Trying To Fill The Kafka Shaped Hole In My Heart With Zenless Zone Zero

You won't remember a thing except me.

• Kafka

Clickbait title: Justin's Most Deranged Blog Post Yet

It has been one year since Mommy Kafka Gave Me A Gambling Addiction and my obsession has only become worse.

I pulled for Kafka two more times and got her light cone during the banner re-run last January. I plan to do this again on the next re-run.

I put Kafka on my leverless.

I cuddle with my cat Kafka bean cake plushie.

I "cuddle" with my Kafka body pillow.

[IMAGE REDACTED]

I named my cat after Kafka.

I named the b8s node closest to me after Kafka. ^{(1) (1)} This is definitely on the same level as naming my cat Kafka. In fact it's probably even more meaningful because I get way too emotionally attached to code I write and treat all my tools as if they were children of my own blood. This isn't foreshadowing, I have never foreshadowed anything in my entire life.

Mon esprit n'est que Kafka.

But… it's not… enough. I need more! I need more Kafka.

SO WHERE IS SHE? WHERE DID SHE GO?

Why have I not seen her since the first chapter of the Luofu arc MiHoYo?? I NEED TO SEE HER AGAIN.

YOU'VE MADE THE PERFECT CHARACTER. Why are you even bothering with other characters let alone GAMES??

Wait… you made a whole new game? I can't see my mum because you were too busy MAKING THIS FUCKING GAME??????

Ok, ok, calm down me. Maybe is she in the new game?

No.

Is there anyone who looks or acts like her in it?

No.

mfw no Kafka.

But to be fair, game looks kinda fun. Maybe I will find a new Kafka!

Yes! That's what this post is about!! Going through the characters in the hot new gacha game Zenless Zone Zero (ZZZ) and finding a new Kafka! Isn't that exciting!!! You are very excited right now!! You are sweating with anticipation! Right on the edge of your seat!! TREMBLING WITH A BURNING DESIRE TO FIND A NEW KAFKA! You WANT to know if I will find a new Kafka!! You MUST know if I will find a new Kafka!!!!!

Please don't leave, this is important to me and I wish for you, my best friend, to support me in this endeavour.

Okie thanks for sticking around, let's go through ALL the characters and see if we can find a new Kafka!! YAY!!

Wait a minute… oh my Bidoof… is that- is that… a brown Asian cat girl??!!

Excuse me!!?

Oh… she just like me… SHE JUST LIKE ME FR!!!!

Wow, a Southeast Asian ^{(2) (2)} I know there's literally nothing that indicates this, and the game takes place in a fictional world so it's technically impossible. Just let me have this, it's not very often I get a representation win. in my Chinese video game? That's so crazy, I didn't even know that they knew of our existence (THIS IS A JOKE. I'm well aware of the "things" that have been and are happening).

So with a few 5 star/S tier agents, like Nekomata here, you get to go through "Agent Stories" which are quests that delve deep into the story of specific agents.

Nekomata has my favourite Agent Story so far. Every Agent Story, except for Soldier 11's (I'll get to her), uses an NPC as a sort of foil. They're usually utilised by the writers to reveal the Agent's internal conflicts and driving forces, and I think this was done best with Nekomata and Ollie.

This isn't really the place to recap the entire story, but in broad strokes; They developed one another in a compelling way, which created an engaging mini-narrative and added depth to Nekomata that would persist in future stories. Ollie's story enhanced Nekomata's by contrasting with her past struggles and her desire to be acknowledged by her family, which was evident at the beginning of the chapter where she was at odds with Anby (I'll get to her).

Wait, this is looking like an actual critique… sorry, let's get back on track.

UMM ALSO I THINK…

I THINK NEKOMATA IS CUTE AN- Oh no sorry, what I mean is, I think she is uhhh, adorable and amusing.

The one thing I'm not super down for is that she's too happy and extroverted. That's not like me at all, I can't relate to that. It's also not very cat-like.

I mean, have you met a cat before?? They are NOT extroverted. Kafka (my cat) is deeply terrified of every new person that comes to my apartment. She's a little curious at first, but eventually just runs away.

Hang on, that's what I do as well…

Oh… she just like me… SHE JUST LIKE ME FR!!!!

