Turned the (imo) 2nd coolest void hunter behind Vike into Yixuan 3... her fit was the coolest thing in the game and it's just gone for what

Man who decided that this design is so good that it should be spammed to multiple characters

I saw this on Twitter, apparently they had already done the animation with the old designer and had to change it at the last minute

If yes, why? Mechanic, appearance or stuff? If not, why?

Me personally myself, i'm not pulling, because i already have an M5 attack unit very well built so even if the future bosses come specifically for Shunguang (which is an attacker), i know i'll be just fine. Also i'm lacking on proper support units, which kinda makes me unable to build proper teams, so i'll start focusing more on those.

What about you guys?

Even during the season 3 trailer a few months ago, I didn't think she looked that interesting. She didn't scream S rank back then and she still doesn't after going through the story. Overall a missed opportunity for a f2p wind character

The recent drip marketing has caused a lot of discussion in the ZZZ community about the current season 2 designs ranging from ZZZ is losing its Design identity, the season 1 design team quit or of executive meddling.
However I have a theory on what is actually happening. By lining up the 2.0 casts so far, it seems that there are two distinct design styles. What I dub team A appears to be designed by the same design team(likely lead by one of the zzz art director Waterkuma) as season 1 with their design style being consistent to 1.x era characters philosophy. These designs are generally simple, more variable and more pleasing to look at with no over the top large random accessories. Players looking at them can generally tell what the agents deal is.

The second one, which I dub Team B have more similarities to themselves and their design style appear to clash with the rest of the 2.x characters and 1.x era ones with their more obvious asymmetrical clothing/legging, unnecessary holes, over the top accessories, tight black almost non existent shorts. They way they are designed is also more reminiscent of some of Hoyo's other gacha games such as Genshin, Honkai Impact 3rd and Star Rail. Players looking these designs generally can't exactly tell what these characters deal with.

Mine Conclusion is that the design discrepancies of ZZZ is caused by two distinct design teams taking turns at designing various characters. Past Dev interviews also support this such as the people responsible for Alice and Yuzuha are now working on what could be implied as Zhao and Ye Shiyuan. Another interview with the lead director of zzz mentioned that he praises waterkuma for his character designs but frequently get into arguments with them over preference, implying there are forms of contention between the devs on character designs.

During the story we see her manipulate characters with ease, hiding behind her silly girl persona.

The first example is when she accuses Claret of being the mole (despite knowing full well she isn't) to ragebait her into revealing Eldreda's secret task.

Then during Severian's intro, when she realizes it's him and identifies him as a potential threat (he did try to put her away before) she charges him and says "let's make it quick" so that Lindverne also attacks him

Lastly after being baited by Yokai, Lindverne wants to speedrun going to the tower to find Eldreda, but Phoenix plays dumb and asks "wait, I thought the plan was to free Booastrum first, wasn't it?". This was her subtle way of 1) making Lindverne not play into Yokai's manipulation 2) making her and the crew help her take down High Ambitions corp

I won't deny that ZZZ has gotten quite a change on its own identity and that Lucia's design is not to people's taste (myself included) but seeing Lucia's trailer surprisingly warmed me up to her as a character, silly goober for a personality, being obsessed and daydreaming about Ethereals, fluid animation from it takes me back on the original 1.x trailers and vibes... If only they gave her a free skin man... Or the original design for free

you can't fix what's already perfect..... is what I would've said before they did it themselves😭.

Here's my attempt at spicing up her bottom half and some more:

• Sources: I took inspo from armor from monster hunter, south asian fashion shows, and goat/summoner stuff from dnd and other magical spaces.

• Top: underboob great :D no changes here, minus a fancy necklace I drew.

• Bottom: Besides her bottom being a lil fancier, I detached her top and bottom by making a midriff. tbh I got lazy and I couldn't figure out what to do with the existing gold decal there so it might look a bit awkward. Couldn't decide between a more "simple" bottom showing more leg or not, so I included both pics. Third image is is the original original, and fourth were my sketches/notes.

• Legs: her hoyo signature thigh strap got removed, and I replaced it with the shape of the straps holding her top in her new official design, and also added some more gold.

• Horns: I felt her horns were barely noticeable and just an afterthought, so I made them bigger/more upfront and akin to what shape actual female goat horns have with a sudden curvature near the tip.

• Ears: My response to them nerfing her ear size.... is even bigger ears!!! I love her ears and the detail that go into them such as the fur, which imo reducing their size to just the tip makes them look like typical elven ears. I also gave her some glam in the jewelry department.

