Zenless Zone Zero 1.4 Teaser In-depth Analysis: A real "Reborn" for ZZZ

In the recently concluded Zenless Zone Zero 1.4 Teaser, a lot of official "big news" was released. Whether it's the new skills of agents in Hollow combats or the new "Bangboo Control Mode" in mainline tasks, it's all very heavy news at first glance. Summarizing the entire teaser, the 1.4 update is undoubtedly a reborn of ZZZ. So let's discover the most in-depth content in it.

1. Underlying Design of 1.4 ZZZ

The first feeling given to proxies by this teaser content is that ZZZ has resolved the underlying contradictions of the game. The overall design logic has become more fluid.

1.1 Disadvantages of Combat System

Zenless Zone Zero is a game for the general public and is intended as an opportunity for more players who have never played an action game to try it out. As such the game's pre-game difficulty is designed to be low to the point of dodging and parrying.

At the same time, ZZZ is a game that sells agents. So in order to get multiple agents on the field, the in-game parry is tied to a switching mechanic. And even if you fail to parry within a combat, you can switch agents through quick support after being attacked in order to reduce the difficulty and increase the frequency of switching agents at the same time.

Since Zenless Zone Zero is trying to increase the frequency of agent switching, the game also ensures that the vast majority of the agents in the game, except for the support agents who don't have a lot of chance to dealing damage, can do so for a short period of time after they debut. And each Impact and Main DPS agent has a different damage dealing and damage burst time. This also leads to the rhythm of the battle depending on the team match and the enemy's attack interval.

So let's start talking about Ultimates. Ultimates are the only common resource now, so theoretically you have to choose which character's ultimate to use depending on the situation. For example, if the enemy will gain a shield without going stunned for 30 seconds, then the ultimate of the Imapct agent should be used. On the other hand, if you need to keep providing buffs, you should use the ultimate of the support agent. So even if you use the same team, the logic for releasing ultimate will be different depending on the enemy and the pace of the combat.

This design is inherently very interesting, but Zenless Zone Zero is a long-running game, so the drawbacks are becoming apparent. Essentially the difficulty of develop agents in ZZZ is not that high, and once the resources are overflowing proxies will definitely tilt those resources to the main DPS agents. This also leads to the main DPS agents' damage dealing must be higher, boosting the main DPS agents' standing time. In addition, due to the lack of difficulty in the later stages, ZZZ can only make the enemy's attack frequency higher, which in turn makes the benefit of dodging much higher than bouncing back to switch characters. This completely violates the combat rhythm of three agents taking turns to stand and dealing damage.

And before 1.4 version teaser, Zenless Zone Zero have shown a great desire to improve the game's spectacle, operational difficulty and numerical difficulty at the same time. But at this point players already have two full teams. Especially after the introduction of the "Tower Climbing" feature in version 1.3, the game has fallen into a situation where there are only simple combats and boredom.

2. New Combat Optimizations in 1.4 version ZZZ

In previous versions players could say that they could not see the future of ZZZ at all, as boring and repetitive combats filled the entire game. However, the 1.4 version of the preview finally showed me and all you rope makers the Zenless Zone Zero production team's thoughts on how to solve the problem.

2.1 Ultimate Revision in ZZZ

With the 1.4 update, ultimate have gone from being shared by 3 agents to being used independently. On the surface, the production team is trying to solve the problem of the low existence of ultimate. However, on a deeper level, the overall battle rhythm will change dramatically after the update.

Agents are invincible during their ultimate and have a considerable amount of power over the enemy. Therefore, an increase in the frequency of ultimate means a decrease in the pressure to survive. In addition, support agents' ultimates have the ability to add buffs and restore the team's energy, which means that the team's energy cycle becomes simpler.

With skill cycling becoming smoother and survival pressure reduced, it means that ZZZ's battle rhythm will be more focused on skill cycling in the team. Reduced frequency of interaction with monsters. In the future, in Shiyu defense combats, the focus of the combat will be on the player's agent values.

