Breaking through the conventions of the theme, the game design has merit
SLG games are one of the most popular types of strategy games on mobile.
Unfortunately, from the beginning of 2015's "Coast of the Land" to the rise of the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms And Strategy Edition" in the past two years, this prosperity was locked in the theme of the Three Kingdoms. Even if it is not a product of the Three Kingdoms theme, it is often swirling around in the circle of ancient civilization wars.
It's a rigid path-dependent choice — neither for the game industry nor for players.
As a netease that single-handedly laid the foundation for SLG's prosperity, six years after the release of "Coast of the Land", with the game "Endless Lagrange", I saw some courage to break through.
Since the explosion of science and technology, human beings have looked up at the stars and seen not all of them are illusory illusions. The breakthrough of space technology makes us feel that the endless galaxy seems to have the possibility of touching.
The universe above our heads should not be such a lonely and cold space, so we have many imaginations called "science fiction", which inject some temperature into this grand space that represents the ultimate.
We have witnessed the birth of many great science fiction works in many fields such as film and television, animation, novels, paintings and so on. On various game platforms, there are also many extremely wonderful narratives for stories that consider people on a cosmic scale.
Only the space of the SLG game is still lonely, especially regrettable.
Because one of the most important experiences in SLG is that players can break through the narrow pattern and conquer the world through personal efforts. And in human cognition, is there a larger and broader pattern than the universe?
Therefore, this time NetEase's attempt to break the deadlock began by turning the journey towards the sea of stars.
And from the perspective of the game itself, they did not regard the theme of space as a pure gimmick. Instead, they are trying to create, as they imagined, what the interstellar frontier period should look like.
The documentary at the beginning of the game is a highlight in the creation of a sense of atmosphere.
The landmark event record, calm with some emotional bystander tone, tells the past of this world. Technological breakthroughs have brought prosperity to interstellar societies, and the fertile and vast universe cannot contain human ambitions.
Prosperity, collapse, clean up the old mountains and rivers, start all over again - so that players can feel the weight of history, but also for the "nothing new under the sun" historical development.
After the player has a preliminary understanding of the history of the original human exploration of the universe, the game quickly shapes the player's sense of identity.
As a pioneer, he experienced the application for qualifications, the voyage of curvature spaceships, and the travel of magnificent stargates, and finally came to a strange and rich new place. Shining on you is a pioneering spirit full of hope.
In this way, through the documentary and the opening plot performance, the player completes the transformation from an outsider to a participant. What follows is the game, the adventure, the player's personal achievement, and the progress of human civilization in the game.
Driven by this sentiment, it is only natural to establish bases, develop production lines, mine minerals, develop trade, and build self-defensive armed forces.
But if it stops there, then NetEase has only carried out a change in the theme this time, but it is another "skin changing" game that is more beautiful.
What truly reflects its courage to break the game is that in addition to the change of theme, there should also be exploration of gameplay.
In traditional SLG games, the player's daily business experience is very linear and severely constrained. The resources in the distance are abundant, and following the principle of adjacent to their own territory, players must hit them one grid at a time.
The slow pace of the game makes this experience of climbing the grid unbearable, and there are too many redundant steps to complete between planning and achieving goals.
In "Endless Lagrange", the design of the planned circle gameplay turns the entire daily operation into a freer and more diverse experience.
The planning circle is the premise of all the players' actions in the game, and the behaviors of collecting, fighting, transporting, supporting, exploring, etc., must rely on the establishment of the planning circle to be completed.
However, as soon as the planning circle is established, the player does not need to climb the grid on the way to the target location. Moreover, there is no distance limit to the establishment of the plan circle, and at any point on the map, the player can set up the plan circle to achieve their goals.
This is a more free exploration design that fits the space background.
The upper limit of the number of planned circles allows players to mess around without thinking, to ensure that more things can be completed in the same planning circle, but also to prepare some spare planning circle quotas for the next situations that may need to be dealt with.