Anby (I got to her) is the cooler Soldier 11 (I'm still getting to her).

I like her because she has the sword like Raiden (from Metal Gear). And when she ults, she does the pose like Raiden (from Metal Gear). And she does lightning related things like Raiden (from Metal Gear). And when she runs, she deflects bullets automatically by wooshing her sword around like Raiden (from Metal Gear). And she has white hair like Raiden (from Metal Gear). And she seems like she'd have a dark past as a child soldier like Raiden (from Metal Gear). And she's definitely the type to return as a cyborg ninja in the follow up to one of the most meta-breaking narratives ever put in a video game before and since that probably shouldn't have gotten a follow up, because how tf are you actually supposed to follow that up without making several retcons and contradictions with past and future games but it's fine, I still love it because of the big robot fight and subsequent old man fist fight on the boat where they do the nostalgia bait with the music, like Raiden (from Metal Gear). And she's cute like Raiden (from Metal Gear).

I like Raiden (from Metal Gear), thus it follows that I like Anby (from Zenless Zone Zero).

Unfortunately as an A rank agent, she doesn't have an Agent Story so I can't talk about it, but I'm sure we'll see more of her in the future so there'll be more opportunities to learn about her. Also her name sounds like enby. I'm counting that as another representation win for me.

I LOVE LYCAON.

I LOVE LYCAON.

I LOVE LYCAON.

I've been watching Ster for over 10 years, and I finally understand what he's been talking about all this time.

FURRIES ARE COOL AF.

And Lycaon is especially cool because his stat type is literally ice. I am very clever.

I love his whole design, from the robots legs that have thrusters attached, to his… whatever that is on his face, to his big fluffy tail!

His storyline was great. While having the proper, formal gentleman being haunted by ghosts of a dark and mysterious past is a little trope-y (but it makes sense for stories in this game to be trope-y, with the whole "cinema" theme), I think it was well executed here, again with the help of an NPC foil.

It gave as an intriging picture of his past and while staying open ended so we could look forward to see how it continues in the future.

If there's one critisism I have with him, it's that he's too sound of mind and I don't like that in people, it's boring. He seems to be regretful of his past, so he might have been a little more spicy back then. We'll see when they continue his story (they fucking better, or else).

Also for tax purposes I am now stating that my fursona is a red panda.

Rina was the person who I originally thought would be most likely to be able to replace Kafka. Probably from the mommy vibes.

I dunno, she's fine.

Her Agent Story was good, even if giving someone sci-fi dementia is always a kinda cheap way of getting sympathy, ^{(3) (3)} I always zoned out in HSR whenever Firefly talked about her space cancer, I do not like Firefly. And I don't like how the game keeps trying to gaslight me into liking her. Like she's literally in the same group as Kafka, whenever I see her I'm just reminded that I'm not SEEING KAFKA.

The robot is cool tho, so I still pulled for her. it was still touching. I think seeing how Rina did her job as a maid for the NPC foil (like Lycaon) went a long way to characterise her. And her backstory about her bangboo doll was very bittersweet.

But as the initial hope as the new Kafka, the expectations of her from me were probably too high. Add that to the fact that she seems like she's just straight up a nice and good person and isn't very manipulative and morally gray like Kafka is, and she starts disappointing.

I know it's not really her fault she got over-hyped in my head and had to be compared to literal perfection. But it is what it is.

What the hell, why did they have to make the most attractive character a cop? That's so lame. I can't simp for a cop. I know Kafka is a mass-murdering criminal but I'm sorry, on the scale of things I can tolerate, the line stops at the police.

So you might then wonder why pulled for her.

And that's because she's fun to play. I mean just look at this.

Like holy hell, why did they put handlebars on her ass? That's fucking awesome stupid.

No but actually, she is unironically fun to play. Her fighting style is a treat. Everything about her gameplay is just pure gun fu.

The over the top effects and explosions everywhere, the high mobility of her guns to create a fluid mix of martial arts and guns in her moveset. As much as I hate to admit it, her being a cop is thematically appropriate with the Hong Kong action cinema she is inspired by so it makes a lot of sense.

But enough about that, I think I'm going to need to prove I'm not a sexist and misogynist, so we're going to talk about her personality too.

