ZZZ just in general has very high quality assets from characters to animations to the environment everything... and that's only possible because of it not being an Open-World...The story is also really grounded and really cool chapter 3 is where it hooked me...Compare this to genshin It's was actually the later half of Inazuma that hooked me, the devs have improved a lot on the story telling department as of now it seems..!!!
At least the Characters don't feel "Bad" or god forbid "Actively Wasteful" like in Genshin, the A Ranks Here are actually Fun and Enjoyable, not Bloated and Add Negatives to the Gameplay Experience
Yeah. I’m not happy that only Lighter and, in the future, Harumasa are the only S Rank dudes. Meanwhile, most of the guys have been relegated to the A Rank category. It feels like ZZZ’s marketing ploy is “Sexier S Rank Ladies = More Money” when that wasn’t the big obvious tack for me playing Genshin Impact (which I still do since it launched on Sony consoles). They flesh out their four star characters with Hangout Events that are like mini Character Stories and, unlike ZZZ, lets you listen to special voice clips from each character about a multitude of topics. While I like ZZZ’s setting, character personalities and the combat, I kind of am getting more and more fed up that my teams to complete higher end missions are almost all 100% female when I run 2 guys and 2 girls on my Genshin teams if I can.
@@asterthehedgehog6861 Dude, do more Trust Events in Zenless Zone Zero, Genshin Impact is a Nothing Sandwich, sure I agree The Characters are easy to Love, but the game doesn't give you much to work with
Dude your "at least 1 A rank agent per faction" is actually still doable, the issue is, those A ranks were already at the start, so when their factions got a new agent they could only release as S ranks SoC - Lucy and Piper H.S.O.S. 6 - Soukaku N.E.P.S. - Seth Victoria Housekeeping - Corin I'm sure in the future OBOL Squad and Idols will have 1 A rank Agent too, it's just ZZZ is filling current released factions as I stated before
Also noticed that all the A rank you listed are all the youngest/newbie in there respect factions expect Piper who mainly take an back seat in the on foot action
@@Josh-qt5zimeanwhile there are the Belobog A ranks who were working there before Koleda even became their boss, i think they're the only exception to what you said (along with Piper of course)
I definitly think Hoyo's plan is to have at least one A rank per faction. That allows everyone to at least experience that faction. Soukaku is a good example as we got her for free and now that section 6 is being built upon we already have one character giving us insentive to get the rest. Calydon is another where we should all have piper and Lucy, lucy was even given out for cheesetopia so more insentive to get Burnice, Caesar, and Lighter.
Soukaku was free possibly to incentivize people to pull Ellen too, since they work so well with each other, and Ben was our first look at a defense character (aka stun-support-shields all in one character) which might have been the reason he was free as well
It honestly should be a 3:1 ratio of S-ranks and A ranks more so they should have atleast 2 A ranks when more then 3 S ranks exist in a faction. Unless they wanna start handing out free S-ranks from time to time or farmable ones to take the place of A-rank drops, the game is gonna hit the same god damn burn out honkai impact 3rd, genshin impact and honkai star rails suffer which results in too many units get dumped out and things get so saturated with power creep that people can just straight up skip 6 months worth of units and power creep all they miss out with just saving 6 months and having plenty of funds ready for that unit that came out 6 months later. Some games like Wuthering waves put a lean of its A-ranks fitting more to supports and sub dps focuses with the ability on some can become DPS units with higher waveband duplicates, but when you look at alot of mihoyo games, a number of those 4 star and A rank units are made ALOT MORE RELIANT on higher rank versions to mechanically function, especially as supports with only the highest rank stuff finally giving them stuff that leans properly into dps or so in a number of the cases. Also it would just be nice if they had some factions that may have only a SINGLE S rank as the `key member` of the group with a bunch of A ranks that act as supporting members to that character in the faction if the game is gonna lean into wanting to make teams with units of the same faction more then and if the entire team has to consist solely of S ranks/5 stars, it makes the burn out worst and those who join late get clucked if some of those units in the faction are NOT PRESENT on the banners you can pull on at the time so your permanently stuck with incomplete faction type teams. probably one of the few things i can give praise to Another eden these days cause they used a personality system for things like Grasta(power up equips basically) where some Grasta had the ability to share the effect to anyone that matches a certain personality that was attached to the grasta, so if the grasta would party share its effect to `Cat Lovers`, that means any character, regardless, as long as they had a personality trait of `Cat Lovers` would get in on that benefit in a party, enabling some fun combinations, often times making FREE characters extremely valuable as a result even if they were year 1 freaking units, they could get value as holding multiple personalities to overlap with multiple units to give party bonuses thanks to that grasta gimmick. Either way, a game that pushes out more then 2 or more S-ranks a version, barely give break patch periods with reruns, A-ranks or free S-ranks and just straight up has to make a power creep unit instead of an ALTERNATIVE unit which just gives a new way to play without necessarily being `much more OP` then what unit it would be compared to, is likely to get screwed over quite a bit on making the game a terrible FOMO with no attention to balancing things out to keep long term players, outside of FOMO trapping.
@@BladeSerph >a ranks as support or subdps that is literally what a ranks are doing right now in zzz lol, seth is budget caesar (shield) and lucy/nicole are close to BIS support, depending on the team you're running.
@@pallingtontheshrike6374 Dont play so i dont keep up with that game`s meta, after the shenigans with the other mihoyo games, aint no way gonna trust Mihoyo is just gonna quartet it into the same problem that just leads to FOMO and money fiasco`ry. Would not be amazed if they continue the `make a problem to FOMO people into multiple copies just for a unit to be functionally viable` or just release too many units too fast and power creep them so fast they are only viable for a few months instead of getting atleast 1, preferably 2 years to actually be viable before they retire them. Since imagine getting a new character and they get `retired` in 6 months or less after they debuted and they are a S-rank to boot. Plus the fact they flipped off having much for active engagement, didnt ditch the TV world BEFORE the game launched and they decided you can only do one ultimate between your entire team at a time and they are gonna have to rework THAT TOO, which means they have to rebalance the entire game to work with having multiple character ultimates work and even REWORK ULTIMATES to function more into team synergy bits... Yeah i dont think anyone is gonna enjoy playing a `offically released mobile game` suddenly having to turn into a `early access game` as they heavily revamp many units, especially already acquired characters which could make the value of alot of them extremely worsen`d and make those who spent feel extra cluck`d if they severely weaken someone like Nicole to `rebalance the game`, as they redesigned them to work with the new game design reworkery.
People say that they keep using the same A ranks in banners but little do they know, there are just that less A ranks compared to S ranks,... I feel like it's going to be a major problem as the game progresses as A ranks become characters you'll only use when you have no other options or are new to the game. Which is unfortunate as alot of them have interesting mechanics or are just fun to play with. Nice video on the topic.
Eh... A ranks you're a lot more likely to get copies of, which increases their power and viability. Maybe down the line M0 A ranks will no longer be viable and you'll need to have M5 or M6 for them to keep up things. I feel like it will be a while before an M6 A ranks no longer contribute to a team. It also depends on how much overlap they have in terms of their abilities and use case. Like I'm going to use Soukaku for my Miyabi team and until someone comes along who can buff ice damage like she can, I'll probably continue to use her.
yeh, but with the new faction ocming i hope they add a A rank to each new faction atleast to make their S rank core skill easier to gain, like the idol grp and obol etc
I think we should definitely get more situations like Jane's banner. With Seth you were getting two characters at best, and even if you lost your 50/50 you were still walking away with someone new.
Bro I've done so many pulls on banners and STILL haven't gotten even one seth. It's so annoying because I was planning on running him with maybe Anby and Anton as a Shock mono team
Newer player here, and i agree with everything you've said here. I really love the A rank characters and I'm torn between being really happy that they're as usable and well made as any character and feeling immense dread that they're probably going to become irrelevant at some point. It mightve been on your podcast, but I remember someone saying that we haven't had a limited S rank support yet, and just thinking about how hard they could powercreep several A rank characters at once. Shivers.
Hmm as long as you use them when they are buffed on the right stages with 1 limited S rank or sometimes 2 you will be able to use them forever at M6 with a decent build which btw you will get sooner or later don’t worry about it
@VioletKFY Oh totally, I'm not too worried about "meta teams" anyway. It's less about whether they'll be usable and more like "i want to pull for new characters" and never finding a reason to use certain characters again unless I miss using them Like, does it make sense to use hamster cages on A rank units? Sure if you use them a lot. But you might end up regretting that if you pull for a more versatile character later on
@ hmm I get you, the goal is to have teams that clear all end game so you can get all the goodies after that just focus on what you like, I caged my Anby she’s my favourite character and I will never regret it. You get like 3 cages maybe 4 per patch it’s never the end of the world, I personally feel nice double caging my limited S ranks, that means 1-2 cages per patch will be staring at the wall so what I do is use them on my favourite A ranks. All in all just be good enough to clear the game but don’t get too into being meta that you can’t have fun ❤️ have fun !!
obvious answer before I watch the video: zzz characters probably cost way more to make than characters in hoyo's other games, or characters of most other gatcha. they have more effects, and about a billion animations each.
If that's the case they'd also slow down with S ranks, they're just greedy and anyone with a functioning brain can see that since we haven't had any new A ranks since like, 1.1, and on track to not having any for 1.5 either
Here's the thing: A ranks are definetely not a "worse" rarity: there's virtually no actual downside in using an A rank, as they're overall easier to build and optimize. In other word, A Ranks objectively make you pay and play less to build them. Which would mean overall less playtime and money. So for the devs, who rightfully so want to make a living, they can't allow hyped up characters to be A ranks because they know that if they do make that happen, people will spend considerably less to max them out, so instead they opt for "less" hyped up characters. Here's the problem though: this game has such good characters that EVERYONE is hyped. Miyabi and Harumasa are hyped, Pulchra is Hyped, Big Daddy is Hyped, fuck, even that one leaked nun, Lucia, is hyped by some people (me included). There isn't a single character that, in their eyes, isn't "S rank" worthy, and because of this, there's none that IS A rank worthy.
And ZZZ is very character personality heavy. Unlike genshin or hsr, every character in ZZZ so far is brimming with personality. Like you said, all of these makes each character quite financially taxing to make, so they're not worth it to be A rank.
@@bruh10246hell Bellum showed up for just ONE CUTSCENE (if i remember correctly) in the story and yet that one scene with Lighter is still so memorable and people still quote the "did he just say you're handsome twice" part all the time, i might have liked Mors too if he didn't always claim that we're the pray and then proceed to run away 5 seconds later
@@TheRoleplayer40k the problem is outside of their quotes you rarely see it because Genshin is incredibly bad at using its pretty big cast where 90% of them just dont have any screen time (not just the 4 stars btw) and you hope for a glimmer of them in events just for them to be dropped out of the Event in favour of NPCs again *cough* Noelle in the poetry event *cough*
@@BardianAngel yea I completely understand that as well, getting an m6 of a character you like is also good, but I feel like I’d be a lot happier getting an S rank, ig it all comes down to preference tbf
@@BardianAngel A rank characters are technically not guaranteed. I did a few pulls on Jane banner and going to near pity I only got one Seth and the rest were all Anby. A ranks also tend to be more easily power crept over time, especially if you don’t have them M6.
