option between tv mode or only battles, 95% of the audience aren't gonna do tv mode even if it was amazing puzzles, because in the end its about respecting peoples time and the tv mode did not. some of the side quest were too long versus what you got out of it.
@@Fa_moe bad take. Seems like all you care about is to skip through everything. "Respect your time" = "Just give a skip button and give me my rewards and give me quick quests so I can log off as quickly as possible."
@@viciouspink6247Brother you have some bad reading comprehension, No i clearly stated at the beginning that they gave us more cutscenes, more comic book scenes and interactions with the characters...which people liked (yes that includes me) and again it was the most well received update for this game. Its about giving us content that MAJORITY of people enjoy. and at the same time content that feels like I'm not wasting 20mins doing to get a small reward aka tv "puzzles".
@@Fa_moeYeah but 1.2 felt extremely bland without any downtime. It was just go, go, go, which isn't very good for storytelling, imho. That's one of the major reasons that I personally just didn't care for 1.2 or the Sons of Calydon at all. The proxy siblings were barely even involved, and for some reason Billy wasn't involved despite the Outer Ring being his old home. Real missed opportunity. And this is exactly where TV mode would've been meaningful. You may not like it, but you're making it seem like it served no purpose at all when it allowed the player to learn more about the characters too, if not more so. It gave us time to breathe, hear their banter, and learn about who they are, how they act, etc. Instead of getting rid of it or providing the option to get out of it, they should just improve it to make it more fun for the people who don't enjoy it as much. It's not like Hi3rd where there are different modeled rooms, ZZZ combat takes place in the same rooms over and over again, and that's not fun nor engaging. It's just boring.
@@eeughwhatyearisit I never really got that feeling of "oh tv mode made me understand the characters more" in fact i think it made me ignore majority of what they had to say as I 2x''d everything because of how outrageously slow they were explaining things ontop of the boring tv system. What you are complaining about isn't really a tv mode issue...? it sounds like you just didn't like the story they were telling. I agree their was less main character, but maybe that was their vision for this? The nuance of the story was to make it feel like the sibling CAN'T do everything and they have to rely on others as it was kinda established that at the beginning of the story where they were thrown into the hollow and you as the main character were helpless, and at the end of the story when they were driving back they explained how helpless they felt as they were pushed into an area where they can't establish their amazing abilities and use their actually base. If you paid attention to the story you would realize the main characters are NOT the main characters of the story in 1.2 and that's what the developers were trying to tell us. I do agree more billy would of been nice. But again, we got more cutscenes, more comic book scenes, and more face to face interaction scenes to make up for the lack of "tv interactions". So again it feels like you just didn't like the story and thats okay what matters is majority of the audience did.
I think the truth of the matter is the TV mode is good.. in moderation. I think the game is worse when its all TV mode, and all worse when its no TV mode. Give us a good even mix- a couple TV mode missions, a bunch of non-TV-mode missions. TV mode DOES add something to the game, just don't overuse it.
“Hoyo have been collecting feedback since the first public beta” is a rare but true viewpoint. Just because I only learned about ZZZ right at launch, doesn’t mean they haven’t been getting consistent feedback for a significant time. “TV Mode won’t disappear, it’ll just get more fun” is very reassuring to me. Give me more special events for TV mode like #CamelliaGoldenPeak, and more Agent-focused, pre-Phaethon ‘and that’s how I met your mother’ stories for the patch MSQs, and I’m happy.
TV mode serves a lot of importance to the story than people give it credit for. It gives us, the players, the breather we need from all the action so we can process things. We get to hear the banter of the characters more, and learn about who they are as a result of that. That's not something you can do in combat because you'd be too busy doing combos on enemies. That's kinda why I didn't like 1.2 at all personally. It was just go, go, go with no break, no time to actually know anyone besides Lucy and Ceasar (which wasn't that much either), and then randomly see Lucius's true colors (which were obvious from the beginning). I know majority would rather remove the TV and keep the Hollow run, but honestly... that's just boring. It's not like Hi3rd where the player is running in a map with different areas and rooms, and you get places to rest and have the characters talk. ZZZ uses the same battle grounds, same boss arena, same everything depending which on Hollow you're in and there are hardly any breaks because all you're doing is running straight into another danger zone. It's just not fun. I don't wanna be hacking and slashing enemies all the time. If I wanted that, I'd just replay Musou Warriors 2 for the 1,000th time. Instead of getting rid of TV mode, they should improve it to give a better experience for players. Now I fear they're gonna remove it all together because people wanna complain about it rather than ask for improvement. I know some people are, but majority I've seen just keep saying to get rid of it. Which is just sad, because the devs wanted this to work and they should be able to keep something they clearly worked hard on and were proud of.
The point of the TV mode is that it is the interface with which Phaeton engages the Hollows through Eous. To reduce its role is to reduce Phaeton's involvement in the story process. Plus I really loved the creativity it brings to the table when it comes to presentation. Particularly loved what they did with Rina's Agent Story and Qingyi's Mindscape stuff. For Chapter 4, I'd say it's at least a bit forgivable considering they're in the Outer Ring, so the commission is done outside of Random Play (where their TV board is). I do agree with the rest saying that it can be too spoonfeed-y and tedious, but overall TV mode gives ZZZ a breath of fresh air.
My first exposure to ZZZ was being impressed by cutscenes. Then after I learned it was going to be this mix of action game and classic dungeon crawler type thing was when I got excited to actually _play_ it. So losing half of that isn't great to me.
I honestly didn't mind the TV mode and love the unique dialogue characters had to say when diving in the hollows. Still this story felt like the protags was missing. Navigating through hollows are their job. Removing that takes away their identity.
While i never hated them enought to ask for their removal i cant deny that i never liked TV I always felt they overstayed their welcome on the story and in side missions i always left them for last. While the pacing for ch 4 wasnt perfect and there was room for some TV (some being the operative word ) i enjoyed it more than previous chapters. The twins relevance is more of a writting problem than a TV problem, because of Fairy. As much as i enjoy Fairys characters she severely puts into question Paethons role in the story. Most of the time they are doing what she tells to and transmiting what information are given by her. Fortunately they seem to realize this and are trying fix it by giving them some moments of quick thinking like in Ballet Twins. Even here the twin was quick enought to direct Billy to drive to the hollow, send a distress signal and start recolecting data all on their own while in the hollow. I honestly i find that a lot better than do what Fairy tells you to do again. Also i like to bring up ch2 as an example of bad pacing and mc irrelevance. That was Koleda and Graces story, we were just there to pay our electricity bills with little connection and little to no bonding with the characters. Meanwhile Koledas emotional arc felt like something that should've taken more time but they had to rush it to introduce Sacrifice. In the end i hope TV comes back better but i do not want it in the same amounts than before unless it improves significantly.
While I do agree with most of what you said, you also gotta consider the fact that this part of the story took place in the middle of the desert where oil is still being used to power whatever few buildings are still being used, I think the reason this patch had almost zero TV mode was because it wouldn't make sense in the game world as to why Wise and Belle would suddenly be OP in a place with minimal technology, even fairy admitted she couldn't do much outside of New Eridu, so maybe this patch was just an extreme which is why I'm waiting to see how they handle TV mode back in New Eridu where more missions can make use of it before casting my vote for or against it
The tv is showing what wise and bell are seeing on their hdd while they control their bangboo and that hasn't changed at all. It has absolutely nothing to do with the area being a desert, they just removed it because most people hated it.
To contradict your point: Wise/Belle and Caesar literally went out of their way to set up a mobile HDD so that both siblings could connect via Eous in the Hollow, which is a sign that TVs were meant to play a role here and were just removed in a rushed manner by the devs due to backlash which in turn butchered the pacing and writing of the story, but hey victory for TV haters I guess?
This has nothing to do at all, the devs SAID that they took it away from main story because of the players complains, there is no need to come up with weird theories because the devs already cleared it up by themselves on the interview
I think you are definitely right but I believe it was more their "excuse" to try out how the community would react to it by just not having any TV mode at all
some story telling+gameplay mix of the tv mode in the main story is so engaging me and the creativity of it all is just a plus. removing it in the main story completely just seems a lil extreme to me. it gave zzz that distinct aesthetic and personality that i loved day 1. and depending on how they go about it, its gonna throw itself in the already saturated brain off mode action gacha stash. i wish they stuck to developing its qol changes and its balance to action gameplay ratio first rather than outright having plans for letting it go in the main story. srsly, i cannot imagine scenarios like the rail rerouting in ch1, the machine interactions in ch2 or the ch3 navigation being good if told in the action format. its really not gonna hit the same. Ive already accepted it tho so im just hoping they dont fumble the bag on the execution
It also completely guts the idea that the Hollow is supposed to be ever changing and random. When youre just running through the Hollow in 3D, it doesnt come off as anything other than just a regular dungeon in a regular game.
I feel like some of the announced features aren't helping fill that "mc does nothing" feeling either as while I'm excited to roam around as my fluffy boi Lycaon its yet another loss of any connection to wise or belle. People will just start roaming as their waifu/husbando first chance they get, the issue I think the tv conundrum has is that its a good idea but the simplistic setup and snap right into combat leaves people with whiplash, perhaps upping the involvement and thought required could help to make it more engaging/enticing given it being so insanely easy yet so slow is most peoples problem anyway.
Just started playing this game a few days ago and absolutely loved it, blasted through chapter 1 and am halfway through chapter 3. Knowing chapter 4 is just gonna be fight after cutscene after fight after cutscene... sucks, SO much. It's gonna drag the story so far down for me to make it completely unenjoyable. I want the story to be told "through" gameplay and the TV mode, so far, has been great for that, sure it has its faults, being stopped every 2 seconds to be told "look over there!" and them dropping these cool ideas they introduce just after what essentially feels like a tutorial, like, do more with it! The only way this is going to work is if battles become more than just that, that you'll explore and interact with unique enviroments to push the story forward in unique ways, which they won't do, I'd bet on it. If this homogenizing continues, I'll be long gone, which would REALLY fucking suck considering I've already whaled out on it and spent $300 in just the first chapter lmao
I think it's fine for events and hollow zero, if they put in more complicated stuff that'd be great otherwise it just feels like a needless time gate. The problem with it being part of the story progression is that they can't make it complex because they NEED the widest audience to be able to complete it. Golden-week seemed like the first peek that something interesting could be done with it. Make it big, non-linear, with interesting puzzles and fun mini-games (that you can actually fail) and I'd enjoy it. Otherwise don't force me down linear hallways, hold my hand for every thing and force me to watch pointless animations and dialog. I don't need to be told how many gear coins or what Rank I need to unlock a door for the hundreth time. I don't need 6 tutorial screen popups when a new mechanic is introduced. Let me struggle a bit so I can enjoy getting through it.
The thing with TV mode is that it slows the pace down. That is a bit of a problem if you put it in the mandatory main story. Firstly, a lot of players only play the game for the combat, and forcing them to slow the pace down and do something else feels bad for them. Secondly, there is also a lot of players trying to clear the main story to unlock all the features and content. They just want to have everything essential ready and keep up. Slowing them down also feels bad for them. Relegating the TV mode into side commisions and/or events is the best solutions imo (unless they can rework it to feel faster), as you are usually not in a rush to complete it because it's not mandatory, and therefore can enjoy it for what it is.
Agreed. I almost quit because of how frequent the TVs were and because I thought the combat was incredibly dumbed down and boring, because it is in the early game. I don't know how but I powered through the story and ended up liking the game after that once I reached Shiyu Defense.
No ! Everyone has to be subjected to a mandatory dose of dumb puzzles every 10min while you are following the main storyline. It's the premium zenless zone zero experience what actually sets the game apart from other gatcha slop out there, tv is fun and creative gameplay !
I don't think slowing the pace down is the problem itself, but how slow tv mode can be. I'm sure a lot of people, including myself, would gladly watch characters yap to each other, but yapping and moving through tv mode? I sleep. No really, I've genuinely felt like sleeping at times through tv mode and it's stopped me from playing the game for days and weeks because I don't like the idea of grinding the game and it's a bunch of long tv segments. To me it just needs a rework with the right changes to be fine instead of complete removal because it does give a good narrative structure in the story. The character banter, the build up to fights, puzzles, moving through the twin towers before the final conflict, tv mode was good for that, it's just the execution is bad.
"The thing with TV mode is that it slows the pace down. That is a bit of a problem if you put it in the mandatory main story." It's only a problem for the brain fried zoomers who can't watch anything without constant stimulation. "Secondly, there are also a lot of players trying to clear the main story to unlock all the features and content." And who the f*ck cares about these people? I don't think the dev should cater to the speed runners and the story skippers.
@@kiteofdark Exactly the same, i yawned until either i got to play S rank characters in certain missions or until i got to interknot 40-50 and could start endgame.
No TV is bad Too much TV is bad They just need to find a good balance & we'll be fine. They already improved the TV mode a LOT in 1.2 & fortunately, people who enjoy it have become more vocal. I just hope that ZZZ doesn’t lose its identity. Also, despite people complaining & crying, TV mode is inarguably most important in the main story. Great video
as a long hour working adult, i appreciate getting into the meat of things rather than spending my limited free time running back and forth in TV mode.
ye, im a working adult as well, i can only play zzz during train transportation and I dont really like playing tv mode while on train, it made me sleepy
Some of TV mode quest is good but most of them are such a time waster, some argue that 1.2 is boring and empty like whaaatttt, we literally got a heavy drop lore that our siblings protagonist have a master/teacher, a bit of Miyabi appearances and her motivation, new area, more challenging enemies with doppelganger thirens and biker ethereal boss, now compare it with 1.1, feels like they're the one who don't pay attention to the game 😪.
