preface
In November 2018, "After Tomorrow" was launched, and a commercial mobile game paradigm with post-apocalyptic survival as the packaging and differential gameplay, and a long RPG as a clue appeared. After the launch, the data performance was eye-catching, with more than 3000W registered in 12 days, DAU breaking 1500W, and an estimated turnover of more than 600 million in the first month.
After a few years, there was no competition that was unexpectedly able to fight, until recently, Tencent's self-developed "Dawn Awakening" and Byte's "Planet Restart" Taiwan server were released one after another, and the category of open-world shooting RPG (let's call it that) that had been dormant for several years became lively again.
Earth: Revival promotional material
The high basic quality and many more complete details of "Planet Reboot" show the development of the category. Although the commercial data after the launch is not too dazzling - the first week of Taiwanese service performance is 120w downloads, revenue of 150w US dollars (dual-ended iOS + Google), it is still worth our in-depth study.
On the other hand, some products similar to "Once Human" that are still in the research and development period are still further exploring the boundaries of the category, and also urge us to take a closer look at the characteristics of the category.
"Once Human" featuring the theme of Cthulhu
This article will take "Planet: Reboot" as the main clue, and compare the design of "After Tomorrow" and "Dawn Awakening" horizontally, in order to see the design details and trade-offs made by the category in each gameplay module.
In the article, we will mainly explore the following questions and try to give answers:
● What is the core design framework of the open world shooter RPG mobile game? What are the possible trade-offs involved in the rulemaking of each module, and where are the decision-making points?
● Which designs belong to the atmosphere design, which can be selected according to the project's capabilities, and which are the core experience components that must be polished in place?
● Why is "After Dawn" so crotch-pulling, and which of its designs led to failure?
● Based on several existing products, what is the possible development of the category in the future, and is there a possibility of further explosions?
Part 1. Analysis of the main gameplay
1. Open world map design
1.1. Map organization
In essence, the worlds of shooting RPGs such as After Tomorrow, Dawn Awakening, and Planet Restart are "discrete", that is, the entire world is made up of "separate maps". The main differences lie in two main points:
● Whether the player is directly loading through the image to skip the field, or whether there is a package;
● When you come to the boundary of the map, whether you can simply be closed and cannot continue to move forward, or can you seamlessly cross to another map;
In the interpretation of jumping between maps, "After Tomorrow" and "Planet Awakening" have added a layer of packaging - by placing the player in a space-independent helicopter cabin or in a different dimension, making the action of loading the map more natural.
Jumping maps through independent spaces is a good package
In terms of map boundary processing, "After Tomorrow" and "Dawn Awakening" are loaded seamlessly, and players will naturally arrive at another map after crossing the map boundary. Planet Reboot, on the other hand, has various obstacles at the border, and although the player's world can still see into the distance, it is actually inaccessible.
Restart processing at the boundary
This reflects the fact that whether or not to do seamless loading has nothing to do with whether there is a big world, but with the player's path to play. If the player's path is actually teleportation-based, like "Dawn Awakening", the teleportation itself is very convenient, and the player's actual play path is frequently teleported, then the cost performance of seamless loading is low.
On the contrary, if the design is appropriate, even if it is not seamlessly loaded, it can still have a good sense of "big world". For example, in "Planet Restart", the huge structure in the vista and the wide field of view all suggest that the player's world is large, and the visual extension and reasonable blocking at the boundary can make the player realize the rationality of his inability to pass the boundary.
These processes embody the "deceptive properties" of the game, just as a few curtains and simple paths in a stage play are enough to give the brain a good imagination without actually building a huge scene.
The distant mountains and open horizons hint at the vastness of the world
1.2. Grasp the scale of transmission
In commercial games, for the convenience of players, teleportation is almost a necessary function, and its difficulty is mainly reflected in the grasp of the scale of teleportation ability.
If the teleportation function is too convenient, then a lot of polishing and design in the scene may become useless, and players will use teleportation frequently instead of vehicles or legs to see the world for themselves. The problem is that too convenient teleportation will cause modules such as vehicles and mounts to lose their design meaning.
And if the transmission is too troublesome, it loses the original purpose of the transmission function.
A related problem is how to reasonably design the player's "mobility upgrade", that is, plan the pace and speed of the player's mobile ability improvement, so as not to obtain too high teleportation ability too early.