In an extreme case like in my account where I'm hyper saving for a future unit, this problem is even worse. Scrounging around on standard for copies and being forced to snag Seth from the shop initially made getting A ranks super hype for me but at this point, I've genuinely managed to snag just about everyone. We desperately need more A ranks especially since every new S Rank is just the new best character it feels silly to try keeping up right now
@@VladDascaliuci save in gacha games until about a year in. i watch for how fast and likely powercreep happens. i’d rather be content with standard units and get more stronger characters in the future than have outdated 1.0 characters. think of it like 4D chess-future FOMO xD
tho it is a lot of work on Hoyo’s behalf, if they kept adding A’s the same way they did with Seth, we’d get A’s pretty dang frequently. Since Yanagi’s banner is over already I guess they didn’t have this in mind. Would’ve been nice tho
according to some very old leaks, lighter was originally intended to be an A rank agent and i believe there's some evidence that supports that: A) he's very prominent in the story during CH4, but he was never playable (cuz he wasn't out yet), which felt weird in encounters where he should've been playable (like in the bellum fight). B) His promotion outside the game was kind of lacking, his demo was shorter than usual (1.5 minutes long, while other limited S ranks were about 2 to 3 minutes tops) and the trailer telling his backstory was mixed in with a MV instead of just being 2 separate videos, like with Yanagi. C) His W-engine looks really simple in design compared to the signatures W-engines of other limited characters, comparable to that of Anton's or Corin's Signature in how it doesn't really standout. So i think Lighter being originally an A rank that hoyo bumped up to a limited S rank has some merit(the reason why probably being because there was no S rank male post launch and Lycaon was sitting alone on that throne).
I'm guessing Lighter was originally intended for 1.2 since he was data mined as A rank originally, and either Yanagi or Harumasa was originally intended to be A rank for 1.3 since there really isnt much content in 1.3, i dont think they originally planned for it to play out like this. I wonder if they realized exclusively making waifus and no husbandos woulda pissed off their community.
Just from a character 3d model perspective Lighter just feels like an S-Rank and Deputy Chief Tsukishiro Yanagi feels like an A-Rank. I like the deputy chief, but she just doesn't have the layers of detail in her clothing and overall design. In her squad she fits the Ben Bigger kind of role (who I still use almost all the time) which is what I feel is more of an A-Rank personality than a 'protagonist of patch 1.3' type personality like Lighter has. But that's just my opinion. I feel like when we look back on ZZZ in the future that anything before 1.4 is going to feel like 'early access' and 1.4 is when the more reliable long term patterns will start to form. 1.3 feels like a lot of testing the water.
Harumasa was actually intended to be an A rank along with lighter funny enough. But as per usual, it's a company and they are doing business so it makes sense that they'd bump up their rarity (although Harumasa is apparently meant to be free)
@@crimsonraiza3633 I feel like one of the largest dropping off points for people in a gacha game is when they spend 120+ pulls just to get the Limited 5 Star they want, and they just keep getting 4 Stars they have already maxed and then lose a 50/50 and get a Standard 5 Star that has been neglected and is vastly underpowered. Might not be as frustrating for Whales, but if the low spenders and free to play players start dropping the Whales don't have a community and move on. Knowing you can M6 someone like Ben Bigger or Nicole who is still totally viable on the squad of your Limited S-Ranks makes the pulls not feel as much like you are just throwing your money in the garbage. Limited S-Ranks might be better short term quarterly gains, but A-Ranks are sort of the life blood of long term sustainability and profit.
Let me give you my answer before the video starts. Because they decided to rework the entire early game story to remove TV, add a whole new set of animations to every character for the city and change core combat mechanics they decided to make characters that were originally going to A ranks into S ranks to cover the release schedule.
Yeah like two factions already have 3 S ranks and just 1 A rank character (If we count Miyabi and Harusama), most of these S ranks are limited, which mean that those who missed the limited banners are literally doomed to play these characters without their team boost or just in mono teams.
i believe the lack of A-ranks is mainly because of Lucy and Piper. If you played the betas, they werent there, they werent even announced anywhere until the launch stream. I bet they were planning to release them during the SoC arc was going on but they decided to throw them at the start because there was a complete lack of anomaly characters and the the existing A-rank supports were very element-specific, making any team outside of Ether and Ice (and Cunning Hares team) hard to use
I do wonder if we haven't seen any more A ranks because all of the factions we've had banners for already had A ranks, except for NEPS. Victoria Housekeeping has Corin, Sons of Calydon have Lucy and Piper, and Section 6 has Soukaku. They had Seth be the A-rank for NEPS and maybe as new groups are introduced they'll have at least one A rank going forward.
Truly we need the Pulchra who synergizes with Burnice (burn and maybe other anomalies) with an A-Rank, anomaly Bullem. Seriously though, it would be very cool to release more A-Ranks to fill in roles that players could be missing. Like, if you make an Attacker or Stun agent who synergizes with the DoT anomalies, you could release an A-Rank to support them, but make them do things a bit different from the S-Rank they compete with. Like how Piper gives DMG to the team while Jane is still way stronger. Something like an anomaly Bellym could burn well with his flamethrower, but possibly still provide things like a shield (since he looks like a defender) and maybe other buffs while being a damage dealer.
@@lionel7360 that's good format for life service games. It would be hype in zzz even if you want to skip returning agent. Even more if you want both. Sprinkle it with little agent story/event and our wallets are done
@@lionel7360 that a great format for gatcha life service. It's hype if you don't want to get re-run agents and even better if you do. Sprinkle it with some agent story/event and our wallets are done.
Also one thing that @averageluckgamer missed is that M6 A-ranks return the full cost of the pull. If you've got a lot of them maxed, then that's actually great, because you get a huge discount as you're climbing to banner pity. That's balanced out by how much of a hassle it is to level characters, which is also a huge factor: getting a lot of new units is a huge burden to level and gear
I think every faction will have at least one 4*. the sons of calidon already had 2 4* so they didn't need another one. So it makes sense that lighter was a 5*. and the cops didn't have a 4*. so it makes sense they released Seth as an option.
@@AverageLuckGameryeah but that's silly, sorry. What happened is that they released all the season one A ranks at launch, but staggered the limited S ranks to release one at a time. That isn't A ranks getting cut, that's S ranks getting slow-dripped. Seth was the only exception and I think reflects their desire to fill out defense as Ben isn't enough
Also, @AverageLuckGamer, the kits and animations that go into A ranks doesn't even begin to approach S ranks. Lucy has some neat stuff, but Seth is incredibly basic compared to Caesar and no A rank even begins to approach marquee limited DPS like Burnice, Yanagi or ESPECIALLY Jane. (Jane is one of the most cracked units in any game I've ever played). I think what's throwing you off is that you're treating the standard S ranks as equivalent, when they're much closer to the A ranks. The Limiteds are a class above; not in terms of utility, this isn't Star Rail, but in terms of how they feel to play. Anton just plain sucks to play, it's boring and slow to use his drill EX, while Burnice has a similar EX in her flamethrowers that are an utter joy to use. That's not an accident and it's not bad design, it's very clever design that reflects how gamefeel defines why the Limiteds are distinct.
this is just a thing in hoyogames where the a rank or four stars , one new one is released every 3 characters or so , look at genshin release of character , right now we most likely to get more a rank with new upcoming faction . all of these been known since beta , new ones gonna be most likely be one A rank after every three limted S rank
But Genshin and Star Rail pushed out a decent amount of 4 stars within their 1.x patch cycles. Star Rail had a 4* EVERY PATCH up until 2.2. And even then 2.2 had Harmony Trailblazer. Only recently has star rail’s 4* releases begun to taper off because of the immense powercreep, and how hard it is to make effective new 4* that are actually worth using without powercreeping old 5*.
The A ranks are pretty damn good, all they're designs and mechanics are comparable to S ranks, Nicole, Piper and Lucy are prefect examples of this and will always be evergreen
My take on it is the beginning cast of characters we got were set in stone waaaaaay early on, its kinda clear they wanted to get the main story characters all finished first. My “evidence” is the fact sokaku, lucy and piper were out way before sons of calydon, or section 6 released. Because they had already finished those characters. It seems like they make a bunch of characters in a batch for the story they are serving, i feel like now that 1.4 has released and theres really no characters we havent seen yet other then leaks is when we will finally start seeing some A ranks outside of the story they planned with these specific groups long ago
Every faction that hasn’t gotten a new a rank already had one at launch so I think once there’s factions we haven’t had anything at launch we will get more a ranks
I started playing recently with no limited pulls yet and I just noticed that I only need 2 more A ranks to have every single A rank. I'm waiting for the Idol girls because I love their designs.
I want more A rank characters because I like my account to have a horizontal progression- character diversity is my number one priority. I don't care if a team I have is suboptimal, as long as it is fun. More A ranks makes this easier. It also makes the game more accessible for F2P. I'd also love to see another faction like the Cunning Hares, mostly, if not all A-rank. Plus, if everything's an S-rank.... doesn't that cheapen the value of a character or make S-ranks very niche? A-ranks are also pretty good. In other gacha games, lower rarity can have a massive dip in quality, but A-ranks- with appropriate team comp and investments, can be very insane in this game.
I think the main reason we're seeing so many S ranks is to fill out each faction. The likely reason NEPS was the only faction to get an A rank after 1.0 was because they didn't have an A rank. All the other factions had A ranks from the start of the game, like piper and lucy for SoC. I assume now that 1.4 is happening and they've flushed out most the factions we knew about from the start of the game theyll add more A ranks
As a Soldier 11 simp, I wish Lighter had been an A-rank, because I'm saving for Miyabi and holding on to a guarantee, but I also see a silver lining in so few A ranks and the ease of getting some of them at M6, which is that it means more opportunities to get the 20 residual signals 'refund' from pulling those M6 agents again, and spending that on trying to get S ranks. Like, if you have both featured A-ranks on a banner at M6, that's more or less 10% of your pulls getting 'refunded'. Or if you pull an M6 agent on the Stable banner, and then buy an Encrypted Tape with the currency, you've essentially fully turned a Stable pull into a Limited pull. Small gains, but nice at least.
I've seen an interesting idea in Girls' Frontline. They introduced a way to upgrade some characters beyond the maximum level while giving them a rarity increase when doing so. It's also tied to some background story for the character (which is supposed to give a little bit of develooment for them). I believe i there were a possibility in the future that an A-rank character might recieve an upgrade which would increase their power cap, added a new twist to their skills, then it would have been fine to make A-ranks more simple. That being said there are over a couple hundred characters in Girls' Frontline iirc, and they have 4 rarities, so this system works well there to bring some 2,3 and 4-stars up to the level of meta units. And also for some already popular 5-stars to not be power crept as easily.