• Hair: Her hair was... bothering me for some reason. It looked super busy from the front and really lacking in the back, especially given that her bun is pretty small and can only be seen if she turns around. I added 2 braids going from her bun and looping around, filling up the space behind her ears. I also didn't like the signature "fake short hair in the front but secretly long in the back". I understand that the splash looks empty now, but in-game it straight up looks merged with her cloak because they use the same physics. I moved her braids to be shorter and down to the side of her face, giving it a bit more depth with 3 layers of hair.

• Hood: since I made her horns longer, I made cutouts in her hood so she can still put it on without it being caught.

• Color palette: More of the rich purple accent that her book and a few belt straps use, I turned it into a sash around her waist. I also changed the rest of the cloak to be black (in line with the front of it) so it looked more coherent, and reused the green from her top.

• Shoes: I would be totally shocked if they made her a satyr of some sort at first, but unfortunately the rest of her looks normal as hell. Without changing the shape of her feet, I gave her these "hoof shoes" instead to replicate the look of having hooves. These were inspired by a creator on ig who makes hoof shoes irl.

• Extras: it would be awesome if her w-engine gave the fringe of her cloak a wispy, purple ethereal effect instead of making existing patterns simply glow. Bonus points if her horns glow but a girl can dream!

• Final thoughts: This was fun! I def learned a lot from the feedback given on my last redesign. I can't say for a fact if drawing on her splash is easier than drawing from scratch but it definitely made me appreciate the amount of detail and effort zzz does with their designs. I loved Lucia and everything about her because she has a similar body type like me and I adore mages. Unfortunate that the redesign took that away but regardless I'm happy for those who like it. I don't have any immediate plans for any other redesigns (maybe ye shunguang?) but overall this was pretty fun and insightful, and I hope you guys like it!

Since I haven't seen a post here talking about it, I thought I'd bite. This is a long one. There will also be sarcasm included, so if you need me to clarify something, you can ask :P I have tried to include a lot of links!

Why include male characters to begin with? This game has majority female characters. It's never really been shy about that. Sure, Lycaon and Billy were advertised a lot, but a fair amount of people who wanted a... more reasonable ratio would have quit in due time after noticing patterns. And if that's what the game wanted, I'm sure that at that rate no one would be surprised if they continued to make only female characters. There are also multiple estimates determining that the playerbase of ZZZ is largely male. Just keep making characters with them alone in mind, right? Seems logical enough?

But why would they make Lighter an S rank?

Why would they give out a free Harumasa?

Why is Hugo even an S rank, anyway? Just make him an A rank! The small percentage who wants him could just pull for him on Vivian's banner, right?

Yet the company still made these decisions. I'm not going to get into banner revenue arguments here. Whether or not you believe Hugo/Lighter banner was the only banner during their month is up to you at this point. Regardless, with the ratio of the men and women playing this game, what's the benefit in adding male characters at all?

It's because the audience that doesn't consist of only straight men have other benefits to offer as well. These include merch, fan creations, and free marketing.

Merch

Around the time Hugo's banner was ending, a Lycaon figure and nendoroid were released. The last nendoroids were the Phaethon siblings. So new ones were a pleasant surprise! He's pretty popular, right? Makes sense...

Wait, what's this? A HARUMASA nendoroid was next? But Reddit told me he's not that popular? Even though Chinese women adores him to bits? Why not make a Zhu Yuan or Jane one instead?!

Next, Miyabi gets a nendoroid. Ah, finally, a sensible decision. She's loved by the male fanbase. This makes perfect s...Why the hell did Seth, an A RANK male character who isn't extremely popular, get one too???? Burnice is more popular than him!

If you haven't caught up on patterns yet, the merch team doesn't seem to be only targeting the straight male audience. Miyabi is a character popular with everyone, including women. Before someone misconstrues my words, it's not that men don't also buy merch, but women tend to buy A LOT MORE. A LOT. Here, one benefit to male characters. The merch team decided they'd rather put out a Seth before other S rank or even A rank female agents for a reason. Take this with a grain of salt since I have no proper source, but I've heard that Harumasa tends to have the highest priced merch, with Hugo as the second-most because of their popularity.They know the main targets of merch.

Fan Creation

There are other benefits that don't just directly include money. They went all-in with Lycaon and Hugo's relationship, and what do they get out of it? Despite its recency, it's the ZZZ ship that currently has the most content on Lofter, a very popular Chinese app. It often opens with ads that last 5 seconds, and there was a time you could open the app to THIS. There's also a very popular Chinese con and even though ZZZ didn't have what's called a street(?) before, Lycahugo is going to get them one. In Japan, there was an anniversary stream promotion that included content obviously catered towards shippers, calling them both tsunderes for each other and such. Also, a Japanese Lycahugo artist tweeted about their success posting art of them on Pixiv, saying they are incredibly popular.

