Text haKuRyu
Your worker grandpa is back!
The reboot of the "Worker's Tales", "New Workers' Words", personally written by legendary designer Volker Wertich and developed by the original developer Blue Byte's Ubisoft Düsseldorf Studio, has been officially announced to be officially released on March 16!
While I'm not a big fan of the old Worker's Tales series, I'm an avid strategy game lover. I've been happy to see this classic series, which has influenced many players, come to life for a long time, not to mention the free Beta subscription offered by Ubisoft China (that's the point).
If you haven't been exposed to the Worker's Tales series, don't worry. As one of the most influential but also fateful legendary IPs in the history of RTS and strategy games, the Worker Whispers series does not test the player's micro-manipulation ability, nor does it accurately assign resource management to each unit, but requires the player to plan the development route of the entire city to indirectly control production.
This kind of special gameplay that pays more attention to overall planning has attracted many strategy game enthusiasts, but the "Worker Language" series has been trying to make innovations since the second generation, and even the official direct deletion of the four words "Worker Language" is outrageous. As a result, people's evaluation of the "Worker Language" series has been very fluctuating, so the canonical works of the "Worker Language" series have been separated from us for a full 12 years, and many people have long stopped looking forward to a sequel.
The good news is that although I have played a small closed beta version, I have been able to find that this reboot of "New Worker's Tales" has returned to the classic macro strategy and economic development gameplay of the series. If you're curious about what kind of game New Worker Talk is, take a moment to check out this demo experience report!
>>> complex economic system with a certain learning cost
Although the Worker's Tales series has been on the move for nearly 30 years, one thing that hasn't changed is the much more complex economic system than other RTS games. However, I am not a fan of the old "Worker's Language" series, so today we will only talk about what "New Worker's Language" showed in the closed beta version.
First of all, the resource types of "New Worker's Tales" have come to an exaggerated 20, and most of them will have a linkage effect with other resources.
Let me give you a simple example.
All buildings in New Worker Tales require both hardwood planks and stone, and you have to get hardwood planks in four steps: building a lumberyard, collecting wood, transporting it to a processing plant, and processing and producing it. While stone can be mined directly from open pit mines, you can also build more efficient underground mines in the middle of the game to collect stone.
It doesn't sound complicated, but keep in mind that these lumberyards, processing plants, open pit and underground quarry work differently, and the hardwood planks and stone needs vary from building to building. How to balance the production speed of these resources has become a difficult problem that tests the player's overall planning ability, after all, the lack of productivity will lead to the player's inability to shoot the desired building in time, but if too many hardwood boards and stones are produced, it will bring solid resource hoarding and waste.
A more complex example is the hammer (tool). Although I would like to complain that the hammer actually needs coal + iron, you must first expand the border to reach the mountain area, then build a coal and pig iron gathering facility, then make iron blocks from the factory, and finally synthesize the hammer. Given the rate of production just mentioned, and the need for a variety of other resources and even military forces to keep the mining base running, the production hammer may be much more troublesome than you think.
In addition, in order to prevent players from using micro-manipulation to increase productivity like other popular RTSs, "New Worker Language" also inherits the classic setting of the series: the player cannot directly control any worker, and all collection, production and transportation tasks are completed by the workers themselves. The only thing the player can do economically is to set up buildings, plan roads, and wait for engineers and workers to work on their own — theoretically you can micro-manipulate engineers, but in reality there's no need for that in the game, because it doesn't add much marginal benefit.
Speaking of which, the economic system design idea of "New Worker's Voice" is already very obvious: resource management and overall planning. Different resources have different uses, require different buildings to build, and the production speed is also different, but almost all resources can form a variety of linkages - balancing the output and income of different resources, ensuring that the supply of resources is sufficient, but also not piling up in the warehouse mold, which is the core gameplay of the economic system of "New Worker's Tale".
In recent years of strategy and business simulation games, I think Ymir's economic system can be compared to NewCaster's. They all put forward a certain test for the player's mathematical, management and even economic level, emphasizing the ability to regulate resources at the macro level. Mainstream players are likely to be unable to accept such a complex design, but to be honest, this economic system is really interesting to study, and it belongs to the category of ecstasy of strategy game enthusiasts.
>>> other ways to play: an extension of the economic system
Compared to the complex economic system, the other gameplay of "New Worker's Tale" is more like a derivative of this economic system: complementary and just right.
This is evident in the combat system. Although all RTS games emphasize "what kind of economy produces what kind of soldiers", the battles of "New Worker's Tale" have completely become an accessory to the economic system, after all, the production of military units requires the production of weapons, and weapons are naturally processed from a variety of resources... So it all went back to the economy.