It’s probably because they made lighter and harumasa S ranks like you said. They scream they were meant to be A ranks like seth. The backlash for no dude characters that were s ranks makes me think the dialed back the decision and just didn’t have enough time to do that for seth.
I'd like to believe that, once we've gotten a limited S-Rank for each element and type combination, we'll start seeing more A-Ranks to fill out the slots we're currently missing. Maybe they'll spread those new ones out among re-run banners to incentivize even players who own the re-run Agent to pull not just for Mindscapes. But if that's the future...it'll be a long ways away since we don't even have Obol Squad yet. Especially if we're going to see more factions popping up out of nowhere like Virtual Idols. Bare minimum, we'll see another two A-Ranks coming with Virtual Idols and Obol Squad...I hope. Would be weird if we broke the 3S/1A format now.
Another positive of fewer A-Ranks is the residual signal refund you get, which could be viewed as a small safety net for spent poly. As they not only allow you to directly buy S-Rank W-Engines from the shop, but also extra pulls to get the limited S-Ranks.
Not sure why no one mentioned this but Lighter WAS an A rank. Up until a couple updates ago he was an A rank in the game files until spontaneously becoming an S. And this isn't people miss reading or things naturally changing as everyone else has had ranks set in stone since months before launch. The running theory is that Lighter was promoted due to people who like male characters not having a banner to pull for 3 whole banners was driving them away. And the fandom was being real annoying at people who wanted them 😂. So it seems hoyo realized that not how you get money from people and promoted him
To be fair, I came back to ZZZ specifically for Lighter after last pulling for Seth. I can't be the only one. I'm a big Hoyoverse fan but the game's marketing has blatantly been telling me this game isn't marketed for me.
@@GummyDinosaursify i was hoping this game wasnt gonna be super female centric but i guess having balance in these gatchas are too much to ask for....lycoan and lighter are so similar also being the only male S ranks in the game
well i think of it as making it easier to c6 A-Ranks by not diluting the A-Rank pool so much like you said. genshin has a problem where there are so many, and they're really bad at choosing the rate up 4 stars, so you could go years without getting a specific character.
6:40 it's a very rare occurrence, but yes, this does happen. A very good example is Molly's (Mollozhang) pulls in HSR's feixiao banner. She managed to get 3 5-star(S-rank equivalent) characters before getting a single 4-star(A-rank) character that is rate up in that banner. And it's not her being extremely lucky on the 5 star pulls either, although she got the first one on 20 pulls, she reached around 60 pity or more for the other two. She pulled hundreds of times but only got *one* of that 4 star RATE UP character. Extremely improbable, but never impossible
In Genshin, i've managed to get 2 5 Stars before I have gotten a single Ororon. I'm about to hit max pity on a third 5 star. I've never been this simultaneously lucky and unlucky in my life.
Probably they will start adding A characters on Reruns, like Wuwa is doing, it is because A rank in both games are really well kitted with different animations and very unique. Also giving A ranks on reruns give more reasons to old and new players to pull for the old characters.
My problem with getting more A ranks is meaning that the character design you like and have been saving for might not be as strong as you hoped, but at the same time, we do need more A ranks, at least 1 per team/faction
I'd been wondering about this for a while as well, though thinking about it, the case of Soukaku, Piper and Lucy had always been a bit curious to me. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if their addition to being available for the game's launch was to avoid not having a balanced and varied enough roster for the launch of the game, otherwise the only A Ranks that would be available would be Anby, Billy, Nicole, Anton, Ben and Corrin, with the first three being given to players right from the start. Soukaku was at least introduced through Section 6 and Hollow Zero, but that was pretty brief. Lucy and Piper were even more odd to have right at 1.0, two patches before their faction even got a proper introduction. Plus Soukaku and Lucy having EN voice actor changes makes me wonder if the original intent was to release those characters along with the proper introduction of their faction, like we had for Seth. Regardless, that's just my speculation, but I do hope we at least get a continuing trend of at least 1 A-Rank per faction and the lack of new ones was really a result of last minute launch roster changes that goofed up an originally intended roadmap. Though, I'll also just be happy to prolong having the same issue Genshin has now with WAY too many 4 star characters and not nearly enough avenues to get them.
After 1.4 considering the possibility of new teams being added will have more A-ranks and it's also I feel a narrative point too. Like in NEPS, Seth is a top-rookie while everyone else is an experienced officer which is why they are S-ranks. They might release more teams that narratively are more upcoming teams will get more A-ranks
My guess is that for every NEW faction introduced, there will be at least 1 or 2 A ranks. For example the Idol Faction, 1 of them could potentially be an A rank, so we wouldn't know until they actually get released. This is just my guess though.
I think A ranks will start pouring in once they start adding new factions. The only factions we've had so far have been ones that have been around since day 1 and ones that already had established A ranks in their rosters.
I wish they had more a rank hero because they since the s rank agents are definitely the premium agents that have the better skills and abilities but if they made more A ranks that are watered down versions of the S rankers it would make it so much easier for new players to stay invested in the game especially for those that missed out on the banner pulls for Jane, Burnice, Cesar, and yanagi.
It seems a lot of effort has gone into addressing the game’s core issues, especially in 1.4. I wouldn’t be surprised if after the game’s success, they saw its potential and decided to dedicate more core resources to it (i.e. replacing the TV mode, which was basically designed to keep the game’s budget low), and working on that is taking away dev time from A-ranks. I do think ZZZ has a broken economy, where even as a f2p player it’s possible to run out of things to meaningfully do. Right now, as an f2p, almost all of my characters are developed to a decent degree, have their own gear, have leveled skills. I think only 1 or 2 aren’t really there yet. The game needs Lucy-level A-ranks just for its economy and monetization to even work. But I think they have bigger priorities now, with a lot of those being realized in 1.4. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see the return of A-ranks in 1.6 or something like that.
S-rank and A-rank characters also receive the same amount of non-story mode lore and interactions outside of the S-rank agent story, which sometimes aren't even that noteworthy (see nekomata's, koleda's). hoyo clearly wants each character added to the game to be mechanically and aesthetically/narratively interesting, regardless of their rarity.
The main difference in A Ranks and S ranks is invincibility and movement. A rank attacks usually plant them, they move slowly, and they seem to have less s than Sranks.
I think there might be something that your over looking with the lack of A rank characters. When the game launched, we all had out free to play team and Ellen was our limited S rank. However we also had 6 other S ranks , and we were also top heavy with A ranks. Not counting the cunning hares, we also had 6 A ranks that we could of had. And some of them haven't been in the story yet, so we couldn't interact with them. I think the spacing of these characters is the issue as to why we haven't seen many new A ranks. Cause if you look at each faction, there at least one or two A ranks. And this is just what I've noticed while playing the game.
I'm glad that we got A-rank Seth because if it weren't for him, I would honestly doubt we'd get any more A-ranks added over time. Aside from Seth and Corin, I've got every single A-rank up to C6, and they've been there for weeks. Them adding more would be nice not only because it'd mean we have a chance at getting some free, easier-to-obtain characters, but I'd also have a reason to look forward to more A pulls instead of just seeing an A show up on the screen and actually hoping it's a W-engine I don't have at 5 stars yet. On that note, I'd also love it if we could get some more basic, not-banner-limited S-ranks as well.
I think we're not seeing more A-ranks also because so many have been pre-planned for all the factions so far. Maybe we'll get more with the idols and moving forward. But... currently I'm just hoping that Seth will be on Harumasa's banner because I'd really like to get his two last mindscapes and more copies of his signature w-engine.
I'm pretty sure we will get more A-Ranks. Right now for each faction we have: VH: 1 (Corin) CH: 3 (Nicole, Billy, Anby) BHI: 2 (Anton, Ben) SOC: 2 (Piper, Lucy) NEPS: 1 (Seth) S6: 1 (Soukaku) When we get more Obol Squad units, there will likely be an A-Rank. In future updates, there is room to add, say, another NEPS A-Rank or Victoria Housekeeping A-Rank. Additionally, new factions (like the Idols) will likely have at least 1 A-Rank. Just because they didn't add a third A-Rank to Sons of Calydon doesn't mean they will stop adding new A-Ranks.
I think the ideal number of A Ranks is is just 1 less behind of a faction that are guaranteed to be S Agents. Like Sons of Caldylon has 5 Members and theres 2 A ranks and three S ranks, compared to Victoria Housekeeping has only 1 A ranks but three S ranks. But I really wish that theres a faction that will have the same amount of A ranks as Cunning Hares.
With how little A ranks there is in the game I already got them all and with each banner more and more of them become for me a "free" pull instead. As others pointed out the best banner was Jane one with a new S rank and a new A rank. Harumasa is an S but he'd work well as new A rank for Miyabi banner.
The answer is that ZZZ isn't making enough money, so they have to keep pushing out S ranks to bring in the cash. Same thing happened with ToF and WuWa.
A positive that wasn't mentioned (unless I missed it) was that a dupe of a mindscape 6 A rank is effectively a refunded summon, since it gives 20 residual signal which can be exchanged for 1 master tape (or other things). Because of this, having less A ranks effectively makes it easier to get the S ranks you want, because you'll max out your A ranks faster at which point A ranks just become a refunded summon that still builds towards pity. Imo this is a pretty big positive that will stack up over time and result in you getting a lot more summons than if we were getting new A ranks more frequently. Still want more A ranks tho lol
I think having a A rank for each faction is fine, and as far as I can remember, we have that already. From what I've seen, and what little I know of other gacha games, ZZZ seems to have a smaller roster of characters with more focus and attention put into them than other games. I don't do gacha games much, I dropped off FGO pretty quick, same with Genshin, but something I don't know about is if there's any way to ever 'Rank Up' a character. If they aren't going to give us many more A ranks, I think it would be possible, at some point, to let players increase an A rank character to S rank. Maybe it would require the character to be M6, a decent chunk of money and other resources, but NOT some new special limited resource, to unlock a 'test' of sorts that the character needs to be used in earn the 'Rank Up'. The 'Rank Up' could improve their overall stats by like 20% or something as a generic thing, or be more specific, like Seth's shield applies to the entire group instead of just one character (does he apply it to himself as well? I don't know, I don't like him, he's better than Ben in terms of gameplay but I dislike Seth as a character). To me, this would be a way to say that the S rank characters aren't BETTER than A ranks, just that they've already proven themselves somehow, whereas the A rank characters haven't quite hit their full potential. To not confuse people instead of this 'Rank Up' making them S rank, this could make them 'A+' or 'A*' rank, or something like that. This sort of things seems like it could change the narrative around A ranks vs S ranks. I think this would give some people something to work towards even after maxing their A rank characters. It wouldn't involve adding any new animations or character design changes or anything else, so very little extra work for the dev's in that regard, just a little tweaking of stats/specific abilities.