Genuine question: Do you actually enjoy the braindead combat of the story mode? Because if you want to "get into the meat of things" why play a live service gacha game of all things if you know the story tends to be extended over the course of years lol
This has nothing to do with you not having free time, there's no "meat" of the game, TV mode is as much part of the games as combat is, they're just two different types of gameplay, you just happen to not like TV mode as much, which is a fair opinion to have, but as someone who enjoys TV mode i could very well say that that's the meat of the game for me, it's just a matter of preference, not of having free time or not.
@@baldwin3750 You... Do realize Lore =\= Story right? Was the lore drop cool? Oh yeah for sure, did it progress the story? No, not at all, not even close, the Phaethon plotline took a backseat during the entirety of chapter 4 (Something that didn't happen during chapters 00-03 and that's no coincidence)
TV mode in first chapters was necessary but a lot of times due to how simple and scripted TV mode is there it felt like a chore. I didn't felt engaged in characters due to them being mostly static tv screen. Jane and Calydon stories were much more fun and engaging. For TV mode to be enaging in main story they need to allow player to have greater influence on it (like in Hollow exploration). Main story TV mode is by far least fun element in otherwise very fun game imo
If no TV mode actually does mean consistently more overworld content, new map regions, and larger maps for more overworld traversal, than I'm ultimately fine with it. But if they phase it out in favour of just combat segments, than it's only going to make the game feel truncated.
I know everyone's out here talking about TV mode vs Combat mode etc etc but when are the Devs going to address the REAL problem with ZZZ? When will we be able to hang more than 8 photos on our Memory Board? It's an absolute travesty and god looks upon that design choice with disgust! Edit: This is obviously sarcasm, but fr it would be nice if we could hang more photos 🙉
I said it a bunch and I'll say it again: I love puzzles, I just don't like hitting non-interruptable stops Let the dialogue happen while I still play and get rid of the excess of dialogue popups 1.2 TV modes, as scarce as they were, already felt great, even if the flying car one was relatively braindead I'd probably still play normal weekly Hollow Zero over Blitz if the game would let me insta-pick upgrades and not waste 90% of the time clicking through popups And I agree with you ALG, The TV modes, if optimized, will make the game unique, because as a Day 1 player, barely skipping a day yet, the combat almost burns me out already, the puzzles and even the cooking mode we got now was the only thing that made the game feel a bit refreshing again after all those weeks
it's a little bizarre that challenge mode doesn't turn off the handholding, i dunno if really nobody thought about it or if it was just too low priority.
TV mode had great potential, as some of the exploration commissions have shown. I thought in the story, they felt like more of a chore because of how simple the puzzles were. I was hoping they'd increase quality and QoL before removing it. The 1.2 story missions were very compact and felt shorter than Janes bit. My problem is mainly with how engaging story content is and sadly, even the cooking event was more engaging than the main story of 1.2. Not that the writing was bad (on the contrary - I enjoyed it alot), but rather how it was packaged. 90% killing trash mobs that are still no challenge in challenge mode and walking. It all just feels like filler and not a well thought through system in and of itself. I really wish they increased challenge mode difficulty to Shiyu level and added more quality things to do. Like they went through the hassle to add the motorbike driving minigame, only to have it implemented into a very small portion of the patch. The vampire survival arcade game is what the story should be like.
I honestly never minded TV Mode that much, off the top of my head my biggest complaint with it is that dialogue can't be fast forwarded or tapped through. I can read the line as quickly as it can scroll on to the screen, faster than the voice actor can perform it, and when I'm just trying to get a move on, it stands out as an odd limitation to make me wait for a dramatization of information I've already read.
The drill exploration quest was unique and a nice change of pace, and from the teasers we got from the broadcast and the camellia missions from last chapter, it seems that they have TV mode's best interest at heart.
I always just thought all they had to do was stop blocking your progress in tv mode. It felt like they made you stop for every dislogue or gate and it reslly slows it down for the people that wanted to just move through it. I really loved tv mode puzzles and they became a reason for me to play the game, dissapointed that they're moving such a fun story telling device.
TV Mode is fun, I just felt it sometimes broke the flow of the game a bit too much. I feel like it's when they try to mix both type of gameplay that the imbalance shows. I loved the Ballet Twins story in TV Mode, The Prophecy is a great commission and I'm glad it's in the game.
TV enjoyer here. I much more enjoy it at end game when it's not a slog to get through. During the main story it can be quite daunting, and I enjoyed the shit out of the TV mode in the Golden Week event, and the little bit of it in hollow zero is perfect for me. I want them to keep it around but it not be overwhelming.
That chapter 3 segment where Lycaon and etc are helping you navigate through the black out was such a really neat and creative way to tell that story. And by ch3 I realized how much I like the TV mode because of that. As long as the team were continued toward that direction and made it fun, I was down to see more. So straight up I think removing the TVs was a mistake and removing that is removing part of the games unique charm and identity. But it be like that I guess. This is part of why I think what makes art, “art” has really lost its meaning in this era, but that’s a whole different topic. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who enjoyed the TV mode specifically for storytelling purposes.
I am on the exact opposite opinion of other people. I loved the TV mode in the story. Great exposition and story telling device. Great opportunity to get banters. In the TV mode where you get a lot of Fairy's whole character to shine. The part where I hate the TV is Hollow Zero. It's atrocious. Every time you need to go through the same path to clear it. It supposed to be a rouge like, but the variety is close to none. Not to mention that you need 30-40 minute to clear 1 run. That's a f*cking lot of time compared to anything that is in HSR Sim universe or Genshin's Spyral Abyss. Imo the devs acted too quickly. They should have slowly to decrease the TV mode and not going from 100 to 0.
Side comment related to TV in Blitz vs Vanilla HZ (so not necessarily in the story mode), I honestly liked Blitz quite a bit less than the TV mode. Felt like I had less choice, less control, and just generally less fun than the original Hollow Zero. I did three runs on Blitz and kinda gave up on it, would much rather do things with the TV mode and make interesting choices along the way, even if the loop is longer. My hope is that they keep both on that side at least, so folks who want the fast version can keep that, while I play the longer tv-mode version and get to pick my patha bit more.
The truth is that the TV mode was always a bad idea despite what TV apologists were saying. People complained about it already in the beta. Testers said: Hoyo, this thing sucks. Its intrusive, slow, epileptic and not fun at all. But Hoyo, thinking they have some sort of holy Grail on their hands doubles down on it thinking: no trust us bros its going to be good and what happens? Game launches and surprise, people leave at mass because the TV mode sucks. Fast forward to 1.3 and theyre doing everything in their power to make the TVs as non intrusive as they only can to the point where entire outer ring chapter basically didn't had any. Yes. In theory TVs made sense and were cool, but in practice they don't and they've realized it too late after the TVs already delt enough damage. Hate it all you want, but its the truth tv apologists refuse to believe. TVs caused ZZZ to lost a lot of money and players and hoyo, being a business first foremost will make appropriate changes ranging from TVs being relegated to side content if not outright removed in most modes moving forward. In fact its already happening as we speak as most content were getting these days doesn't have TVs
Well, different people have different opinions. I liked Tv mode from the start, I don't getting why people calling it the slow, it's much more faster comparing to running in 3D locations as your characters, I sick by GI and HSR because of it, I don't want to run from point A to point B and being tortured by this slow animations of characters, meanwhile TVs are just 2D tiles, animation and moving on map is literally few seconds and much more pleasing in my opinion. Also I like many mini games in TVs as well. You can think all you want, but TVs are decent mechanic and have big potential. Sorry for my bad english, it's not my native language
@@AljabirAmantaevpeople may have different opinions but some opinions get outvoted. And TV mode has been more hated than loved so that side wins the vote
Yeah, I completely agree with the idea that Belle and Wise were basically absent from the story, unless they were in cutscenes, and just that. The only reason people don’t completely realize that is because at the very, VERY end of the main quest we got lore bombs about old eridu from the two main characters of this game. Part of me feels like the game might end up making Belle and Wise as irrelevant as an obscure side character npc that occasionally reminds you they exist, or even worse, lore exposition characters that have no other role, which is kinda bad considering how, again, these two are our PROTAGONISTS for the game.
Have you played Reverse:1999? Vertin the main protagonist of the game is not a playable character but she has a heavy impact on the story. If ZZZ manage to do that as well, Im sure they can pull it off for Belle/Wise to still have importance in the story.
I agree with this. the tv mode is fun and all , but it takes too long to complete and it feels repetitive, so I think is great for it to be removed from the story mode and used in other segments of the game, such as events and some sidequests. Also on Hollow zero, the new mode without tvs feels incredible, huge fan of that.
Tv mode also help so much in the narrative and characterization of the characters so much more than combat. I get to know about the characters so much more in tv mode and world buidling! It doesn't also help that combat narrative is easily missed when you're busy hitting stuff and it also feels very brief and sparse or barebones. E.g in chapter 2 we get to take turns being introduce to each characters of the belobog and how they interact with each other, ben the worry wort, anton the postive and gung ho character and koleda and grace having siblings interactions and then there's chapter 3 even in its short chapter how the maid team work together, rina and lycon and ellen with corin, we get lore about the towers and meet spoopy ghost liter old clipping newspaper about the tower. a way better experience than fight go here , fight go here. There's a reason why I never get engage with the story in aether gazer and pgr imo and we dont need another pgr clone. ZZZ really stands on its own with its puzzle and interactive content and it would be a shame if 90% of the story and SIDE quest are nothing but combat. Walk combat, walk combat , walk combat, doesn't make it a memorable experience.
also lack of tv mode is why I feel , chapter 4 is disappointingly short imo. We barely know anything about each character except maybe ceaser but stuff the like vanquishers and pompey were so short making the emotional highlight feel weaker in comparison to chapter 2. Also de tour inferno , the most build up event in the chapter is a single motorcycle mission and that was it.
I quite like TV mode. My first impression was just a mini-JRPG styled gameplay segment, which is why a mission like The Prophecy works so well in it. It felt to me like a clever way of doing breathers in between combat sections. But, if there were a lot of complaints about it, then A big problem for me is what the removal of it did to chapter 4. I'm still very bothered about how rushed it felt. Combat intro, 2 more combat missions, slice of life with Caesar, and then it's the 10 minute finale combat. I was very disappointed and post-credits Cheesetopia missions doesn't help it. I genuinely believe we don't NEED TV mode, but I really feel like TV mode was taken out without anything replacing it which is super lame. It was a lot shorter with important characters and missions over incredibly quickly. My big problem, and why do feel like TV mode helps the story, but isn't needed, is that ZZZ's main story is WAY too easy ON TOP OF Caesar (giggity) being the most brain off character. It's not that she's easy to play, but if enemies can't threaten her shield, their movesets are virtually not aspects of the gameplay. While I know it's just manipulating dopamine and how the brain works, TV mode gives cooldown time for those parts of the brain to recover and get, at least somewhat, excited for the cool effects and stuff against non-threatening normal enemies. I felt like they coulda added more, like those test runs that apparently happened COMPLETELY OFF SCREEN... Utterly cringe. First bike sections shoulda been before the big race, the practice before a longer ride. I also assumed it was going to actually be the way we explore the hollows, different turns going to different places, but instead it's just a mini-game set piece. Those could've been perfect alternatives to the HDD in this location, while giving nice moments for a set amount of dialogue.
I ended up only picking up the game recently after having dropped it when it initially came out, reason being was the TV mode was just such a slog to get through. It wasn’t until friends who stuck with it told me that end game has significantly less TV mode did I actually pick it up again. I’m sure the devs have data on how many people have dropped the game after or during long tv sections so I think it does make sense for them to remove it until they can flesh it out and make it more interesting
TV Mode IS fun IMO and it is what makes ZZZ to stand out from your standard Genshin-like gacha where "exploration" is just collecting nothing burgers and fighting fodder enemies. Unique puzzle-solving gameplay combining it with simple but fantastic combat and animations. While on Main Story, TV mode felt quite handholding and super easy, side commissions are harder and more fun to play. I believe that TV Mode just requires a few QoL changes which some were seen in this last patch with bit faster animations and skipping some unnecessary animations like the prompt for opening doors. I'd love to see TV Mode coming back to the main story again, but something where you can combine the little exploring there is with switching in and out quickly to TV Mode in order to open new paths, resolving puzzles and find the secret boxes. Make Eous Relevant Again! Also there is this commission named "The Prophecy" that is on TV mode only and it was like an RPG mode and was absolutely fantastic. Another thing that I'd like to add is that without TV Mode chapters would feel incredibly short. Chapter 4 is already short but without the TV Mode it took me so little time to complete. I do appreciate the cinematics tho.
I completely agree that Belle & Wise felt absent in chapter 4, it made their big emotional scene at the end feel pretty out of nowhere and disconnected from the plot.
The problem with 'listening to the fans' is you're often actually listening to the loud 1% of the fanbase which doesn't represent the perhaps larger than understood portion of the fanbase who disagrees.
There are times when tv mode feels like a waste of time for how long it takes vs rewards gained. Compare that to the 2-5 min combat missions and it feels even worse. I like tv mode but it needs to feel like exploration and discovery more than a time sink.
I always liked your intro, even though I am a dolphin. It let me know you were going to approach things from a reasonable perspective. Literally every other ZZZ channel uses the words "Broken, OP, must pull" in every video. Apparently whales are only looking for confirmation bias, not actual info.