So, she's… uh… a cop right?

And she… works hard.

And she… is… a nice person that cares about justice… or whatever it is that copaganda usually tries to tell you.

Ok got all that? Great.

To end, I thought it'd be really funny and clever to call her "lipstick on a pig," but like…

I have never been so conflicted before in my life.

I love Grace because she is obsessive over her robots and robots in general, to the deteriment of all her human connections and relationships.

Oh… she just like- no, I'm not doing that again.

But her Agent Story is literally about how you should love your tools and treat them with care so they do a good job. At least, I'm pretty sure that's what it was about. I might be projecting.

But I totally get what she's talking about, let me tell you a story.

So over two years ago for work, I was tasked with a very simple project to get emails from an inbox and import them into our system if they were a press release, along with information about who the press release came from.

Haha yeah I say simple, if you're a programmer you'd know - that is not simple.

Anyway I came back with a teleo-reactive inspired system that acted as a sort of autonomous agent for the problem. I trained a BERT model from hundreds of thousands of press releases already in our system to determine if a piece of text was a press release. If the email itself wasn't a press release but a link to it, I setup a whole bunch of heuristics to find the link to the press release in the email. And I used named-entity recognition and some more heuristics to determine who to assign to the press release.

This was probably my magnum opus. Like there are so many edge cases to literally every email, that there basically aren't any edge cases, it's all edge. And I got around an 80% accuracy with this in two weeks and around 800 lines of code.

That's been humming along great for two years but at some point, I had a realisation. All of this could have been done with an API call to GPT-4, and it probably would have been more accurate.

I did a quick tests on GPT-4 with emails that the system failed to ingest and yeah, GPT-4 could figure them all out.

So when I got another two weeks to improve the system a few months ago I had a choice to make, I could either spend more time on getting small benefits from making adjustments to the BERT model and my heuristics, or I could just rip its guts out and replace them with the soulless blackbox from OpenAI for what I was certain would be a big increase in accuracy.

Seeing over 400 red lines in the GitHub diff viewer hurt me on a spiritual level I have never felt before. I murdered my child.

For what?

Getting a 95% accuracy rate, and one that is much easier to adjust and improve?

Yeah actually, that was probably worth it. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself. Sure, it's now over twice as expensive to run as it was before, but system had become critical to the business so everyone was apparently okay with that.

But I don't like relying on other people (or rather, their code), especially when I have no oversight into it and it's hard to understand what it's doing. And it made me feel like I failed in some way. Like I wasn't good enough to keep it alive.

I've never felt real phantom pain, but I imagine this is what it's like. Yeah… this is for sure going to get me on r/programmingcirclejerk.

Anyway for a more recent example (we aren't done here, you will read my trauma dumping), quite literally the day after I posted about my geolocation infrastructure, I learnt about anycast networking and had my entire being yeeted into the astral plane, as I disassociated from the very idea of having to dropkick my dear, lovely DNS servers into the aether.

I was going to make another post about it, but here's probably fine right? I'm sure you won't mind.

So in an anycast configuration, multiple servers located in different geographic regions share the same IP address. This means that when a user sends a request to the anycast IP, the request is routed to the nearest or best-performing server based on current network conditions. The decision on which server to route to is made dynamically by the existing network infrastructure, using routing protocols such as the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).

BGP would also be able to effectively act as my load balancer and failover mechanism (something I don't have and have been planning to add to b8s) as when one server fails or becomes unreachable, the network would start redirecting traffic to another without any input from me or my code.

This is a clear improvement over my solution of geolocation routing. It is less code for me to write (thus being less likely I fuck something up) and theoretically simpler to implement. It's the GPT-4 situation all over again. But… my DNS servers, I put so much love into you, I can't give up on them ;(

Ok so I say theoretically simpler to implement, I'm just assuming getting an IP address and assigning routing tables is simple. What's it actually take to do this thing?

So to set up an anycast network you first need an Autonomous System Number (ASN). This is a unique identifier used by other Autonomous Systems (AS) to announce paths to reach your network via BGP. ASNs are managed by five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), each responsible for overseeing ASNs within specific geographic regions of the world.

