There are no routines, it all depends on sincerity
On the long-silent SLG track, a new storm is finally about to be ushered in.
At the recent (May 10) "Three Kingdoms: Conquer the World" tasting meeting, Station B announced that the game will be launched on June 13, and at the same time, the game further increased its efforts on "Krypton" to announce "full dynamic free", with the public beta 7 days to send 125 draws and Sun Ce, Xu Shengwu General welfare, completely launched the first shot of the 24-year SLG track.
"Three Kingdoms: Plotting the World" (hereinafter referred to as "Three Schemes") is one of the most blockbuster products of Station B this year, and it is also one of the products with the highest attention among SLG's new products, and has won 200W reservations on the whole platform. In the case of many years of silence on the track, "Three Schemes" was able to achieve such a volume before its release, and it undoubtedly injected a new dose of strength into other new SLG products.
What is unique about this product, and the competition also took the opportunity of this tasting to let everyone have a deeper understanding of this young and bold SLG product.
SLG，平民也能玩的很爽？
In March of this year, a big man in World War III, who had been out of the pit for a long time, suddenly thought of going back to the pit and asked me about buying an account.
In the author's impression, he had no time to be liver because of job changes, and he was also a famous boss in the alliance before he got out of the pit - armed with a team of high-red Northern Expedition guns, and a team full of red Taiwei shields often killed all sides. Although this lineup is no longer strong now, after all, it has the support of redness, and it may be able to touch the low-red lineup at this stage, and the experience of returning to the pit is more than enough, why should you consider buying a number?
Later, after inquiry, I found out that the lineup he was proud of before was now beaten by the teams of SP Ma Chao and SP Guan Yu, so that now when he sees the spear team, he has to take a detour, and the experience is somewhat aggrieved. If he wants to redraw these new characters with a new lineup, it will be a big expense, and this cost is enough for him to buy a finished number that can kill all sides, including SP Ma Chao and SP Guan Yu.
This incident may be just a small episode for the big guy, but it is extremely impressive to the author, because it reflects the pain point of many current SLG games - "liver and krypton".
First of all, the big guy got out of the pit because of a job change, which revealed one of the pain points of SLG - the liver degree far exceeds that of other types of games, especially the soaring liver degree in the process of land reclamation.
Secondly, with the iteration of the version, it is not surprising that the new generals have stronger performance, but the cost of obtaining the core generals is even higher than the cost of buying the finished number, which also reveals the second pain point of SLG - the cost of obtaining the mainstream lineup is higher than the sunk cost of players, not to mention the daily trivial consumption such as second return, second city construction, copper coin collection, and city relocation.
This also makes the author understand why "Three Schemes" should work hard to reduce liver and krypton, and even become one of the footholds of the product. However, in terms of the specific landing of liver reduction and krypton, I am afraid that it is not simply to change the price and change the physical strength setting to achieve it, but it needs to really cover the player's gameplay behavior and optimize it.
Among them, the author believes that there are two kinds of "liver" in the season-based SLG. The first is to compete with other players for limited resources during the Season Wasteland phase, which largely determines the maximum amount of resources a player can earn in the early and mid-season. Therefore, if you want to get a better game experience in the season, you must invest a lot of time in paving, laying ground, leveling, and upgrading urban construction.
The second is a Siege Alliance strategic directive similar to the Alliance's timed arrangement, which does not require a lot of time from the player, but will occupy a certain amount of time for the player. For example, if the alliance arranges a siege at 6 o'clock tomorrow morning, then players need to mobilize the siege troops to the surrounding camps before going to bed tonight to get ready, and go online on time to participate in the siege before 6 o'clock tomorrow.
Siege warfare is to be unprepared to achieve miraculous results, so there will often be a relatively netherworld siege time
"Three Schemes" revolves around the liver of the season-based SLG development stage, and is optimized for different links. For example, in paving the ground, the design of one-key paving and automatic abandonment of the ground has been added, so that players no longer need to carry out the cumbersome operation of paving the road in one grid; In terms of training and lineup replacement, designs such as automatic upgrade of the training station, replacement of generals, non-destructive reset of tactics, and sweeping of the inner city have been added, even if the generals are completely stocked, they will not lag behind the mainstream level too much; In the siege, the function of one-click reservation for siege has even been added, so that players no longer need to get up early in the dark to attack the city.
