The joy of being “alone” in an MMO.
“I seem to have bumped into you just now.” A man named Sun Xiaoxi approached me.
Then she took me to the side to check if I was injured. We became friends and had three drinks at the tea shop. She decided to find an inn for me to take a break.
After hesitating for a while, I declined her kindness, and then I said goodbye, ending this chance encounter.
This is a trivial thing I encountered in “Anti Shui Han Mobile Games”. This person named Sun Xiaoxi is an NPC in the game. Under normal circumstances, she is just the kind of character who stands and shakes by the roadside and does nothing. , but by chance today, she decided to speak to me and have a tea party with me.
Of course I know she’s an NPC, but in a game, it’s hard to resist the urge to give it a shot when a given character can actually react based on your answers.
This stems from an AI NPC system added to the game. Most of the characters in the game can give corresponding feedback according to the player’s behavior pattern. In fact, this system has yet to be perfected, and the situation that the answer is not the question happens from time to time, but as long as the player’s reply is not too uncommon, they can often get quite interesting interactive answers:
An interaction encountered by a Weibo player
On September 30, the blind box test of “Adverse Water Cold Mobile Game” was launched. I started playing from the first day of the test. For players like me who have played the terminal game “Reverse Water Cold” for a while, there are many dimensions to measure how the mobile game inherits the characteristics of this IP – the most distinctive How should the “market temperament” be restored, whether the world will be as open as before, and how the picture level that has been performing well technically will be reproduced on the mobile phone system.
As far as my experience is concerned for a few days, these parts are all well done in mobile games. The Huansha girl at the foot of Sanqing Mountain is still humming “Huansha Song”, which is a common memory of many end-game players of “Reverse Water Cold”. Players often miss this song in order to listen to the song, which can be called the “fireworks” of the game. Qi” badge.
Most of the main line, the adventure system, and even the construction part of the manor in the end game have been restored to the mobile game with high precision, but I didn’t have time to experience too much – in the past week, I almost Time spent exploring the puzzles in the game.
The process starts with the game subtly mobilizing your curiosity and competitiveness.
When you settle down in any corner of the world, you will mysteriously find something unusual at your feet: it may be two butterflies revolving around you, it may be a shimmering windmill, or it may be a A rather inconspicuous painting hanging on the side of the road.
Next, the player needs to use the martial arts of his life to crack these “little treasures”, such as the picture above, only when the player uses ice attribute skills on it can he reveal his true body, and then the player will enter the world of the picture scroll and come to a “is a man” Just go down a hundred floors.”
The children on the roadside are eager to play with water, so you may get a few splashes with your skills. When their clothes get wet from playing with water, you can help them dry them on a fire, and you can get a treasure chest.
Because of my “willingness to help others”, the people of Sanqingshan, Bianjing, Hangzhou have solved many life problems.
I will spend a lot of time in this system, on the one hand, because as a player of the end game “Reverse Water Cold”, I am not curious about the development of the main line and branch of the game, and more time will be spent on “pleasing myself”, Compared with the “delayed gratification” of doing long-term tasks, the small treasure chest on the mobile game is more like a “timely enjoyment” choice. On the other hand, in the early stage of the announcement of “Adverse Water Cold Mobile Game”, this “open world with a huge number of puzzles” was also one of its selling points. To what extent, I was curious.
In view of the official year-round announcements of “Adverse Water Cold”, players are mostly wary of the “selling points” proposed. However, judging from the experience and word of mouth of players in recent days, the previously mentioned “thousands of players”, “a huge amount of exploration in the open world” and “butterfly effect of the development of the plot” have indeed been made in the game. of trying and learning.
As far as the puzzles just mentioned, almost every large map is stuffed with about 300 puzzles, and each screen will hide five to six puzzles. Most of the puzzles are simple in form, and there are various types. It is roughly estimated that there are more than 40 different types, which are quite sufficient. Although most of the small puzzles don’t have many rewards, as the exploration progresses, some complex puzzles may directly reward high-value martial arts stunts to encourage players to explore the world.