I have a theory that will most likely be confirmed or denied when idol faction comes out but I feel that every faction will have at least 1 A rank character. In general though not in terms of unreleased characters. Seth was an A rank because if he wasn't NEPS faction would have been all S ranks. We haven't been getting any more because every faction the characters were in already had A ranks. Meaning we won't be getting any more until a new faction releases where they'll theoretically have to release an A rank
On the contrary, getting a dupe of a maxed A rank is in fact, helpful. Because that is essentially 1 pull refund which adds up in the longrun, especially if you are pooling resources for certain S ranks.
I am also wondering where all of the A rank agents are. Now, in Lighters earlier development, I did see in his earlier video's that he was listed as an A rank at some point. Not having Koleda, I was excited to be getting a fire stunner for my Soldier 11 team. It wasn't until his official announcement that I realized that they made him an S-rank character instead. Which is fine by me, since I know that means a bigger power budget, and therefore a stronger Soldier 11, but at the same time, I couldn't help but shake the feeling that we really could use an A rank stunner that isn't Anby. We've gotten more A rank Bangboo's than we have playable A-rank characters at this point. Which is somewhat worrying, because there are upcoming characters I like, but may not be able to get if they're ALL S rank...
i honestly think that the quality is better then quantity, if the amount of A ranks increase in short time a lot of them may have simple kit just to support the upcoming s rank agent with them.
There will be more earrings when newer actions get released. It’s just right now. There’s no more story content so they’re kind of just focusing on the S ranks I’m sure once the items come out there’s going to be a few new A ranks
Every faction has at least 1 A rank character to date. Cunning Hares as 3 A, 1 S. Victoria Housekeeping has 1 A, 3 Ss. NEPS has 1 A and 3 S. And so on. Right now they're filling S ranks after preemptively giving us a bunch of A ranks on the unlimited gacha. More A ranks will come when they release new factions
I like having my A ranks at 6/6 because it basically refunds the pull when I get them, which means more pulling. Anything that gets that pity to fill up faster for essentially no cost is a major positive in my books. Adding newer A Ranks, which I'm not against, means more characters to max out to have that basically guaranteed free pull every 10 pulls back.
I just started building piper for giggles yesterday since I've nearly maxed most of my main teams, and even under-leveled with hardly any investment she's an absolute beast paired with Lucy and Burnice! I actually favor her over Jane now for physical damage in that comp and had no problem clearing the new Shiyu 7 with her. Too many A ranks would dilute the pool too much , might be nice every 3 or 4 banners to get one. 1 or 2 A ranks per faction wouldn't be too much of a stretch, I think it's highly likely this will be the case.
I hope this doesn't become an Apollo's gift of prophecy moment, but what if future A ranks end up becoming all the enemy/npc-first appearing characters. I can imagine it'd save them time to do the design and moveset work if they did
I mean, SSRs being the majority is the norm in gacha games. I'd be surprised if we did get more A-Ranks. That being said, I was absolutely expecting Harumasa and Lighter to be A-Ranks anyway, considering their positions. If we got a new group, though, yeah, we'll more than likely get at least one A-Rank maybe
There are less A rank characters released because they've been already there. ZZZ has a faction system. The only faction were they could introduce more than 1 new 4 star would be Obol squad, since they started with a 5 star.
They should do a bit more A-Ranks and then later add S-rank skins/versions for popular ones. Creating an upgraded/alternate version of a character with a couple extra moves and better stats is cheaper than designing from scratch. Maybe I'm in a minority but I would definitely shell out to pull for a limited S-Rank version of Anby, for example.
Her faction is likely to be the focus of the start of season two, which will probably include at least one new A-rank as well as at least two limited S ranks
@@CrispBaker Finishing season 1 without all the base game factions seems illogical to me. I would be a bit more inclined to believe they planned to keep Soldier 11 solo long term if she didn't have a standard faction bonus that requires 1 other Obol or 1 other fire. "When another character in your squad shares the same Attribute or Faction: Soldier 11 deals 10% more Fire DMG. When attacking Stunned enemies, this effect is further enhanced by an additional 22.5%."
@MrMarti-i7f teaser to make people wonder, maybe? They aren't going to be too worried about her viability as a unit, she's just a standard, so the missing buff isn't much of an issue.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you said, but it sounded like you were saying that there wasn't an A-rank for every faction which is part of why we haven't received any new A-ranks. But every faction, apart from OBOLS does have at least one A-rank. NEPS added Seth who was their only A-Rank but every character that has come out since then has been part of a faction that already had A-rank characters. SoC already had Piper and Lucy and Sec6 already has Soukaku. When we get new factions added to the game, we may get new A-Ranks along with them, but that would explain why we haven't been getting any since Seth. I do agree though that I think the devs probably are just focusing on pumping out S-ranks only because of the amount of development time/resources that go into new characters in this game. That's got to be a large part of the reason why even at launch the roster of characters was very small compared to other games like Genshin and Honkai. And while this is tinfoil hat, I do feel like Harumasa was originally intended to be an A-rank but because of the time/resource commitment needed to make new characters and/or the player feedback asking for more limited male characters, they pivoted to making him an S-rank instead. I know it is very subjective, but his design doesn't feel particularly S-rank, which is a large part of why I think that. But, again, that's purely speculation.
I'm of the theory that they frontloaded the game almost every A-Rank they had designed so that we could build teams right off the bat. So instead of A-Ranks like Soukaku releasing in 1.3 with Section 6's story, or Lucy and Piper in 1.2 with the Sons of Calydon, we got them in 1.0 for base comps I do still have hope for more A-Ranks in future banners of course, I just think we'll have to wait until a new faction drops to those A-Ranks Anyway no idea if my theory will hold up lol, good video on the subject, got me thinking
Well Okay Every Faction has an A rank character Like for example Seth Released when 2 of the Police faction where released because there where no a ranks, There will also probably not be an A rank next patch because we have soukaku the A rank for Section 6. In 1.5 when we get a new faction there will he a new a rank for that faction. They released most of the A ranks for the factions on release.
I'm curious how they'll go about once we complete all the current factions, and they add a full 4 person faction in the game. Cause then they have a choice to make some A ranks, or just have a full S rank squad. And that'll be what makes the direction they want to go clear for me
I kinda like having less A ranks as a newish player since it makes it easier to m6 them and even after you've maxed them all, or at least all the ones you care about, getting a dupe for a maxed character refunds you a pull from the signal shop meaning more pulls for S ranks
Now that i think about it i kinda like that there aren't that many A-ranks, makes it easier to get max mindscapes. I have maxed every A-rank except Corin, Piper, and Seth at this point, it's kinda nuts. But anyways, I definitely agree with the whole quality over quantity thing.
I mean so far every faction does have an A rank character (besides Soldier 11s useless one right now) so I can definitely see them adding more A ranks in the future per faction
I'm quite okay with limited amount of A ranks because i'm still trying to max some MS (and you get extra currency when you pull them when MS is complete) BUT they are 100% lacking. Imo the tight faction system is not helping when it comes to figuring out who will be a A or S ranks BUT hopefuly they will just expand every faction freely with new A rank after Asaba & Miyabi release since they're the last lunch trailer characters.
Separating characters by rank in 2024 is in itself a bad idea. It's like the developers are saying themselves that a-rank characters are worse than s-rank characters and they have less overall value.
I don't mind the A ranks exclusivity, as is it feels like they all serve some purpose. All the other benefits you mentioned apply too. I would be down for one A Rank per faction if possible, if they're handled how Seth was. At least, dropping one every once in awhile would be nice.
Wise and Belle have extremely good connections. Most of the Agents they have contact with are S rank with A in the minority. They don't even have to bother with Agents that are B rank or lower.
What's odd is the balance of A to S rank per faction, the maids only have one A rank but Cunning Hares has 3 and their only S rank is standard, then move to the construction team and they're perfectly balanced 2 and 2; Police department? 3 S ranks and one guy and you know the rest, there's no order to these, I hope one of the idols is A rank at least.
We're going into the final couple weeks of 1.3 so I'll be curious to see if we hear anything about A ranks in the 1.4 stream or the drip marketing for the 1.5 characters. Me personally I'm hoping for more A ranks just to give us some more weapon choices. Pulling Every character's signature weapon is not ideal, but some characters don't really have a lot of options outside of their signature (I'm looking at you Caesar). It would definitely be nice to have another A rank defense character, or another A rank Stun just to have some more wengine options.
The a rank quality in zenless is so high everyone has their own animations and the details are just insane
ZZZ just in general has very high quality assets from characters to animations to the environment everything... and that's only possible because of it not being an Open-World...The story is also really grounded and really cool chapter 3 is where it hooked me...Compare this to genshin It's was actually the later half of Inazuma that hooked me, the devs have improved a lot on the story telling department as of now it seems..!!!
@saahil0855 absolutely agreed
tfw I have Yanagi well-built and Seth is somehow still my best agent and the one I actually NEED to do hard content that I shouldn't be doing yet
To be fair there is ONE major difference between A and S ranks: the male-female ratio :V
lmao
At least the Characters don't feel "Bad" or god forbid "Actively Wasteful" like in Genshin, the A Ranks Here are actually Fun and Enjoyable, not Bloated and Add Negatives to the Gameplay Experience
Yeah. I’m not happy that only Lighter and, in the future, Harumasa are the only S Rank dudes. Meanwhile, most of the guys have been relegated to the A Rank category. It feels like ZZZ’s marketing ploy is “Sexier S Rank Ladies = More Money” when that wasn’t the big obvious tack for me playing Genshin Impact (which I still do since it launched on Sony consoles). They flesh out their four star characters with Hangout Events that are like mini Character Stories and, unlike ZZZ, lets you listen to special voice clips from each character about a multitude of topics.
While I like ZZZ’s setting, character personalities and the combat, I kind of am getting more and more fed up that my teams to complete higher end missions are almost all 100% female when I run 2 guys and 2 girls on my Genshin teams if I can.
@@asterthehedgehog6861 Dude, do more Trust Events in Zenless Zone Zero, Genshin Impact is a Nothing Sandwich, sure I agree The Characters are easy to Love, but the game doesn't give you much to work with
Dude your "at least 1 A rank agent per faction" is actually still doable, the issue is, those A ranks were already at the start, so when their factions got a new agent they could only release as S ranks
SoC - Lucy and Piper
H.S.O.S. 6 - Soukaku
N.E.P.S. - Seth
Victoria Housekeeping - Corin
I'm sure in the future OBOL Squad and Idols will have 1 A rank Agent too, it's just ZZZ is filling current released factions as I stated before
Also noticed that all the A rank you listed are all the youngest/newbie in there respect factions expect Piper who mainly take an back seat in the on foot action
@@Josh-qt5zi Nicole
@miuiruma273 well compared to billy, anby, and nekomata she's still kind of inexperienced in combat compared to them so it still makes sense
@@Josh-qt5zimeanwhile there are the Belobog A ranks who were working there before Koleda even became their boss, i think they're the only exception to what you said (along with Piper of course)
@@madmanof2016 no make sense, Nicole faction have 3 A rank agents, all argument 1 a rank per faction is lost
I definitly think Hoyo's plan is to have at least one A rank per faction. That allows everyone to at least experience that faction. Soukaku is a good example as we got her for free and now that section 6 is being built upon we already have one character giving us insentive to get the rest. Calydon is another where we should all have piper and Lucy, lucy was even given out for cheesetopia so more insentive to get Burnice, Caesar, and Lighter.