Shooting RPG class map transmission rules
Compared with the teleportation rules of the three games, After Tomorrow is the most troublesome, while Dawn Awakens is the most convenient. In fact, the subsequent design of "After Tomorrow" made a compromise, and the "autopilot" function was later updated, so that the journey of the player to the only fixed exit can be completed automatically, which reduces the degree of hardcore to a certain extent; Some vehicles added the ability to "teleport on the side", which also abandoned the initial design of very few teleportation points.
After Tomorrow automatically navigates after specifying a destination
1.3. Resource Collection Rules
An important feature of the so-called "shooting RPG with survival gameplay" is that all props were originally generated by gameplay such as monster drops or quest chests, and now various resource points distributed on the map can also produce materials, and players can collect them through logging and collecting such methods as logging and collecting.
The main trade-off here is – can low-level collection tools collect high-level minerals? That is, whether there is only a difference in efficiency or whether there is a difference between different levels of tools.
A more common approach is that low-level gathering tools can mine high-level minerals and produce basic resources, but the rate of rare material drops becomes very low. The main reason for this design is to avoid the problem that players cannot collect resources for the first time when they go to the second-level map, and to take care of novice players; On the other hand, it is also for "logical self-consistency", because usually when the player does not have any tools, the game will still give the player the ability to pick resources freehand. In this way, once the player reaches the advanced map, once the collection tool is exhausted, he can also use the basic resources to redo it. No need to run another low-level map.
In addition, in terms of numerical design, a significant feature is: basic resources must be out + large values; Rare resource probability out/condition out + decimal value. This method can better adapt to the numerical expansion caused by long growth lines and provide sufficient and easily perceptible material granularity.
1.4. Performance of resources in multiplayer mode
When player A collects resources in the big world, what will player B see? Is the resource simply disappearing or is the resource still there?
When the open map is multifaceted, it is necessary to answer the above questions. The full sense of realism and interaction is naturally the best, the world perceived by different players is completely consistent, and they can also grab mines with each other, at the cost of increasing the amount of synchronous data.
"Planet Reboot" does a rough job of resource gathering, players do not need to fight for mining, each player only needs to pay attention to their own mining progress.
Other players collect stones that I have already mined
1.5. "Exploration" design
Strictly speaking, exploration is more like a BP-like activity, but as the standard of games with "big world" elements, we can observe what exploration behaviors different games want players to do in the big world from the perspective of "game objectives".
As you can see, the design of the degree of exploration is much the same, and the game behaviors involved are nothing more than these in the table.
Planet Reboot exploratorship page
2. Performance of survival gameplay
2.1. Survival Attribute Rules
After Tomorrow is relatively simple when dealing with survival gameplay at the beginning, and the main numerical outlet is health, supplemented by stamina. The later works obviously focus on more complex survival attributes.
It can be seen that the main design point of the whole set of survival gameplay lies in what the "value export" is. The upper limit of physical strength, physical recovery speed, movement speed, etc. are all more suitable dimensions.
In addition, we will find that the later games have added a health design, and made "health" a buffer value for health. External negative effects, such as weather, only affect health, health to zero and then deduct blood, negative feedback is not too fast and too strong. By comparison, the design of "Planet Awakening" is more reasonable. Dawn awakened a lot of flowers, a little messy. And in fact, after playing it once, it quickly fell into boredom.
"Survival Gameplay" design at a glance
An inherent problem with things like hunger is that they are necessary for survival gameplay, but quickly become repetitive and cumbersome.
Some designs that avoid such questions already have ready-made answers, and in Valhalla, the exit of food is no longer hunger value, but direct combat power. In Dinkum, players don't go hungry, they just burn out their stamina when performing various actions. The general idea is to move away from decreasing values over time and instead use decreasing with behavior.
"Dawn Awakening" is too cluttered with survival attribute design
2.2. Collection tool design
The design of the acquisition tool is a relatively small module, which mainly increases the atmosphere. Here, the tools of After Tomorrow and Dawn Awakening are separate. Planet Reboot uses only one. However, all tools are durable, i.e. wear-resistant.
We can think more carefully about the difference in experience between attritional tools and permanent tools.
● Wearable tools provide a consumption port for the base material:
● The continuation of "logical self-consistency", considering the creation of a survival atmosphere, here the game has a "carry-on recipe" design, players can use some materials at hand to make some props anytime, anywhere.
Of course, we will find that there are also some game collection tools that are permanent and do not actually affect the fun of the game. Such as "Astroneer".
Planetary restart collection tool
As for the classification design of the collection tool, it is mainly pure atmosphere design.
Of course, more tools may mean more art asset manufacturing, although it can provide a certain degree of more "realism" in the experience, but in fact, after the initial freshness, it will be, and the main problem brought by multiple collection tools is "whether the switch is easy to use".