Through the limitation of the planning circle quota, players learn to plan their own development routes, so that the goal is clearer and clearer, so as to continuously obtain a sense of achievement through the achievement of the phased goal.
In addition, the planning circle can be used not only as a unit directive for external operations, but also as a supplement to other programs.
Because after the planning circle is established, if there are players' own units in the planning circle, then the player can obtain the curvature coordinates in the planned circle, so that the spacecraft passing through this planning circle can accelerate the curvature and speed up the use of other plans.
Actions within the planned circle also have auxiliary effects, the player's actions in the game need to consume strategy points, if this action is carried out in the planned circle, then the consumption of strategy points will be halved.
Therefore, the flexible and planned use of the planning circle can multiply the player's early development efficiency.
Because of the existence of the planning circle, the player's daily operation in the game is no longer a purely linear experience, but will show a completely different state with the player's choice and planning. The degree of flexibility in the use of the planning circle will also affect the player's development progress.
This is what the design of the planning circle brings, and the biggest difference from the traditional SLG game experience is that it is more in line with the evolution of the gameplay of the big stage of space.
In addition to enriching the strategy of the daily business process, the cultivation and combat experienced by players in the game also have more room to play.
The player's battleships are obtained through the study of blueprints, and as the number of battles experienced by the battleships increases, the blueprints can also increase experience and upgrade the player's battleship abilities.
In this process, players can also transform the blueprint of the battleship through scientific and technological research, and can also strengthen some functional modules of the battleship itself through the loading of different technologies.
It can be said that each player can selectively invest resources in blueprint research according to their next stage goals to strengthen the functions they need.
The need to increase resource reserves will strengthen the efficiency of engineering ships; Fleets that need to deal with powerful privateers or other players will strengthen the ability to restrain the opponent according to the composition of the enemy's fleet, such as the firepower of heavy cruisers and the clearance ability of light fighters in close combat; If you need to launch an attack on building targets such as space stations, you can also strengthen the siege ability of the fleet and so on.
Different areas of resource input will also make some differences in the player's fleet characteristics. Every player can find their favorite fighting style in the process.
And the rich selection of ships, the formation change of the front, middle and rear rows, the team formation function without a ceiling, the freely moving space space, and the battleship function that can be directionally enhanced, all give players a lot of tactical choice space when facing the enemy in the game.
Because the player in the game can see the planning circle established by the enemy within the visual range, as well as the route of the fleet, then the player can choose to send a small fleet to ambush and harass on its inevitable path, gradually encroach on the opponent, and then in the next part of the road, deploy heavy troops to annihilate in one fell swoop; It is also possible to send a spearhead force with weak firepower but excellent defensive ability to entangle the opponent, and then use another fleet with strong fire but more fragile to annihilate the enemy.
In the traditional SLG, the player's local tactics are actually not important, more or the platoon deployment under the perspective of grand strategy, and most of the frontal battlefields are still crushed with more powerful military strength.
In Endless Lagrange, the importance of strategy has increased, as long as the player can take advantage of the information gap between the opponent and the opponent, then it is not completely impossible to be small.
Moreover, in addition to improving strategy, the game also uses some other designs to make the basic gap between players not easy to reach the level of "one force and ten will".
On the one hand, accelerated resources such as prefabricated mods and mobilization orders are free and renewable, and the construction speed between players will not be too different due to some off-site factors.
On the other hand, each type of battleship has its own service cap, and even if you have a capital battleship as strong as a hexagonal warrior, you have to think about your overall fleet.
Therefore, the confrontation between players will have richer and more exciting game changes.
Whether it is the planning circle, blueprint cultivation, or pulling down the basic gap and enhancing the game strategy, it enriches the game experience that players get in every link of the game flow.
In addition to the breakthrough of the theme, there is also the richness and improvement of the gameplay, with these, "Endless Lagrange" is effective in trying to break the deadlock.
Effective attempts can really support the courage of NetEase to break the past deadlock this time and seek a larger pattern belonging to SLG games.
I appreciate the courage, the attempt, because whether it succeeds or not this time, they are trying to change, and that is a better start.