Soukaku was free possibly to incentivize people to pull Ellen too, since they work so well with each other, and Ben was our first look at a defense character (aka stun-support-shields all in one character) which might have been the reason he was free as well
It honestly should be a 3:1 ratio of S-ranks and A ranks more so they should have atleast 2 A ranks when more then 3 S ranks exist in a faction.
Unless they wanna start handing out free S-ranks from time to time or farmable ones to take the place of A-rank drops, the game is gonna hit the same god damn burn out honkai impact 3rd, genshin impact and honkai star rails suffer which results in too many units get dumped out and things get so saturated with power creep that people can just straight up skip 6 months worth of units and power creep all they miss out with just saving 6 months and having plenty of funds ready for that unit that came out 6 months later.
Some games like Wuthering waves put a lean of its A-ranks fitting more to supports and sub dps focuses with the ability on some can become DPS units with higher waveband duplicates, but when you look at alot of mihoyo games, a number of those 4 star and A rank units are made ALOT MORE RELIANT on higher rank versions to mechanically function, especially as supports with only the highest rank stuff finally giving them stuff that leans properly into dps or so in a number of the cases.
Also it would just be nice if they had some factions that may have only a SINGLE S rank as the `key member` of the group with a bunch of A ranks that act as supporting members to that character in the faction if the game is gonna lean into wanting to make teams with units of the same faction more then and if the entire team has to consist solely of S ranks/5 stars, it makes the burn out worst and those who join late get clucked if some of those units in the faction are NOT PRESENT on the banners you can pull on at the time so your permanently stuck with incomplete faction type teams.
probably one of the few things i can give praise to Another eden these days cause they used a personality system for things like Grasta(power up equips basically) where some Grasta had the ability to share the effect to anyone that matches a certain personality that was attached to the grasta, so if the grasta would party share its effect to `Cat Lovers`, that means any character, regardless, as long as they had a personality trait of `Cat Lovers` would get in on that benefit in a party, enabling some fun combinations, often times making FREE characters extremely valuable as a result even if they were year 1 freaking units, they could get value as holding multiple personalities to overlap with multiple units to give party bonuses thanks to that grasta gimmick.
Either way, a game that pushes out more then 2 or more S-ranks a version, barely give break patch periods with reruns, A-ranks or free S-ranks and just straight up has to make a power creep unit instead of an ALTERNATIVE unit which just gives a new way to play without necessarily being `much more OP` then what unit it would be compared to, is likely to get screwed over quite a bit on making the game a terrible FOMO with no attention to balancing things out to keep long term players, outside of FOMO trapping.
@@BladeSerph >a ranks as support or subdps
that is literally what a ranks are doing right now in zzz lol, seth is budget caesar (shield) and lucy/nicole are close to BIS support, depending on the team you're running.
@@pallingtontheshrike6374 Dont play so i dont keep up with that game`s meta, after the shenigans with the other mihoyo games, aint no way gonna trust Mihoyo is just gonna quartet it into the same problem that just leads to FOMO and money fiasco`ry.
Would not be amazed if they continue the `make a problem to FOMO people into multiple copies just for a unit to be functionally viable` or just release too many units too fast and power creep them so fast they are only viable for a few months instead of getting atleast 1, preferably 2 years to actually be viable before they retire them.
Since imagine getting a new character and they get `retired` in 6 months or less after they debuted and they are a S-rank to boot.
Plus the fact they flipped off having much for active engagement, didnt ditch the TV world BEFORE the game launched and they decided you can only do one ultimate between your entire team at a time and they are gonna have to rework THAT TOO, which means they have to rebalance the entire game to work with having multiple character ultimates work and even REWORK ULTIMATES to function more into team synergy bits...
Yeah i dont think anyone is gonna enjoy playing a `offically released mobile game` suddenly having to turn into a `early access game` as they heavily revamp many units, especially already acquired characters which could make the value of alot of them extremely worsen`d and make those who spent feel extra cluck`d if they severely weaken someone like Nicole to `rebalance the game`, as they redesigned them to work with the new game design reworkery.
gentle house crying in the corner
Today I learned that Lighter can deflect bullets by punching them
He's him.
V1 jhon ultrakill?😮
I accidently saw that too when I was doing shiyu today 😮 I was like ehh he can punch bullet?
People say that they keep using the same A ranks in banners but little do they know, there are just that less A ranks compared to S ranks,... I feel like it's going to be a major problem as the game progresses as A ranks become characters you'll only use when you have no other options or are new to the game. Which is unfortunate as alot of them have interesting mechanics or are just fun to play with. Nice video on the topic.
It’s basically just gonna be the same 4 star problem hsr has , too little 4 stars and the most of the ones that are there are not that good
What do you mean when you have nothing else to use? Most of the A ranks are literally core to most teams (ie: Nicole Seth Soukaku Lucy Anby)
Eh... A ranks you're a lot more likely to get copies of, which increases their power and viability. Maybe down the line M0 A ranks will no longer be viable and you'll need to have M5 or M6 for them to keep up things. I feel like it will be a while before an M6 A ranks no longer contribute to a team. It also depends on how much overlap they have in terms of their abilities and use case. Like I'm going to use Soukaku for my Miyabi team and until someone comes along who can buff ice damage like she can, I'll probably continue to use her.
yeh, but with the new faction ocming i hope they add a A rank to each new faction atleast to make their S rank core skill easier to gain, like the idol grp and obol etc
@@scorpdelord883 the pop idol faction 100% has at least one or two A ranks (probably just one though)
I think we should definitely get more situations like Jane's banner. With Seth you were getting two characters at best, and even if you lost your 50/50 you were still walking away with someone new.
As someone with every A rank 6/6 its pretty bad. Seth is nice, give us more of that.
More Seth's please.
Seth is just incredible. Not only as a good himbo character, but he's pretty much become the core of my team even as the number of S-Ranks grow
Bro I've done so many pulls on banners and STILL haven't gotten even one seth. It's so annoying because I was planning on running him with maybe Anby and Anton as a Shock mono team
@Skullgryn Wasn't there a Seth copy in the Faded Signal shop last month? That's how I got my only Seth so far.
Newer player here, and i agree with everything you've said here. I really love the A rank characters and I'm torn between being really happy that they're as usable and well made as any character and feeling immense dread that they're probably going to become irrelevant at some point. It mightve been on your podcast, but I remember someone saying that we haven't had a limited S rank support yet, and just thinking about how hard they could powercreep several A rank characters at once. Shivers.
Hmm as long as you use them when they are buffed on the right stages with 1 limited S rank or sometimes 2 you will be able to use them forever at M6 with a decent build which btw you will get sooner or later don’t worry about it
@VioletKFY Oh totally, I'm not too worried about "meta teams" anyway. It's less about whether they'll be usable and more like "i want to pull for new characters" and never finding a reason to use certain characters again unless I miss using them
Like, does it make sense to use hamster cages on A rank units? Sure if you use them a lot. But you might end up regretting that if you pull for a more versatile character later on
@ hmm I get you, the goal is to have teams that clear all end game so you can get all the goodies after that just focus on what you like, I caged my Anby she’s my favourite character and I will never regret it. You get like 3 cages maybe 4 per patch it’s never the end of the world, I personally feel nice double caging my limited S ranks, that means 1-2 cages per patch will be staring at the wall so what I do is use them on my favourite A ranks. All in all just be good enough to clear the game but don’t get too into being meta that you can’t have fun ❤️ have fun !!
@VioletKFY Amen, screw the meta ❤️
@@noah509 Ceasar is essentialy an S rank support and it's already on every meta team
4:39 Did he just say he's handsome twice?
“I understood that reference”
obvious answer before I watch the video: zzz characters probably cost way more to make than characters in hoyo's other games, or characters of most other gatcha.
they have more effects, and about a billion animations each.
Not to mention all the side story and world map interactions they need to put in
No, they just want money, look at HSR, non-stop 5* with a non action gameplay
@@giangtrinhtruong7952 HSR is a much higher budget game than Zenless is.
If that's the case they'd also slow down with S ranks, they're just greedy and anyone with a functioning brain can see that since we haven't had any new A ranks since like, 1.1, and on track to not having any for 1.5 either
@@riven4121 And I think they've gotten more than enough return from players, but still want more
Here's the thing: A ranks are definetely not a "worse" rarity: there's virtually no actual downside in using an A rank, as they're overall easier to build and optimize.
In other word, A Ranks objectively make you pay and play less to build them. Which would mean overall less playtime and money.
So for the devs, who rightfully so want to make a living, they can't allow hyped up characters to be A ranks because they know that if they do make that happen, people will spend considerably less to max them out, so instead they opt for "less" hyped up characters.
Here's the problem though: this game has such good characters that EVERYONE is hyped. Miyabi and Harumasa are hyped, Pulchra is Hyped, Big Daddy is Hyped, fuck, even that one leaked nun, Lucia, is hyped by some people (me included).
There isn't a single character that, in their eyes, isn't "S rank" worthy, and because of this, there's none that IS A rank worthy.
And ZZZ is very character personality heavy. Unlike genshin or hsr, every character in ZZZ so far is brimming with personality. Like you said, all of these makes each character quite financially taxing to make, so they're not worth it to be A rank.
@@bruh10246hell Bellum showed up for just ONE CUTSCENE (if i remember correctly) in the story and yet that one scene with Lighter is still so memorable and people still quote the "did he just say you're handsome twice" part all the time, i might have liked Mors too if he didn't always claim that we're the pray and then proceed to run away 5 seconds later
@@bruh10246I’d say every characters in genshin is brimming with personality
@@TheRoleplayer40k the problem is outside of their quotes you rarely see it because Genshin is incredibly bad at using its pretty big cast where 90% of them just dont have any screen time (not just the 4 stars btw) and you hope for a glimmer of them in events just for them to be dropped out of the Event in favour of NPCs again *cough* Noelle in the poetry event *cough*
@@SmashTheAdam technically two cutscenes and a fight, but yeah, similar to pulchra the one major convo has everyone going "LOL"
Another issue is no one wants their upcoming favourite character to be an A rank fr
Really? i'd rather have a much easier time getting a character i'm interested in...
@@BardianAngel yea I completely understand that as well, getting an m6 of a character you like is also good, but I feel like I’d be a lot happier getting an S rank, ig it all comes down to preference tbf
@@BardianAngel A rank characters are technically not guaranteed. I did a few pulls on Jane banner and going to near pity I only got one Seth and the rest were all Anby. A ranks also tend to be more easily power crept over time, especially if you don’t have them M6.
@@MagmaSpacer That's fair, but i didn't say they were guaranteed. I just said it was easier to get them.