This feeling is similar to the official asking you for a "booster", and all the tedious and uninteresting execution content will be handed over to the "booster" to operate, freeing up the player's own time. Players mainly come to experience the most interesting parts such as land reclamation planning, battle report analysis, and lineup adjustment.
As for the "krypton" of the season-based SLG, the author also thinks that it can be divided into three types. The first is the cost of drawing new generals, especially the "lock card" setting under the surface, which further amplifies the cost of acquiring valuable generals. Players who want to obtain those "core generals" with more powerful attributes and their own tactics often need to spend a lot of krypton gold currency.
The second is that the cost of training generals is very huge, and there is an obvious gap before and after training. Players who want to cultivate a fully equipped lineup can be far more than just three generals and six tactics.
The third is the consumption of daily trivial things in the game, including second city construction, second return, purchase of policies, relocation and other seasons, although the krypton gold currency consumed at a time is not much, but the accumulation is not a small amount.
In response to the above-mentioned three parts of "Krypton", "Three Schemes" has also been optimized separately. First of all, the game directly reduced the unit price of the card draw, and hit the price of about 20 yuan per draw in the season-based SLG on the market to about 6 yuan per draw, and reduced the guaranteed 30 draws to 20 draws, and on this basis, at the same time canceled the "lock card" and other settings, which further saved the player's expenses.
Secondly, "Three Strategies" canceled the third strategy and the setting that the unlocking of Tao Strategy requires the consumption of orange card generals, which greatly reduces the player's demand for orange card generals. The news that the dynamic cards at the tasting meeting are all free further reduces the cost of player lineup development, not to mention that these dynamic cards are of extremely high quality.
Finally, in the daily part, the game cancels the setting of the time it takes to upgrade the city, and when the player's resources are sufficient, they don't need to wait for the direct upgrade, and the experience is very silky. In addition, the game also canceled the design of "moving the city at will", which also saved the player's daily expenses in disguise.
At this point, we can also see that the "liver and krypton" of "Three Schemes" is not just a propaganda slogan, but goes deep into all aspects of the game and turns it into a real foothold. This also means that even a small R player like the author may be able to get a game experience in "Three Schemes" that far exceeds that of other products of the same category.
Reject superficial innovation, but focus on pain points
At present, there is a consensus in the industry that under the SLG category, the homogenization of mobile games is too serious, so everyone is exploring new paths, and "Three Schemes" is naturally no exception.
In terms of innovation, the most representative innovation of the game is the "identity system", which is not simply serving the script setting of the drama, but as the underlying existence of the season gameplay - at the beginning of the season, players need to choose one of the six identities of "Zhenjun, Shenxing, Qizuo, Tiangong, Sicang, and Qingsang". The direction of the attack, support, harassment, defense and other functions between each identity is very clear, which also determines the direction of the player's gameplay this season.
This design is indeed very similar to the "tactics of war" in RPGs, which can meet the experience preferences of different players on the one hand, and on the other hand, it can strengthen the division of labor and cooperation between players. But putting it in a season-based SLG can have a lot more impact than that.
First of all, the design of identity can greatly reduce the threshold for players to get started. The reason why the season-based SLG is expensive to get started is not only that it has far more requirements for player execution and liver than other types of games, but also because of the complex elements such as urban construction, team matching, resource management, and the use of light real-time strategies, which also makes many players at a loss when they first get started.
The complex elements in the game are split through the identity system, simplifying the player's early goals in the form of identity, and the cooperation between identity functions can also greatly increase the participation of new players, so that more players can feel the charm of the season-based SLG.
Secondly, the identity setting breaks the pain point of "paid depth" to determine social status in SLG. In the traditional season-based SLG, the players with higher combat achievements in the alliance tend to have a higher right to speak, while the small and medium-sized R players can only become cannon fodder on the battlefield, a demolition party, or a paving party in the alliance, and most players are reduced to the executive level of the alliance.
It is precisely because of the design of identity that the game does not only look at the strength of the player lineup, but also the special effects brought by the identity can also directly change the battlefield pattern. For example, in the test suit some time ago, Chizo burned through the 350,000 army out of the circle, which was not achieved by the strength of the lineup alone (although it burned his own troops).
"Chizo is so fun, why don't you say it earlier"
Allowing more players to participate in alliance activities in their own way is the innovation of the identity design of "Three Schemes", which breaks the original season-based SLG social ecology, allows more players to participate in alliance activities more deeply, and provides players with the opportunity to gain the right to speak.
