ZZZ's Endgame could be so much more.
Hey there folks, same guy from roughly Two weeks ago with another critique of ZZZ and how I think it could be better.
This go around, I wanna lay out my thoughts on the current endgame of ZZZ and how I feel it could be substantially improve. This is a big post, cause I'm going to be critiquing every major end game mode with the exception of Shiyu.
I wanna start out by saying that I think Hollow Zero, Deadly Assault and Battle Tower are all excellent ideas. My issue with these modes is that as they currently are all of these endgame modes feel like half measures of what they could be.
I am going to start off by listing what I believe the ZZZ devs are attempting to sell each of these events to us as. With words from the Developers on these mods to support my assumptions.
Hollow Zero: A semi-randomly generated roguelike mode that provides insight into the game lore
Battle Tower: A battle arena climb with progressively stronger enemies where the core to the mode is your ability as a player to endure the ensuing waves.
Deadly Assault: A knowledge check of player skill using bosses and their variations within the game.
With that out of the way, I want to convey, mode by mode, how I think these modes fail to fully realize the potential of what they could be, as well as offer my own idea of a suggestion on how these issues can be alleviated or just outright eradicated.
Deadly Assault: I think this mode is actually structurally perfectly sound. Boss battles against unique variants is a perfect way of having you show off your skills as a player. Where I think Deadly Assault falls short is that I think the grading system for this mode is incredibly under-developed and restrictive.
Currently you have two ways of improving your score in every stage.
- One is a very generic "Do Damage" let's not mince words it's no different from Shiyu a "DPS check"
- The other way to accumulate score is a particular gimmick decided for the boss of the stage that you have to play into.
While the gimmicks of the stage tend to lean into a particular knowledge check of mechanics of the game, I feel like the way to gain points is too restrictive. In essence, I feel the grading system does not incentivize as much skill expression and knowledge check as it rightly could. Also sometimes the bosses don't play into the gimmick as much as you'd need them to. (I remember doing one run against Bringer where he only did the Giant Hand ONCE for the entire 3 minutes)
I think deadly assault could be improved by increasing the 'mechanic checks' available in each fight. I do not mean for them to remove the 'gimmick' of each deadly assault boss. In fact, I think it could be better emphasized, whilst still giving you other avenues besides damage to raise your score.
I will use Typhon from the previous Assault as an example
To get a good score with Typhon. You have the following options:
- Do Damage
- Parry Typhon three times in succession in a particular attack pattern window.
I think you could improve this by having it be like this
- Do Damage
- Parry Typhon three times in succession in a particular attack pattern window.
- Go 1 minute without being Hit/Taking damage
- Perfect Dodge or Parry every hit before Typhon's Impairment combo attacks
- Apply Disorder whilst Typhon is impaired
I think by allowing more ways to generate score, that would allow for far more skill expression. Maybe someone opts to do a solo Corin run, and they can't do enough damage for the threshold, but they manage to perfect dodge everything, do the primary gimmick perfectly and go the entire run without being hit once, and so even though they don't meet the DPS limit, they still pass because they're just that good at the fundamentals of the game.
As it currently stands, Deadly Assault is far more DPS check than skill check. (When the gimmick only can amount to roughly 5k of the necessary 20k while the DPS is unlimited. That's basically telling you it's 75% DPS Check 25% Knowledge check)
Battle Tower: Battle Tower's problem can easily be surmised with three words "Number go up"
This is the primary way in which the Tower makes things harder. It's a very lazy way of increasing difficulty.
I will say that the removal of any cues for enemy attacks from floor 50 onwards is incredibly novel and has the capacity to make the higher floors more fun. But in practice, due to just how hard enemies hits become as the floors progress. What the higher floors amount to is rote memorization. This is because the stat increase is so monumental that any hit goes from an inconvenience of the floor to "Well, I better do this perfectly or the enemy will delete 75% of my character's health with a single hit."
Now one could make the argument that this would keep you on edge, which I could reasonably agree with if not for the fact that the floors also opt to bloat the enemy Health bars as well. So it goes from just "Delete the enemy before they can even touch you." to "Do this routine perfectly for 3-5 minutes."
In essence, as you climb the thrill and edge you feel is replaced with a tedium of "I gotta break down all of these enemies attack patterns and then wail on them for a billion years."
Also, I lied, Number Go Up isn't the only issue with the tower.
Don't get me wrong, that is a massive problem, but I feel like many could grin and bear that tedium if not for one additional factor of the tower that should be addressed.
Variety is the spice of life. And lemme tell you, The tower is lacking in spice.