After going through the website for the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) which would be my RIR, it seems like I would need to be an organisation to apply for an ASN. Now I technically own a business, but it is a sole tradership so I don't think that would count.

There's also membership fees. With APNIC, the sign-up fee is $500 AUD and the annual membership fee is at a minimum of $1,180 AUD.

That's… quite a lot.

Though honestly, I could afford that with minimal impact to my financial situation. It's certainly better than spending that much on gambling for virtual waifus. ^{(5) (5)} It's not that much higher than the amount it would cost getting all of Kafka's eidolons as I plan to. But even still like, do I want to afford it?

Anyway there's a small chance I could figure all this out, so let's imagine I am allowed to get an ASN and have no issues with the fees, what else is there?

With the ASN, you're entitled to request IP addresses. Unfortunately, you can't just buy one IP address, you need an entire block. The minimum IP prefix is /24 for IPv4 and /48 for IPv6. This is so the routing tables that ASs manage don't grow too large.

Then you will need to decide whether you want to buy or lease an IP block. I don't intend to stop this blog anytime in the near future so buying would probably be the best option for me.

So just looking at auctions.ipv4.global, I can see that the average price for a /24 IP block in APNIC is around $9,000 USD. Oh…

Ok yeah that's way too much. This idea can go straight to the trash. Bye bye.

That was a close one, thank Bidoof and the limited IPv4 address space that I don't have to replace my DNS servers, my precious little ones! I love them so much, how could I have ever thought of getting rid of them??! Of course I can't get rid of them, they're made in Rust!! They're memory safe 🦀 and blazingly 🔥 fast 🚀! What a fool I was, even thinking about replacing them!

…wait, how did we get there? What were we talking about again?

Oh right, the anime waifus.

Everyone Else

Here's everyone else that I don't have much to say about.

• Koleda: Her Agent Story was quite good, going through concepts of adulthood and family which provided an extra dimension to Koleda's actions in the main story. Also the idea of having her pretend to be a child to infiltrate a school was very funny, but I mostly just liked that Grace was there too, I guess.
• Anton: I don't like how Anton is the only human male in the game. I want my boys! Where are they?? Like Star Rail launched with Dan Heng and Gepard! Those are the best boys I've ever seen!! And all the new boys (eg. Dr. Ratio and Aventurine) are super shippable. I've not felt any desire to ship anyone let alone some hunky boys in ZZZ. Anyway, Anton is a bro which is cool, I guess.
• Ben: Literally a bear. Accounting bear. Not really what I meant when I said I wanted hunky boys but that's cool, I guess.
• Soldier 11: We didn't really get to understand her motivations from her Agent Story, as we were only shown an unexplained sense of duty to the Defence Force (which is almost as bad as being a cop), and some clear parallels to Anby (ie. she likes noodles, while Anby likes burgers). She isn't in the main story yet, so I'm assuming that, and her relation to Anby will be explained at some point. Also she has the Exceed mechanic (except easier to do, and less useful) like Nero (from Devil May Cry). Overall, just the less cooler Anby, I guess.
• Billy: He seems nice, I guess.
• Nicole: She seems nice, I guess.

Anyway so that was EVERY character in ZZZ. To finish, I've made a tier list of who's most likely to be a Kafka replacement. But for some reason the template I used included a bunch of characters that aren't real/in the game. I dunno what's up with that, maybe they were included like how trap streets are in maps or something like that.

Either way, I just put them in a "Not Real" category.

So it's a little more clear on how I feel about the characters (keep in mind C is a passable grade, I don't hate anyone), but making this tier list made me realise something.

Having to do this means that none of them could be the new Kafka. The fact that I'm debating over them means I would never obsess over them as much as I do with Kafka.

Kafka is not debatable.

Would I be doing a post called "Trying To Fill The [Nekomata/Grace] Shaped Hole In My Heart With [New Game]" when the new Animal Crossing inspired Hoyoverse game comes out? ^{(6) (6)} This is a real thing that appears to be happening.

Probably not.

If I get a new cat would I name them Nekomata/Grace?

Probably not. Well actually Nekomata is literally a cat so there's a decent chance of that, but I think I'm more likely to go for Furina ^{(7) (7)} Furina probably would be the new Kafka if I actually played Genshin Impact. But that ain't ever fucking happening. or something.