I liked your intro, made me feel at home and I feel like it really shown what separates you from the other creators. I'm not going anywhere, but personally I just think that helped get new people to instantly stay
I think maybe I was too deadpan in my delivery and this was supposed to be a joke. The intro is not going anywhere. I just dropped it for this one to make a point about “over listening” to feedback.
I think the TV mode in general is fun, new, and unique. There are a lot of cool or funny moments with the storytelling for a bunch of missions also. I think the main pain point is that you the player are playing AS the navigator. That concept is hard to make "exciting" in a moment to moment gameplay style for missions and such. I mean, Persona has Navis, but they are relegated to mostly story or supportive proc abilities, which is totally fine. When you play it as your character, I feel as though making the connection to Belle and Wise is a tad weird in the first place, as I do feel like I'm the one doing everything and they're just....there. That's even with a lot of TV mode in the game. Maybe they could give it a different direction or perspective and tie in their supportive capabilities to the support Bangboo itself...instead of Eous just kind of being there along with another random Bangboo. They could make the main Bangboo on your team an Eous "skin" and Belle and Wise can use the abilities with some kind of information/combat chip or something while masking to look like them like we have now with switching to Caesar and soon Burnice. Then changing back to Eous during important cutscenes, to convey to the player that Belle and Wise are more present in the story and fights. The problem in my opinion is there's not enough TV mode...the split should be somewhere around 70-30 in my opinion, with TV mode truly being the "hacking" part of the game and you can flip flop between them with mostly regular action during any given mission. Kind of like Sly Cooper in a way, that's at least what comes to my mind. Love the videos!
(Typing this before I watch the video) I loved the story in Chapter 4 and thought it was the best one yet, in spite of the lack of TV mode. And I don’t know for 100% sure if this is the case, but there were a few parts that I would swear to you used to be TV mode segments that they replaced with combat commissions at the last minute. The most blatant example is the part where the group were following Kasa into the Hollow. That entire thing felt so weird as it was presented in the final product, and I can almost promise you that used to be a monitor array part. I love the TV mode. It’s one of my favorite parts of the game, and it’s something that I genuinely can’t get anywhere else because I’ve never seen it done like this in any other game. To see them say they were taking it out of the main story, and then to see that they only added 2 new exploration commissions alongside 38 combat ones, that was just painful to see and really discouraging.
Point taken, and it is such a good video! Now for me, I did enjoy the TV but most of the time it takes so much of the enjoyment, maybe there are stories that I loved (especially the ballet twins) but some stories were kinda hard to play and even pay attention that I mostly just fast forward and wanted it to just finish.
The ballet twins tv mode that you were navigating in the dark and fending off ghost is so fun. Another thing that I disliked is the playback/flashback stories and investigation stories because it’s confusing and takes so much time.
I like the TV on Hollow Zero, the multiple path taking and risk/reward there is SO nice because it is that right dose of "gambling where I have some input on the outcome" and it gets better as you unlock stuff that lets you reroll Resonia, the Golden week event also felt nice as they didn't hold your hands so much. Separating Inferno Reap from the Withering Garden was also a great idea, if you want a better Resonia kit then try Withering Garden again and try to take as much risk as possible, Is your resonia kit fine? Then you can retry Inferno Reap as much as you want with any saved kit. Also some good TV modes are the one with the "bomb designer", catching the Bangboos and even the weird Bangboo arena had some fun to it, because they didn't force hold your hand there, specially the Bomb mission, I spent some extra time on the final sections to see how silly the bomb upgrades got. One thing that probably annoyed some people on the previous chapter (the Victoria Housekeeping/Tower one) was surely the Bangboo plug-in gameplay-interface, the plug-in menu is very annoying on PC, "long pressing" R every 3 secs is not fun, on Rina's story switching between her Bangboos is also poorly done, the switching takes longer than solving the puzzles. The common denominator is that the TV has the potential to be VERY annoying and tedious if executed poorly.
TV mode is a great narrative device. It SHOULD be used in story to make the Twins more involved. I loved the sequence where the cunning hares loaded up the bombs onto the train. That whole tv section was awesome. Same thing with the ballet twins, it was a real fun atomspheric time. Doing that 'in the overworld' would've been bad or just a 'worse' version of other games.
Same sentiments, TV mode will increase the feeling of involvement, but the presentation was done very poorly, lack of visuals (compared to other hoyo titles), add unique location in hollow (sixth st, belobog, lumina) and bigger character (profile pic) during dialogue(and replay in hollow) can better relay information. I saw the lack of character voicelines and world building through archives (books, video cover, vinly) descriptions. I feel TV mode is lacking, but all the loud opinions are not seeing the main problem here. The quick respond to please the NPC voices, shows they dont have a clear direction for their product.
Tv mode felt like a bad filler just to make missions take longer in 1.0 and 1.1. Alot of time it was just zipping in 1 screen wide snake for minutes. For me a person who likes the fighting it was just a badly made timegate to the next story fight. i am not talking about hollow zero, just the story. it was just too long and to dry most of the time, the mini games where fun but most of the time you just zipped from tv to tv collected 3 blobs thats it 5 minutes gone and no story, no fight, just press in the only direction you could go. it got better at the end of 1.1 though. I don't want it to disappear but the ballance was way off, for me atleast.
It's actually kind of funny how Belle and Wise played a far bigger role in the Cheesetopia event than they did in the main story. I did appreciate how they expanded a lot on their background towards the ending, and I think the story has a lot of potential if it dives deeper into it in future updates.
Now my question is where were you all when a LOT of people complained about the tvs. I barely saw any positive comments about them. Now when the devs did something about it you all complained. If they didnt change it, you all also gonna say they dont listen like genshin
As a person who finished most the story content in the past month, there’s not much difference in belle and wise screen time with or without the tvs. Each story is about a faction and how their lives intertwine with Phaethon lives and goals (little by little via chapter finale). The tv change nothing but made it all quicker to progress the story. Staying immersed This chapter was the most character driven, intense and emotional by writing alone. We experienced that as a witness and guide, Phaethon like in past chapters. This chapter more than others we felt that experience because we got to stay immersed in the story without the tv. I felt more like a guide noticing, Euos was actually leading them for once. It all felt perfect for me. Explore will always have TV and challenging puzzles btw. I liked the tvs for a couple weeks. Then i noticed how much i lost track of the story because I’m falling asleep with the TVs segments. Losing immersion. It’s the only reason i stopped playing and missed Zhu banners (was really looking forward to her but didn’t want to play much more).
I’ve been such a champion for TV mode in the surveys in large part because I know how much the louder parts of the fanbase dislikes it. I’ve found them to be such a fun method of puzzle solving and navigation in the side quests and an efficient method of storytelling. I think you mentioned this in an older video, but the team being able to use the tv mode to tell parts of character and main stories allows them to use more of that dev-time and money towards killer animations and cutscenes
I get what you mean with Belle and Wise missing in story sections more now, but I believe they're also more present in dialogues during the actual combat levels of the story too. I don't really remember that being so common pre-chap 4. I felt that was worth mentioning still. Maybe they could double down on that more to compensate but just wanted to add, they did try to have them present still iirc.
I legit paused my Shiyu Def run to bemoan the loss of the Billy butt slap / Sniffing Bangboo / Jane walk... glad that was a joke. That bit and your comedic timing with it has literally made me laugh at loud every time. :)
Problem is the tv mode in the main story. TV outside of the story has shown more signs of potential with the events and hollow zero. In the main story the hold your hand throughout the entire chapter when playing the TVs. The story mode to this day still hasn't shown signs of good potential FOR THE STORY besides "hey this is what bell and wise see". It felt like filler because it didn't feel like the concept was fully realized. So hopefully they can go back to the drawing board and make it more fun because to be honest, I didn't even notice the TV mode was gone when playing the chapter. Everything felt natural to me. Regarding bell and wise having more dialogue during missions: That could be cool sure, but they also have to be careful with how much dialogue there is in a specific mission with all the characters. They have to balance that out well otherwise the frequency of dialogue for all the characters might feel tiring for players. I felt like the SoC characters were yapping enough, so it's a balance. I personally never felt like the siblings were missing from the story since the story itself was not about them. They were just the guides. I reminded me of the belobog chapter where the other characters did most of the talking.
Yeah my issue with the TV mode was it was so long and laborious at the start with all the tutorials for really simple puzzles and it killed the momentum when i really wanted to get to the action (which is what i saw in all the marketing) but since combat only take a few minutes at most. The camilla golden week event was actually fun though since i knew what i was getting into. Also going to miss the billy butt slap, it was a joy trying to figure out how you would segue way it into the video. The more tenuous the link the better.
4:55 Couldn't have said it better myself. I was surprised at how much fun I had with ZZZ and it hooked me right away with both the combat and the overall vibe/direction. I almost didn't try it because I assumed it was just going to be another Genshin/Star Rail so I'm really glad Hoyo took a risk by appealing to a different type of audience. Naturally, there are some vocal mainstream Genshin/Star Rail "fans" who complain about the character designs or the fanservice because they expected Hoyo would play it safe to appeal to them. Considering how hard Hoyo has already committed and how they are getting more bold with the fanservice as time goes on I have confidence that they won't change their stance to appease the complainers, but I do think that Hoyo is unsure on how to handle the gameplay and the different modes. Personally, I'm hoping for more social sim elements found in Persona games to enhance the agent interaction and city exploring aspect. I think that would hold a lot of potential and incentivise people to become invested in characters. As for city exploration, I would like to see more interactivity, like shops you can go inside of, agent hangouts not just being fade-to-black with text describing what happens, maybe have the metro system be more interactive too. Of course, none of this is necessary but it would help add to the hub areas like it does in Persona.
TV is great for puzzles in events, it works for hollow zero too but I love how we now have the option to play HZ blitz to avoid TV, while leaving it for those who like it
As a TV mode enjoyer myself. I can only speak to my own experience. To me I really hope they keep trying and experimenting with it. Its probabaly the most interesting concept in a gacha game I've seen in a while. Not because its out-of-the-box the most fun feature ever but the potential for unique storytelling IS there. Rina's agent quest, Ballet Twins commission, and investigations with Pubsec would straight up arguably not be possible without it. And honeslty some of the most engaging momments of the game for me comes from said TV mode. Combat is flashy and fun but by itself cant be the only substance the game has to offer. The overworld is nice but it's simply limiting due to technical and resource constraints as a delivery method for story telling. In short, it is my hope they continue to improve on it rather than abandoning the vision they had for it.
I’m still scarred from that early story tv mode that was way too mind numbingly boring for an action rpg game I personally love zzz for the combat and characters I don’t mind a bit of tv in events and stuff like the rogue like gameplay they do but when they force it on me and it’s long and drawn out just makes it more of a chore than anything
Even though I love combat more than anything else, I still really like tv mode when it’s used creatively, like the commission where you fight a bunch of enemies using ONLY 3 bangboo and not even being able to control them, I wanna see more creativity like this cuz it was super fun!
So far the improvements of TV have been better. And im loving that there was literally no tv section in 1.2. hella fun to walk around the desert area, find cactus 😅 and avoiding the lightning rays.
TV mode was interesting and will not be removed compeletly for sure but any sympathy for it I had died with that goddamn 2hour long commision taking part only in TV mode. The good way to re-introduce TV mode in more substantial gameplay is use it as hacking/route finding mode in-gameplay. Your agents run into a dead end in the hollow and the short cutscene plays showing the Eous tripping in simillar way how the icon in TV mode does, camera zoom in going into it's eyes/visor and blam, loading and the TV Mode opens. It'd made it feel less disjointed for me. Even better, perfect way to do all of it would be to separate agent gameplay with parts where you run as Bangboo with agent/s following the lil bnuy. I know alot of work but let's be honest....ZZZ is making a huge buck. I can dream of weird things like that.
Personally, my experience of TV mode was that it has a few highs (Bangboo Master, RPG minigame, Qin Yi's sync mode), was "ok" for some of the time (didn't add or remove too much from the experience), and made the game feel slow and grindy the rest of the time... which, if you were farming hollow zero, was most of the time. Ultimately, I see TV mode as something that should only be used if it creates some really memorable content (like the two missions we got in 1.2). Otherwise, I prefer if the devs focus on creating longer stages, because this not only gives us more of the beautifully rendered universe to explore and experience, but also means we have more "combat areas" to spice up the repeatable content.
I definitely think more creative ways to use TV mode is the best way to go about solving the issues with it. I also think that, to address the issue with Belle and Wise being included in the story more, if they decide to utilize the battle mode world, maybe have Eous be controllable in some parts? That might make for some interesting new gameplay.
I agree that the twins felt a bit too background in the latest story, but yeah I also think that may have been a side effect of sudden TV removal. I will say I was a big person who HATED TV mode... in the main story. To me it was a poor delivery service for the events and I just couldn't get immersed in them narratively speaking as it was too 'detached' a view. Also I think it was MOSTLY a pain point in chapter 1 and maybe 2 where there were barely 'puzzles' and it was very slow and hand holdy. It also felt kinda clunky in general with how often we were just stopped for dialogue, but I've noticed they have slowly been streamlining the tv mode experience and I do see and appreciate the efforts. I'm actually a big fan of a lot of the side quest puzzle tv missions though, so I think it SHOULD have a place in the game but I think main story wasn't the place to use it FOR EVERYTHING. Maybe having it sporadically would be fine but having it be the only method we experienced the story in felt... not great. I def think there's a middle ground to be had, and definitely think the side quest puzzles were enjoyable :)
Tv-less Hollow zero is a bit of a loss for me, although I do know that it's not replacing the classic exploration mode. The hollow zero exploration is engaging, the different environments make you use different strategies outside of fighting, and then when it comes to the central zone it's like an avengers movie where everyone comes together but also there's a disaster so there's less help like heals and corruption serums. It was really engaging. The new mode is... Brief. Very brief, and packs a lot of fighting. I finished all the weekly tasks through it, it almost felt too brief and simple. In general, I would usually finish the weekly set of tasks in two classic explorations as well, but they just don't feel the same.