@@BardianAngel But S ranks can be guaranteed barring the 50/50 soaking you dry. So easier for their max power is subjective
In an extreme case like in my account where I'm hyper saving for a future unit, this problem is even worse. Scrounging around on standard for copies and being forced to snag Seth from the shop initially made getting A ranks super hype for me but at this point, I've genuinely managed to snag just about everyone. We desperately need more A ranks especially since every new S Rank is just the new best character it feels silly to try keeping up right now
Who are you saving up for?
@@VladDascaliuci save in gacha games until about a year in. i watch for how fast and likely powercreep happens. i’d rather be content with standard units and get more stronger characters in the future than have outdated 1.0 characters. think of it like 4D chess-future FOMO xD
It's kinda okay since you will get bonus residual signals to exchange for tapes to pull for S ranks.
Thanks for the video, excellent quality as always!
Thank you!
tho it is a lot of work on Hoyo’s behalf, if they kept adding A’s the same way they did with Seth, we’d get A’s pretty dang frequently. Since Yanagi’s banner is over already I guess they didn’t have this in mind. Would’ve been nice tho
according to some very old leaks, lighter was originally intended to be an A rank agent and i believe there's some evidence that supports that:
A) he's very prominent in the story during CH4, but he was never playable (cuz he wasn't out yet), which felt weird in encounters where he should've been playable (like in the bellum fight).
B) His promotion outside the game was kind of lacking, his demo was shorter than usual (1.5 minutes long, while other limited S ranks were about 2 to 3 minutes tops) and the trailer telling his backstory was mixed in with a MV instead of just being 2 separate videos, like with Yanagi.
C) His W-engine looks really simple in design compared to the signatures W-engines of other limited characters, comparable to that of Anton's or Corin's Signature in how it doesn't really standout.
So i think Lighter being originally an A rank that hoyo bumped up to a limited S rank has some merit(the reason why probably being because there was no S rank male post launch and Lycaon was sitting alone on that throne).
I'm guessing Lighter was originally intended for 1.2 since he was data mined as A rank originally, and either Yanagi or Harumasa was originally intended to be A rank for 1.3 since there really isnt much content in 1.3, i dont think they originally planned for it to play out like this. I wonder if they realized exclusively making waifus and no husbandos woulda pissed off their community.
Just from a character 3d model perspective Lighter just feels like an S-Rank and Deputy Chief Tsukishiro Yanagi feels like an A-Rank.
I like the deputy chief, but she just doesn't have the layers of detail in her clothing and overall design. In her squad she fits the Ben Bigger kind of role (who I still use almost all the time) which is what I feel is more of an A-Rank personality than a 'protagonist of patch 1.3' type personality like Lighter has.
But that's just my opinion.
I feel like when we look back on ZZZ in the future that anything before 1.4 is going to feel like 'early access' and 1.4 is when the more reliable long term patterns will start to form. 1.3 feels like a lot of testing the water.
Harumasa was actually intended to be an A rank along with lighter funny enough. But as per usual, it's a company and they are doing business so it makes sense that they'd bump up their rarity (although Harumasa is apparently meant to be free)
@@crimsonraiza3633 I feel like one of the largest dropping off points for people in a gacha game is when they spend 120+ pulls just to get the Limited 5 Star they want, and they just keep getting 4 Stars they have already maxed and then lose a 50/50 and get a Standard 5 Star that has been neglected and is vastly underpowered.
Might not be as frustrating for Whales, but if the low spenders and free to play players start dropping the Whales don't have a community and move on.
Knowing you can M6 someone like Ben Bigger or Nicole who is still totally viable on the squad of your Limited S-Ranks makes the pulls not feel as much like you are just throwing your money in the garbage.
Limited S-Ranks might be better short term quarterly gains, but A-Ranks are sort of the life blood of long term sustainability and profit.
Let me give you my answer before the video starts. Because they decided to rework the entire early game story to remove TV, add a whole new set of animations to every character for the city and change core combat mechanics they decided to make characters that were originally going to A ranks into S ranks to cover the release schedule.
Yeah like two factions already have 3 S ranks and just 1 A rank character (If we count Miyabi and Harusama), most of these S ranks are limited, which mean that those who missed the limited banners are literally doomed to play these characters without their team boost or just in mono teams.
Luckly it not needed. Same element give a boost too. Or in the end, you don't need tnr boost to play 99% of the game so far
i believe the lack of A-ranks is mainly because of Lucy and Piper. If you played the betas, they werent there, they werent even announced anywhere until the launch stream.
I bet they were planning to release them during the SoC arc was going on but they decided to throw them at the start because there was a complete lack of anomaly characters and the the existing A-rank supports were very element-specific, making any team outside of Ether and Ice (and Cunning Hares team) hard to use
this is ZZZ’s biggest issue; lack of accessible playstyles
Well we have crit and anomaly builds… that’s it and anomaly is now way better
@Rafterz yeah now anomaly completely crushes crit characters.... I just refuse to pull for any anomaly because I don't want to make my life easier.
I do wonder if we haven't seen any more A ranks because all of the factions we've had banners for already had A ranks, except for NEPS. Victoria Housekeeping has Corin, Sons of Calydon have Lucy and Piper, and Section 6 has Soukaku. They had Seth be the A-rank for NEPS and maybe as new groups are introduced they'll have at least one A rank going forward.
Truly we need the Pulchra who synergizes with Burnice (burn and maybe other anomalies) with an A-Rank, anomaly Bullem. Seriously though, it would be very cool to release more A-Ranks to fill in roles that players could be missing. Like, if you make an Attacker or Stun agent who synergizes with the DoT anomalies, you could release an A-Rank to support them, but make them do things a bit different from the S-Rank they compete with.
Like how Piper gives DMG to the team while Jane is still way stronger. Something like an anomaly Bellym could burn well with his flamethrower, but possibly still provide things like a shield (since he looks like a defender) and maybe other buffs while being a damage dealer.
Do rerurns with new A ranks - win-win
Actually... yeah
That’s what they’re doing in WUWA, oddly enough.
Actually a genius
@@lionel7360 that's good format for life service games. It would be hype in zzz even if you want to skip returning agent. Even more if you want both. Sprinkle it with little agent story/event and our wallets are done
@@lionel7360 that a great format for gatcha life service. It's hype if you don't want to get re-run agents and even better if you do. Sprinkle it with some agent story/event and our wallets are done.
I love the A ranks, maxing their mindscapes, least the ones i use and sometimes not, were so easy it makes me happy
Also one thing that @averageluckgamer missed is that M6 A-ranks return the full cost of the pull. If you've got a lot of them maxed, then that's actually great, because you get a huge discount as you're climbing to banner pity. That's balanced out by how much of a hassle it is to level characters, which is also a huge factor: getting a lot of new units is a huge burden to level and gear
I think every faction will have at least one 4*. the sons of calidon already had 2 4* so they didn't need another one. So it makes sense that lighter was a 5*. and the cops didn't have a 4*. so it makes sense they released Seth as an option.
You said you were wrong about each faction having at least one a rank but so far they do... except obol squad but that's because that's only soldier.
Sorry, I should have explained better, I meant one additional A rank out of the ones we didn't already have.
@@AverageLuckGameryeah but that's silly, sorry. What happened is that they released all the season one A ranks at launch, but staggered the limited S ranks to release one at a time. That isn't A ranks getting cut, that's S ranks getting slow-dripped. Seth was the only exception and I think reflects their desire to fill out defense as Ben isn't enough
Also, @AverageLuckGamer, the kits and animations that go into A ranks doesn't even begin to approach S ranks. Lucy has some neat stuff, but Seth is incredibly basic compared to Caesar and no A rank even begins to approach marquee limited DPS like Burnice, Yanagi or ESPECIALLY Jane. (Jane is one of the most cracked units in any game I've ever played).
I think what's throwing you off is that you're treating the standard S ranks as equivalent, when they're much closer to the A ranks. The Limiteds are a class above; not in terms of utility, this isn't Star Rail, but in terms of how they feel to play. Anton just plain sucks to play, it's boring and slow to use his drill EX, while Burnice has a similar EX in her flamethrowers that are an utter joy to use. That's not an accident and it's not bad design, it's very clever design that reflects how gamefeel defines why the Limiteds are distinct.
Jane's walk is so good looking man, it's been so long since her special episode, I kinda forgot lol
this is just a thing in hoyogames where the a rank or four stars , one new one is released every 3 characters or so , look at genshin release of character , right now we most likely to get more a rank with new upcoming faction . all of these been known since beta , new ones gonna be most likely be one A rank after every three limted S rank
But Genshin and Star Rail pushed out a decent amount of 4 stars within their 1.x patch cycles. Star Rail had a 4* EVERY PATCH up until 2.2. And even then 2.2 had Harmony Trailblazer. Only recently has star rail’s 4* releases begun to taper off because of the immense powercreep, and how hard it is to make effective new 4* that are actually worth using without powercreeping old 5*.
@@lionel7360 ya but keep in mind you need 4 members of a full team for genshin and HSR but zzz need three for full team
The only thing about the lack of A ranks that really annoys me is that we still don't have A rank DPS units for each element
It's still early day's and we've been clearing all content since 2 Month's into the game..bar and endless tower
This is what happen when you hype up a character so much. Just take a look at miyabi, she used to an A rank, now she's S
The A ranks are pretty damn good, all they're designs and mechanics are comparable to S ranks, Nicole, Piper and Lucy are prefect examples of this and will always be evergreen
My take on it is the beginning cast of characters we got were set in stone waaaaaay early on, its kinda clear they wanted to get the main story characters all finished first. My “evidence” is the fact sokaku, lucy and piper were out way before sons of calydon, or section 6 released. Because they had already finished those characters. It seems like they make a bunch of characters in a batch for the story they are serving, i feel like now that 1.4 has released and theres really no characters we havent seen yet other then leaks is when we will finally start seeing some A ranks outside of the story they planned with these specific groups long ago
Every faction that hasn’t gotten a new a rank already had one at launch so I think once there’s factions we haven’t had anything at launch we will get more a ranks
20k soon, good luck / oh and btw, Lighter was a 4* in development
I would like it if one of the idols was an A rank preferably the stun if one stuns. It would make getting all of them a realistic goal.
I started playing recently with no limited pulls yet and I just noticed that I only need 2 more A ranks to have every single A rank. I'm waiting for the Idol girls because I love their designs.
only thing i hate so far is the lack of ether type characters..
astra yao and one of the girl on virtual idol soon
@wotoha479 astra yao's gameplay looks boring as hell😭
I want more A rank characters because I like my account to have a horizontal progression- character diversity is my number one priority. I don't care if a team I have is suboptimal, as long as it is fun. More A ranks makes this easier. It also makes the game more accessible for F2P. I'd also love to see another faction like the Cunning Hares, mostly, if not all A-rank.
Plus, if everything's an S-rank.... doesn't that cheapen the value of a character or make S-ranks very niche? A-ranks are also pretty good. In other gacha games, lower rarity can have a massive dip in quality, but A-ranks- with appropriate team comp and investments, can be very insane in this game.
