Player feedback is very important, but how do you balance that with your own vision of what Zenless Zone Zero should be? It’s impossible to please everyone, so how do you filter the concerns of your community and align them with your own goals for the game?
Zhenyu Li, Game Designer-X, and Game Designer-Y: First off, the team is united and clear on our goals and vision for the game. We hope to bring action games to a wider range of players while also striving to give a high skill ceiling. Based on our foundations of clear direction and persistence, we will perform comprehensive analyses on player feedback, integrating it into the vision, form, and different development goals of ZZZ — and always tackle problems proactively as they emerge with a genuine, sincere attitude.
As a young team, we are always growing. We hope to take on the preferences of different players and integrate their feedback into the game optimization while ensuring quality for our core game highlights and version updates. Of course, we gather tons of player feedback every day and we're lucky that ZZZ is a live-service game because this gives us more time to improve things one step at a time — and we hope this journey of growth is one that everyone can join us on.
It feels like the HDD mode (or TV mode) is gradually getting de-emphasized in the game? Do you still consider it an important part of the experience, or is it something that’s eventually going to get removed? If so, what gameplay elements do you plan to introduce to replace it?
Zhenyu Li, Game Designer-X, and Game Designer-Y: It's been almost six months since our game's official release, and in this time, we have been constantly re-examining the content structure of the game. Right now, we place great importance on every gameplay mode, including TV mode, and even if it has been dialled down somewhat we will still continue to devote time and energy to innovating and optimizing TV mode. So it's not exactly true that it has been diminished.
Besides that, we are going to try to make a few bold moves in the future regarding the core action experience to keep delivering an exhilarating, fresh, and attractive gaming experience to players. Meanwhile, we also plan on fleshing out two areas — Hollow exploration and city life — to enhance the immersive experience and provide a platform for players to make emotional connections and foster bonds with Agents.
For me, Disk management is one of my least favorite things about ZZZ. I often forget which Disks work best with which characters, and which statistical buffs are best suited to my needs. Both Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail have attempted to address this issue with the ability to automatically lock certain Artefacts and community data. Are there any plans to improve Disk management in the future?
Zhenyu Li, Game Designer-X, and Game Designer-Y: In Version 1.3, we launched a Drive Disc recommendation system based on data from the community that lets players adjust Agent Drive Disc loadouts more conveniently and optimize the interface. Secondly, we've also added ways to obtain Drive Discs in compliment to new gameplay, for example: in the new season of Hollow Zero in Version 1.4, players will be able to obtain Victoria Housekeeping Coupons, which can be used on the Routine Cleanup screen to earn rewards without using any stamina.
Can you share any information about what you have planned for Hollow Zero in the future? You’ve mentioned more modes are in development, but is there anything you can say about them yet?
Zhenyu Li, Game Designer-X, and Game Designer-Y: In the future, we will keep exploring different directions for Hollow Zero. For the near term, we're sticking to the roguelike style, focusing on the diverse experiences players will have while exploring the Hollow. Our dev team highly values gameplay uniqueness, and we aim to provide players with experiences that can only be found in ZZZ. We are currently brainstorming and planning features like multiplayer co-op and PvP combat, and we'll share concrete details as soon as they're ready.
With the Agent accompany feature, and the ability to control Agents around the world, it seems like you’re trying to find new ways to allow players to interact with their unlocked characters. Why do you think this is so important?
Zhenyu Li, Game Designer-X, and Game Designer-Y: When it comes to RPGs, characters are one of the most important components of the game world. The interactions that players have with characters and the emotional attachment and connection created are also important factors that keep players playing. Therefore, character interactions are no less integral to the essence of the game than the gameplay mechanics are.
For ZZZ, besides giving players the ultimate action experience we also hope players can have an emotional experience, and that the content resonates. The close relationship this kind of game forms with players largely draws from the bonds built between players and the characters.
With all HoYoverse’s games demanding a significant time investment, how do you keep players engaged with ZZZ when they may already be spending dozens of hours per month on Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail? Is there a sense that all three games are competing for the same players’ time, and how do you deal with this very unique problem?
Zhenyu Li, Game Designer-X, and Game Designer-Y: If we consider things from the perspective of time invested, then every single game ever released has to compete for time invested by users — and not just gaming products, but against social media, streaming platforms, and other non-gaming products. Therefore, when we boost the competitiveness of ZZZ, we should consider the product against the backdrop of the entire market.