I really like the TV part because it gives ZZZ that distinction from other gacha games where you go from place to place interacting with NPCs, watching some story and fighting and so on. With the TVs it feels like Belle, Wise and Fairy are part of the missions and I say the missions themselves and not the story itself, but there is another character that is not given much importance and that gives a lot of meaning to the exploration within the Hollows and it is the bangbu itself. We must not forget that the bangbu along with its carrot is vital so that the characters do not get lost inside the cavities, and that is what the TVs represent in the game. One thing I do agree with is that there are parts of the missions where TVs are not necessary. I think that TVs should only be used at very specific points in the mission where you cannot advance through combat alone and require a more technical and strategic perspective. In addition, the TV part should be more personalized to each type of mission (they have already shown that it can be done with the Golden Week event or the Belobog Constructions story). I think TVs should return to the main story but only when they make them more streamlined, more personalized for each mission, only appear at most 3 times per mission (and only if the mission is long enough so that it doesn't feel like they're abusing the TVs), and maybe they could use them when passing through the rifts as a way to represent the change between the different parts of the Hollow. By the way, why not adapt the explorations and include in-game a setting where you can automatically skip the TV part only in story mode for those who don't like them just because the TVs "slow down" the game experience? And one last note, the fact that the ZZZ devs are listening to the community is a hugely good thing for the game, but that doesn't mean that they have to listen to each and every one of them all the time, because as you mentioned at the beginning of the video, just because a certain very noisy sector of players spend their time complaining about everything doesn't mean that they have to be indulged literally, because at the end of the day those kinds of people will never agree with anything and will end up leaving the game for the most irrational reasons imaginable.
I always liked the tv mode because it made me more excited for when I get to the gameplay. I also like how the agents and the main character interact with each other while exploring the hollow in tv mode and it makes me feel like the main characters are more important to the story because they are needed for the agents to explore the hollow. On the contrary, removing the tv mode made me less immersed to the story of zzz which really sucks. I just wish people could have more attention span.
It won't be removed, but since they've already nearly finished 1.3, there won't be a lot in there, but hopefully more afterwards. Remember to go to your feedback/suggestions tab in game! ❤
TV mode implementation in the 1.0 story ranges from somewhat fun to snoozefest, and while I really liked some of the ways it was used outside the story I am 100% on board with them going back to the drawing board until they find a way to make it more fun. Plus chapter 4's story was by far the most fun so far for me, the only moment that even came close in 1.0 and 1.1 was the ballerinas fight and surrounding cutscenes edit: oh btw, great video as usual! :)
My problems with TV mode weren't the mode itself, but more how often the mode takes control away from the player to move them around to show them something. Speaking neurologically, humans treat tech as part of their body while using it (no, seriously, they've done studies on this) and losing control like that feels to our minds exactly the same as if we suddenly lost feeling in a limb.
The new 1.2 TV mode has improved significantly, and once it's optimized further, I think it's a good idea to reintroduce some TV mode into the Story. So far my Resinless behaviour of grinding the Z-merit limit in 1.2 actually went pretty fast but maybe it might be harder to receive feedback about TV mode because of it's infrequency. Personally, I love TV Mode and was pretty bummed out about no TV mode in Chapter 4, and it really did feel like I just clicked through some dialogue, played some braindead combat because my team is already built for Shiyu (Heck I missed some dialogue for clearing too fast). The only thing that actually saved Chapter 4 for me was actually the Event where it felt like it's Epilogue and the extra gameplay could be taken as "TV mode Puzzle"
If the TV is gone, I can play this game again, this is what made me hate this game so much to quit within the first hours of gameplay, I don't care being a separated mode like the "rogue like" version, but having to play that shit over and over again through the game was painfully bad.
Have to admit I'm considering dolphining. I dolphined with genshin for about 2 years. I know it made rhe game less fun for me, but it also feels weird not supporting a game I love monetarily at all
I'm happy to see so many fellow TV enjoyers come out of the woodworks due to this dev announcement, if they are listening to players then maybe the positive TV sentiment will encourage it's reintroduction into main story. All it would take is a few banger Agent Stories with cool TVs and new players to say "this is dope, wouldn't this be cool in the main story too?"
i dont like TV mode but im playing it only for rewards . but if they add more combat it would be beter and i also think they dont need to remove it but make it short .
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
I think the biggest problem for tv mode to me was that its so hand holdy in the main quest, i love some of the tv mode side quests in ZZZ, but in the main quest have some of the most brain dead objectives made for the lowest common denominator. besides that sometimes the controls are clunky, like why do i need to wait for the animation to finish before I can move to the next square. Less tv but higher quality is definitely good
I can't tell you how many times I immediately wanted to turn the game off once I encountered a puzzle, and then was immediately interrupted and told the answer to it before I was allowed to even try to figure it out for myself. Pretty much every TV segment outside of the main story is decently well done, but for some reason they made it almost completely unenjoyable to play it in story mode.
TV mode in story was a prolonged tutorial for all the little new things that were used once and forgotten.
Off topic but “Lowest common denominator” is a funny ash insult 😂😂
Same. I like thr gemeplay but you can tell most of the story was tutorial after tutorial for a gimmick you'll see twice outside of the main story. Like playing level 1-1 of mario bros for every level in each new world but now here is the tutorial for springs and ice physics but it's still level 1-1.
They should focus now on doing TV mode that actually requires using what was learned. That's why it felt wasteful.
But I liked how they convey the story during tv, except text would quickly disappear sometimes. This is worse for people who.play in japanese but don't speak it, cause they gotta read and text is gone in a blink
I don't understand why they didn't just remove the long animation before trying anything else. Cut off dialogue is harder problem but it's ALSO a problem in combat and... Just having a log would go a long way...(wouldn't solve the issue but definitely remedy it for now)
I personally didn't have the feeling that wise and Belle weren't there when I played. I kinda knew in my mind that they were there. I feel the better question is: why didn't they interact via their Bangboo with the Calydon Crew while in the hollow? I feel the writers just made them quiet.
And it’s that kind of stuff that they probably couldn’t plan for due to the change but can be adjusted moving forwards.
They were quiet because they weren't given the space to be part of the story. Phaeton and Fairy were pretty much taking a backseat the entire time and that made their role to the story almost irrelevant. They were so important that the Sons of Calydon went out their way to contact Phaeton and offer a deal. And yet, name one thing that Phaeton and Fairy did that was so integral, so important to the goals of the Sons of calydon during this chapter? If you can't name more than the mission where they collected hollow data, then you got the answer as to why they were quiet the entire time. It's not that they didn't have dialogues. There just weren't opportunities to begin with
I agree. I still feel like I am seeing the world through their eyes.
I think that the Phaeton role is really undeveloped since the beginning of the game. It's agents who do the fighting, right? And proxy is supposed to navigate them through the Hollow - and TV mode doesn't feel like navigating anything, I'm afraid. Even in missions like Save hacker Rain, where we were going through the Ballet Twins (TV mode heavy), only cutscenes with Eous were a reminder that there's a proxy somewhere.
But from the storytelling point of view it's absolutely ok - Phaeton serves as a tool to bind others' stories together - they don't have to be a part of these stories. For example they could've just been bartenders, listening to agents' stories.
I don't think that I like it a lot though, because the whole Proxy-Agent thing doesn't work for agents from NEPD, nor Victoria, nor Soldier 11 - they're not mercenaries like Cunning Hares - meaning this aspect of storytelling is just completely broken.
Uh. Idk what my point is. Maybe it's that ZZZ may have some nice characters, but it doesn't do a good job in creating a good story - but maybe I want too much from a waifu gacha game (still like it tho)
Yeah they weren't even there cutscene wise they were pretty much never on screen until the end
I am taking classes to learn how to make 3D assets for games rn, and one thing I can say for sure is that TV mode is a godsend for storytelling and the story missions will become very boring without it. The TV mode allowed the writers to get creative with the locations and the obstacles that the characters face during story missions. I know for a fact that it is impossible within 6 weeks between updates to create entirely bespoke custom rooms with puzzles and uniquely designed or animated encounters. People will complain about TV mode being tedious now, but how is a series of empty room -> combat -> hallway -> repeat, going to be less tedious in the long run.
I think chapter 3 is a great example. With TV mode they were able to create a spooky atmosphere, play around with light and darkness as a puzzle mechanic, and create the layout of an abandoned theater full of ghosts to explore; all without ever creating any new 3D models or environments. Plus, as other people have pointed out, you actually get downtime to hear the characters speak and banter, rather than all the dialogue and character development being crammed into endless text boxes like genshin. The voice acting and implementation of the story through tv mode and cutscenes is what has actually made me care about the story in this game where other mohoyo games have failed. I mean the cinematics are great as always, but they are undermined by depriving us of the opportunity to spend time with the characters.
And for people who only care about gameplay, realistically the only interesting gameplay we got in 1.2 was
imo it also kills the immersion of playing story mode for most people (majority that didn't like TV mode). Examples, when there's a quest supposed the ballet twins dancing gracefully but because of the limitation of TV mode it just looks like they going left and right and not actually dancing. Besides, the tension between the enemies and allies doesn't exist at all in main story and u just see two screen TV with simple animation that showed they are arguing and fighting.
@@DANNYWEEBS Yeah I agree, but I’d rather have a an implication of something happening where you imagine it for yourself than have nothing happen at all. Simply put, they can have a scene of two characters arguing and the ballet twins dancing using tv more, but they cannot do that in a real 3d rendered scene. There is just not enough time to model and animate all that. They would have to take away time and effort from the cutscenes to do it and you’d end up with more stuff of lower quality across the board.
I completely agree! Exploring the Ballet Twin in combat mode with full spookiness would have been awesome, but given the time constraint, TV mode is the best method to deliver it. It leaves so much for the player's imagination while building tensions. The combat mode maps feels repetitive very fast. The TV mode creates the illusion it is a lot bigger.
The whole appeal of ZZZ to me is that it blends puzzle and action gameplay. 1.2’s story comms felt far emptier to me for TV mode’s absence 😔
Feel that.
the thing is that the also marketed the game as an action game for the most part. The reaction towards the tv mode is understandable when the audience they attracted is the action game audience not the puzzle one. The comms felt fine to me since the story was about the SoC for the most part. It was like in Chapter 2 with belobog. The belobog characters did most of the talking in those quests because it was about them.
The only reason I started playing zzz is the combat and character designs. I actually had no idea the puzzles were in the game till I played it for the first time.
What I think they should do is change the array styles into 3D. Exploring the map through bangboo's view and you can engage with enemies like HSR
I think ZZZ needs to start doing actual puzzles that challenge people with alk the gimmicks they already introduced. It felt like endless gimmick tutorials but I want the tv gameplay to stay and be what it really should be. I'd even like some of it in a roguelike enviroment that gives us some more boss scenarios to tackle for rewards. I'd play that endlessly. I really like hollow zero but there's not much variety there anymore so it's now mostly Z-merits and repeat
Puzzles in Tv mode = good
mindlessly holding down button for minutes at a time to progress left, right, up, down = bad
If the temporary removal of TV mode means better and especially harder puzzles in TV mode, I could celebrate it. That said, 1.2 doesn't fill me with confidence. One was good (the Steam World Dig-ish exploration mission) and one was dreadful (the extremely generously described 'maze' bike exploration mission) and the biggest problem both had was they were too easy.
Which grinds my gears cause they are clearly willing to put in hard content not everyone is going to be able to clear (see some of the new battle missions and Shiyu Defense, and the high difficulty blitz hollow zero
bro shut up i would rather enjoy 30 minutes of toxic LOL than 15 minutes tv hell
not for me.. i prefer mindlessly pressing buttons... i didnt play a gacha game to use brain outside of combat but thats just me
@@ericnguyen0419 I mean with a puzzle if it's too hard you can just watch a guide on youtube.
yeah, need stuff like other dungeon crawlers where if you hold a button, then any directional input takes you to the end of the corridor super fast (maybe pausing for pickups or new rooms)
I am relieved to see the TV mode changes- it isn’t that I don’t enjoy the TV mode in general, I just don’t like doing it ALL the time.
I still felt like the twins were present during the 1.2 story quest, but I do agree that I would have liked a few additional lines from them. Although I don’t think the TV mode makes me feel more connected to them, personally.
Fair.
It never be "all the time"
Removing the TV mode from the story not only removed the problems that came with it, it also removed the benefits it provided for story-telling. Downtime, exposition, dialogues and banters. These were the things that felt missing during chapter 4. The entirety of the story, we didn't get any downtime at all. We just kept moving and moving, not really giving the story the space to breathe and figure itself out. That ended up with things either ending too abruptly or too fast, leaving us with bad pacing overall. Looking back at my experience of the main story, we went from Act 1 to Act 1 to suddenly finding ourselves in Act 3. There is no Act 2 in this chapter. We weren't given time to gather ourselves, we weren't given the opportunity to further get to know the setting nor the characters beyond their introductions, we weren't given space to approach the foreboding conflict. This led to the payoffs and setups of the story to be rather lacking in impact. The only real setup we got was the Sunflint story that foreshadowed Caesar's dive into the lake. And yes, that part was masterfully done. But anything beside that? If you can't think of one, it's because there were barely anything beyond that. This is made it feel like a large chunk of the story was missing even when the story itself was supposed to be this grand event. It didn't feel grand at all. Because again, we weren't given downtime to explore and learn about the place. Not even a scouting mission or anything. We just went from.. looking for parts and collecting data to.. immediately leaning how Lucius was sabotaging us.
