SLG category can be said to be the game industry fierce competition "Red Sea" track, both domestic and foreign markets have a big general, considering the high cost of SLG to buy, so that every time in the short video platform to see the new SLG product advertising, GameLook will silently read a "warrior" in the heart.
But GameLook also said in a related article at the end of last year that SLG still has a blockbuster ability, and at the beginning of the new year, the predictions have been confirmed.
Recently, 4399's SLG new game "Civilization and Conquest" has achieved good results after being launched in China, and the game has topped the free list of the national App Store shortly after its launch, and then the best-selling list has climbed all the way to the top five on January 6. It can be said that it is the first hit on this track at the beginning of 2022. The game still has a score of 7.2 on TapTap.
Although the "good results" are inseparable from the crazy purchase volume of 4399, according to Dataeye's data, in the past 30 days, "Civilization and Conquest" has placed more than 30,000 groups of advertising materials on platforms such as Pangolin Alliance, Tencent Video, and Today's Toutiao, ranking first in the total list of domestic medium and heavy game purchases.
But for players of SLG games, "Civilization and Conquest" will "not sell VIP, do not sell resources" as the selling point of the game when it is announced, which may be more unexpected, after all, the traditional SLG game that focuses on real-time PVP is "Kryptonian carnival" in the eyes of many players.
However, GameLook, the more direct problem is that while frantically buying, while "not selling VIP, not selling resources" as the highlight of the game, how should 4399 recover the cost and occupy its own acres and three-points of land in this inner volume market?
Here's a promotional video for the game:
Solve the player's pain points and have a good hands-on experience
SLG as a very mature commercial category, SLG products current various models and systems are almost all predecessors with data and failure tests, after paying countless tuition fees to get the relatively optimal solution, of course, SLG is also greatly limited in innovation, the innovation of the subject matter often becomes one of the reasons for the success of some dark horse products.
It is not difficult to imagine from the name of the game alone, Civilization and Conquest, 4399 chose the most classic historical theme in the SLG game, and players need to choose from characters representing different civilizations such as Li Shimin, Joan of Arc, and Bai boles before entering the game. Even the game's art is similar to the cartoon style of SLG head products such as Awakening of Nations.
According to the official introduction, the game uses the Unity engine development, up to 6,000 players to fight on the same screen on the game's 120 km X 120 km map.
As for the core gameplay of the game, in fact, "Civilization and Conquest" is also difficult to open the gap with other SLGs, it is all the beginning of a city, and then the player obtains the corresponding character and skill fragments through the drawing of cards, improves their combat strength, strengthens their own team, and then forms a country with friends to break the world on the big map. But this is not a shortcoming of Civilization and Conquest, but a manifestation of the maturity of the core framework of SLG games in the industry.
But having said that, the above does not mean that the game lacks highlights, on the contrary, GameLook believes that part of the design of Civilization and Conquest actually solves many long-standing pain points of SLG gamers. As some players on TapTap said, this is a game that "combines the strengths of a hundred families and becomes a family".
Taking the most basic conscription as an example, there are 4 types of troops in the game, and there is a restraint relationship with each other, and in battle, the effect of the restraint relationship is actually quite obvious. However, unlike similar SLG gamers who need to consume resources to raise 4 kinds of soldiers at the same time, in Civilization and Conquest, players can automatically create troops without consuming resources, and as long as they return to the main city, they can switch classes.
The second is strategy, although this should be the basis of strategy games, but the strategy of some of the SLGs that are always known is more reflected in the recharge strategy than the tactical strategy.
However, from the feedback of players, "Civilization and Conquest" has indeed achieved the "fair, but not completely fair" statement of the plan, and the complex character development, class upgrades, and skill teaming have also provided an undeniable strategy for the game, so that the player's strength is not completely higher than the combat strength. This was even recognized by some of the players who gave the game a low score.
Finally, the game's so-called "do not sell VIP, do not sell resources", after the simple experience of GameLook, there is indeed no VIP system in the game, the hero's physical strength is also a natural recovery mechanism, and the hero's experience can only grow in battle. In the official parlance, "Compared to SLGs like cok-like, we've tried to cut out as much commercial content as possible." ”
In addition, there are many details of the game optimization, such as the RPG-style novice guidance mentioned by players, the hero inheritance system in the novice period, and the free control of troops during combat, etc., which allow both SLG newcomers and old players to have a relatively good hands-on experience.
Free is always expensive
However, as a game that focuses on "no VIP, no resources", if someone looks at the TapTap page of Civilization & Conquest now, they will find that the term "too kryptonite" ranks first among all the Tags in the TapTap review.
