First, the development of RPG games
Role-Playing Game, or RPG, is a type of game that most players are exposed to and is important in the game market. The earliest RPGs already contained character names, HP, attack, defense settings, exploration mechanics, and some basic growth elements, and the exploration maps of that time usually took place in dungeons, and the most representative work was Dungeons & Dragons. Subsequently, the introduction of DnD rules and the exp growth system made the mechanics of RPG games more abundant, and the game market gradually flourished. With the improvement of players' requirements for game quality, the construction of RPG elements becomes more complex, such as attribute diversification, introducing more attribute terms such as magic, magic defense, speed, skill, hit, dodge; upgrading diversification, upgrading brings additional skill points to provide services for the skill system; interactive diversification, dialogue is no longer a fixed progressive, but presents a variety of choices. In this way, the characteristics of RPG games are summarized in three words, that is, "storytelling", "growth", and "interactivity". ARPG (Action Role Playing Game) as a branch of RPG games, it absorbs the immediacy of ACT games, used to compensate for the slow pace of RPG games, without losing the complex growth system of RPG games and the rich worldview plot setting, while amplifying its interactivity. ARPG provides players with a more detailed, realistic world, which increases the immersion of the game and makes it easier for the player to enter the flow.
However, with the change of player preferences and the development of the game market, the impact of various online games, the sluggishness of the console market, the rise of MOBA games and other reasons, traditional RPG games have gradually lost their market. There is also the "RPG game is dead" remarks, is this really the case? Looking at today's game market, I think the answer is no, whether it is Dark Souls, Kingdom Hearts 3, Orrea 5, all give more definition to the new era of RPGs. Among the game answer sheets handed over in China, "Original God" is undoubtedly the most colorful one. On September 28, 2020, as soon as "Original God" landed on major game platforms, it attracted strong attention from players at home and abroad, and quickly topped the best-seller list, with its open world map exploration, complex puzzle solving experience, high-quality 3D modeling, etc. Players were directly addicted, with revenue of nearly $3.5 billion in the first year alone. This is of epoch-making significance for domestic RPG games. Behind this great success, what makes the original god different from the traditional RPG game, and has won the recognition and support of many players? Today let's do a brief analysis.
2. The design of the continent of Tivat
At present, on the continent of Tivat, maps of three countries are open, namely Mond, Rizuki, and Inaha, and players spend most of their time exploring these three countries, and the main quests account for only a small part of them. In order to guide the player to a more comprehensive exploration of the world, Protoshin cancels the established route, allowing the player to choose the route to reach the destination. Expect players' footprints to be able to travel to every corner of the continent of Tivat. How to provide players with motivation to explore is the design center of the Tivat Continent.
Seven Heavenly Gods and Teleportation Anchors
The Seven Heavenly Gods, as the key to unlocking the map, gives the player a clear motivation. Traveling from one statue to another, gradually lighting up unknown areas of the map, is the player's first and most critical step in exploring the continent of Tivat. Unlocking teleportation anchors can help players quickly travel across the Tivat continent and is an important "means of transportation" for players on their travels. "Original God" inserts the main plot, side plot, secret realm and other points worth exploring between the seven gods and between the teleportation anchor points. Let players encounter unknown adventures and opportunities on their own path, so that the sense of achievement and fun they get will increase several times over the established route.
Large and eye-catching terrain design
The huge terrain design is more likely to arouse the player's exploration psychology, such as the wind dragon ruins of Mond, when they have not yet touched this part of the plot, many players want to go in to see what mysteries are there, but there is a wind wall around the periphery to block it and can only give up; for example, the part of the Dragon's Back Snow Mountain, the white snow mountain is particularly conspicuous on the map, the world mission has not yet instructed the player to complete what task, many players are in a hurry to rush inside, almost freezing inside For example, the part of Ina's wife is a region that requires the player to pass through the main plot of the rizuki to reach, and many players can't wait to pass the level or even want to cross from the bottom of the sea...
Grow survival material
This part of the motivation for exploration comes from the player's desire to make themselves stronger. He can choose to find the Elemental Pupil and offer it to the Seven Heavenly Gods to increase his stamina limit; he can go to the treasure chest to obtain treasures and Elemental Seals, which can be exchanged for the items he wants in the shop; he can go to the wild to mine, minerals can be used to upgrade his weapons; he can go to bosses to get the key materials needed to cultivate his character; he can even collect and cook ingredients to replenish his health, increase defense and attack in battle, and so on. It is worth mentioning that many minerals, ingredients, and cultivation materials are not marked in the map, that is to say, players need to go to every corner of the Tivat continent to find the materials they need, and after collecting the materials, mark the special symbols on the map, then when they need this material next time, they will know where to look. Needless to say, survival materials are far more attractive than any other motivation for exploration, after all, force value is the goal of the player.