Of course, what's more important is that the battle system of NewCaster Tales itself is not complicated: the entire game has only six classes of meat shields, output, ranged, priests, melee tower demolition and long-range tower demolition, and the micro-manipulation methods you can take are extremely limited, and the classic bridge section of StarCraft gunner is basically impossible to use. It's not hard to see that the production team is trying to get us to abandon the complicated operations that test mouse speed and focus on operating the economy and production lines - after all, as long as there are enough troops, the F2A can solve everything.
There are other mechanics in NewCasts, such as research and trade, but they are all appendages to the economy and combat system and do not expand into complex gameplay. The scientific research of this game only works for military units and engineers (at least for now, I see it), there is no project that can directly change the production efficiency; because the beta version cannot be matched to other players, the trading system I played only allows players to exchange gold for other resources, and there is no way to know whether they can trade with teammates for profit.
In addition, in New Worker's Tales, the player's city has boundaries, and buildings cannot be placed outside the boundaries. Resources will always run out one day, and there are various landmarks in the map that players need to occupy and compete for, so players must send engineers to expand the boundaries in advance: however, engineers are also involved in building roads, building houses, collecting special resources and other important tasks, resulting in every engineer in the early stage of the game is precious, and how to allocate engineers has become another kind of overall planning outside the game economy system.
Finally, there are three different factions (races) in New Worker's Tales, each with its own art style and campaign mechanics, with Maru having an oriental twist. However, strictly speaking, the BUFF brought by these factions still does not deviate from the economic system mentioned above, and does not bring about earth-shaking gameplay changes.
>>> shortcomings and summary, with developer interviews
Overall, NewCaster Is a maverick RTS game. Its gameplay revolves around base construction and battlefield fighting like traditional RTS, but in comparison, the base construction of "New Worker's Tales" is much more complicated than traditional RTS, and the proportion of battles has been greatly reduced.
Of course, the shortcomings of this game are also obvious: too little content.
From the game itself, almost all the systems of "New Worker Character Language" are derivatives of the economic system, and have not expanded their own unique gameplay, and players will feel "bored" once they are familiar with the construction routine; from the perspective of the game, this game will only bring three main line battles and encounters after the official release, unless you are Tu Yile, otherwise these contents are really a bit insufficient to play.
Of course, it is still necessary to emphasize that this is only the closed beta stage, and any content may change after the game is officially released, so everyone should be a reference.
Finally, Shanguo Niang also conducted an exclusive interview with Nadim Affani, director of "New Worker's Tales", and Christian Hagedorn, creative director, so interested friends can come to check it out
1. "New Worker's Tales" has a complex industrial chain composed of 20 different resources, but it is also a battle game with PvP, how do you balance the battle part of the game with the resource management part?
Christian Hagedorn: The economic system is important for the entire Worker's Tales series, because how you build cities directly determines how you fight. In addition, we use the concept of throughput to balance different kinds of resources, so what players really pay attention to is how many each building should be built and what they will bring.
2. What is the most unique thing about the popular RTS in the market?
Christian Hagedorn: A fusion of combat and deep economy gameplay. Compared to the RTS industry's head game, New Story is a little more natural and casual, especially for players who want to play to their strategic strengths and like complex economic systems.
If we compare it to the previous "Workers' Tales" series, we have made three major innovations this time. First, engineers became an important pillar of economic activity and one of the core elements of the game; second, some landmarks with strategic value brought vitality and symbolism to the map, allowing players to get out of the base well and compete for maps; third, we brought new warehouses, advanced roads, and donkey carts to improve the game's logistics system.
3. I noticed that the Maru faction is a faction with a strong oriental style, did you consider Chinese elements when designing Maru? If so, what kind of Chinese elements are there?
Nadim Affani: The New Worker's Tale is set in a fantasy world, where each faction needs to adapt to the worldview and the corresponding ecology. We are inspired by many ways of things, so each faction has a unique culture, but they don't have any close connection to the real world.
Speaking of Maru, it is an ancient people that lives on the sea and on land in harmony and tranquility. They gained an advantage in trade, and reduced production costs for gatherers, fishermen and hunters, and ports and gold mines were cheaper. Their special Guardian unit Spearmen will preemptively attack enemies in melee combat and have plenty of health.
4. What are the plans for the future update of New Worker's Tales? Like DLC, New Factions, etc.?
Nadim Affani: We don't really want to share our official plans for the release of the game yet, because the most important thing now is to do the game itself. Of course, we're looking forward to hearing feedback from players after experiencing the closed test that will be held on January 20-24, and we'd love to see what our players like. After that, we will share more details as soon as possible.