Easy design for switching acquisition tools
2.3. Weather & Diurnal Performance
Weather design will probably carry two purposes, one is to increase the sense of realism, which belongs to the atmosphere design; The other is used to create pressure and control the player's progress.
It can be seen that the current treatment of stress has gradually changed to use health values as a buffer value, and only higher stress weather directly affects health points.
Day and night, the performance of the seasons is also part of the authentic atmosphere design. For commercial games, however, this is not a necessary design. In the current product, day and night, the season is usually only bundled with relatively mild gameplay, such as the nighttime monster becomes stronger and stronger. It is because it is more positioned in the atmosphere group, and there is no need to invest too many resources in sculpting.
The day and night system adds realism to the game
3. Grow-up line
3.1. Cultivation Content
Here, Brainsky sorted out the cultivation pits of "After Tomorrow" and "Planet Restart". For reading fluency, two tables are placed in the appendix.
The development structure of "Planet Restart" is closer to that of card games, and a distinctive feature is that the enhancement value of the weapon is bound to the pit rather than the equipment, which means that the player's "upgrade equipment" action upgrades the equipment pit, not a specific equipment. In contrast, the enhancement value of "After Tomorrow" is bound to a specific piece of equipment, and after the equipment is abandoned, it needs to raise a new one, which is much deeper.
Fixed equipment pit for Planet Reboot
On the other hand, for the gameplay produced in cultivation materials, "Planet Restart" has also made clearer cuts.
Carefully calculated, the gameplay of "Planet Restart" is actually not much, and it can be summarized in even three categories, one is related to the big world, including gathering and fighting; The second is the copy combat class, in fact, the copy, climbing towers and the like are all this; The third is PVP class battles; It is equivalent to the game after doing a good job in these three types of gameplay, which is basically enough to support the first version of the gameplay.
In terms of cultivation rhythm, the early pursuit of "Planet Restart" is basically supported by active tokens of the big world and daily tasks, while the more later cultivation content relies on platform gameplay such as social and PVP to support.
On the whole, the partial card approach of "Planet Restart" is easier for players to understand, because it is a fixed pit + fixed gameplay, and it is more certain when it is liver or krypton, and the main price is the lack of depth. While depth is addressed through multiple characters in general cards, Planet Reboot does not have a corresponding design to support it.
In contrast, "After Tomorrow" is more scattered in terms of overall cultivation and delivery, and the structure is similar to traditional RPGs.
Part of the development content of "After Tomorrow"
3.2. Game Tempo Control
Three game rhythm control rules
For free to play commercial games, it is common to use some ways to card the player's progress and avoid players with high liver and high krypton from consuming game content too quickly.
The approach is similar, which is to forcibly set a single-day upper limit for a core value item to make restrictions. The difference is that After Tomorrow does not have character levels, but uses manor levels to control players, and hangs manor levels on strong SOC gameplay, which makes After Tomorrow look more existential (at least in the early days of the game).
Planet Awakening returns to character levels, using more direct "card experience" as restrictions. This makes the game feel more like a card RPG.
Another aspect of rhythm control is to level the progress between players to a certain extent, so as to avoid too divided game progress. It is more common to use a design similar to "server levels" to speed up players who progress slowly.
4. Socialize
4.1. Basic social pattern comparison
Planet Reboot has three levels of socialization, the closest roommates, roommates made up of four bases, and traditional guilds.
Here, we can see that the social compatibility of "Planet Restart" is the best, from the most intimate social to slightly loose, half-person roommates, to completely open guilds, basically covering common social relationships.
In "After Tomorrow", roommates sharing resources and upgrading the foundation of the two require the two to join the same camp and put their homes next to each other, which means that the intimacy must be attached to a stranger group, the guild. This design leads to some problems, such as once two originally co-built close friends are kicked out of the guild, the two must enter the same guild here and form the foundation again to complete the co-construction, and the overall operation cost is very high.
4.2. Co-construction & resource sharing
For "roommates" who carry intimate social interactions, what is more difficult to handle and grasp is the design of the two contents of "co-construction gameplay" and "resource sharing".
The first thing to decide is whether the two will build one estate or still build two after the joint construction. Essentially, it's a matter of positioning. Building an estate means that the relationship between roommates is very close, almost acquaintance or even couple; And keeping the original manor leaves some room for stranger roommates. Since "Planet Reboot" has a roommate relationship composed of a four-person base to accommodate strangers and semi-acquaintances, he directly chose the design of building a manor together.