Despite its flaws, the TV mode did provide these things. If you are someone who simply don't like the experience of TV, then that's perfectly fair. But if you also assert the idea that TV doesn't provide any narrative purposes, then you'd be deadass wrong. What made TV a key tool for the storytelling of ZZZ is that it provided us a place to slow down and breathe. It given us space to learn about characters through dialogue and banters while trudging through TVs. It gave Phaeton and Fairy time to converse with each other and contextualize the application of their expertise inside a Hollow. More importantly, TV was integral in both showing and telling the story through the eyes of us, the Proxy. You know, the two people that we actually want to care about because they're the ones driving this story. Without TV, as a tool for storytelling, we actually lose out on these things. And the fact that people would rather remove the TV for simple inconveniences that could easily be fixed and completely abandoning the numerous upsides of this feature is severely shortsighted. I really hope people could understand that you don't remove a problem by deleting them, you fix them. The TV had problems but these are things that can be fixed, can be adjusted and can be changed.
Edit: to preface, i personally enjoyed the story and actually loved it for what it is. that said, my love for this chapter is not a good enough reason to completely ignore the parts that soured my experience. i am critical of this chapter not because i'm a hater or a TV lover or whatever. I am critical of this chapter because i genuinely love and enjoy ZZZ for what it is and I'd rather be honest about the things that i enjoy. If I'd rate this chapter, it's an above average 6.5/10. The ideas and themes of this chapter was top-notch but the execution of the beginning and the middle was borderline messy. I loved every character that we got to know through this chapter but at the same time, this chapter left me feeling like we could have gotten to know them more better had we been given proper time to do so. If I were to consider the Cheesetopia as a continuation of the main story, then I'd rate it 8/10 because we did learn more about the Sons of Calydon in this event. But the fact that an event outside of the main story is what bumped my enjoyment of this chapter is indicative of the flaws the persisted in the story.
Well said
Yeah, I liked the story of Chapter 4. But the whole thing was just "go go go," which is a pacing problem. Fixing that pacing without ballooning the cutscene budget will involve a lot of "stand still and talk" moments, whereas TV mode lets you "walk and talk."
This is what I felt missing in this Chapter, in TV mode I can focus on the dialogue between characters... I don't have time focusing on dialogue while I'm in combat all the times. Plus I know more bout Belobog and Victoria member just from story with TV mode
i feel its because they were experimenting with the let you explore as a character thing like they did with the jane sub plot. Technically that moment where you use Caesar for exploration was downtime
I really hope they bring tv mode back to the story...
Apart from the motorcycle event, every trip into the Hollow in the latest patch felt like an anticlimax. Get teleported into an irrelevant environment. Fight a couple of waves of straightforward enemies. Done. I already do that every day to spend my fuel, it's hard to get enthusiastic about doing it more.
TV mode was the build-up, combat was the pay-off. You can't get rid of one without cheapening the other.
Spending 20 minutes on the "buildup" and 5 minutes in combat does not sound fun at all.
@@Some1The4Got10-n6nagreed, they even advertise this as an action game, that's why I'm so glad that they made changes to this one. I know that this T.V. mode is unique to this game, but it feels so boring if you're playing this anytime, it's like you're playing a mini game all day.
I think it was very unnecessary for them to remove the TV mode this much. And I'm saying this as someone who enjoys the combat much more. I get toning down the frequency a bit, but I think it adds a lot of variety to the gameplay along with just more stuff to do, and like you mentioned it gives more significane to Belle and Wise's roles.
As long as they listen to player feedback instead of people on X complaining who don't even play the game.
THIS
lol 😂 so true Genshin has so much people complaining that dropped the game ages ago and don’t represent any significant portion of the player base
That's one of my concerns with a dev team that's very willing to listen to its playerbase. They might start listening to the wrong groups of people and make the game move in the wrong direction. Non-players should really just f**k off since they're not qualified to give any constructive criticism.
Please don't talk about people on X they are OVNI 👽 from planet stupid. Imagine GI fans are attacking ZZZ. For the WuWa side is ok. It's a nother game sharing the same genre and from another company, but ZZZ whinch is from the same company this is totaly absurd. 🤨
I'm PGR, HI and AG. I love it, I don't the need to roast it just because PGR, HI3 and AG were there fiest. Instead I'm happy for Hoyo (not a big fan). Played and leave it just because of the TV mode only. But it's a great game in my opinion. 😢
TV mode removal was not made because of X complaining. This change was plan since the last beta. Devs got complains from all Content Creators and Players who played the Beta and that is why they could shift away from the TV mode so fast. Patches in this game are always made 3 or 4 months in advance before they hit the beta test.
There were some instances where the TV mode felt fun and interesting, like Camelia Golden Week, and the towers with the ghosts and the bulbs, but it was poorly implemented and felt disruptive throughout a lot of the story. For example, I really disliked being stuck twiddling my thumbs while Wise was explaining something obvious instead of being able to move while the dialog ended. Boy, was that annoying, TV mode tutorials were BAD. Oh, and the TV mode got really old for me FAST on Hollow Zero, I actually have fun there now with the new mode.
I don't think the TV mode should disappear as it can actually be pretty fun, but they shouldn't add it just fort the sake of it being there.
I'm all for more entertaining and inventive ways to use the TVs, but I'd be lying if I said they didn't feel like a chore 70% of the time.
And with the new fixes to the animation speed it could work now. So removing it after fixing the pacing seems like a waste. At least for people that already finished everything tv related so far. For newcomers it'll be a better experience overall.
I can't imagine doing Prophet mission without TV mode.. it prob gonna take more than an Hours. But yeah I think they just need improve the quality of TV mode
They need to make it so challenge mode just yeets away the handholding tutorials, and instead in challenge mode fairy just says one comment on how to interact and you have to figure out the rest
My issue with TV mode is they don't leverage the dungeon crawler aspect. Hollows are supposed to be weird otherworldly corrupted places and you don't get that feeling in the story section except for cut scenes where I think it should matter. Items, collectables, and safe zones, they exist in the game, but where supposed to be a wacky group of hollow raiders trying to get through a world that's trying to twist you inside and out. Removing TV mode removes that aspect of it and removes a chunk of the games soul. Was it well implemented? Of course not. It was bare bones at best, but the side stories, hollow zero, and the various events show how goofy, fun, and challenging it could be if done right
TV mode had issues, but the complete removal of it in 1.2 is absurd, they should have improved it, implemented it better and iterated on it going forward. Hopefully now that this fiasco has happened in 1.2 that is what they will be doing. Hope it comes back strong in 1.3 and beyond!
It’s a shame, it felt like the identity of the game. The story felt bland in 1.2 because of the lack of puzzles and fun interesting non-combat interactions. Which sucked cause I love Caesar and the sons of calydon! But what I got instead was “go here, kill things, start next mission, kill more things”
It was the most well received update by a landslide apparently. we got more cutscenes, more comic book scenes, more actual interactions with the characters. The story was a good pace that care about peoples time. The game has only been out for like 3 months, the identity can always change for the better, they are clearly seeing what works and what doesn't. TV mode clearly didnt hit the mark... and if they gave you the option between tv mode or only battles, 95% of the audience aren't gonna do tv mode even if it was amazing puzzles, because in the end its about respecting peoples time and the tv mode did not. some of the side quest were too long versus what you got out of it.
@@Fa_moe bad take. Seems like all you care about is to skip through everything. "Respect your time" = "Just give a skip button and give me my rewards and give me quick quests so I can log off as quickly as possible."
@@viciouspink6247Brother you have some bad reading comprehension, No i clearly stated at the beginning that they gave us more cutscenes, more comic book scenes and interactions with the characters...which people liked (yes that includes me) and again it was the most well received update for this game. Its about giving us content that MAJORITY of people enjoy. and at the same time content that feels like I'm not wasting 20mins doing to get a small reward aka tv "puzzles".
@@Fa_moeYeah but 1.2 felt extremely bland without any downtime. It was just go, go, go, which isn't very good for storytelling, imho. That's one of the major reasons that I personally just didn't care for 1.2 or the Sons of Calydon at all. The proxy siblings were barely even involved, and for some reason Billy wasn't involved despite the Outer Ring being his old home. Real missed opportunity. And this is exactly where TV mode would've been meaningful. You may not like it, but you're making it seem like it served no purpose at all when it allowed the player to learn more about the characters too, if not more so. It gave us time to breathe, hear their banter, and learn about who they are, how they act, etc. Instead of getting rid of it or providing the option to get out of it, they should just improve it to make it more fun for the people who don't enjoy it as much. It's not like Hi3rd where there are different modeled rooms, ZZZ combat takes place in the same rooms over and over again, and that's not fun nor engaging. It's just boring.
@@eeughwhatyearisit I never really got that feeling of "oh tv mode made me understand the characters more" in fact i think it made me ignore majority of what they had to say as I 2x''d everything because of how outrageously slow they were explaining things ontop of the boring tv system.
What you are complaining about isn't really a tv mode issue...? it sounds like you just didn't like the story they were telling. I agree their was less main character, but maybe that was their vision for this? The nuance of the story was to make it feel like the sibling CAN'T do everything and they have to rely on others as it was kinda established that at the beginning of the story where they were thrown into the hollow and you as the main character were helpless, and at the end of the story when they were driving back they explained how helpless they felt as they were pushed into an area where they can't establish their amazing abilities and use their actually base.
If you paid attention to the story you would realize the main characters are NOT the main characters of the story in 1.2 and that's what the developers were trying to tell us.
I do agree more billy would of been nice.
But again, we got more cutscenes, more comic book scenes, and more face to face interaction scenes to make up for the lack of "tv interactions". So again it feels like you just didn't like the story and thats okay what matters is majority of the audience did.
I think the truth of the matter is the TV mode is good.. in moderation. I think the game is worse when its all TV mode, and all worse when its no TV mode. Give us a good even mix- a couple TV mode missions, a bunch of non-TV-mode missions. TV mode DOES add something to the game, just don't overuse it.
“Hoyo have been collecting feedback since the first public beta” is a rare but true viewpoint. Just because I only learned about ZZZ right at launch, doesn’t mean they haven’t been getting consistent feedback for a significant time.
“TV Mode won’t disappear, it’ll just get more fun” is very reassuring to me. Give me more special events for TV mode like #CamelliaGoldenPeak, and more Agent-focused, pre-Phaethon ‘and that’s how I met your mother’ stories for the patch MSQs, and I’m happy.
TV mode serves a lot of importance to the story than people give it credit for. It gives us, the players, the breather we need from all the action so we can process things. We get to hear the banter of the characters more, and learn about who they are as a result of that. That's not something you can do in combat because you'd be too busy doing combos on enemies. That's kinda why I didn't like 1.2 at all personally. It was just go, go, go with no break, no time to actually know anyone besides Lucy and Ceasar (which wasn't that much either), and then randomly see Lucius's true colors (which were obvious from the beginning).
I know majority would rather remove the TV and keep the Hollow run, but honestly... that's just boring. It's not like Hi3rd where the player is running in a map with different areas and rooms, and you get places to rest and have the characters talk. ZZZ uses the same battle grounds, same boss arena, same everything depending which on Hollow you're in and there are hardly any breaks because all you're doing is running straight into another danger zone. It's just not fun. I don't wanna be hacking and slashing enemies all the time. If I wanted that, I'd just replay Musou Warriors 2 for the 1,000th time. Instead of getting rid of TV mode, they should improve it to give a better experience for players. Now I fear they're gonna remove it all together because people wanna complain about it rather than ask for improvement. I know some people are, but majority I've seen just keep saying to get rid of it. Which is just sad, because the devs wanted this to work and they should be able to keep something they clearly worked hard on and were proud of.
I think the middle line is that the tv will remain but there should be an optional skip button for it.
The point of the TV mode is that it is the interface with which Phaeton engages the Hollows through Eous. To reduce its role is to reduce Phaeton's involvement in the story process. Plus I really loved the creativity it brings to the table when it comes to presentation. Particularly loved what they did with Rina's Agent Story and Qingyi's Mindscape stuff. For Chapter 4, I'd say it's at least a bit forgivable considering they're in the Outer Ring, so the commission is done outside of Random Play (where their TV board is). I do agree with the rest saying that it can be too spoonfeed-y and tedious, but overall TV mode gives ZZZ a breath of fresh air.
Nobody cares about Phaeton. People care about characters they spent their resources to get.
My first exposure to ZZZ was being impressed by cutscenes. Then after I learned it was going to be this mix of action game and classic dungeon crawler type thing was when I got excited to actually _play_ it. So losing half of that isn't great to me.
I honestly didn't mind the TV mode and love the unique dialogue characters had to say when diving in the hollows.
Still this story felt like the protags was missing. Navigating through hollows are their job. Removing that takes away their identity.
Wtf, I was really caught off guard. 6:43
Sorry Daniel!
Me too!
While i never hated them enought to ask for their removal i cant deny that i never liked TV
I always felt they overstayed their welcome on the story and in side missions i always left them for last.
While the pacing for ch 4 wasnt perfect and there was room for some TV (some being the operative word ) i enjoyed it more than previous chapters.
The twins relevance is more of a writting problem than a TV problem, because of Fairy.
As much as i enjoy Fairys characters she severely puts into question Paethons role in the story. Most of the time they are doing what she tells to and transmiting what information are given by her.
