Zenless Zone Zero is toning down its divisive “TV mode” after “a lot of negative feedback,” which means I can finally try this painfully gorgeous action RPG

Our Zenless Zone Zero review gives Genshin Impact developer HoYoverse’s urban action RPG 4/5 shiny stars for its slick combat and stellar character designs, but ever since the beta I’ve personally been put off by its over-reliance on an interim puzzle-lite minigame that ends up eating a lot, if not most of your time. That minigame, dubbed “TV Mode” even by the ZZZ devs themselves for its maze-like grid of TV screens, is getting pruned back in upcoming updates, which means people like me – who like the game’s art and music but also like having our time respected – may finally have a way in. 

In a lengthy new dev diary, game designer Y and guest Heitongguge go back and forth on several major changes coming to Zenless Zone Zero not just in update 1.2, due September 25 (or today, September 24, for some regions), but also through update 1.4, which should come around December 18. 

“Since the launch of Zenless Zone Zero there has been a lot of negative feedback from the community regarding gameplay mechanics of the ‘TV Mode,'” Heitongguge says. “What are your thoughts on this situation?”

Y admits that, “to be honest we all think the TV Mode had many issues at release.” HoYoverse has iterated on the mode based on player feedback, and even “made some phone calls asking for the opinions of many players” according to Y, while collecting feedback on its problems. Those boil down to three things, Y says, which can be summed up as: 

TV Mode takes up too much timeIt interrupts the normal gameplay flow of combat Animations in TV Mode can be “sluggish,” even with the speed-up feature that can also impact dialogue negatively Especially “during the early gameplay experience,” the proportion of TV Mode sections “might be a bit excessive”

ZZZ has already addressed some of these points: story segments have largely moved away from TV Mode, this is also the case in update 1.2, and it will be the new format going forward. This comes alongside a sort of auto-complete, Fairy Auto Explore, option that lets you hand off commission TV mode bits you’ve cleared before to your companion. 

“We will take into account not to use TV-Mode as a means of presentation,” Y says. “And strive for as much consistency as possible to convey it through a stage-based approach.” 

He later adds that, “as for the subsequent storyline experiences we probably won’t use the TV Mode,” but that isn’t an absolute. “This doesn’t mean that we will completely let go of this TV Mode,” Y explains. “We will still iterate based on previous ideas that have garnered high praise from everyone.” 

The catch is that all existing story sections won’t be redesigned to minimize or remove the TV Mode stuff for a while. “For the flow of each commission and the flow of the storylines we’ll do what we can to redesign these,” Y affirms. “So, we estimate we’ll have this done by Version 1.4.” 

Here are all the Zenless Zone Zero codes and how to redeem them.