In recent years, the popularity of open-world games can be said to be obvious to all.
This category with super-large-scale maps, massive interactions, and diversified gameplay seems to have become synonymous with AAA production and has been sought after by a large number of players. Of course, this category also has a high degree of research and development difficulties. Without the resources, technology and input, there is no way to water a world with texture.
In the face of the open world heat and market trends, many domestic manufacturers are also working intensively to try. Even some IPs that I never envisioned to be linked to the open world have already handed over their answers. For example, "Tianya Mingyue Knife OL" (hereinafter referred to as Tiandao), which created the "City on the Clouds" exploration gameplay in the new expansion film, surprised me.
For this MMO product, which is now in its seventh year, I have looked at it from many dimensions. Battle design, graphic technology, social construction, and e-sports operations can be said to be the highlights of this IP.
But even though I had participated in the large-scale offline activities carried out by Tiandao in Zhangjiajie and other places, and knew that the official would carry the famous mountains and rivers into the game, I never thought that the game would eventually be presented in such an independent open world gameplay.
Today, the Cloud City expansion pack has been online for several months, and the second area of Cloud City was unveiled in April this year, in which the independent open exploration gameplay has given new vitality to the big world of Cloud City.
However, for the beginning and end of the birth of the open world gameplay of "Sky Knife" and the direction of development, the author still has many questions. Good MMORPG, do you really need to join the open world gameplay? What about the MMO audience's feedback on the exploration gameplay?
Full of curiosity, I found Tiandao IP architecture planning evening song and engine development engineer Dao Chang, who works from home in Shanghai. The two core members of northern lights studios told me that this challenging trip to the open world was stressful, but it was also "great value."
How hard is the open world?
When it comes to why "Sky Knife" challenges the open world, the evening song tells me that there are two main reasons: "One is that this game is currently popular at home and abroad, which is the trend of the times; second, in the previous player survey, nearly 50% of users have expectations for open world gameplay." ”
The call of the players gave the team the idea of jumping out of the "comfort zone", but this step was naturally not easy to take too big. Therefore, Cloud City Exploration is mainly a "local attempt" based on the traditional MMORPG architecture, which meets the needs of users and makes some verification for the future.
This attempt at gameplay based on the original framework will naturally encounter limitations in dimensions such as MMO architecture, toolchain logic, and gameplay mechanics. But for Sky Knife players, this new approach that completely jumps out of the inherent framework and focuses on immersive exploration is already attractive. From the perspective of the team members, this is also a good opportunity to practice the gameplay design and test the user experience in the mature product, and the team's production mode, design concept, and tool flow can take this opportunity to upgrade and transform.
And such a project, which is full of value no matter how you look at it, has actually started, but the team members have experienced a very severe test, and they have not completely "eased up" so far.
"There are about forty or fifty people involved in this project, which is definitely a small manpower for an open-world game." Evening Song said: "The team only began to develop from the second half of last year, and it took more than half a year to officially go online, and the small partners worked very hard throughout the process." ”
Even though the team had made preparations for planning, technical preparations, and physical engine exploration a long time in advance, the pressure of manpower and schedule still made the members feel anxious. In particular, the outbreak of the epidemic in Shanghai this year has brought many additional inconveniences to the team.
"Our working state is often just turned off the editor, we have to open the software to start grabbing dishes, it is really hard. Fortunately, everyone is very conscious and dedicated, and has maintained a fairly good working state. Evening Song sighed: "Now that I think about it, it is a miracle that I can make this model online." ”
You may think that for a mature studio like Northern Lights, it is not difficult to update "Sky Knife". But this open world exploration attempt is definitely a major test of "from 0 to 1".
As an MMORPG product, Sky Knife has never focused on map exploration before. The hard power accumulated by the team in MMO gameplay does not seem to have much in common with the design needs of the open world. Looking at the MMO online game market, the products that can do a good job of open exploration and design are very limited. In such a dilemma that it does not have enough accumulation and the outside world lacks suitable reference, the team must explore a sufficiently perfect gameplay structure in order to truly land the project.