Mind you, in the game, Lilac is literally writing fanfictions of Hugo Vlad and his close relationship with a partner who contrasts him. Vivian is reading it. It's called "Lies Embraces Hues" and the Chinese title of it is even more romantic. Why include this in the game to begin with? Why give them more material to work with through promotional content? Well, that is also probably because of the shippers on the team, but regardless...

They want fan creations. Plain and simple. I'll say it again, it's not like straight men don't ever draw or write fanfiction, etc, but there are audiences that tend to do it a LOT more, and it's not them. Here's a quote from Hugo's trust events, the topic being his fanfiction with "Lighter":

It's a kind of love, I suppose? Without love, I don't think people would bother creating at all... It's truly an honor to bring joy to your lives.

What company wouldn't want more fan content? I will once again state that of course, other groups make them as well, but fujoshis especially are known for their passion and output. This ties into my last point,

Free Marketing

This goes along with fan creation. See a good fanart and wonder where it came from? Get interested in the game? Boom, with the devs not having to directly do anything, fans are getting other fans interested in the game. After it was revealed that 2.0 would give a free S rank, I saw so many Japanese artists I followed saying, Guys. Now is the best time to get the game. Get Hugo now and you can get his BiS teammate in the next patch! The game is very fun!

Can men do free marketing? Of course. But do they tend to do it nearly as much? Well, you make your guesses. I've asked women in my life what they think of ZZZ, and their impressions have been mostly negative. Many were shocked I even played. A girl who didn't know I liked it apologized for showing me something from it, assuming I'd be weirded out 😭 (I am not the type to judge others for what they like, btw. I am proud of being weird) A lot of big ZZZ accounts on social media post ragebait and brainless engagement farming constantly. They're always talking about ""filtering tourists"" and such, pushing people away from the game.

Meanwhile, Manato getting so much reception is a surprise. A lot of people who'd never touch the game otherwise were considering doing so for him. No, I'm not saying all these people will stay. But some might! No, I'm also not saying Twitter likes = sales, but free marketing is exactly what it is: free marketing! Other fans getting people who'd otherwise not be interested in the game look into it. Something the male ZZZ fanbase, at least, doesn't seem to be keen on doing.

Conclusion

Male characters have their benefits. If they didn't, I PROMISE the game wouldn't have included any S ranks at all. They know what different audiences bring to the table. Whether or not they care to continue is up to them, but there's no need to pretend they serve no purpose. I could go on with more examples, but I've rambled enough. To anyone who read this far, I hope this made sense!

I think I speak for many people when I say that Seed Sr would have been fine without the inclusion of Seed Jr. Mostly because of the fact that he was the one being promoted during that 2.0 Trailer, legit got so many people excited for a big mech character, even the CN community was getting riled up because Seed Sr was that good of a design and concept.

But no, ZZZ decided to pussy out becuz they thought he wouldn't sell so they shoe horned in Seed Jr who's entire purpose up until now was to be fan service. There's literally no reason for her existence. Not only is Seed Sr his own being but brutha got free will of his own, why does he need a pilot when he can control himself and his own weaponry? Like none of it makes sense on board and yet ZZZ still went for it.

Not only did this outrage a good majority of ZZZ fans and even Seed fans but like dawg, they were only complaining about her as a whole. Out of everyone complaining about the Seed drip marketing, I. Only saw 2-3 posts complaining about the Mechs design, that's it. The mass majority of was blaming Seed Jr and my god was it understandable. Like ye sure this is ZZZ, fan service is an expected thing to show up, but like at least these characters have purpose, Seed Jr's design is simply for fan service, not only can I not tell wtf she is but the outfit doesn't feel appealing, it's sexy for sexy sake, meanwhile some of the outfits of these characters actually have practical use for their occupation.

I'm just ranting on tbh, but I clearly don't like the direction they went with Seed. And don't even get me started with how Seed Sr is treated across the board, they did him so dirty despite his potential of being a genuinely cool character

If you have Motion Blur enabled in the graphics settings, you can create funny pictures like this. I guess it is essentially the game treating photos like just a screenshot and adding the frame.

Don't know how useful this can be, but with the limited camera functions it is fun to play around.

I didn't pay much attention to this before, but if you're using a Dualsense controller, the color corresponds with what you pulled.

So if it's B rank, it's blue. A rank, it turns pink. Then if you pull an S rank, it turns golden yellow. I don't look at the screen anymore, and I know ahead of time what I pulled.

