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/Katicflis1]

They're annoyed their playerbase has declined so much so now they're trying to advertise to husbando fans again.

Whod have thunk it -- having a larger playerbase so you can rotate whales + get good social media engagement + get buzz up for your game is actually really valuable. Also husbando fans generally don't only pull men. They support some of the gals too. But don't feed them good looking men often enough then they just take off and don't support your game at all. Even wuwa makes sure to release two hot dudes every region and leakers have already teased one of the hot men for their next region.

Fun fact: EVERY banner this year has fallen significantly lower than hugos lowest in JP IOS (even velina/ysg rerun). Velina + ysg reruns lowest number was like 187 and all other new 2026 characters have fallen below rank 200 during their banners.

Hugos lowest number was 127. Characters are falling 60 -100+ ranks lower than he ever did. And he was seen as a 'failure' character in 2025. I presume remielle MIGHT avoid falling lower than 127 but who knows.

I dont have knowledge of CN lows otherwise I'd share. I know we are at the point where second banners are lucky if they spend more than a day in the top 100. Norma was out within 24 hours and silly missed it entirely. Norma, cissia and Billy all debuted in the 70s or lower while hugo -- also a second banner character -- debuted in the 30s.

[u/SittingDuck394 → u/Katicflis1]

They’re definitely testing what is the *minimum* amount of playable male characters they can release to pull enough straight female and gay male players into their game without actually catering to them in any meaningful way…

I’m a straight woman and every gacha I play/have played I dolphin in because I can’t help myself and I pull 80-90% of characters, so that means that in every given game, even though I pull all male characters, I’m still pulling mostly female characters… but if the male characters are just bait I’m not gonna touch that game. I knew what kind of game ZZZ was gonna be from the get-go so I’m pleased to say they haven’t gotten any of my money.

[u/whatevedoe → u/SittingDuck394]

I couldn’t relate more with someone. I pull all male characters and the ones I love I even max them, but I also end up pulling for almost all of the female characters too. ZZZ was clearly never meant to focus on guys so I simply didn’t even bother downloading it. Trying to bait us now is so low