I think the main reason we're seeing so many S ranks is to fill out each faction. The likely reason NEPS was the only faction to get an A rank after 1.0 was because they didn't have an A rank. All the other factions had A ranks from the start of the game, like piper and lucy for SoC. I assume now that 1.4 is happening and they've flushed out most the factions we knew about from the start of the game theyll add more A ranks
Almost 20k subscribers! Next 100k!!
As a Soldier 11 simp, I wish Lighter had been an A-rank, because I'm saving for Miyabi and holding on to a guarantee, but I also see a silver lining in so few A ranks and the ease of getting some of them at M6, which is that it means more opportunities to get the 20 residual signals 'refund' from pulling those M6 agents again, and spending that on trying to get S ranks. Like, if you have both featured A-ranks on a banner at M6, that's more or less 10% of your pulls getting 'refunded'. Or if you pull an M6 agent on the Stable banner, and then buy an Encrypted Tape with the currency, you've essentially fully turned a Stable pull into a Limited pull. Small gains, but nice at least.
M6 Piper, Lucy and Soukaku are beasts and perform better than some M0 S-Rank characters!
Re runs with new A-Rank, profit
I've seen an interesting idea in Girls' Frontline.
They introduced a way to upgrade some characters beyond the maximum level while giving them a rarity increase when doing so. It's also tied to some background story for the character (which is supposed to give a little bit of develooment for them). I believe i there were a possibility in the future that an A-rank character might recieve an upgrade which would increase their power cap, added a new twist to their skills, then it would have been fine to make A-ranks more simple.
That being said there are over a couple hundred characters in Girls' Frontline iirc, and they have 4 rarities, so this system works well there to bring some 2,3 and 4-stars up to the level of meta units. And also for some already popular 5-stars to not be power crept as easily.
It’s probably because they made lighter and harumasa S ranks like you said. They scream they were meant to be A ranks like seth. The backlash for no dude characters that were s ranks makes me think the dialed back the decision and just didn’t have enough time to do that for seth.
I'd like to believe that, once we've gotten a limited S-Rank for each element and type combination, we'll start seeing more A-Ranks to fill out the slots we're currently missing.
Maybe they'll spread those new ones out among re-run banners to incentivize even players who own the re-run Agent to pull not just for Mindscapes.
But if that's the future...it'll be a long ways away since we don't even have Obol Squad yet. Especially if we're going to see more factions popping up out of nowhere like Virtual Idols.
Bare minimum, we'll see another two A-Ranks coming with Virtual Idols and Obol Squad...I hope. Would be weird if we broke the 3S/1A format now.
Another positive of fewer A-Ranks is the residual signal refund you get, which could be viewed as a small safety net for spent poly. As they not only allow you to directly buy S-Rank W-Engines from the shop, but also extra pulls to get the limited S-Ranks.
Not sure why no one mentioned this but Lighter WAS an A rank. Up until a couple updates ago he was an A rank in the game files until spontaneously becoming an S. And this isn't people miss reading or things naturally changing as everyone else has had ranks set in stone since months before launch.
The running theory is that Lighter was promoted due to people who like male characters not having a banner to pull for 3 whole banners was driving them away. And the fandom was being real annoying at people who wanted them 😂. So it seems hoyo realized that not how you get money from people and promoted him
To be fair, I came back to ZZZ specifically for Lighter after last pulling for Seth. I can't be the only one. I'm a big Hoyoverse fan but the game's marketing has blatantly been telling me this game isn't marketed for me.
@@GummyDinosaursify i was hoping this game wasnt gonna be super female centric but i guess having balance in these gatchas are too much to ask for....lycoan and lighter are so similar also being the only male S ranks in the game
Doesn’t track, you don’t make a song do for an a rank and that takes time to make
Back your statement with the proof dude, Lighter has been an S-rank ever since he was put into the test servers.
@@GummyDinosaursifyi returned to zzz for Lighter too! Last i played was Neps policewoman gunner's banner >.
well i think of it as making it easier to c6 A-Ranks by not diluting the A-Rank pool so much like you said. genshin has a problem where there are so many, and they're really bad at choosing the rate up 4 stars, so you could go years without getting a specific character.
6:40 it's a very rare occurrence, but yes, this does happen. A very good example is Molly's (Mollozhang) pulls in HSR's feixiao banner. She managed to get 3 5-star(S-rank equivalent) characters before getting a single 4-star(A-rank) character that is rate up in that banner.
And it's not her being extremely lucky on the 5 star pulls either, although she got the first one on 20 pulls, she reached around 60 pity or more for the other two. She pulled hundreds of times but only got *one* of that 4 star RATE UP character. Extremely improbable, but never impossible
In Genshin, i've managed to get 2 5 Stars before I have gotten a single Ororon. I'm about to hit max pity on a third 5 star. I've never been this simultaneously lucky and unlucky in my life.
Probably they will start adding A characters on Reruns, like Wuwa is doing, it is because A rank in both games are really well kitted with different animations and very unique.
Also giving A ranks on reruns give more reasons to old and new players to pull for the old characters.
My problem with getting more A ranks is meaning that the character design you like and have been saving for might not be as strong as you hoped, but at the same time, we do need more A ranks, at least 1 per team/faction
I'd been wondering about this for a while as well, though thinking about it, the case of Soukaku, Piper and Lucy had always been a bit curious to me. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if their addition to being available for the game's launch was to avoid not having a balanced and varied enough roster for the launch of the game, otherwise the only A Ranks that would be available would be Anby, Billy, Nicole, Anton, Ben and Corrin, with the first three being given to players right from the start. Soukaku was at least introduced through Section 6 and Hollow Zero, but that was pretty brief. Lucy and Piper were even more odd to have right at 1.0, two patches before their faction even got a proper introduction. Plus Soukaku and Lucy having EN voice actor changes makes me wonder if the original intent was to release those characters along with the proper introduction of their faction, like we had for Seth.
Regardless, that's just my speculation, but I do hope we at least get a continuing trend of at least 1 A-Rank per faction and the lack of new ones was really a result of last minute launch roster changes that goofed up an originally intended roadmap. Though, I'll also just be happy to prolong having the same issue Genshin has now with WAY too many 4 star characters and not nearly enough avenues to get them.
227K on Endless Noon in the background is fantastic, well done! Best score I've reach so far is about half that.
After 1.4 considering the possibility of new teams being added will have more A-ranks and it's also I feel a narrative point too. Like in NEPS, Seth is a top-rookie while everyone else is an experienced officer which is why they are S-ranks. They might release more teams that narratively are more upcoming teams will get more A-ranks
My guess is that for every NEW faction introduced, there will be at least 1 or 2 A ranks. For example the Idol Faction, 1 of them could potentially be an A rank, so we wouldn't know until they actually get released. This is just my guess though.
All the A ranks are really good too. Anby, seth, nicole, and soukaku are still characters i still use
I think A ranks will start pouring in once they start adding new factions. The only factions we've had so far have been ones that have been around since day 1 and ones that already had established A ranks in their rosters.
I wish they had more a rank hero because they since the s rank agents are definitely the premium agents that have the better skills and abilities but if they made more A ranks that are watered down versions of the S rankers it would make it so much easier for new players to stay invested in the game especially for those that missed out on the banner pulls for Jane, Burnice, Cesar, and yanagi.
It seems a lot of effort has gone into addressing the game’s core issues, especially in 1.4. I wouldn’t be surprised if after the game’s success, they saw its potential and decided to dedicate more core resources to it (i.e. replacing the TV mode, which was basically designed to keep the game’s budget low), and working on that is taking away dev time from A-ranks. I do think ZZZ has a broken economy, where even as a f2p player it’s possible to run out of things to meaningfully do. Right now, as an f2p, almost all of my characters are developed to a decent degree, have their own gear, have leveled skills. I think only 1 or 2 aren’t really there yet. The game needs Lucy-level A-ranks just for its economy and monetization to even work. But I think they have bigger priorities now, with a lot of those being realized in 1.4. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see the return of A-ranks in 1.6 or something like that.
S-rank and A-rank characters also receive the same amount of non-story mode lore and interactions outside of the S-rank agent story, which sometimes aren't even that noteworthy (see nekomata's, koleda's). hoyo clearly wants each character added to the game to be mechanically and aesthetically/narratively interesting, regardless of their rarity.
The main difference in A Ranks and S ranks is invincibility and movement. A rank attacks usually plant them, they move slowly, and they seem to have less s than Sranks.
I think there might be something that your over looking with the lack of A rank characters. When the game launched, we all had out free to play team and Ellen was our limited S rank. However we also had 6 other S ranks , and we were also top heavy with A ranks. Not counting the cunning hares, we also had 6 A ranks that we could of had. And some of them haven't been in the story yet, so we couldn't interact with them. I think the spacing of these characters is the issue as to why we haven't seen many new A ranks. Cause if you look at each faction, there at least one or two A ranks. And this is just what I've noticed while playing the game.
I'm glad that we got A-rank Seth because if it weren't for him, I would honestly doubt we'd get any more A-ranks added over time. Aside from Seth and Corin, I've got every single A-rank up to C6, and they've been there for weeks. Them adding more would be nice not only because it'd mean we have a chance at getting some free, easier-to-obtain characters, but I'd also have a reason to look forward to more A pulls instead of just seeing an A show up on the screen and actually hoping it's a W-engine I don't have at 5 stars yet.
On that note, I'd also love it if we could get some more basic, not-banner-limited S-ranks as well.
I think we're not seeing more A-ranks also because so many have been pre-planned for all the factions so far. Maybe we'll get more with the idols and moving forward. But... currently I'm just hoping that Seth will be on Harumasa's banner because I'd really like to get his two last mindscapes and more copies of his signature w-engine.
I'm pretty sure we will get more A-Ranks. Right now for each faction we have:
VH: 1 (Corin)
CH: 3 (Nicole, Billy, Anby)
BHI: 2 (Anton, Ben)
SOC: 2 (Piper, Lucy)
NEPS: 1 (Seth)
S6: 1 (Soukaku)
When we get more Obol Squad units, there will likely be an A-Rank. In future updates, there is room to add, say, another NEPS A-Rank or Victoria Housekeeping A-Rank. Additionally, new factions (like the Idols) will likely have at least 1 A-Rank.
Just because they didn't add a third A-Rank to Sons of Calydon doesn't mean they will stop adding new A-Ranks.
I think the ideal number of A Ranks is is just 1 less behind of a faction that are guaranteed to be S Agents. Like Sons of Caldylon has 5 Members and theres 2 A ranks and three S ranks, compared to Victoria Housekeeping has only 1 A ranks but three S ranks. But I really wish that theres a faction that will have the same amount of A ranks as Cunning Hares.
With how little A ranks there is in the game I already got them all and with each banner more and more of them become for me a "free" pull instead. As others pointed out the best banner was Jane one with a new S rank and a new A rank. Harumasa is an S but he'd work well as new A rank for Miyabi banner.