There is no replacement for Kafka. Kafka cannot and will not be replaced. Kafka is ONE, Kafka is ONLY. KAFKA IS THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA.

I BELIEVE IN KAFKA SUPREMACY.

Thanks for letting me waste your time, this is why we're best friends.

Epilogue

Ok so I had this whole rant about how the game was too easy even when doing the supposedly hardest content. But it was kinda stupid and unhelpful. This is a mobile game (or game that can be played on mobile) aimed at mass market appeal to sell waifus. Of course it's going to be easy.

But I really want to complain about something, so instead let's talk about skill expression.

When first seeing this game, I originally assumed changing characters would be functionally equivalent to a weapon switch mechanic in any other good action game, where weapons have moves with synergy that you use to string combos together.

Like if for instance, you were able to use Anby's launcher to switch into a Zhu Yuan gun juggle, finishing into Nicole's gravity blast attack thing as they land.

But no, Anby's launcher is not actually a launcher because nobody in this team can do anything with it. Zhu Yuan can't juggle because she can't shoot enemies in the air. Nicole's gravity blast attack thing can hit enemies as they land, except only when from an assist but it's not like it really matters at that point.

The game is very flowchart-y, but there's only like 4 flows in the chart and they don't interact or connect to each other at all. I think a non-zero amount of that is due to the set roles. Like here's the actual game plan for our Anby, Zhu Yuan, Nicole team (and basically every other Stun, Damage, Support team - which is all of them if you want to play optimally):

1. Keep hitting Anby's basic (and only) 3-hit combo extensions, EX specials, and dodge counters for posture damage.
2. When posture breaks, assist follow-up to Nicole to apply her passive.
3. Assist follow-up to Zhu Yuan and hold the attack button until the posture recovers (then go back to number 1) or the enemy dies.

This is how you play against every enemy. ^{(8) (8)} It's kinda funny how this is also the problem I have with Dark Souls combat. I won't say it's easy (it is), but it certainly gets stale.

Ok actually it changes a little depending on what you're fighting. Like if it was a group of small and weak enemies you would crowd control with Nicole and her gravity thing to bunch them up, then just hold the attack button with Zhu Yuan. But again, 4 flows in the flowchart that are just straight lines with no complexity.

There are little mechanics to each character that you can use for a tiny bit higher of a skill ceiling. But all of these can be figured out by just reading their abilities page. There's no real ability for creative experimentation or discovery in any moveset.

Like I get the game needs to be playable on a phone, and thus has to be accessible to "casuals" ^{(9) (9)} I wouldn't call a game "casual" just because it's on a phone, it's just a different input device. A lot of mobile rhythm games in particular are just as "hardcore" as their PC/console counterparts. with a simplified control scheme, but there are plently of other casual games with optional complexity. Couldn't you have added like a few moves that combo into each other, as a little treat for the people who actually want to try something a tiny bit more mechanically interesting.

Just having a jump button, and being able to hit enemies mid-air would open so many avenues. I know that's a decent amount more work, since it essentially doubles every character's movesets, but MiHoYo literally makes hundreds of millions of dollars every month, I don't think it would be much of an issue for them.

If that happened, you could add a style meter ^{(10) (10)} Ultrakill (an FPS) proved literally every game in this genre would be better with a style meter. I still don't understand why it's basically just a Devil May Cry thing, Metal Gear Rising in particular desperately needed it (as well as instant weapon switching, but let's not get into that).

As it stands right now, a style meter wouldn't work with ZZZ since each character only has like 3 moves. You literally can't be stylish.

And yes, I've gone out to find cool looking "high level" gameplay on Bilibili. Ignoring the fact that most of these require "suboptimal" team composistions due to a certain mechanic I will get into later. That isn't stylish, that's just how your supposed to play the game. I'm sorry, but the game only has a 20 cm space between the skill floor and skill ceiling. 60% of that is just reading what your agents do, and another 30% is a reflex test for if you can hit the right button when the flashing light appears, leaving only 10% for the actual interesting things like animation/assist cancelling, that actually aren't that interesting.

But seriously, the fact that Anby has an ACTUAL, REAL LAUNCHER THAT ACTUALLY LAUNCHES ENEMIES INTO THE AIR FOR REAL and you can barely do anything with it is a sin against everything I love about video games.