Technically, although the technical level and self-developed engine of Northern Lights Studio have always been praised, the optimization pressure brought about by large-scale open maps and Shanghai details has brought no small challenge to the team.
The new expansion pack adds a map that is already four times larger than the largest maps in the past. The scenes, objects, and vegetation in the Cloud City Exploration gameplay are also much more than the planning in the original map, plus a large number of mechanism decryption and scene interaction, which makes the consumption of the engine become particularly huge. While the scene specifications are rising, the user's hardware level is a constraint that cannot be ignored.
"According to our research, many players' computers are still configured years ago, and they will not iterate on hardware as our map specifications improve." "So for me, the pressure is mainly to spend more effort on players of different hardware levels to have the same smooth experience, and at the same time not to have a significant degradation of the game effect," said the governor. ”
It is not difficult to see that it is a chore to present a world that is sufficiently immersive. Without a deep understanding of this gameplay and the corresponding technical means, it is difficult for users to feel the texture of a real world. Fortunately, in the first phase of cloud city open exploration gameplay, "Sky Knife" can be regarded as finding its own answer and starting point.
A suspenseful "sci-fi martial arts" journey
If Sky Knife is going to be an open world, what should it look like?
In this regard, the evening song said that the core fun of the open world is still "exploration". "When I play open world games, the most enjoyable thing is to explore the unknown, to run to places, to meet those unexpected and reasonable surprises, it is a very pure joy." 」
This sense of exploration is easy to say, but to implement it into the play experience, it is very challenging to the design and scheduling skills of the creator. In order to create a better sense of exploration, the Northern Lights team hopes to explore a "loop" of experiences that constantly motivates players. Just as in RPG we are accustomed to "battle-grow-fight", the team intends to build another dimension of motivational loops with the theme of exploration.
"Our vision is to guide players to enrich the means of exploration through exploration, such as means that can go to more places, means of solving more puzzles and mechanisms, and then these means will help players carry out new explorations and solve more puzzles, thus obtaining corresponding rewards." I think this is a very positive cycle, and whether you can do this cycle well is undoubtedly the key to the whole open exploration game. The evening song concluded.
With perfect gameplay logic, it also needs enough narrative and theme elements to be packaged, and the accumulation of "Sky Knife" IP in this regard is sufficient. In order to create an environment that is "full of threat, but full of desire to explore", the production team introduced concepts such as "mysterious meteorites of the Northern Song Dynasty" in the IP concept, allowing unexpected science fiction elements to mix martial arts themes to refresh the player's habitual cognition.
Evening Song told me with great interest: "In a martial arts world, how to use a logic that conforms to that era to explain the effects of meteorite radiation is very interesting and mysterious in itself, and naturally makes people have a desire to explore." ”
Well, the background of the meteorite falling martial arts world that triggered the mutation does sound a bit ridiculous. But if you've actually explored the city on the clouds, you'll find that the game doesn't throw out the settings roughly, but does a lot of delicate laying out. Through various fragmented narratives and stacking of details, the production team gradually guides players to analyze the truth behind various visions. In a bizarre setting, this is still a martial arts story close to the ancient dragon-style detective.
Every letter in the scene, the purple blade firefly used by the player, the glass fragments scattered on the ground, and other elements have multiple functions such as plot narrative, gameplay content, and atmosphere rendering. The team's integration of the main story, free exploration and decryption interaction into a whole makes this mysterious event of "Eight Wild Disciples Exploring Meteorite Radiation" particularly gripping.
"We wanted to have a whole setting to connect all the fragmented content scattered around the map, which was actually one of the principles that we needed to follow most in the overall design." The evening song added to this.
Obviously, Cloud City Exploration is a model full of detail and design. In order to accurately present the characteristics and atmosphere envisaged by the team, it undoubtedly needs technical support. The polishing of the technical level is also the key to the smooth formation of this "open world of the heavenly knife".
Every grass and tree in the game can be said to have been repeatedly deliberated. For example, in an animation of vine growth triggered by a purple blade, the team had to think about details such as "how many leaves are displayed and whether they can swing in the wind".