Fortunately they seem to realize this and are trying fix it by giving them some moments of quick thinking like in Ballet Twins.
Even here the twin was quick enought to direct Billy to drive to the hollow, send a distress signal and start recolecting data all on their own while in the hollow.
I honestly i find that a lot better than do what Fairy tells you to do again.
Also i like to bring up ch2 as an example of bad pacing and mc irrelevance. That was Koleda and Graces story, we were just there to pay our electricity bills with little connection and little to no bonding with the characters.
Meanwhile Koledas emotional arc felt like something that should've taken more time but they had to rush it to introduce Sacrifice.
In the end i hope TV comes back better but i do not want it in the same amounts than before unless it improves significantly.
While I do agree with most of what you said, you also gotta consider the fact that this part of the story took place in the middle of the desert where oil is still being used to power whatever few buildings are still being used, I think the reason this patch had almost zero TV mode was because it wouldn't make sense in the game world as to why Wise and Belle would suddenly be OP in a place with minimal technology, even fairy admitted she couldn't do much outside of New Eridu, so maybe this patch was just an extreme which is why I'm waiting to see how they handle TV mode back in New Eridu where more missions can make use of it before casting my vote for or against it
That is true actually. Good point.
The tv is showing what wise and bell are seeing on their hdd while they control their bangboo and that hasn't changed at all. It has absolutely nothing to do with the area being a desert, they just removed it because most people hated it.
To contradict your point: Wise/Belle and Caesar literally went out of their way to set up a mobile HDD so that both siblings could connect via Eous in the Hollow, which is a sign that TVs were meant to play a role here and were just removed in a rushed manner by the devs due to backlash which in turn butchered the pacing and writing of the story, but hey victory for TV haters I guess?
This has nothing to do at all, the devs SAID that they took it away from main story because of the players complains, there is no need to come up with weird theories because the devs already cleared it up by themselves on the interview
I think you are definitely right but I believe it was more their "excuse" to try out how the community would react to it by just not having any TV mode at all
some story telling+gameplay mix of the tv mode in the main story is so engaging me and the creativity of it all is just a plus. removing it in the main story completely just seems a lil extreme to me. it gave zzz that distinct aesthetic and personality that i loved day 1. and depending on how they go about it, its gonna throw itself in the already saturated brain off mode action gacha stash.
i wish they stuck to developing its qol changes and its balance to action gameplay ratio first rather than outright having plans for letting it go in the main story. srsly, i cannot imagine scenarios like the rail rerouting in ch1, the machine interactions in ch2 or the ch3 navigation being good if told in the action format. its really not gonna hit the same. Ive already accepted it tho so im just hoping they dont fumble the bag on the execution
It also completely guts the idea that the Hollow is supposed to be ever changing and random. When youre just running through the Hollow in 3D, it doesnt come off as anything other than just a regular dungeon in a regular game.
I feel like some of the announced features aren't helping fill that "mc does nothing" feeling either as while I'm excited to roam around as my fluffy boi Lycaon its yet another loss of any connection to wise or belle. People will just start roaming as their waifu/husbando first chance they get, the issue I think the tv conundrum has is that its a good idea but the simplistic setup and snap right into combat leaves people with whiplash, perhaps upping the involvement and thought required could help to make it more engaging/enticing given it being so insanely easy yet so slow is most peoples problem anyway.
Just started playing this game a few days ago and absolutely loved it, blasted through chapter 1 and am halfway through chapter 3. Knowing chapter 4 is just gonna be fight after cutscene after fight after cutscene... sucks, SO much. It's gonna drag the story so far down for me to make it completely unenjoyable.
I want the story to be told "through" gameplay and the TV mode, so far, has been great for that, sure it has its faults, being stopped every 2 seconds to be told "look over there!" and them dropping these cool ideas they introduce just after what essentially feels like a tutorial, like, do more with it!
The only way this is going to work is if battles become more than just that, that you'll explore and interact with unique enviroments to push the story forward in unique ways, which they won't do, I'd bet on it.
If this homogenizing continues, I'll be long gone, which would REALLY fucking suck considering I've already whaled out on it and spent $300 in just the first chapter lmao
I think it's fine for events and hollow zero, if they put in more complicated stuff that'd be great otherwise it just feels like a needless time gate. The problem with it being part of the story progression is that they can't make it complex because they NEED the widest audience to be able to complete it. Golden-week seemed like the first peek that something interesting could be done with it. Make it big, non-linear, with interesting puzzles and fun mini-games (that you can actually fail) and I'd enjoy it. Otherwise don't force me down linear hallways, hold my hand for every thing and force me to watch pointless animations and dialog. I don't need to be told how many gear coins or what Rank I need to unlock a door for the hundreth time. I don't need 6 tutorial screen popups when a new mechanic is introduced. Let me struggle a bit so I can enjoy getting through it.
The thing with TV mode is that it slows the pace down. That is a bit of a problem if you put it in the mandatory main story.
Firstly, a lot of players only play the game for the combat, and forcing them to slow the pace down and do something else feels bad for them.
Secondly, there is also a lot of players trying to clear the main story to unlock all the features and content. They just want to have everything essential ready and keep up. Slowing them down also feels bad for them.
Relegating the TV mode into side commisions and/or events is the best solutions imo (unless they can rework it to feel faster), as you are usually not in a rush to complete it because it's not mandatory, and therefore can enjoy it for what it is.
Agreed. I almost quit because of how frequent the TVs were and because I thought the combat was incredibly dumbed down and boring, because it is in the early game. I don't know how but I powered through the story and ended up liking the game after that once I reached Shiyu Defense.
No ! Everyone has to be subjected to a mandatory dose of dumb puzzles every 10min while you are following the main storyline. It's the premium zenless zone zero experience what actually sets the game apart from other gatcha slop out there, tv is fun and creative gameplay !
I don't think slowing the pace down is the problem itself, but how slow tv mode can be. I'm sure a lot of people, including myself, would gladly watch characters yap to each other, but yapping and moving through tv mode? I sleep. No really, I've genuinely felt like sleeping at times through tv mode and it's stopped me from playing the game for days and weeks because I don't like the idea of grinding the game and it's a bunch of long tv segments. To me it just needs a rework with the right changes to be fine instead of complete removal because it does give a good narrative structure in the story. The character banter, the build up to fights, puzzles, moving through the twin towers before the final conflict, tv mode was good for that, it's just the execution is bad.
"The thing with TV mode is that it slows the pace down. That is a bit of a problem if you put it in the mandatory main story." It's only a problem for the brain fried zoomers who can't watch anything without constant stimulation.
"Secondly, there are also a lot of players trying to clear the main story to unlock all the features and content."
And who the f*ck cares about these people? I don't think the dev should cater to the speed runners and the story skippers.
@@kiteofdark Exactly the same, i yawned until either i got to play S rank characters in certain missions or until i got to interknot 40-50 and could start endgame.
No TV is bad
Too much TV is bad
They just need to find a good balance & we'll be fine. They already improved the TV mode a LOT in 1.2 & fortunately, people who enjoy it have become more vocal. I just hope that ZZZ doesn’t lose its identity. Also, despite people complaining & crying, TV mode is inarguably most important in the main story. Great video
as a long hour working adult, i appreciate getting into the meat of things rather than spending my limited free time running back and forth in TV mode.
ye, im a working adult as well, i can only play zzz during train transportation and I dont really like playing tv mode while on train, it made me sleepy
Some of TV mode quest is good but most of them are such a time waster, some argue that 1.2 is boring and empty like whaaatttt, we literally got a heavy drop lore that our siblings protagonist have a master/teacher, a bit of Miyabi appearances and her motivation, new area, more challenging enemies with doppelganger thirens and biker ethereal boss, now compare it with 1.1, feels like they're the one who don't pay attention to the game 😪.
Genuine question: Do you actually enjoy the braindead combat of the story mode? Because if you want to "get into the meat of things" why play a live service gacha game of all things if you know the story tends to be extended over the course of years lol
This has nothing to do with you not having free time, there's no "meat" of the game, TV mode is as much part of the games as combat is, they're just two different types of gameplay, you just happen to not like TV mode as much, which is a fair opinion to have, but as someone who enjoys TV mode i could very well say that that's the meat of the game for me, it's just a matter of preference, not of having free time or not.
@@baldwin3750 You... Do realize Lore =\= Story right? Was the lore drop cool? Oh yeah for sure, did it progress the story? No, not at all, not even close, the Phaethon plotline took a backseat during the entirety of chapter 4 (Something that didn't happen during chapters 00-03 and that's no coincidence)
TV mode in first chapters was necessary but a lot of times due to how simple and scripted TV mode is there it felt like a chore. I didn't felt engaged in characters due to them being mostly static tv screen. Jane and Calydon stories were much more fun and engaging. For TV mode to be enaging in main story they need to allow player to have greater influence on it (like in Hollow exploration). Main story TV mode is by far least fun element in otherwise very fun game imo
If no TV mode actually does mean consistently more overworld content, new map regions, and larger maps for more overworld traversal, than I'm ultimately fine with it. But if they phase it out in favour of just combat segments, than it's only going to make the game feel truncated.
I know everyone's out here talking about TV mode vs Combat mode etc etc but when are the Devs going to address the REAL problem with ZZZ? When will we be able to hang more than 8 photos on our Memory Board? It's an absolute travesty and god looks upon that design choice with disgust!
Edit: This is obviously sarcasm, but fr it would be nice if we could hang more photos 🙉
I said it a bunch and I'll say it again: I love puzzles, I just don't like hitting non-interruptable stops
Let the dialogue happen while I still play and get rid of the excess of dialogue popups
1.2 TV modes, as scarce as they were, already felt great, even if the flying car one was relatively braindead
I'd probably still play normal weekly Hollow Zero over Blitz if the game would let me insta-pick upgrades and not waste 90% of the time clicking through popups
And I agree with you ALG, The TV modes, if optimized, will make the game unique, because as a Day 1 player, barely skipping a day yet, the combat almost burns me out already, the puzzles and even the cooking mode we got now was the only thing that made the game feel a bit refreshing again after all those weeks
it's a little bizarre that challenge mode doesn't turn off the handholding, i dunno if really nobody thought about it or if it was just too low priority.
TV mode had great potential, as some of the exploration commissions have shown. I thought in the story, they felt like more of a chore because of how simple the puzzles were. I was hoping they'd increase quality and QoL before removing it. The 1.2 story missions were very compact and felt shorter than Janes bit. My problem is mainly with how engaging story content is and sadly, even the cooking event was more engaging than the main story of 1.2. Not that the writing was bad (on the contrary - I enjoyed it alot), but rather how it was packaged.
90% killing trash mobs that are still no challenge in challenge mode and walking.
It all just feels like filler and not a well thought through system in and of itself. I really wish they increased challenge mode difficulty to Shiyu level and added more quality things to do. Like they went through the hassle to add the motorbike driving minigame, only to have it implemented into a very small portion of the patch.
The vampire survival arcade game is what the story should be like.
I honestly never minded TV Mode that much, off the top of my head my biggest complaint with it is that dialogue can't be fast forwarded or tapped through. I can read the line as quickly as it can scroll on to the screen, faster than the voice actor can perform it, and when I'm just trying to get a move on, it stands out as an odd limitation to make me wait for a dramatization of information I've already read.
Im a little sleepy, and when i heard you call out my name, i immediately woke up and looked at my screen with disbelief.
Thanks for that
Sorry Daniel.
The drill exploration quest was unique and a nice change of pace, and from the teasers we got from the broadcast and the camellia missions from last chapter, it seems that they have TV mode's best interest at heart.
Yeah I believe it.
I always just thought all they had to do was stop blocking your progress in tv mode. It felt like they made you stop for every dislogue or gate and it reslly slows it down for the people that wanted to just move through it. I really loved tv mode puzzles and they became a reason for me to play the game, dissapointed that they're moving such a fun story telling device.
TV Mode is fun, I just felt it sometimes broke the flow of the game a bit too much. I feel like it's when they try to mix both type of gameplay that the imbalance shows. I loved the Ballet Twins story in TV Mode, The Prophecy is a great commission and I'm glad it's in the game.
The Prophecy and Endless Abyss are absolute bangers
They kinda dropped the premise of the story and it’s weird because they didn’t need to.
TV enjoyer here. I much more enjoy it at end game when it's not a slog to get through. During the main story it can be quite daunting, and I enjoyed the shit out of the TV mode in the Golden Week event, and the little bit of it in hollow zero is perfect for me. I want them to keep it around but it not be overwhelming.
That chapter 3 segment where Lycaon and etc are helping you navigate through the black out was such a really neat and creative way to tell that story. And by ch3 I realized how much I like the TV mode because of that. As long as the team were continued toward that direction and made it fun, I was down to see more.
So straight up I think removing the TVs was a mistake and removing that is removing part of the games unique charm and identity. But it be like that I guess. This is part of why I think what makes art, “art” has really lost its meaning in this era, but that’s a whole different topic. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who enjoyed the TV mode specifically for storytelling purposes.
I am on the exact opposite opinion of other people. I loved the TV mode in the story. Great exposition and story telling device. Great opportunity to get banters. In the TV mode where you get a lot of Fairy's whole character to shine.
The part where I hate the TV is Hollow Zero. It's atrocious. Every time you need to go through the same path to clear it. It supposed to be a rouge like, but the variety is close to none. Not to mention that you need 30-40 minute to clear 1 run. That's a f*cking lot of time compared to anything that is in HSR Sim universe or Genshin's Spyral Abyss.
Imo the devs acted too quickly. They should have slowly to decrease the TV mode and not going from 100 to 0.