Of course, the innovation point of "Three Schemes" is by no means an "identity" design, and the game has also been deeply cultivated in terms of strategy experience, and has launched settings that restore the real battlefield in ancient times, such as "baggage mechanism and city co-construction". For example, players can focus on the setting of "baggage transportation", and repeatedly compete for baggage transportation according to the official road, and can derive sand table war strategies such as sneak attacks, roundabouts, roundabouts, and encirclement reinforcements.
The "city co-construction" setting fundamentally eliminates the "optimal solution" of front-line city blockade in similar season-based SLGs, and solves the pain points of the season-based SLG in the season-based SLG where the rest of the season is lying flat and rotten after two weeks of hard work. At the same time, with the setting of "no friends" in the game, it avoids the situation of dominating the aircraft carrier, which effectively stimulates the vitality of the game in the season.
Of course, the innovation of "Three Schemes" is not limited to this, but in the above content, we have been able to see that the innovation of the game is not a superficial innovation of "innovation for the sake of innovation", but an innovation based on solving the pain points of the season-based SLG experience and stimulating the essential interest of SLG games.
Pay attention to the gameplay ecology, create content, and alliance ecology, and demonstrate the determination of long-term operation
The word innovation not only covers the gameplay and social content of "Three Schemes", but also covers the long-term gameplay ecology of the game. In addition to the liver reduction and krypton reduction of the game itself and the innovation around the pain points, the author also found interesting content around the ecological construction of the gameplay at the tasting meeting.
One of them is the game AI sandbox playback function. According to Bilibili, they gathered several ACM gold medal programmers to train a set of large language models based on the knowledge graph of the Sanmou world to interpret and summarize various sand table events. to help everyone know more about the national trends in the world of Sanmou, and even the secret gossip.
The author believes that the AI sand table playback function can not only allow players to understand the macro changes in the battle situation, but also further enhance the sense of substitution and interest of "players to write legends/interesting stories of the Three Kingdoms".
Another content that attracted the author's attention was the game's "Martial Arts Conference" gameplay, which requires players to customize and match random generals and tactics, and verify it through random custom lineups against other players.
In the season-based SLG, due to the richness and diversity of the skill system, the process of "matching→ verification→ tuning" in the lineup itself is very interesting, and it can also directly affect the strength of the player's lineup, which in turn directly affects the game experience, which is one of the core experiences in the season-based SLG game.
"Three Strategies" takes the "martial arts competition" as a weekly gameplay, which is intended to further release the fun of "lineup matching", stimulate the charm of the game's lineup matching and restraint relationship, and strengthen players' understanding of matching. And with the addition of new versions of generals and tactics, this gameplay will also change.
Of course, for the season-based SLG, it is important to reduce the liver and krypton to fight for innovation, but whether there can be a "person to play" may be more important.
In the article "Station B's Rate Like Youth Edition, I Want to Use the Price War to Launch a Raid" before the competition, a senior player commented, "In recent years, there have been countless casual versions/low-cost versions/liver-nourishing versions of rate like games, but most of them have been short-lived, indicating that these are the pain points of SLG, but they are not the core of SLG games, and the core is the lack of people to play, that is, alliance managers."
In this regard, Bilibili took out 100 million cash investment in the first year to build content and alliance ecology. From the player's point of view, these contents and alliance ecology are also acting as "people who play with them" inside and outside the game.
For example, the prosperity of the content ecology can allow players to understand the lineup and sand table strategy outside the game to help players better participate in the game. The construction of the alliance ecology can also make it easier for players to find "people to play" in the game, and then allow players to make a group of truly "like-minded" partners in the process of fighting in the alliance, and finally establish a "small alliance group" with their own position.
It can be said that this 100 million yuan represents Station B's determination to focus on the content of "Three Schemes" and the ecological construction of the alliance, and also represents Station B's determination to serve players for a long time.
In fact, looking back, the reason why "Three Schemes" has today's popularity is that the quality of the product is naturally partial, and it is also inseparable from the close cooperation and full support of Xiang Dongfeng Studio and Station B.
It is the project team composed of veteran SLG players whose product "Three Schemes" can discover the pain points of the category and improve them; Perhaps it is precisely because Dongfeng Studio is young enough that it dares to do what others dare not do and bring down the price of SLG; And with the full support of Station B, more players who love the Three Kingdoms and love SLG will see such a bold and young product.
And in June of this year, it is bound to usher in a new storm for SLG.