I'm sure player retention isn't just crucial to ZZZ, but to every game with long-term operations. As far as the ZZZ team is concerned, we've focused first on creating our own unique product: whether it's the art, music, combat systems, and so forth we hope players can feel the care and unique style behind ZZZ when they actually play the game. We are still listening to player feedback and will never retreat to any ivory tower. As a new game that only just came out this year, ZZZ's continual growth is intimately connected to player support — and player criticism, of course.
We hope players can feel that we're not only listening to their voices but also that they're seeing it reflected in-game through the constant optimizations. This is why ZZZ has changed so incredibly much between the 1.0 release and Version 1.4, and a large part of our team's motivation comes from the passion of the player community. In the future, our team will strive with ZZZ's vision while continually integrating player feedback into game optimization so that players can kick back and enjoy life in New Eridu.
ZZZ will be the first HoYoverse game to support PS5 Pro. Can you speak specifically about what the addition of ray tracing will bring to the game? What’s your first impression of PSSR, and how is it helping you to achieve your objectives? Are there any other graphical improvements we can expect from the PS5 Pro version?
Cross Shi: Some players might be concerned about the impact our new ray tracing may have on performance. Actually, the overall performance-cost ratio on PS5 Pro is barely higher than using a pure rasterization pipeline. Thanks to ray tracing (which replaces AO, reflections, and other features of traditional rasterization), we can switch out part of the performance cost for balance. Also, we have recently modified the engine to minimize the impact of performance cost on player experience.
With other visual upgrades besides supporting native 4K resolution and 60fps gaming, players can also see support for HDR and VRR, higher rendering accuracy, surface partitioning, and other more functional upgrades. We hope this allows players to experience an even more immersive New Eridu.
Besides the improvements to overall graphics and performance, we wanted to share some of the targeted optimization and controller adaptations we've used for the PlayStation series of products. Thanks to the PlayStation joystick's outstanding vibration features, players can experience more immersive controller combat.
We've adapted different vibration feedbacks for different combat commands, like Basic Attacks and Special Attacks. With higher performance, graphics, a customized controller experience, beloved characters, and all-new gameplay to be released in Version 1.4, we hope players can really feel the impact in ZZZ's combat.
Can you talk a little bit about Sony’s involvement with PS5 Pro, and your work on PlayStation in general? How does the platform holder facilitate and support your ambitions as game makers?
Cross Shi: Developing ZZZ for the PS5 Pro (and for the entire PS5 lineup) may seem smooth, but we encountered several challenges along the way. The results we achieved were made possible by the collaboration across teams within our company, the support of Sony as a partner, and the continuous hard work of our tech team.
First of all, we're grateful for how much emphasis Sony places on communication with developers. From the early stages of development for PS consoles, they established a very close collaboration channel with us and assigned dedicated technical support staff who could respond to any challenges our team encountered during development, engaged in face-to-face discussions with developers, and provided valuable suggestions for development, testing, review, and publishing processes.
Honestly, I still remember how nervous I felt when the Sony team came to see our first demo. I was worried we wouldn't deliver a 100% perfect presentation. But after just watching the demo and experiencing the game with the console, the Sony team gave us very positive feedback. That gave us a huge boost of confidence to push forward with the console development. This early trust played a big role in helping us overcome many challenges later on.
Despite time zone differences and all kinds of challenges, we were able to collaborate and encourage each other, pass multiple reviews, and not only launch the game simultaneously on PS5 and other platforms but also make ZZZ the first game from HoYoverse to launch on PS5 Pro.
Secondly, we're also fortunate that, as a new game from HoYoverse, we get to stand on the shoulders of our predecessors in developing for console, learning from them and gradually exploring our own path. So here I'd like to express our sincere gratitude to other teams for their support.
Finally, I'm proud to say that we have a tech team that's always exploring new possibilities to bring console players an even better experience. We always try to apply the latest cutting-edge tech to our products. Taking HDR development as an example, which is a feature exclusive to PS5: the workload for bugs (including rendering) for this platform was double the rest, not to mention extreme compatibility errors. And as a game with very high requirements for visuals, ZZZ is intense with visual aspects like brightness and shading. These extremely strict standards and the massive workload meant we were unable to complete this function before launch, but we're very proud now to have finally accomplished it.
Thank you to the entire ZZZ team, specifically Zhenyu Li, Cross Shi, and the two game designers, for taking the time to answer our questions in such detail. Are you impressed by how much the game has been improving since launch, and which changes do you appreciate the most? Let us know in the comments section below.