Friends who are familiar with Zelda can see that this kind of small puzzles all over the map is borrowed from the “Ahaha” in “Breath of the Wild”, and some puzzles look a little familiar. But for modern open world online games, this is indeed a design that can effectively enhance players’ desire for exploration and sense of substitution. As long as the puzzles are properly “localized” so that they conform to the game world view and are naturally unobtrusive to play, they will become a bonus item in the player’s exploration process.
In addition, there are some case-solving stories for players to explore alone in the game, which are also new parts of the mobile game. After encountering an incident, you can decipher the testimony of witnesses sentence by sentence and review the plot of the case, from finding clues to considering loopholes to solving puzzles, which is a relatively complete task chain:
According to the official statement, this part of the gameplay draws on “Ace Attorney” and “Danwan Lunpo”, and the classic elements of these games can indeed be seen in the actual game.
Based on the above-mentioned large number of “puzzles” and interactive gameplay, coupled with the amount of text in the main line, side lines and adventure tasks in this article, it is not difficult to see the direction of efforts of “Adverse Water Cold Mobile Game”: even an MMO mobile game, It is trying to satisfy the idea of modern players who like to be self-sufficient in a light social way.
But this does not mean that the game has abandoned the traditional team copy game mode. Judging from the polishing of the mobile game version itself, there is no shortage of ambitious designs in the copy part. The two dungeons that impressed me the most were from “The Wind and Rain of Jianghu”. In the dungeon called “Qiu Lan Painting Academy”, the player will enter a horizontal scroll of Chinese painting in the level, and the enemy will use the ink in the style of Chinese painting. You attack:
The ultimate Boss “Mr. Mo” uses a big trick on the player, which is to place a dot of ink on the center of your screen, which needs to be wiped off with your fingers. This kind of interaction that “breaks the fourth wall” can also give players a lot of experience. Get some freshness.
The most discussed by players is another copy called “Jinghu Feiyin”. You can think of this as a battle that mimics the barrage sound game mode. Players can only attack through notes, during which the game perspective will be between 2D and 3D. Switching back and forth, the battle is particularly gorgeous.
But from the above picture, you can feel how much load this performance can bring to the mobile phone. When playing this part, my phone (iPhone 13 Pro) did start to get noticeably hot, and the screen froze. In addition, the contradictions that are easy to appear in “end-game” mobile MMO products: due to the small screen, large scenes, and gorgeous skills and special effects, it is not easy to see the character’s actions and status. question.
Although this test did not open the paid function, as we all know, whether krypton gold is “conscience” has always been the top priority of mobile game players. During the early publicity, “Reverse Water Cold Official” once put forward some interesting arguments, such as how to make the game make money without kryptonite and make money. At that time, the official gave a plan called “wool appears on the cow” , On the premise that the daily activity meets the standard, the income from advertising in the game will be converted into preferential treatment for players.
For example, the water you drink in the game may be labeled “Nongfu Spring”, and the slogan “KFC is half price on Thursday” may be written under the city walls of Hangzhou. Although these contents cannot be seen in the current version, trying to build a benign payment model to promote the optimization of the relationship between players and the game is always something people are happy to see.
In the short test time, “Adverse Water Cold Mobile Game” gave me an experience similar to a stand-alone open world. This is due to the current version design tendency and the reason for the length of the test. The sincerity of the amount of content has been seen by the players in this test. But in the final analysis, as an MMORPG, its MMO part will play a decisive role in the long-term operation. The ecology in this type of game often leads players to a way of playing that “maximizes profits”, which is what we often call the “sense of part-time work”. If you want to avoid this kind of development and embark on a path of benign development, then, how to persuade players not to pursue the optimal solution, and how to provide the most appropriate compensation to different players, may be the “thousands of people” system will face the biggest challenge.