The flow of resources of the original god core
Character nurturing resource flow map
Weapon cultivation resource flow map
Objects that emit light
In the subconscious of most players, it is always thought that the place where the light will shine is likely to be buried with treasure. Proto-God also fully applies this psychology in the design of the Tivat continent. For example, after defeating an enemy, a sparkling item that falls to the ground; such as a glittering sunset fruit that grows on a tree; such as a red aperture around a treasure chest and a red monument in the wild, which attracts the player to challenge the treasure; such as a floating fairy, follow it you can find the treasure chest. The reason why the glowing object attracts the player's attention is because it is different from the surrounding environment, so on the continent of Tivat, there may be treasure not only where the light is emitted, but any place where you feel abnormal may be buried with treasure. This anomaly could be three piles of stone pillars on the grass you pass by, or it could be rocks of a different color than those around you.
A scene of triangles
The application of the scene triangulation rule is mainly reflected in the two aspects of static and dynamic, static is the cutting-edge design of the building terrain, and dynamic is the occlusion vision in the travel route. The first is the cutting-edge design of the building's terrain, due to the natural tip-guiding advantage of triangles, so players often have the impulse to climb to the highest point of the building or terrain during exploration, and often get unexpected gains here. Then there is the obscuration of vision in the travel route, where the triangle scene can be divided into three levels, large, medium, and small, with large triangles often used as the destination of the route as the most obvious landmark building, neutral triangles used as a natural visual barrier between places and places, and small triangles used as control points for the rhythm of the journey. As the player continues to move forward, "the other side of the scene gradually emerges with the pace of progress", attracting the player to continue to walk forward to see what is different on the way ahead.
3. The core battle mode of the original god - elemental damage
The battle mode of the original gods is divided into physical damage and elemental damage. Physical damage is related to the weapon a character uses, while elemental damage is caused by reactions between seven attributes: ice, water, fire, thunder, wind, rock, and grass. With the proper use of elemental reactions, you can gain an unexpected advantage in battle.
The first is physical damage, depending on the type of weapon used, we can divide the characters into legal characters, one-handed sword characters, two-handed sword characters, and bow characters. Among them, except for the french characters who are completely elemental damage, the rest of the characters have physical damage. As the main output, the two-handed sword is the most attack rate of all characters, suitable for attacking shield-wielding monsters, and the best candidate for mining. One-handed swords and spears can also be used as main output, although their attack rate is lower than that of two-handed swords, but the attack speed is fast, so the character's DPS is not low. Finally, there is the bow character, for the player, the heavy hit aiming mechanism of this type of character is more difficult to operate, and the attack rate is relatively low, so it is often used as an auxiliary or puzzle tool person.
The second is elemental damage, in the continent of Tivat, all food has elemental attributes, which are composed of seven elements: ice, water, fire, thunder, wind, rock, and grass. When contact occurs between different elements, elemental reactions may occur. All elemental reactions can be divided into three main categories, damage, amplification, and special.
The first type of injury elemental reaction refers to the additional damage that will be triggered after the element contacts, which is the key means of our output, which has the following forms:
The second type of amplification elemental reaction does not deal damage by itself, but increases the amount of attribute damage.
The third type of special elemental reaction produces a variety of tactical effects.
Whether it is physical damage or elemental damage, all the damage of "Protoss" can be critical hit, next let's take a look at the Protoshin damage announcement, interested players can take a look:
Here is a brief introduction to the monster resistance damage absorption ratio and the monster defense damage reduction ratio. The monster injury ratio is a segmented function:
The damage reduction ratio of monster defense is also called level suppression:
From the above formula, it is clear that the damage played by the player is related to the player's attack power, elemental mastery, critical strike chance, critical hit damage, and also related to the defense and resistance of the monster. On the side of reducing monster resistance and defense, players can only do it by increasing their level, and the value changes are very small. On the player's own side, the damage to monsters can be increased by stacking equipment and the Critical Strike Rate and Critical Hit Damage entry of the Holy Relic.