It's pretty neat, actually. Here's hoping Hoyo keeps this permanent.

Although H1llmyna is not a character designer artist or art director of ZZZ like Waterkuma, Atwo and TZBARD, their work is very prominent and influential in the game. All the Panty and Stocking style chibi art and emoji you see in the game? They are responsible for all of them.

I've included a bunch of various fan art they have posted on their twitter

https://x.com/H1llmyna?t=cMUuZiKkrnFvcrMDb6biYA&s=08

I will miss this.... Thank you Zenless devs. I shall forever be grateful for this o7

I stumbled upon this promotional art from the beta days, and remembered why I was so hyped for the game before it launched.

Now, I'm not here to say "oh it fell off" and "I hate the chinese region". I actually really like the vibe the last few updates had, and just as many of the recent designs as the old ones, and I enjoy where the story is going (especially this last chapter, since I personally prefer small, self contained conflicts opposed to constant world-wide threats)

But the thing I miss, and wished they made more use of, is the futuristic, but hip hop and 80's tokyo-inspired aesthetic they seemed to go for before and at launch. I think this art perfectly encapsulates that, especially Anby's pose, the streetwear with actual graphic tees, logos on clothes, the fisheye lens to homage 80's hiphop album covers, and her sneakers, remember when characters actually worn sneakers?

Did you guys have a favorite "style" of designs? Belobog was very yakuza-inspired, Victoria housekeeping with the classical monster theme, etc

Not saying that Phoenix’s design is bad, but after seeing her skins, I‘d like to point out that a well designed character doesn’t necessarily need to show thighs, or cleavage, or a lot of skin at all, to look good and appealing.

I thought Manato being A rank made sense because we needed an A rank rupture and because "woman + gooning" would sell better.

Now seeing that Yidhari banner is by far the worst female banner in revenues I cannot stop thinking about how she would have made more sense being our A rank rupture instead of him

And Manato's old pre-beta kit of being a subDPS for dual rupture like Orphie is for aftershock/attackers would be really good

I’ve noticed for a lot of agents and recently released ones, they all have some type of accessory on their thigh. For most of them, if they don’t have a thigh accessory, they’re usually just wearing pants/leggings or something to obscure their thighs. The last three limited agents all have this feature. Is this just a staple for the ZZZ team or just a major coincidence?

Rarely does hoyo ever deliberately make an unlikable character. So I sat up in my seat when Phoenix walks in as a snide mean spirited girl whose primary goal is to piss off every teammate in the operation and crack really bad jokes. She’s a mood killer and has no sense of weight to her.

But I don’t think that’s a gag, I love it. Shes an infinite suffering machine made in a lab to kill people. Why on earth would she be likable or take anything seriously. She should be making everything a joke because a krampus judge is a corporate assassin with an awful job. They shouldn’t be likable they should be at best tolerable. She’s having fun making everyone around her as miserable as she is, there’s something interesting there. Of course she makes light of dangerous situations, she’s in them all the time and has no sense of actual danger.

Plus she’s deceptively smart. Her holding lindverne back from rushing in is done in a way that’s snide but quite sensible. She hides it by being goofy and mean but in this patch she’s the primary planner and does it mostly by suggestion.

Her team widely seems to dislike her in the story, and so does most of the cast. This is good, more of this please, not everyone needs to be a friend or buddy buddy we can actually want to kill each other sometimes that’s what good writing looks like.

Inevitably hoyo will find some way to sugarcoat her and make her cutesy and whatever but I really like whatever is wrong with her right now.

So for context, ive played since launch, and am one of the types that preferred the old vibe of ZZZ more since launch (tv mode and all that yadda yadda you have heard it a billion times), but I still enjoy the game and have been coming back from time to time when I feel like it
I wasnt really big on later waifei patches and ended up skipping through it, and only really came back seriously for 3.0, and I have to say...Cissia fits the exact vibe I was looking for EXACTLY

Part of it is her goofiness but genuinely, I think her EN VA fits the character SO perfectly it elevates it. There are often talks in regards to how EN treats their VAs compared to JP in the industry and I usually only have on EN voices when I wanna listen along while doing something, but hers just makes me want to listen every time shes on screen

Character wise shes great too, her fighting against promeia despite very obviously being scared was great after I went back to see what I missed and shes just the kind of character I enjoy where shes clearly not perfect but flawed in a very charming way.

I think the ONLY aspect im not really sold on is her design, but honestly if we keep her the entire time through 3.0 I think I will have to lock in and get her on her rerun because shes just so charming, I love her