2.2 New Combat Design in ZZZ

Players don't need to worry about values in the new Hollow combats, as your agents will be maxed out and some of them will have new skills. It's clear that the production team wants to give players more fun with their agents. In the current version of the game, there are already single-agent combats for some agents to keep things fresh and to show off the new agents' fighting skills. I'm sure there will be more and more of these modes in the future.

Zenless Zone Zero 1.4 sends a clear signal to separate "numerical difficulty" from "operational difficulty". Previously, there was the more maneuverable "Disputed Node" and "Tower Climbing", but both of these modes were still based on agent values. The actual operation of these two modes is not difficult, but the tolerance rate is still closely related to the agent value. Because the production team wants to take care of every aspect of the battle, it becomes monstrous.

In the new version, each mode will only focus on one of "numeric" and "operation", and level design will be much easier. The new Hollow Zero adventure that looks like it will test both agent values and controls only requires 6 out of 9 stars to get all the rewards. This new event allows the player to focus on only one of the agent controls and agent values. You can see that the logic of ZZZ's battle design has become clearer and more reasonable, well in line with most players' expectations.

3. Other Optimizations of Zenless Zone Zero Updates

Aside from the very core combat design, ZZZ version 1.4 is pretty much spot on with changes to other parts of the game.

3.1 TV Mode Updates

There are a lot of players who like "TV Mode" and a lot of players who don't like "TV Mode", so it's not a good choice to give up either group. In my opinion, "TV Mode" has a strong narrative function, so how can we compensate for the loss of "TV Mode"? The production team has directly introduced the Bangboo Control mode for players who don't like "TV Mode", so they can play as Bangboo themselves, which is very thoughtful.

3.2 Agent Stroll System

For players who care about logic and think that they shouldn't be able to control other characters except for certain episodes, version 1.4 allows players to control the main character while asking for different agents to follow them as they walk around the city. For those who want to take pictures of their favorite characters in the city, the production team has also retained the ability to control the acquired characters directly.

In this system, as with TV Mode, neither side of the player can be discarded, and Zenless Zone Zero has chosen to take care of the needs of different players at the same time, which is a huge amount of work, but it shows the team's commitment to "Reborn".

3.3 Reborn of Zenless Zone Zero

I'm sure a lot of proxies weren't very happy with several of the 1.3 events and battle modes. Their underlying logic was actually all very interesting, but the lack of design in the middle and late processes eventually turned them into modes that required a lot of repetitive labor. This all stems from not having enough time to test and polish, which simply means a lack of capacity.

But after watching the 1.4 version teaser, most proxies probably understand, as I did, why version 1.3 wasn't perfect. The changes to the underlying battle logic and all the optimization updates mentioned above are much more important content. It takes quite a lot of work to perfect these contents, so the update capacity of version 1.3 must be very limited. In exchange for version 1.3, Zenless Zone Zero has been reborn in version 1.4.

Judging by the preview, version 1.4 is quite rich in content. There's no need to mention the mainline tasks; the shiyu defense battle has been turned into two modes that alternate weekly, which means there are new combats to play every week. Relatively speaking, the delivery of "Victoria Housekeeping tickets", new agents and development materials are all reducing the pressure on players to develop. This is a very positive sign, and means that in the future, Zenless Zone Zero's production capacity may be sufficient to provide enough new content that it doesn't need to take time away from the proxies by rearing them. The underlying logic of combat is just now changing, and it will take one or two more versions to deal with the issues that come with the shift. After that, I expect the pressure to developing agents will be reduced even further.

ZZZ version 1.4 Teaser undoubtedly gave players a shot in the arm, not only to clear up the logic of the design of the battle, but also to release production capacities.

Perhaps there are still some people who doubt whether the 1.4 update is still treating the symptoms but not the root of the problem, at least I think this update is a clear logic, interlocking and directly to the core of the problem. I believe Zenless Zone Zero will be better and better after this "Reborn"!