A building built by Planet Reboot
In terms of resource sharing, several games have adopted a similar design. The basic idea is to transform the original broad problem of authority into a certain numerical problem of production and marketing, similar to the problem of wealth distribution solved by money in real society. The basic idea is as follows:
● There is a certain value between roommates to limit the use of materials (usually called tacit value), which will be filled periodically;
● The upper limit of the tacit understanding value can be increased, usually controlled by the intimacy system, and the intimacy applies to all friends;
● The tacit understanding value limits the number of material interactions, and the intimacy limits the types of material interactions;
Through such a system, the issue of permissions between roommates can be better handled.
All three games use similar mechanics to control access to items
4.3. Rules of Intimacies
The content of the intimacy rule reflects the game designer's expectations and encouragement for player interaction, and we record it in a table for subsequent design reference only.
5. The rest of the gameplay
In this section, we will briefly introduce the modules and list their design points, but will not go further.
5.1. Construction
The construction of the three games is not much different in terms of basic rules, and all use a modular building mode - buildings are built from structural components such as boards, walls, stairs, etc., on which furniture can be freely placed.
The game's homes are in a relatively independent plane rather than a large world, and the scope and location of the construction are relatively fixed, giving the player only limited freedom to build.
As the main carrier of personalization, the game provides a convenient path to the manor show.
The estate showcase page for Planet Reboot
5.2. Vehicles
Planet Reboot's vehicle selection page
5.3. Pets
Pet wishes for Planet Reboot
6. Core & Ambience Design
Through the discussion of the entire Part 1, we can list the following table to identify the core design and atmosphere design in the category design.
Part 2. Discussion of a number of thematic issues
7. Why is the combat experience in Planet Reboot better?
7.1. Mowing induction is the main pursuit experience of shooting PVE
Comparing these three games, we can clearly feel that the combat feeling of "Planet Reboot" is the best. We will not discuss the issue of shooting feel here. Only emphasize the importance of creating a mower feeling in "shooting PVE".
To do this, "Planet Reboot" in terms of monster design:
● Dense and melee mobs
● Huge and oppressive silly bosses
First, adding more and denser melee monsters to shooting battles helps create just the right amount of pressure. Compared to ranged enemies, melee enemies are close and visually more oppressive, and they cannot actually deal damage without contact. This feeling that looks scary but is actually not dangerous is more suitable.
On the other hand, the number of enemies is higher. If the high-speed shooting of firearms is only directed at one monster output, there will be a feeling of gun fatigue.
"Planet Reboot" - "Bug Hunting" is the best shooting experience
The size of the boss is as large as possible, and the silly and large boss can give enough excitement.
Huge bosses bring a sense of oppression
7.2. RPG-based skills have more room for design
On the other hand, the more RPG "character skills" design in "Planet Reboot" also adds a lot to its shooting experience.
First of all, every gun in "Planet Reboot" will have skills, and skill types such as energy balls, rocket launches, etc. are relatively close to RPG skills, and they have low release requirements while hitting high damage. "Dawn Awakening" also made a similar skill design, but let's observe that its skills are very FPS ideas - throwing grenades, Molotov cocktails, etc., to achieve the release effect has certain requirements for operation and timing, and the performance effect is not as strong as "Planet Restart".
Skill release in Dawn Awakening
8. Why can't the goal of Dawn Awaken never be established?
To elaborate on the shortcomings of "Dawn Awakening" will be the volume of another long article, here we will discuss only a few main points to get a glimpse of what happens if this category does not do well? Why will it not be done well. The design deficiencies in the details will not be repeated here.
8.1 The goal of home building has never been established
Most players started with After Tomorrow from Liver Manor, and it also spent a lot of ink on the player's original home. At least the following combined forces have formed a strong sense of liver home in "After Tomorrow"
● A large number of early guidance is completed in the home
● The house was there at the beginning, but it was relatively broken
● There is a strong need to go home due to food, storage, etc
Planet Reboot is similar: after finishing the beginner level first, players go straight to their home.
● A large number of early guidance is completed in the home
● The house was there at the beginning, but it was relatively basic
● There is a strong need to go home for food, storage, etc. (especially drinking water, electricity supplementation, etc., to go home)
The original house of After Tomorrow
In contrast, the home of "Dawn Awakening" has been relatively light:
● The guidance is mainly completed in the "main city", and the scene of his own home is very light
● The time point to unlock is very rear, and even a battle quest has been completed
● At the beginning there were no houses, only completely blank foundations. At this time, the player places a wall panel and roof to make a closed house, which becomes a self-drive + probability event. Due to efficiency problems, there may be no wall + roof directly. The feeling of home is weak
● There is a huge tree house with all the facilities inside, but it obscures the player's emotional projection object.