Finally, let's talk about the team matching of the original gods, first of all, due to the open world of the original gods, the two-handed sword and bow characters in the team are necessary, the former is used for mining, the latter is used to solve puzzles. Secondly, it is best to have a water elemental character and a wind elemental character, the former is used to restore health, the latter triggers a diffusion reaction, and the remaining two seats are either thunder element + fire element, which together with the wind element character causes "overload" and "diffusion" reactions, or ice element + thunder element, and wind elemental together trigger "superconductivity" and "diffusion" reactions.
Fourth, the target user group of the original god
From the perspective of landing platform, at present, the original god has landed on four platforms, namely Android, Apple, PC, PS, that is to say, the target user group of the original god is all gamers. In the user groups of all platforms, mobile phone users are the most important user group of "Original God", most of the income of the original god also comes from this part of the group, and the game has a good experience on the PC side, with good gamepad adaptation, so it has also seized a lot of PC users, and PS and the NS version of the game that may be in the future mainly focuses on overseas markets. In fact, it is impossible to make a game meet the requirements of all platform players at the same time, and the original god in this area also exposed some problems, from the lower limit of the platform's skills, the optimization of the mobile version of the "original god" is really not close to the people, dissuading many low-end players, from the upper limit of the platform's skills, the game has the phenomenon of frame drop, texture delay, many host players are not very satisfied with this.
In terms of user attributes, most of the players of "Original God" belong to the two-dimensional users, and the character drawing, gameplay type, voice actor cv, and game plot in the game production are all accurately hit on the preferences of this type of player. After that, the game's interaction system, commercialization model, and even game operation must be planned according to the characteristics of such players, so it is very important to study the user attributes of two-dimensional players. The player's user attributes include age, gender, common apps, preferences, personality traits, and more.
gender
In the entire two-dimensional user group, the proportion of male users is very high, accounting for almost 70%, and the proportion of women is too low, so the original god is not a female game. Its overall plot is biased towards blood and reasoning, and there are more female card characters, and most of the characters so far are female characters, which is in line with the preferences of male users.
age
The number of young people in the second dimension is the largest, the proportion of users aged 14 to 20 is more than 70%, most of them are mainly students, and nearly 40% of them are players, who spend more than 4 hours a day on a game (including terminal games, page games, and mobile games). So even if the open-world gameplay of the original god needs to take up a large chunk of the player's continuous time, there are still many players who can accept it.
Commonly used apps
According to the survey, in addition to games, two-dimensional gamers also like to use music, novels, video apps, so in addition to the game production itself, art, gameplay, game music, plot, and even cutscenes are also important points that can attract two-dimensional players.
like
Among the hobbies of two-dimensional players, in addition to the top-ranked anime and games, there are two particularly prominent hobbies, namely peripheral and offline activities. Secondary users have consumption in derivatives beyond our imagination. Many offline activities, such as COSPLAY, comic exhibitions, etc., are also an important way to promote two-dimensional games. It has been two years since the public beta, and the resulting humanistic novels, surrounding and offline attractions are also loved by players.
Personality traits
Two-dimensional users have three particularly important personality traits: decentralized opinion leaders, almost faith-like love, and another world in their hearts. The latter two are easy to understand, and the first decentralized opinion leader is an important feature of the two-dimensional users, they are extremely picky and extremely tolerant, they love what they recognize, they have their own fixed social circles, they do not force themselves or force others to integrate into other circles, and therefore, the guild-like social system that is popular in other games does not apply to the original gods.
Fifth, social systems and commercialization models
As mentioned above, one of the more important characteristics of secondary users is to go to the center of opinion leaders, they have their own fixed social circles, and they do not like to force themselves into other circles that are not suitable for themselves. Therefore, today's social system of "Original God" is only a mutual help model, and the temporary mutual assistance between strangers does not need to be regularly online to fight monsters and other binding relationships. It turns out that this PVE rather than PVP mode is more popular with players, who do not want their world to be disturbed by many strangers, preferring to immerse themselves in their own world. And this kind of weak social gameplay also limits the game's business model to a certain extent.