As you climb the tower, you're going to be hit with all forms of classic combos that you've come to know throughout this games life cycle. A few noteworthy remixes every now and again of singular bosses but eventually, as you progress, the tower will start to loop its sets of enemies and eventually it should become rather obvious that the only discernable difference between the tower and anything else is that missing a cue will melt your health like nobody's business.
Now I'm not going to sit here and say that the Devs should make unique enemy encounters up to floor 999. But 100 floors, the usual cap for this mode. I think it'd be reasonable to take a look at the multiple mobs and mob variants we have and go "We can really fuck with this playerbase if we wanted to."
I'm tired of seeing Pulchra, Mors and Balatro together on a floor
Do something novel like Belvedere and Thanatos side by side.
Jane too old hat for you?
How about the tower throwing Jane with Pompey right at your face?
Have a floor where there's 25 Alpeca on one side and 25 Poachers on the other... and you just gotta work that shit out somehow.
There's currently
- 25 standard enemies
- 22 elites
- 16 Bosses (17 if for some ungodly reason they ever decide to put Nineveh on a floor one day)
That's a lot of variety that could get mixed and matched far more than it is right now. I'm tired of seeing two of the dogs together or Thanatos with Dullahan.
I want there to be a moment where I load up a stage of Battle Tower and there's a Greta on one side, a typhon on the other and a Notorious Marionette in the middle and I'm just like "Devs, what the fuck are we doing" and I know when they put that stage together they were just saying "Get to it, motherfucker."
Preferably in a manner where if any one of them hits me I don't just instantly lose 8k health
Hollow Zero: Given this technically is two separate modes, I feel there needs to be critique on both halves.
Withered Domain: I am not a fan of TV mode. I have litany of problems with it that I could likely do an entire breakdown for.
But, I am not here to critique TV Mode within ZZZ as a whole. I am here to specifically call out what I consider to be Withered Domain's fundamental problem.
Exploration is nonexistent.
Withered Domain is a Rogue Like/Lite. And when it comes to Rogue's, Lites, and Likes. Choices are important in how you progress. Not only in what buffs or debuffs you choose but also in the directions you go and do not. I would say a fundamental part of what makes Rogue genre work is both the ability to choose and the mystery of not knowing.
The big issue with Withered Domain is that every stage within clearly spells out what you're getting into. A single run of any level basically tells you everything you need to know about that stage, and that in essence removes some of the excitement.
The layouts are the same, the general buffs and debuffs are the same, the boss pool is tailored to the stage so you know exactly who you're going to run into. The mysticism is basically not there.
Butcher's stage is going to hit you with Pressure overload, Complex is going to go after your money, The Twins will have you doing choose a side. It's all so laid out that there's never a moment of genuine "Didn't see that coming" nor a "This run was a breeze" followed by "This run IS HELL"
The only part that is dissimilar is the Withering Gardens, but not because it changes up the formula, but because it stacks so many debuffs on you from the outset that you're in a much more tenuous position outright.
Personally, I think this could be remedied with just two changes.
- Don't show the entire floor. By making everything beyond maybe the initial few blocks a complete mystery, it adds to the mysticism of the entire affair. Your choices become a lot more impactful when you don't have immediate knowledge of what's up ahead.
- Add more theme relevant gimmicks to each stage. Rather than Butcher's level just be Pressure up or Pressure down, maybe have it so there are times when the gimmick is where gaining pressure gives benefits along with the debuffs. Instead of the Complex stage just being "Make sure you have enough to pay back the loanshark" there could be a version where it's all about gambling gear coins.
Lost Void: Honestly, the biggest issue with Lost Void is effectively what was lost from Withered Domain.
Essentially what Lost Void needs most is Stage Variety and Resonia variety. A strong suit of the Withered Domain, I felt were the large collection of element and play type resonia that basically supercharged certain character playstyles. Effectively all of those resonia got left in Withered Domain, which leaves much of the playstyle for characters in Lost Void very by the numbers outside of the few playable characters that have very unique gameplay altering equipment.
Also in keeping with this idea. I feel that Lost Void also suffers from a lack of local variety. Every run, while it may be more random than Withered Domain in terms of what you get mechanic wise is visually the same. This section could greatly benefit from a uniform biome for every run that has a particular theme or maybe even repurposing the rally environments to provide a more realized aesthetic.
And lastly, I miss the lore pieces. While I had tons of issues with how infrequent lore dropped in the Withered Domain... at least lore still dropped. Lost Void lacks the photos, text logs and audio files that I think truly elevated Hollow Zero as a game mode. I feel like some of the absolute best voice acting and narrative in all of ZZZ exists in the audio logs in Hollow Zero and it kinda sucks that that has been lost with Lost Void.