Yes I know this aside has gotten so long that it should probably have been in the main body and that some people really hate when I do this.

But fuck you, I'm going to make it longer.

Have you played 1000xRESIST? What an absoluetly wonderful game. It's always good to remind yourself of what a video game can really be. A shame those at MiHoYo might not be able to play it since it's banned in mainland China. The writers (at least for Honkai: Star Rail) seem quite well read, and this would be right up their alley (if they're Hong Kong liberation sympathisers). which would lessen the impact of the game being too easy. Since there's now an intrinsic reward for trying to get good and achieve a high style score for the people who want that, instead of just playing to finish the level.

It would then be nice if it wasn't just an intrinsic reward, you could also have a separate ranking in Shiyu Defence. One for your boring-ass DPS check that just tests you on how much money you spent, or how much time you've been grinding for a good disc drive (which could also involve spending money). And one for actually being good at the game.

The best part of any good hack-and-slash (and Ultrakill) is being able to look and feel like your doing something impressive and cool. ZZZ does a lot for the "looking cool" aspect, but doesn't have the substance to actually back it up.

It plays more like an ARPG (eg. Diablo, Path of Exile, Hades, etc) without any of the things that make an ARPG satisfying or interesting to play, and all of the bad parts like the lack of a jump button limiting arena design to essentially being just a flat rectangle (the lack of any real environmental hazards also don't help). To be more inline with an ARPG it could have used a top-down perspective, but that probably wouldn't have gone down well with the "casuals" so is instead given the camera problems of every other third-person action game without any of the benefits (and is also made harder to play on a phone).

No actually I take that back, top-down ARPGs aren't unpopular with "casuals." look at the little game by indie game developer Activision Blizzard, Diablo Immortal (2022) for a counterexample. Yeah I know, you don't like the game because it isn't Diablo II (and you're right to think that), but you might not know that it's actually been wildly successfull (especially in China) and passed $100 million USD revenue in its first eight weeks. The game itself is honestly pretty decent (as a mobile game entry to a game series which has one of the best games ever made) but very predatory. Hey, doesn't that sound familiar?

A top-down approach would also allow you to move the complexity from the agents into the enemies/bosses to create more dynamic fights. In Furi (2016) for example, there are even less ways to express combat but it's much more engaging (and fun). Now that's partly because of the difficulty, but mostly because of how Furi adds variety and intricacy in its boss design through incorporating patterns in other genres such as bullet hells.

Yeah I know Furi had its problems with not being able to properly integrate these different elements of itself together, where gameplay was a mediocre hack-and-slash during the in hack-and-slash phase of the fight which then suddenly became a medicore bullet hell during the bullet hell phase of the fight. But surely infinite money MiHoYo could do better in finding ways to seamlessly merge genres than a tiny French indie (but actually this time) game studio.

This game is nothing but missed opportunity. There's this incredible cast of interesting, varied, and fun characters, and yet the only nice thing I can say about Zhu Yuan's gameplay is that it looks cool and has cool animations. Not any interesting tech, not how it interacts with anything in the environment, just that her spinny flips hasn't run its course on me yet.

Oh I just remembered I was supposed to talk about the bullshit "Additional Ability" mechanic which gives bonuses if certain agents that match requirements (normally being of the same faction, or having the same attribute) are on the same team. What an awful fucking mechanic that does nothing but restrict team building. This is not a sign of a game that wants you to experiment with it's combat, but play the way they dictate so they can balance the game around having to buy more fucking waifus as the old ones become stagnant and boring.

I dunno, every thing about this game feels so held back. ^{(11) (11)} I'd say the same about Honkai: Star Rail, but I don't play enough turn-based RPGs to be able to describe what feels wrong about it. Like you can tell it's trying it's hardest, but the material conditions of it's environment forbid it. It's hard to enjoy the game when you're constantly second guessing every game mechanic wondering if it's just bad, trying to exploit you, or both.

And I know the excuse is "well Justin, if the game wasn't a gacha it probably wouldn't exist."

Yeah, maybe.

But if it wasn't a gacha it might actually have been good.

If they add a Kafka expy I will change my mind tho.