Side comment related to TV in Blitz vs Vanilla HZ (so not necessarily in the story mode), I honestly liked Blitz quite a bit less than the TV mode. Felt like I had less choice, less control, and just generally less fun than the original Hollow Zero. I did three runs on Blitz and kinda gave up on it, would much rather do things with the TV mode and make interesting choices along the way, even if the loop is longer. My hope is that they keep both on that side at least, so folks who want the fast version can keep that, while I play the longer tv-mode version and get to pick my patha bit more.
The truth is that the TV mode was always a bad idea despite what TV apologists were saying. People complained about it already in the beta. Testers said: Hoyo, this thing sucks. Its intrusive, slow, epileptic and not fun at all. But Hoyo, thinking they have some sort of holy Grail on their hands doubles down on it thinking: no trust us bros its going to be good and what happens? Game launches and surprise, people leave at mass because the TV mode sucks. Fast forward to 1.3 and theyre doing everything in their power to make the TVs as non intrusive as they only can to the point where entire outer ring chapter basically didn't had any. Yes. In theory TVs made sense and were cool, but in practice they don't and they've realized it too late after the TVs already delt enough damage. Hate it all you want, but its the truth tv apologists refuse to believe. TVs caused ZZZ to lost a lot of money and players and hoyo, being a business first foremost will make appropriate changes ranging from TVs being relegated to side content if not outright removed in most modes moving forward. In fact its already happening as we speak as most content were getting these days doesn't have TVs
Well, different people have different opinions. I liked Tv mode from the start, I don't getting why people calling it the slow, it's much more faster comparing to running in 3D locations as your characters, I sick by GI and HSR because of it, I don't want to run from point A to point B and being tortured by this slow animations of characters, meanwhile TVs are just 2D tiles, animation and moving on map is literally few seconds and much more pleasing in my opinion. Also I like many mini games in TVs as well. You can think all you want, but TVs are decent mechanic and have big potential. Sorry for my bad english, it's not my native language
@@AljabirAmantaevpeople may have different opinions but some opinions get outvoted. And TV mode has been more hated than loved so that side wins the vote
Yeah, I completely agree with the idea that Belle and Wise were basically absent from the story, unless they were in cutscenes, and just that.
The only reason people don’t completely realize that is because at the very, VERY end of the main quest we got lore bombs about old eridu from the two main characters of this game.
Part of me feels like the game might end up making Belle and Wise as irrelevant as an obscure side character npc that occasionally reminds you they exist, or even worse, lore exposition characters that have no other role, which is kinda bad considering how, again, these two are our PROTAGONISTS for the game.
Have you played Reverse:1999? Vertin the main protagonist of the game is not a playable character but she has a heavy impact on the story. If ZZZ manage to do that as well, Im sure they can pull it off for Belle/Wise to still have importance in the story.
@@onelasada1707 i do play reverse 1999! Love the game’s story.
I agree with this. the tv mode is fun and all , but it takes too long to complete and it feels repetitive, so I think is great for it to be removed from the story mode and used in other segments of the game, such as events and some sidequests.
Also on Hollow zero, the new mode without tvs feels incredible, huge fan of that.
Tv mode also help so much in the narrative and characterization of the characters so much more than combat. I get to know about the characters so much more in tv mode and world buidling! It doesn't also help that combat narrative is easily missed when you're busy hitting stuff and it also feels very brief and sparse or barebones.
E.g in chapter 2 we get to take turns being introduce to each characters of the belobog and how they interact with each other, ben the worry wort, anton the postive and gung ho character and koleda and grace having siblings interactions and then there's chapter 3 even in its short chapter how the maid team work together, rina and lycon and ellen with corin, we get lore about the towers and meet spoopy ghost liter old clipping newspaper about the tower. a way better experience than fight go here , fight go here.
There's a reason why I never get engage with the story in aether gazer and pgr imo and we dont need another pgr clone. ZZZ really stands on its own with its puzzle and interactive content and it would be a shame if 90% of the story and SIDE quest are nothing but combat. Walk combat, walk combat , walk combat, doesn't make it a memorable experience.
also lack of tv mode is why I feel , chapter 4 is disappointingly short imo. We barely know anything about each character except maybe ceaser but stuff the like vanquishers and pompey were so short making the emotional highlight feel weaker in comparison to chapter 2. Also de tour inferno , the most build up event in the chapter is a single motorcycle mission and that was it.
@@MrCerberust i think not that short.. i play it like 3hrs+ ish.. and i think its pretty good...
Honestly I thought TV mode was fine as it is and I hope TV mode stays in the game as it seems to be a core feature that makes the game special
I quite like TV mode. My first impression was just a mini-JRPG styled gameplay segment, which is why a mission like The Prophecy works so well in it. It felt to me like a clever way of doing breathers in between combat sections. But, if there were a lot of complaints about it, then
A big problem for me is what the removal of it did to chapter 4. I'm still very bothered about how rushed it felt. Combat intro, 2 more combat missions, slice of life with Caesar, and then it's the 10 minute finale combat. I was very disappointed and post-credits Cheesetopia missions doesn't help it. I genuinely believe we don't NEED TV mode, but I really feel like TV mode was taken out without anything replacing it which is super lame.
It was a lot shorter with important characters and missions over incredibly quickly. My big problem, and why do feel like TV mode helps the story, but isn't needed, is that ZZZ's main story is WAY too easy ON TOP OF Caesar (giggity) being the most brain off character. It's not that she's easy to play, but if enemies can't threaten her shield, their movesets are virtually not aspects of the gameplay.
While I know it's just manipulating dopamine and how the brain works, TV mode gives cooldown time for those parts of the brain to recover and get, at least somewhat, excited for the cool effects and stuff against non-threatening normal enemies.
I felt like they coulda added more, like those test runs that apparently happened COMPLETELY OFF SCREEN... Utterly cringe. First bike sections shoulda been before the big race, the practice before a longer ride. I also assumed it was going to actually be the way we explore the hollows, different turns going to different places, but instead it's just a mini-game set piece. Those could've been perfect alternatives to the HDD in this location, while giving nice moments for a set amount of dialogue.
I ended up only picking up the game recently after having dropped it when it initially came out, reason being was the TV mode was just such a slog to get through. It wasn’t until friends who stuck with it told me that end game has significantly less TV mode did I actually pick it up again. I’m sure the devs have data on how many people have dropped the game after or during long tv sections so I think it does make sense for them to remove it until they can flesh it out and make it more interesting
TV Mode IS fun IMO and it is what makes ZZZ to stand out from your standard Genshin-like gacha where "exploration" is just collecting nothing burgers and fighting fodder enemies. Unique puzzle-solving gameplay combining it with simple but fantastic combat and animations. While on Main Story, TV mode felt quite handholding and super easy, side commissions are harder and more fun to play. I believe that TV Mode just requires a few QoL changes which some were seen in this last patch with bit faster animations and skipping some unnecessary animations like the prompt for opening doors.
I'd love to see TV Mode coming back to the main story again, but something where you can combine the little exploring there is with switching in and out quickly to TV Mode in order to open new paths, resolving puzzles and find the secret boxes. Make Eous Relevant Again!
Also there is this commission named "The Prophecy" that is on TV mode only and it was like an RPG mode and was absolutely fantastic.
Another thing that I'd like to add is that without TV Mode chapters would feel incredibly short. Chapter 4 is already short but without the TV Mode it took me so little time to complete. I do appreciate the cinematics tho.
I completely agree that Belle & Wise felt absent in chapter 4, it made their big emotional scene at the end feel pretty out of nowhere and disconnected from the plot.
I like TV mode now more than ever. The QoL updates they added make it flow a lot better.
The problem with 'listening to the fans' is you're often actually listening to the loud 1% of the fanbase which doesn't represent the perhaps larger than understood portion of the fanbase who disagrees.
There are times when tv mode feels like a waste of time for how long it takes vs rewards gained. Compare that to the 2-5 min combat missions and it feels even worse.
I like tv mode but it needs to feel like exploration and discovery more than a time sink.
I always liked your intro, even though I am a dolphin. It let me know you were going to approach things from a reasonable perspective. Literally every other ZZZ channel uses the words "Broken, OP, must pull" in every video. Apparently whales are only looking for confirmation bias, not actual info.
Appreciated! It’s only a bit, it’ll be back.
I liked your intro, made me feel at home and I feel like it really shown what separates you from the other creators.
I'm not going anywhere, but personally I just think that helped get new people to instantly stay
I think maybe I was too deadpan in my delivery and this was supposed to be a joke. The intro is not going anywhere. I just dropped it for this one to make a point about “over listening” to feedback.
I think the TV mode in general is fun, new, and unique. There are a lot of cool or funny moments with the storytelling for a bunch of missions also. I think the main pain point is that you the player are playing AS the navigator. That concept is hard to make "exciting" in a moment to moment gameplay style for missions and such.
I mean, Persona has Navis, but they are relegated to mostly story or supportive proc abilities, which is totally fine. When you play it as your character, I feel as though making the connection to Belle and Wise is a tad weird in the first place, as I do feel like I'm the one doing everything and they're just....there. That's even with a lot of TV mode in the game.
Maybe they could give it a different direction or perspective and tie in their supportive capabilities to the support Bangboo itself...instead of Eous just kind of being there along with another random Bangboo. They could make the main Bangboo on your team an Eous "skin" and Belle and Wise can use the abilities with some kind of information/combat chip or something while masking to look like them like we have now with switching to Caesar and soon Burnice. Then changing back to Eous during important cutscenes, to convey to the player that Belle and Wise are more present in the story and fights.
The problem in my opinion is there's not enough TV mode...the split should be somewhere around 70-30 in my opinion, with TV mode truly being the "hacking" part of the game and you can flip flop between them with mostly regular action during any given mission. Kind of like Sly Cooper in a way, that's at least what comes to my mind.
Love the videos!
(Typing this before I watch the video)
I loved the story in Chapter 4 and thought it was the best one yet, in spite of the lack of TV mode. And I don’t know for 100% sure if this is the case, but there were a few parts that I would swear to you used to be TV mode segments that they replaced with combat commissions at the last minute. The most blatant example is the part where the group were following Kasa into the Hollow. That entire thing felt so weird as it was presented in the final product, and I can almost promise you that used to be a monitor array part.
I love the TV mode. It’s one of my favorite parts of the game, and it’s something that I genuinely can’t get anywhere else because I’ve never seen it done like this in any other game. To see them say they were taking it out of the main story, and then to see that they only added 2 new exploration commissions alongside 38 combat ones, that was just painful to see and really discouraging.
Point taken, and it is such a good video!
Now for me, I did enjoy the TV but most of the time it takes so much of the enjoyment, maybe there are stories that I loved (especially the ballet twins) but some stories were kinda hard to play and even pay attention that I mostly just fast forward and wanted it to just finish.
The ballet twins tv mode that you were navigating in the dark and fending off ghost is so fun.
Another thing that I disliked is the playback/flashback stories and investigation stories because it’s confusing and takes so much time.
I like the TV on Hollow Zero, the multiple path taking and risk/reward there is SO nice because it is that right dose of "gambling where I have some input on the outcome" and it gets better as you unlock stuff that lets you reroll Resonia, the Golden week event also felt nice as they didn't hold your hands so much. Separating Inferno Reap from the Withering Garden was also a great idea, if you want a better Resonia kit then try Withering Garden again and try to take as much risk as possible, Is your resonia kit fine? Then you can retry Inferno Reap as much as you want with any saved kit.
Also some good TV modes are the one with the "bomb designer", catching the Bangboos and even the weird Bangboo arena had some fun to it, because they didn't force hold your hand there, specially the Bomb mission, I spent some extra time on the final sections to see how silly the bomb upgrades got.
One thing that probably annoyed some people on the previous chapter (the Victoria Housekeeping/Tower one) was surely the Bangboo plug-in gameplay-interface, the plug-in menu is very annoying on PC, "long pressing" R every 3 secs is not fun, on Rina's story switching between her Bangboos is also poorly done, the switching takes longer than solving the puzzles.
The common denominator is that the TV has the potential to be VERY annoying and tedious if executed poorly.
TV mode is a great narrative device. It SHOULD be used in story to make the Twins more involved. I loved the sequence where the cunning hares loaded up the bombs onto the train. That whole tv section was awesome. Same thing with the ballet twins, it was a real fun atomspheric time. Doing that 'in the overworld' would've been bad or just a 'worse' version of other games.
Same sentiments, TV mode will increase the feeling of involvement, but the presentation was done very poorly, lack of visuals (compared to other hoyo titles), add unique location in hollow (sixth st, belobog, lumina) and bigger character (profile pic) during dialogue(and replay in hollow) can better relay information.
I saw the lack of character voicelines and world building through archives (books, video cover, vinly) descriptions.
I feel TV mode is lacking, but all the loud opinions are not seeing the main problem here. The quick respond to please the NPC voices, shows they dont have a clear direction for their product.
Tv mode felt like a bad filler just to make missions take longer in 1.0 and 1.1. Alot of time it was just zipping in 1 screen wide snake for minutes. For me a person who likes the fighting it was just a badly made timegate to the next story fight. i am not talking about hollow zero, just the story. it was just too long and to dry most of the time, the mini games where fun but most of the time you just zipped from tv to tv collected 3 blobs thats it 5 minutes gone and no story, no fight, just press in the only direction you could go. it got better at the end of 1.1 though. I don't want it to disappear but the ballance was way off, for me atleast.
It's actually kind of funny how Belle and Wise played a far bigger role in the Cheesetopia event than they did in the main story. I did appreciate how they expanded a lot on their background towards the ending, and I think the story has a lot of potential if it dives deeper into it in future updates.