"The animation demand for this vine growth, we began to explore the realization plan in the second half of last year, until this year it was finally completed." But it's one thing to show this effect, and it's another thing to achieve the quality that can be online. The Dao Commander explained specifically: "To present the effect under limited resources, without affecting the entire gameplay experience, so that the frame rate does not change significantly, so that the consumption of video memory is also within a controllable range, which requires a lot of debugging." ”
In particular, in the scene of this Cloud City exploration gameplay, a very delicate physical collision effect was added, which added many problems to the team. Due to the early establishment of the "Sky Knife", a complete physical collision system was not added at that time. Now to upgrade the physical collision system, it is not only necessary to be compatible with the two sets of collision systems of the old map and the new map, but also to make a lot of adjustments to the effect details.
Dao Chang said: "Our art and planning colleagues usually only put forward the general effect requirements, and for the specific effect and precision of the physical collision, we need to control it." How to make the art and planning open up the entire map production chain with almost no perception is a very important difficulty. ”
Overall, the open world challenge of "Sky Knife" not only accumulates experience in the design structure of the exploration gameplay, but also promotes the improvement of technical strength with the upgrading of the self-developed engine. This has laid a solid foundation for the follow-up update of Tiandao IP and even the exploration of more development directions of the MMO category. But is this direction of innovation really something that "Sky Knife" players are happy to see?
MMO players, will they fall in love with open world?
When I talked to the two developers about the feedback of the players on the cloud city exploration gameplay, they said that the discussion was very hot, but there were still many differences in the experience of users with different preferences.
Some single-player parties, leisure parties or exploratory players are naturally very comfortable with this game. Even some users who are not so familiar with the open world gameplay can gradually immerse themselves in the story and atmosphere of Cloud City exploration.
Player feedback
However, traditional MMO users who pay more attention to cultivation and socialization will obviously feel uncomfortable, and have no small opinions about some of the puzzle solving and platform jumping content covered in the game. In particular, users who have the idea of "revenue first" will think that the gameplay that needs to be explored with a deep heart is a "waste of time".
Player feedback
These completely different experience feedbacks can't help but make me start to think: when a new model that is different from the previous gameplay structure appears in the game, how can the team guide, leave enough space, and package attractiveness?
I believe that the boldness of bold innovation is certainly worth encouraging, but the new gameplay that falls from the sky still needs to serve the player's experience, and too much fragmentation or compulsion will greatly reduce the charm of the new content.
The first and most important thing is undoubtedly the guidance of the production team to the players. The temptation to play rewards can only be regarded as one of the dimensions, and more importantly, it may be to continue to try to stimulate the player's motivation to explore, make them fall in love with this immersive gameplay, and form a recognition of the open world of the "Sky Knife" style, thus paving the way for the subsequent improvement of Cloud City exploration.
As for players who are completely uninterested in exploration, they must also be given the power to "not play" and let them focus on their favorite areas. On this basis, leave some room for them to reward them, and not become outsiders completely. It's also important for them to realize that the new model is the icing on the cake and not the main story.
Of course, the production team must have been more prescient than me, a layman who only talks about how to mitigate the conflict between the MMO and the open world in terms of experience.
The evening song told me that the team has always been concerned about the voice of the players. For example, after receiving feedback such as not being able to adapt to new perspectives, the team will urgently follow up and make optimizations overnight. For those users who are not accustomed to exploring the gameplay, the official follow-up may also launch a system like entrusted tasks, allowing players to obtain Cloud City tokens by completing the commission and redeem corresponding rewards. This idea of timely adjustment according to player feedback, I think to a large extent can also ensure that players better adapt to content updates.
At present, the open exploration gameplay of the city on the cloud is only the first phase, and how this mode will continue to fill in the content and attract more new and old players to invest in it is still unknown. But I believe that in the 3.0 era of the "Sky Knife" IP, this will definitely be the biggest challenge and opportunity for this product.
Adding the burden of open world exploration to the MMO content update is undoubtedly a tough protracted battle for the team. And once the charm of this gameplay module is fully stimulated, the possibilities are immeasurable. "Heavenly Knife" has now opened a new window, and whether the follow-up can persist in walking out of a new era of uniqueness remains to be observed.