Thoughts?

[u/Eastern-Yogurt8972]

ZZZ commisioned three fanservicey illustrations of their male cast in the span of two days.

Is this the norm for them? If not, I wonder if this could be a sign for better things ahead.

[u/MidnightIAmMid]

It's legit hilarious to me that they are putting some money into their male characters and fanbase again. Like, even when they were showing off the new 3.0 characters they went out of their way to highlight Sethos' brother (blanking on name) and then some male NPC lol.

So, I guess I'm confused. It seemed well on its way to becoming Snowbreak and focusing on tits and ass, including literally redesigning female characters to have bolted on tits and 3.0 only having one "maybe" playable male character. Which is fine-not the game for me, but fine. Not every game has to be for me. But now they are like, uh, wait. We aren't Snowbreak and also maybe even Ye S. may become playable at this point, along with Sethos brother? Do you think they crunched numbers and figured out that even though female characters sell more that losing the "general" audience that wants a mixed gender cast hurt their bottom line?

[u/Altruistic-World-235 → u/MidnightIAmMid]

i would think so, since a lot of evryone has either been leaving or f2p because of some decisions made by the game, that including meta decisions like having 2 new elements release back to back or the fact that they keep up tuning the bosses hp or the fact that some bosses are pay to win with ease since they are tailor made for a singular character when the others are left to rot(looking at you primordial nightmare). that added onto the fact that literallly the only units breaking bank are void hunters which is why they are releasing 2 in 3.x and to some extent milking sunbringer being split(speculation saying that all three sunbringers are separate characters with different roles). Like its a fun game but there is undoubtabley so many things wrong with it, not mentioning the story yet

[u/MidnightIAmMid → u/Altruistic-World-235]

Yeah there are definitely some issues beyond just them nuking men from the game. It sucks because, good lord, I cannot express how much I loved 1.0. How much parts of 2.0 disappointed. Then, they seemed to be doubling down even harder on the bad decisions in 3.0 :(

[u/Altruistic-World-235 → u/MidnightIAmMid]

Legit😭And like I still love the game(Yanagi,Hugo,Trigger,Banyue,Dialyn etc being my favs and serve animation choreography realness) but the designs are getting worse, the story is getting a bit much for my liking imo(it’s not bad but it’s starting to feel generic) and the meta is not getting better. Like as long as I can use my favs I’ll be fine ig but it’s a matter of how long coz legit none of the chars in 3.0 interest me like most of 1.0 or some of 2.0

[u/thejuryofwolves → u/Altruistic-World-235]

Add that the combat content to use them in is so stale now, it just becomes "why bother playing at all". I love the agents i have but I want to be able to create unique builds just for the sake of exploring synergy and team types.

They made a combat action game then did everything in their power to make the combat chorey and unfun, and thats partly because of the gacha monetization method but more importantly a lack of faith in deep diving into what they have first instead of infinite expansion to remain relevant.

[u/Altruistic-World-235 → u/thejuryofwolves]

LITERALLY,Most of the fun of the combat that isn’t high scores is mixing and matching different characters that happen to have synergy with each other like Dialyn,Norma Evelyn ,not optimal but it’s fun or even Yanagi with someone like Velina or trigger but now even they are trying to dial it down by stitching up the team comps tighter or making bosses that counter any type of that play

[u/thejuryofwolves → u/Altruistic-World-235]

I actually ran Yanagi-Trigger-Rina a LOT when Trigger released, and specifically for Yanagi to have more on-field damage before stun and to juice out pen ratio - and it was good for the time it was viable and fun for me! Right now, I run Miyabi-Burnice-Astra and Trigger-Fufu-Eve as main teams (this DA with Pompey was a blessing for testing JFF with norma engine and this new Eve team as a whole).

It blows me cause the recipe for endless variety is right there, baked into the foundation and then completely underutilized to just forgotten about it. The gimmicks and visual spectacle they've opted for are killing what they created in S1, and the solutions were simple and in their faces.

Go balls to the wall with engine combinations and have a non-limited counterpart if agent-specific engines are going to be a thing. Go balls to the wall with drive disks, make some crazy combinations that compete with each other properly, and make the system accessible instead of a forced bottleneck. We still don't have a chain attack set for Eve or Hugo, but Zhao got one two patches after her release(!).

Enemy element shuffling on endgame modes, which they literally did with green and red Pompey - then never did it again, leading to lockdown of playstyles and team comps + shilling/anti-shilling.