Now my question is where were you all when a LOT of people complained about the tvs. I barely saw any positive comments about them. Now when the devs did something about it you all complained. If they didnt change it, you all also gonna say they dont listen like genshin
As a person who finished most the story content in the past month, there’s not much difference in belle and wise screen time with or without the tvs. Each story is about a faction and how their lives intertwine with Phaethon lives and goals (little by little via chapter finale). The tv change nothing but made it all quicker to progress the story. Staying immersed
This chapter was the most character driven, intense and emotional by writing alone. We experienced that as a witness and guide, Phaethon like in past chapters. This chapter more than others we felt that experience because we got to stay immersed in the story without the tv. I felt more like a guide noticing, Euos was actually leading them for once. It all felt perfect for me.
Explore will always have TV and challenging puzzles btw. I liked the tvs for a couple weeks. Then i noticed how much i lost track of the story because I’m falling asleep with the TVs segments. Losing immersion. It’s the only reason i stopped playing and missed Zhu banners (was really looking forward to her but didn’t want to play much more).
I’ve been such a champion for TV mode in the surveys in large part because I know how much the louder parts of the fanbase dislikes it. I’ve found them to be such a fun method of puzzle solving and navigation in the side quests and an efficient method of storytelling. I think you mentioned this in an older video, but the team being able to use the tv mode to tell parts of character and main stories allows them to use more of that dev-time and money towards killer animations and cutscenes
I get what you mean with Belle and Wise missing in story sections more now, but I believe they're also more present in dialogues during the actual combat levels of the story too. I don't really remember that being so common pre-chap 4. I felt that was worth mentioning still. Maybe they could double down on that more to compensate but just wanted to add, they did try to have them present still iirc.
I legit paused my Shiyu Def run to bemoan the loss of the Billy butt slap / Sniffing Bangboo / Jane walk... glad that was a joke. That bit and your comedic timing with it has literally made me laugh at loud every time. :)
Problem is the tv mode in the main story. TV outside of the story has shown more signs of potential with the events and hollow zero. In the main story the hold your hand throughout the entire chapter when playing the TVs. The story mode to this day still hasn't shown signs of good potential FOR THE STORY besides "hey this is what bell and wise see". It felt like filler because it didn't feel like the concept was fully realized. So hopefully they can go back to the drawing board and make it more fun because to be honest, I didn't even notice the TV mode was gone when playing the chapter. Everything felt natural to me.
Regarding bell and wise having more dialogue during missions: That could be cool sure, but they also have to be careful with how much dialogue there is in a specific mission with all the characters. They have to balance that out well otherwise the frequency of dialogue for all the characters might feel tiring for players. I felt like the SoC characters were yapping enough, so it's a balance. I personally never felt like the siblings were missing from the story since the story itself was not about them. They were just the guides. I reminded me of the belobog chapter where the other characters did most of the talking.
Yeah my issue with the TV mode was it was so long and laborious at the start with all the tutorials for really simple puzzles and it killed the momentum when i really wanted to get to the action (which is what i saw in all the marketing) but since combat only take a few minutes at most. The camilla golden week event was actually fun though since i knew what i was getting into.
Also going to miss the billy butt slap, it was a joy trying to figure out how you would segue way it into the video. The more tenuous the link the better.
4:55 Couldn't have said it better myself. I was surprised at how much fun I had with ZZZ and it hooked me right away with both the combat and the overall vibe/direction. I almost didn't try it because I assumed it was just going to be another Genshin/Star Rail so I'm really glad Hoyo took a risk by appealing to a different type of audience.
Naturally, there are some vocal mainstream Genshin/Star Rail "fans" who complain about the character designs or the fanservice because they expected Hoyo would play it safe to appeal to them. Considering how hard Hoyo has already committed and how they are getting more bold with the fanservice as time goes on I have confidence that they won't change their stance to appease the complainers, but I do think that Hoyo is unsure on how to handle the gameplay and the different modes.
Personally, I'm hoping for more social sim elements found in Persona games to enhance the agent interaction and city exploring aspect. I think that would hold a lot of potential and incentivise people to become invested in characters. As for city exploration, I would like to see more interactivity, like shops you can go inside of, agent hangouts not just being fade-to-black with text describing what happens, maybe have the metro system be more interactive too. Of course, none of this is necessary but it would help add to the hub areas like it does in Persona.
Im a weird gamer. ZZZ has some uniqueness and weirdness. Dont unweird this for me. Dont unweird your channel too much either. Stay yourself.
TV is great for puzzles in events, it works for hollow zero too but I love how we now have the option to play HZ blitz to avoid TV, while leaving it for those who like it
As a TV mode enjoyer myself. I can only speak to my own experience. To me I really hope they keep trying and experimenting with it. Its probabaly the most interesting concept in a gacha game I've seen in a while. Not because its out-of-the-box the most fun feature ever but the potential for unique storytelling IS there. Rina's agent quest, Ballet Twins commission, and investigations with Pubsec would straight up arguably not be possible without it. And honeslty some of the most engaging momments of the game for me comes from said TV mode. Combat is flashy and fun but by itself cant be the only substance the game has to offer. The overworld is nice but it's simply limiting due to technical and resource constraints as a delivery method for story telling. In short, it is my hope they continue to improve on it rather than abandoning the vision they had for it.
I’m still scarred from that early story tv mode that was way too mind numbingly boring for an action rpg game I personally love zzz for the combat and characters I don’t mind a bit of tv in events and stuff like the rogue like gameplay they do but when they force it on me and it’s long and drawn out just makes it more of a chore than anything
Even though I love combat more than anything else, I still really like tv mode when it’s used creatively, like the commission where you fight a bunch of enemies using ONLY 3 bangboo and not even being able to control them, I wanna see more creativity like this cuz it was super fun!
you can see euos following out pov of the sons of caladon, they sould just let us look through Euos's pov
So far the improvements of TV have been better. And im loving that there was literally no tv section in 1.2. hella fun to walk around the desert area, find cactus 😅 and avoiding the lightning rays.
TV mode was interesting and will not be removed compeletly for sure but any sympathy for it I had died with that goddamn 2hour long commision taking part only in TV mode.
The good way to re-introduce TV mode in more substantial gameplay is use it as hacking/route finding mode in-gameplay. Your agents run into a dead end in the hollow and the short cutscene plays showing the Eous tripping in simillar way how the icon in TV mode does, camera zoom in going into it's eyes/visor and blam, loading and the TV Mode opens. It'd made it feel less disjointed for me.
Even better, perfect way to do all of it would be to separate agent gameplay with parts where you run as Bangboo with agent/s following the lil bnuy. I know alot of work but let's be honest....ZZZ is making a huge buck. I can dream of weird things like that.
Personally, my experience of TV mode was that it has a few highs (Bangboo Master, RPG minigame, Qin Yi's sync mode), was "ok" for some of the time (didn't add or remove too much from the experience), and made the game feel slow and grindy the rest of the time... which, if you were farming hollow zero, was most of the time. Ultimately, I see TV mode as something that should only be used if it creates some really memorable content (like the two missions we got in 1.2). Otherwise, I prefer if the devs focus on creating longer stages, because this not only gives us more of the beautifully rendered universe to explore and experience, but also means we have more "combat areas" to spice up the repeatable content.
I definitely think more creative ways to use TV mode is the best way to go about solving the issues with it. I also think that, to address the issue with Belle and Wise being included in the story more, if they decide to utilize the battle mode world, maybe have Eous be controllable in some parts? That might make for some interesting new gameplay.
I agree that the twins felt a bit too background in the latest story, but yeah I also think that may have been a side effect of sudden TV removal. I will say I was a big person who HATED TV mode... in the main story. To me it was a poor delivery service for the events and I just couldn't get immersed in them narratively speaking as it was too 'detached' a view. Also I think it was MOSTLY a pain point in chapter 1 and maybe 2 where there were barely 'puzzles' and it was very slow and hand holdy. It also felt kinda clunky in general with how often we were just stopped for dialogue, but I've noticed they have slowly been streamlining the tv mode experience and I do see and appreciate the efforts.
I'm actually a big fan of a lot of the side quest puzzle tv missions though, so I think it SHOULD have a place in the game but I think main story wasn't the place to use it FOR EVERYTHING. Maybe having it sporadically would be fine but having it be the only method we experienced the story in felt... not great. I def think there's a middle ground to be had, and definitely think the side quest puzzles were enjoyable :)
Tv-less Hollow zero is a bit of a loss for me, although I do know that it's not replacing the classic exploration mode. The hollow zero exploration is engaging, the different environments make you use different strategies outside of fighting, and then when it comes to the central zone it's like an avengers movie where everyone comes together but also there's a disaster so there's less help like heals and corruption serums. It was really engaging. The new mode is... Brief. Very brief, and packs a lot of fighting. I finished all the weekly tasks through it, it almost felt too brief and simple. In general, I would usually finish the weekly set of tasks in two classic explorations as well, but they just don't feel the same.
I really like the TV part because it gives ZZZ that distinction from other gacha games where you go from place to place interacting with NPCs, watching some story and fighting and so on.
With the TVs it feels like Belle, Wise and Fairy are part of the missions and I say the missions themselves and not the story itself, but there is another character that is not given much importance and that gives a lot of meaning to the exploration within the Hollows and it is the bangbu itself. We must not forget that the bangbu along with its carrot is vital so that the characters do not get lost inside the cavities, and that is what the TVs represent in the game.
One thing I do agree with is that there are parts of the missions where TVs are not necessary. I think that TVs should only be used at very specific points in the mission where you cannot advance through combat alone and require a more technical and strategic perspective. In addition, the TV part should be more personalized to each type of mission (they have already shown that it can be done with the Golden Week event or the Belobog Constructions story).
I think TVs should return to the main story but only when they make them more streamlined, more personalized for each mission, only appear at most 3 times per mission (and only if the mission is long enough so that it doesn't feel like they're abusing the TVs), and maybe they could use them when passing through the rifts as a way to represent the change between the different parts of the Hollow.
By the way, why not adapt the explorations and include in-game a setting where you can automatically skip the TV part only in story mode for those who don't like them just because the TVs "slow down" the game experience?
And one last note, the fact that the ZZZ devs are listening to the community is a hugely good thing for the game, but that doesn't mean that they have to listen to each and every one of them all the time, because as you mentioned at the beginning of the video, just because a certain very noisy sector of players spend their time complaining about everything doesn't mean that they have to be indulged literally, because at the end of the day those kinds of people will never agree with anything and will end up leaving the game for the most irrational reasons imaginable.
I always liked the tv mode because it made me more excited for when I get to the gameplay. I also like how the agents and the main character interact with each other while exploring the hollow in tv mode and it makes me feel like the main characters are more important to the story because they are needed for the agents to explore the hollow. On the contrary, removing the tv mode made me less immersed to the story of zzz which really sucks. I just wish people could have more attention span.
It won't be removed, but since they've already nearly finished 1.3, there won't be a lot in there, but hopefully more afterwards. Remember to go to your feedback/suggestions tab in game! ❤
Absolutely!
TV mode implementation in the 1.0 story ranges from somewhat fun to snoozefest, and while I really liked some of the ways it was used outside the story I am 100% on board with them going back to the drawing board until they find a way to make it more fun. Plus chapter 4's story was by far the most fun so far for me, the only moment that even came close in 1.0 and 1.1 was the ballerinas fight and surrounding cutscenes
edit: oh btw, great video as usual! :)
My problems with TV mode weren't the mode itself, but more how often the mode takes control away from the player to move them around to show them something.
Speaking neurologically, humans treat tech as part of their body while using it (no, seriously, they've done studies on this) and losing control like that feels to our minds exactly the same as if we suddenly lost feeling in a limb.
The new 1.2 TV mode has improved significantly, and once it's optimized further, I think it's a good idea to reintroduce some TV mode into the Story. So far my Resinless behaviour of grinding the Z-merit limit in 1.2 actually went pretty fast but maybe it might be harder to receive feedback about TV mode because of it's infrequency. Personally, I love TV Mode and was pretty bummed out about no TV mode in Chapter 4, and it really did feel like I just clicked through some dialogue, played some braindead combat because my team is already built for Shiyu (Heck I missed some dialogue for clearing too fast). The only thing that actually saved Chapter 4 for me was actually the Event where it felt like it's Epilogue and the extra gameplay could be taken as "TV mode Puzzle"
I actually went "noooooooo" when I heard you say you're not going to use the Billy buttslap anymore
If the TV is gone, I can play this game again, this is what made me hate this game so much to quit within the first hours of gameplay, I don't care being a separated mode like the "rogue like" version, but having to play that shit over and over again through the game was painfully bad.
Now you gotta have a Jane walk playing in the corner the whole time and a Billy slap after every other sentence, just to balance things out.
Have to admit I'm considering dolphining. I dolphined with genshin for about 2 years. I know it made rhe game less fun for me, but it also feels weird not supporting a game I love monetarily at all
That’s an interesting take. I kinda feel I want to support the game more too but it’s just so generous with its freebies!
I didn’t start spending til TV mode was removed from the main story lol
I'm happy to see so many fellow TV enjoyers come out of the woodworks due to this dev announcement, if they are listening to players then maybe the positive TV sentiment will encourage it's reintroduction into main story. All it would take is a few banger Agent Stories with cool TVs and new players to say "this is dope, wouldn't this be cool in the main story too?"
i dont like TV mode but im playing it only for rewards . but if they add more combat it would be beter and i also think they dont need to remove it but make it short .