At present, the main profit model of the game is divided into two types, namely the in-app purchase system and the buyout system. The buyout system sells the reputation of the game and the pool of buyers, the audience of the game determines the revenue of the game, due to the relationship between the market, the current revenue of the domestic buyout game is not very much. And the purchase of the game is the player's growth space, the player just started to enter the game, his growth space is very large, but as the player in the game and liver and krypton, his growth level is constantly improving, the growth space is also shrinking, this time the game planning will add some growth lines in the game, but the speed of addition must not keep up with the speed of player growth, when the player grows to a certain extent, in order to open up the gap between players, most of the games will increase the cost of player growth, Let his liver take longer to krypton more gold, this time the player's input-output ratio is declining, when it drops to a certain extent, the player will stop recharging or even losing. This is the monetization model for most games with PVP as the main model. As a game with a weak social orientation, the original god allows players to experience the fun of the game itself and immerse themselves in it. Therefore, it does not dig a deep payment pit in character growth and equipment, but expands the numerical system horizontally, that is, to bring players a paid experience with card drawing as the core.
The original god has a total of two payment lines, one is to draw characters, weapons card pool, first of all, the original god will release the official character PV, attract players to the character pool for card draw, and the various guarantee mechanisms of the card pool will attract players to continue to draw cards, such as ten draws must be out of the four-star items, 90 draws must be out of the five-star items, until the player draws the desired role. The other is the Battle Pass, or Pearl Kiyuki, which is mainly a paid point designed for character development. The battle pass has two lines, one is the free line (Dadi Jixing), one is the paid line (Pearl Kixing), which attracts players to pay attention to this pass through the way of free line, and then distinguishes players with different payment abilities through this high-level layering method, as long as the player stays in the game long enough, as his Jixing level increases, one day will reach the best price/performance ratio in his mind, then the player has a high probability of buying. For a game with a large number of DAU levels like Harashin, the benefits obtained through the Battle Pass are also considerable.
Sixth, the creation of pan-IP
The purpose of creating a pan-IP is actually to expand the game ecology, before discussing this, it is necessary to understand how the original god planned its plot.
The plot planning of the original god can be divided into five major parts, namely the theme, world view, characters, scenes, and plot.
topic
The first is the theme, which is relatively abstract, the starting point and axis point of the creator's creation, and the cognitive point that the player is expected to be expected. The theme is divided into an purpose-oriented theme and a thinking-oriented theme, and the purpose-oriented theme is generally aimed at a simpler game, such as Super Mary, whose theme is to defeat the villain and rescue the princess, and justice will eventually triumph over evil. The thought-oriented theme is relatively metaphysical, based on a large, complex worldview and plot, and the player can think and argue through the entire development of the game. From the very beginning, the protagonist came to the Tivat Continent as a foreigner without magic organs, but could manipulate the power of the elements; in the next Mond chapter, the wind god Barbatos gave up his rule over Mond and let Mond choose his own way of life; then the glass moon chapter, the rock god Morax terminated the "contract between god and the glass moon", and the seven stars of the glass moon opened the "contract between the glass moon and the person"; followed by the rice wife chapter, the thunder god Barr issued an eye hunting order, In order to rescue the protagonist who opposed the general's order, Kaedehara Manba took her "thoughtless knife". This theme is actually the contradiction between the power of the gods and the will of human beings, as the plot continues to advance, the relationship between them changes from freedom to contract to suppression, the contradiction continues to intensify and eventually erupts, the result is that the human will can overcome the power of the gods, in the second world view, the original ancient kingdom of the Tivat continent, Kanrira, is a kingdom without gods, but it is destroyed by the alien sky island, and this setting also echoes the theme.
Worldview
The world view is a very large module, and the original god's world view can be mainly divided into three major blocks, vertical world history, horizontal social structure, and overall environmental setting.
The first is the vertical world history, its end point is the beginning of the game plot, and the starting point is the difference with the real world, in the original god is the elemental force, the Tivat continent was composed of elements from the beginning, so the entire history of the Tivat continent is fictional. At this point, the original god adopts the method of multi-layered historical structure, its surface history is the Seven Kingdoms of the Earth, based on this world, there is a buried civilization underground, that is, the Kingdom of Karria, in the plot of The Rice Wife, a new ancient country story appears again - the White Night Kingdom. This architectural approach gives the player a second sense of purpose, allowing the player to complete the main quest while generating the desire to explore more history. At first, there are no gods on the continent of Tivat, Kanria becomes a superpower with its own technology, then the gods descend, the Demon God War breaks out, the seven earthly rulers rule their own kingdoms, and then Kanria and the White Night Kingdom are destroyed by Sky Island, and finally the game plot begins. It runs through the experiences of some major events and important people, forming the development of the entire history of the world.