The author believes that in 2022, there should be no players who will associate the game company with the bodhisattva who drinks the dew, not to mention the zero-sum game model of SLG, which will naturally make the players who devote themselves to it willing to invest a lot of resources and funds, which can be said to be a game type with natural metal absorption, but the emergence of "too kryptonite" is still slightly embarrassing in the face of "cutting off more commercial content as much as possible".
According to the feedback of players and the author's experience, the kryptonite points of the game are mainly focused on the two aspects of card drawing and resource system.
First of all, of course, is the core resource of the SLG game, civilization and conquest in the player needs to obtain a lot of resources almost the only way is to attack specific resource points, but each time need to consume tokens (military orders and defender secrets) props, by default do not buy the case, the player can theoretically only play three resource points a day, and want to fight again can only wait for the next day the system automatically reset the three attack opportunities.
Of course, as one of the cores of SLG, resources can certainly not be completely linked to kryptonite, although the token caused resources and growth of the card caused some players to be dissatisfied, but this is not the majority of the game Krypton gold, the draw card is.
If you want to introduce the card drawing system, you need to understand the character development system game in the game. "Civilization and Conquest" has a variety of characters of different levels such as SSR and SR, and the skills of each character are S level, A level and other different levels, of course, skills can be advanced, players need to draw cards to obtain fragments to obtain skills, advanced skills and awakened characters.
Although it seems complicated, if the game's card pool only has characters and skills, in fact, it is not particularly excessive like the character pool and weapon pool of many two-dimensional games, but in addition to the player can draw character and skill fragments from the card pool, there is also a high probability of drawing "dispatch guide book" and "gold coins" such as in-game props, which directly deepens the depth of the pool. In the game, if the player wants to make the skill qualitative change, he needs to upgrade to the 10th level by extracting duplicate fragments.
The product resident pool (Qi Ling) needs to consume 98 diamonds (worth 9.8 yuan) to smoke a single time, compared with some two-dimensional mobile games, although it is not expensive, but in the face of the deep pool and the large demand for fragments, everything is a floating cloud.
And in addition to being permanent, the game will also launch a "relic treasure hunt" that can obtain high-star characters, skills, and props through exploration, which is equivalent to a limited pool. In the Limited Pool, the player spends 50 gems (450 gems 10 times) for a single draw (exploration), while the reserve in this pool is 500 draws.
The price of the game's limited pool guarantee is not cheap even if it is placed in a two-dimensional mobile game.
There is no way
SLG games have long been from the traditional roll-on washing users into the era of fine layered operation for large R, medium R, and small R, and the kryptonian gold system with card drawing as the core is relatively in line with this trend in the author's opinion.
Although the nature of the SLG game PVP makes it difficult to guarantee the gaming experience of Xiao R, and "drawing cards on demand" seems to be a joke, this is achievable in Civilization and Conquest.
Through the strict control of resource acquisition, Civilization and Conquest has slowed down the gap and contradiction between zero Kr and heavy krypton in the early stage, coupled with the game's emphasis on strategy, it can also ensure a part of the game experience in the small R growth period, as for the late game, SLG is usually upgraded to a battle between alliances, at this time, the impact of individual strength on the player experience is often diluted in collective action, and players can also contribute to the team.
Although the game's kryptonite system, Civilization & Conquest player reviews show a polarized state, but only for the card drawing system that has been widely discussed by players, GameLook actually feels that it is an understandable choice.
Of course, in fact, from the position of 4399 in the game industry before, we may be able to better explain the various characteristics of Civilization and Conquest now.
Although those familiar with 4399 may know that with its relatively good ARPG mobile game and experienced purchases, 4399 has been doing quite well in the game companies that have gone to sea in the past few years. But on the track dominated by Chinese game companies, 4399 is still a newcomer, and "Civilization and Conquest", which "took three years", has undoubtedly become the SLG ticket of 4399.
According to GameAnalytics statistics, SLG productSAP value can be close to 50 US dollars, according to GameLook, the current domestic SLG product single user acquisition cost has reached 200 yuan, a head SLG product can even reach the exaggerated high of 500 yuan.
In direct proportion to the high cost of user acquisition, SLG games, whether domestic or overseas, usually have a return cycle of 10-12 months.
As an admission ticket, civilization and conquest has a collection of thousands of families, to solve user pain points, optimize the side of the business system; but SLG's high cost of buying and relatively long return cycle, resulting in the game can not be completely disregarded returns, otherwise the "conscience" will become "cool".
Speaking of the situation of the early SLG parties, it is also quite interesting. Inside the game, players throw a lot of money only to gain a dominant position in "fighting with people", outside the game, the game company does not hesitate to lose money, and uses the player's money to throw a lot of money only for "fighting with the product", successfully standing in this track. From this point of view, the two do not seem to be much different, and this may be the only way for many game categories to go in the future.
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GameLook Daily Game Industry Report
Global vision / depth is material