The initial house and fully equipped book house for "Dawn Awakening"
8.2. The collapse of game credibility
Many players complain that "Dawn Awakening" has no sense of apocalypse, like an "amusement park". This comment is not an exaggeration, and there are a lot of details that make it impossible for players to feel that this is a post-apocalyptic world, here are some examples:
● Survivor camps that are too clean and filled with "comfort" appliances
● Various tropical vegetation in the environment, but NPCs keep giving players winter clothes
● NPC clean clothes and clothing that does not fit the environment
The result of this "play" is the collapse of the credibility of the game, that is, the player does not believe that the world created by the game is real and valuable, and naturally all the actions they do in the game lose their meaning. It's as if those who feel that the world is false and meaningless in real life will lose their ability to act.
"Dawn Awakening" is full of casual and theatrical designs
8.3. Expired Daily Design, Adventure Manual
Usually, there are systems in the game to help players establish goals and plan daily game behavior. In the shooting RPG category, "Daily Mission" and "Adventure Manual" are the bottom-line target systems, and when players don't know what to do next, they can quickly find the target by looking at the Daily and Adventure Manual. But "Dawn Awakening" is more crotch-pulling in the design of these two pieces
Perhaps to create garbage time for players to socialize, Dawn Awakens allows players to "follow the team" while completing daily quests, meaning that players can complete quests "lying down" without being kicked. Coupled with extremely convenient teleportation and automatic pathfinding, a lot of the player's operations are omitted.
In the case where "everyday" allows lying down, the game stipulates that "everyday" is an important way to gain experience, which is equivalent to what the player must do.
On the other hand, as written in 3.2, the manor level and character level in "Dawn Awakening" will be stuck in progress, which means that if players still want to advance the game normally, the two most important things after going online every day are collecting + lying down. It's boring and has no point of operation.
Another design that can be used to guide the player's game behavior is the "adventure manual", which is to put it bluntly, the mission system in RPG games, but the structure is relatively free. The survival guide of "Dawn Awakening" has a big problem, and it is difficult to guide the system as the main goal. Perhaps because of this, the game also added traditional main story guidance, making the guidance in the game more chaotic.
● Entrance too deep: It's hard for players to actively discover the adventure manual, let alone use it to know the game
● Content arrangement is relatively arbitrary: a simple list of game behaviors cannot carry the positioning of the target system
● The reward is relatively light: it belongs to what can be done or not, chicken ribs
● Unable to record completed actions: This is a bug, the content of the manual completed by the player in advance cannot be recorded, and the manual can only be completed in strict accordance with the linear process
"Dawn" on the top, "Tomorrow" on the bottom
9. The future of the category: More than just shooting
If we compare more with the open-world shooter RPG represented by "Planet Reboot" and the open-world Genshin-like RPG represented by "Tower of Fantasy", we will find that they have many similarities in the construction of the large world, and even the card-based cultivation structure is very similar.
But in summary, they still have two core differences:
● Since the open-world RPG line is derived from the second game, the "multi-character development" is always a very core design, compared to the shooting RPG is weak in this regard;
● In the category of open-world shooting, because it is derived from the idea of SOC integration, the proportion of "home building" has always been high, and it plays an important role in core modules such as equipment manufacturing and social networking;
An obvious new idea is to merge these two paradigms - its combat will be more RPG-oriented, and even with shooting as the core, it will have an OW-like skill design; Home construction plays an important role in the game, and the entrances to some important functions are on the facilities of the home; Its cultivation structure is clear card-like, and the output of different gameplay methods is cut and rotated through the token mall; The player has a large number of characters to develop, which may be humanoid weapons, characters themselves.
The benefits of this are at least the following:
● The core gameplay of the game is told, and there is almost no need to change the general framework of "After Tomorrow" or "Planet Restart";
● More RPG-style combat further lowers the threshold for shooting, and it is easier to make a difference in combat;
● The cultivation of multiple characters can dig deeper than the cultivation of equipment, but the player's feeling will be softer;
"Home building in "After Tomorrow" + battle mode in "OW" + multi-character development in "Phantom Tower" may be a possible future.
appendix
I. A single map for three games
After Tomorrow single map
Dawn Awakens single map
Planet Reboot single map
II. "After Tomorrow" development content
Note that paid acceleration is not considered here, only modules that are fully commercialized are listed.
III. Planet Reboot Development Content