Regarding the social structure, at present, the original god map only opens three countries, Mond's system is close to the city-state democracy, which is governed by the Knights of the West Wind; the rizuki is close to the parliamentary monarchy, and the rock god gives the power to the rizuki seven stars, and the rizuki seven stars have full control over the affairs of the ritsuki; indyata is a monarchical dictatorship, and the general Thor controls all the rights, and there are three institutions under it to carry out orders for her. Compared with other games, this part of the original god structure is actually rougher.
Finally, there is the setting of the natural environment, including the design of the large map of the entire Tivat continent, the biological environment and resource attributes that exist, which have been mentioned in the design of the second part of the Tivat continent. Knowing these three points, the original god's world view can be roughly grasped.
figure
Characters are a very important part of plot planning, he can not only promote the development of the entire world view and plot, but also some classic characters can also help shape the memory points of the game. There are generally two ways to shape the character, one is people-oriented, this character is designed at the beginning, so the degree of freedom in the setting and experience is relatively high, such as the original god Wendy, Zhong Li, General Raiden, the screenwriter spent a lot of ink to describe which enemies these three characters have defeated, how tough the force value is, because they are the symbols of Mond, Li Yue and Inari. There is also a way to create characters based on needs, such as Manyo, who is a very important character in Theatoshi, because he saved the protagonist and took over the "thoughtless knife", so why did he have such an act? The character experience of this behavior of the original god is that he once had a friend who dueled with the general in order to resist the eye hunting order, and when Manyo arrived, the friend had died under the general's knife, and he did not have time to save his friend, so he would wander around, and when he learned that the protagonist was facing a situation similar to that of his friend, he would fight to save the protagonist.
scenario
Regarding the design of the scene, the difference can be clearly felt when the protagonist travels through different countries. The overall hue of Mond is green, the terrain is dominated by plains, covered with forests, and partial European-style buildings; the moon is dominated by gold tones, with many mountains towering and chinese architecture; Inari is covered with a faint purple color, which is a country composed of many small islands, with wave boats as the main means of transportation, you can see a lot of cherry blossoms, and the architecture is more Japanese.
plot
The two more important parts of the plot are the climax design and the interaction design. The first is the climactic design, taking the barrier to the ruins of the wind dragon in the Mond chapter as an example, this goal set for the player, in the pursuit of this goal, split out some key target nodes for pre-laying, first find Wendy, then look for wind dragon teardrops, purify the wind dragon teardrops, and then steal the sky organ, repair the sky piano, and finally played by Wendy. The second design is interaction design, the original god in this area to do only touch screen click, take pictures, etc., but in fact, the interaction design is more complex than these, the player hopes that the interaction can have an impact on the world, there are different branch endings, but this is also a huge requirement for the planning workload, this multi-ending branch generally does more single-player, when the player's emotions change, insert interactive entry points, render the player's emotions, and then let the player make a choice, when the player abandons the rational choice, When he chooses the emotional choice, his emotions reach a climax, and his memory of this plot point will be very deep. However, there is only one plot line of the original god, and the player can only passively accept it, and many times the player has forgotten this part of the plot after completing the task.
The above five parts, especially the world view, together constitute the IP of the original god, and the reason why this point is raised is because of the current profitability of the game, according to the survey. The revenue of online games peaks at the beginning of the game launch for one or two years, and then it will decline rapidly, mobile games will be faster, and the in-app purchase of games will gradually decrease as the growth space shrinks. According to this trend, this game will become less and less profitable, and now a common practice is to create a pan-IP, through the world view to close a group of pan-users, this group because there is no game shackles, their adhesion is actually higher, due to the acceptance of the world view, they are more likely to pay for familiar content, such as movies, peripherals, comics, stage plays and so on. At the same time, it is also possible to transfer the gameplay, which is what the Yin-Yang Division Baiwen Card and the Decisive Battle Heian Kyo do. With the development of the times, people's time is more and more fragmented, in order to seize the time of various fragmentation, the future original god can cut out a variety of different branch versions, to adapt to a variety of different users, and then through the same IP to associate these versions, this is actually the expansion of the game ecology.
This article is only the author's personal experience and perception in the experience of the game, some of the content draws on Zelda's design, if there is a lack of writing, welcome to criticize and correct the industry seniors.