The answer is that ZZZ isn't making enough money, so they have to keep pushing out S ranks to bring in the cash. Same thing happened with ToF and WuWa.
most likely
A positive that wasn't mentioned (unless I missed it) was that a dupe of a mindscape 6 A rank is effectively a refunded summon, since it gives 20 residual signal which can be exchanged for 1 master tape (or other things). Because of this, having less A ranks effectively makes it easier to get the S ranks you want, because you'll max out your A ranks faster at which point A ranks just become a refunded summon that still builds towards pity. Imo this is a pretty big positive that will stack up over time and result in you getting a lot more summons than if we were getting new A ranks more frequently.
Still want more A ranks tho lol
I think having a A rank for each faction is fine, and as far as I can remember, we have that already. From what I've seen, and what little I know of other gacha games, ZZZ seems to have a smaller roster of characters with more focus and attention put into them than other games.
I don't do gacha games much, I dropped off FGO pretty quick, same with Genshin, but something I don't know about is if there's any way to ever 'Rank Up' a character. If they aren't going to give us many more A ranks, I think it would be possible, at some point, to let players increase an A rank character to S rank.
Maybe it would require the character to be M6, a decent chunk of money and other resources, but NOT some new special limited resource, to unlock a 'test' of sorts that the character needs to be used in earn the 'Rank Up'.
The 'Rank Up' could improve their overall stats by like 20% or something as a generic thing, or be more specific, like Seth's shield applies to the entire group instead of just one character (does he apply it to himself as well? I don't know, I don't like him, he's better than Ben in terms of gameplay but I dislike Seth as a character).
To me, this would be a way to say that the S rank characters aren't BETTER than A ranks, just that they've already proven themselves somehow, whereas the A rank characters haven't quite hit their full potential. To not confuse people instead of this 'Rank Up' making them S rank, this could make them 'A+' or 'A*' rank, or something like that. This sort of things seems like it could change the narrative around A ranks vs S ranks.
I think this would give some people something to work towards even after maxing their A rank characters. It wouldn't involve adding any new animations or character design changes or anything else, so very little extra work for the dev's in that regard, just a little tweaking of stats/specific abilities.
I have a theory that will most likely be confirmed or denied when idol faction comes out but I feel that every faction will have at least 1 A rank character. In general though not in terms of unreleased characters. Seth was an A rank because if he wasn't NEPS faction would have been all S ranks. We haven't been getting any more because every faction the characters were in already had A ranks. Meaning we won't be getting any more until a new faction releases where they'll theoretically have to release an A rank
On the contrary, getting a dupe of a maxed A rank is in fact, helpful.
Because that is essentially 1 pull refund which adds up in the longrun, especially if you are pooling resources for certain S ranks.
I am also wondering where all of the A rank agents are. Now, in Lighters earlier development, I did see in his earlier video's that he was listed as an A rank at some point. Not having Koleda, I was excited to be getting a fire stunner for my Soldier 11 team. It wasn't until his official announcement that I realized that they made him an S-rank character instead. Which is fine by me, since I know that means a bigger power budget, and therefore a stronger Soldier 11, but at the same time, I couldn't help but shake the feeling that we really could use an A rank stunner that isn't Anby.
We've gotten more A rank Bangboo's than we have playable A-rank characters at this point. Which is somewhat worrying, because there are upcoming characters I like, but may not be able to get if they're ALL S rank...
i honestly think that the quality is better then quantity, if the amount of A ranks increase in short time a lot of them may have simple kit just to support the upcoming s rank agent with them.
There will be more earrings when newer actions get released. It’s just right now. There’s no more story content so they’re kind of just focusing on the S ranks I’m sure once the items come out there’s going to be a few new A ranks
"piper is an A-Rank in disguise" I couldn't agree more, my piper burnice team clears content as fast as with jane burnice one
Every faction has at least 1 A rank character to date. Cunning Hares as 3 A, 1 S. Victoria Housekeeping has 1 A, 3 Ss. NEPS has 1 A and 3 S. And so on. Right now they're filling S ranks after preemptively giving us a bunch of A ranks on the unlimited gacha. More A ranks will come when they release new factions
I like having my A ranks at 6/6 because it basically refunds the pull when I get them, which means more pulling. Anything that gets that pity to fill up faster for essentially no cost is a major positive in my books. Adding newer A Ranks, which I'm not against, means more characters to max out to have that basically guaranteed free pull every 10 pulls back.
I just started building piper for giggles yesterday since I've nearly maxed most of my main teams, and even under-leveled with hardly any investment she's an absolute beast paired with Lucy and Burnice! I actually favor her over Jane now for physical damage in that comp and had no problem clearing the new Shiyu 7 with her.
Too many A ranks would dilute the pool too much , might be nice every 3 or 4 banners to get one.
1 or 2 A ranks per faction wouldn't be too much of a stretch, I think it's highly likely this will be the case.
I hope this doesn't become an Apollo's gift of prophecy moment, but what if future A ranks end up becoming all the enemy/npc-first appearing characters. I can imagine it'd save them time to do the design and moveset work if they did
I mean, SSRs being the majority is the norm in gacha games. I'd be surprised if we did get more A-Ranks.
That being said, I was absolutely expecting Harumasa and Lighter to be A-Ranks anyway, considering their positions.
If we got a new group, though, yeah, we'll more than likely get at least one A-Rank maybe
There are less A rank characters released because they've been already there. ZZZ has a faction system. The only faction were they could introduce more than 1 new 4 star would be Obol squad, since they started with a 5 star.
They should do a bit more A-Ranks and then later add S-rank skins/versions for popular ones. Creating an upgraded/alternate version of a character with a couple extra moves and better stats is cheaper than designing from scratch. Maybe I'm in a minority but I would definitely shell out to pull for a limited S-Rank version of Anby, for example.
With Soldier 11 being an S-Rank you would think that there would be at least one A-Rank in her faction...
If she ever gets her faction.
Her faction is likely to be the focus of the start of season two, which will probably include at least one new A-rank as well as at least two limited S ranks
@@CrispBaker Finishing season 1 without all the base game factions seems illogical to me.
I would be a bit more inclined to believe they planned to keep Soldier 11 solo long term if she didn't have a standard faction bonus that requires 1 other Obol or 1 other fire.
"When another character in your squad shares the same Attribute or Faction:
Soldier 11 deals 10% more Fire DMG. When attacking Stunned enemies, this effect is further enhanced by an additional 22.5%."
@MrMarti-i7f teaser to make people wonder, maybe? They aren't going to be too worried about her viability as a unit, she's just a standard, so the missing buff isn't much of an issue.
@@CrispBaker Nah, it is a pretty big issue.
@@MrMarti-i7f she's a standard attacker designed to pair with a fire support like Lucy. It's really, really not an issue.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you said, but it sounded like you were saying that there wasn't an A-rank for every faction which is part of why we haven't received any new A-ranks. But every faction, apart from OBOLS does have at least one A-rank. NEPS added Seth who was their only A-Rank but every character that has come out since then has been part of a faction that already had A-rank characters. SoC already had Piper and Lucy and Sec6 already has Soukaku. When we get new factions added to the game, we may get new A-Ranks along with them, but that would explain why we haven't been getting any since Seth.
I do agree though that I think the devs probably are just focusing on pumping out S-ranks only because of the amount of development time/resources that go into new characters in this game. That's got to be a large part of the reason why even at launch the roster of characters was very small compared to other games like Genshin and Honkai. And while this is tinfoil hat, I do feel like Harumasa was originally intended to be an A-rank but because of the time/resource commitment needed to make new characters and/or the player feedback asking for more limited male characters, they pivoted to making him an S-rank instead. I know it is very subjective, but his design doesn't feel particularly S-rank, which is a large part of why I think that. But, again, that's purely speculation.
I'm of the theory that they frontloaded the game almost every A-Rank they had designed so that we could build teams right off the bat. So instead of A-Ranks like Soukaku releasing in 1.3 with Section 6's story, or Lucy and Piper in 1.2 with the Sons of Calydon, we got them in 1.0 for base comps
I do still have hope for more A-Ranks in future banners of course, I just think we'll have to wait until a new faction drops to those A-Ranks
Anyway no idea if my theory will hold up lol, good video on the subject, got me thinking
Well Okay Every Faction has an A rank character Like for example Seth Released when 2 of the Police faction where released because there where no a ranks, There will also probably not be an A rank next patch because we have soukaku the A rank for Section 6. In 1.5 when we get a new faction there will he a new a rank for that faction. They released most of the A ranks for the factions on release.
I'm curious how they'll go about once we complete all the current factions, and they add a full 4 person faction in the game. Cause then they have a choice to make some A ranks, or just have a full S rank squad. And that'll be what makes the direction they want to go clear for me
I kinda like having less A ranks as a newish player since it makes it easier to m6 them and even after you've maxed them all, or at least all the ones you care about, getting a dupe for a maxed character refunds you a pull from the signal shop meaning more pulls for S ranks
Now that i think about it i kinda like that there aren't that many A-ranks, makes it easier to get max mindscapes. I have maxed every A-rank except Corin, Piper, and Seth at this point, it's kinda nuts. But anyways, I definitely agree with the whole quality over quantity thing.
I mean so far every faction does have an A rank character (besides Soldier 11s useless one right now) so I can definitely see them adding more A ranks in the future per faction
I'm quite okay with limited amount of A ranks because i'm still trying to max some MS (and you get extra currency when you pull them when MS is complete) BUT they are 100% lacking.
Imo the tight faction system is not helping when it comes to figuring out who will be a A or S ranks BUT hopefuly they will just expand every faction freely with new A rank after Asaba & Miyabi release since they're the last lunch trailer characters.
Separating characters by rank in 2024 is in itself a bad idea. It's like the developers are saying themselves that a-rank characters are worse than s-rank characters and they have less overall value.
I don't mind the A ranks exclusivity, as is it feels like they all serve some purpose. All the other benefits you mentioned apply too. I would be down for one A Rank per faction if possible, if they're handled how Seth was. At least, dropping one every once in awhile would be nice.
Wise and Belle have extremely good connections. Most of the Agents they have contact with are S rank with A in the minority. They don't even have to bother with Agents that are B rank or lower.
What's odd is the balance of A to S rank per faction, the maids only have one A rank but Cunning Hares has 3 and their only S rank is standard, then move to the construction team and they're perfectly balanced 2 and 2; Police department? 3 S ranks and one guy and you know the rest, there's no order to these, I hope one of the idols is A rank at least.
We're going into the final couple weeks of 1.3 so I'll be curious to see if we hear anything about A ranks in the 1.4 stream or the drip marketing for the 1.5 characters. Me personally I'm hoping for more A ranks just to give us some more weapon choices. Pulling Every character's signature weapon is not ideal, but some characters don't really have a lot of options outside of their signature (I'm looking at you Caesar). It would definitely be nice to have another A rank defense character, or another A rank Stun just to have some more wengine options.