The revival of SLG depends on this battle
Is the SLG pattern about to loosen?
Recently, from the announcement of "Three Kingdoms: Conquering the World", to "Ten Thousand Dragons Awakening", "World Qiyuan", "Heroes of Might and Magic: Lords of Lords", "The Lord of the Rings: Discord" and other new products have been released. This not only indicates that this year's SLG track will usher in the biggest battle in the past four years, but also hints that SLG is about to enter the next stage.
In recent years, the domestic SLG battlefield has mainly focused on COK and rate soil like. However, with the change of domestic SLG user preferences, the rate of local like has gradually presented a dominant situation, but the arrival of ROK like's new products seems to imply that the situation of the SLG track seems to be about to change again.
In the article "NetEase Lingxi Lilith Diandian 4 Stronghold, Who Can Be the King of the Next Generation SLG", the competition briefly described the development and changes of COK like and rate like products and the differences between the two gameplay, but there is no more in-depth discussion on why SLG users will gradually favor rate earth like. The author also took this opportunity to sort out why ROK like and rate like can stand out in recent years from the perspective of product experience and user appeals, and why rate like can be "one big one" now.
Through the interpretation of the pain points of the two types of products, the author tries to analyze and deconstruct the trade-offs made by the new batch of SLG products. Who is most likely to run out in the SLG battle.
率土like与ROK like突围
In the COK era, SLG products will have a characteristic, that is, they pay special attention to the game experience of big R players, and even most of the gameplay and content design will revolve around big R players.
This phenomenon is also partly due to the tonality of the SLG category. Compared with traditional numerical development games, SLG games are not only a variety of leaderboards to strengthen the satisfaction of big R players, but also the winning side can destroy the enemy player's saved troops, causing a substantial blow to the enemy such as resource loss, and there is no punishment, further strengthening the satisfaction of high paying players.
Judging from the demands of big R players, they don't care too much about gathering, cultivation, building, heroes, and technology, these are just some small thresholds for them to achieve their goals, they only need to think about how to abolish hostilities, kill all their soldiers, establish their authority in the game, and improve their social experience.
Therefore, investing in big R players is also an effective way to realize the rapid realization of SLG. For example, in the design of the product, paid cultivation content will be put to increase the numerical difference between players—through the sale of resources, the cultivation of troop heroes, etc., urban construction facilities, etc., multi-faceted amplification of numerical differences; And introduce a paid entrance with "breaking rules" - for example, you can fly to the city at will by paying, speed up the march, etc., so that big R players can do whatever they want.
But this also undoubtedly destroys the strategic experience of the game, not to mention the numerical difference between players and big R, even if ordinary players want to compete with each other on an equal footing, I am afraid that they must first fill up the paid functions such as Flying City and Acceleration, otherwise it is a sure thing to be hit by dimensionality reduction.
Small and medium-sized R is part of the big R game experience, which is not an exaggeration in many SLG products at that time, but the life of this type of product is not long, and the dragon of rolling service and server naturally cannot escape, and when the small and medium-sized R players in the game are consumed, the game is basically going to die. Of course, there are also some products (such as "Clash of Kings", "King of the Troubled Times", etc.) will add a "shield" mechanism on this basis, which will improve the experience of small and medium-sized R players to a certain extent.
In today's domestic SLG track, it is rare to see such short-term products. The author believes that there are two reasons, one is the background reason that after the baptism of the cold winter of the version number, the new products have to develop towards high-quality and long-term operation, and the other is that on the basis of the market background, the new long-term SLG products will further squeeze the previous rapid realization of SLG products.
As a result, SLG products that focus on serving big R players and can be quickly monetized are becoming more and more difficult in China, and gradually fade out of the domestic market.
As a result, more and more new SLG products have begun to tap the long-term operation potential of products. Among them, according to the differences between manufacturers, it can be divided into two directions: one is the direction of micro-innovation + high-quality ROK like (such as "Awakening of Kingdoms" and "Medal of War"), which is characterized by a low threshold for getting started and a strong sense of quality, but the huge gap between players still exists in the later stage, and the product mainly serves high-paying players; The second is the season-based + geo-strategy direction of the rate of the land (such as "The Shore of the Land" and "Three Kingdoms: Strategic Edition"). It is characterized by a certain experience for small and medium-sized R players, but the threshold for getting started is high and the liver is large. In terms of innovation, both focus on strengthening the upper limit of the strategy experience, for example, "Awakening of Kingdoms" has innovated on the large map, not only introducing maps, map exploration and other content, but also adding a light RTS setting where players can actively control the troops, which greatly strengthens the real-time strategy of battle.
The rate of the like is to disperse the focus of the strategy into two parts, one is the combination strategy of military generals and tactical skills, and the combination of lineup restraint, and the other is around the "geopolitical strategy" and command operation strategy, and the two interact with each other to enhance the upper limit of the strategy experience.
This is a further validation of the survival of innovation, even in the SLG category.
The heavy liver blockage season lies flat; The big R experience surpasses everything and can't get around the category pain points
It should be noted that in most cases, only a small number of core players can reach the upper limit of the strategy experience, and the decision to account for more of the game experience of ordinary players is the lower limit of the strategy experience of game design.
How to define the lower limit of SLG's strategy experience, the author believes that it is brought by the gameplay rules themselves - whether it is large, medium or small, all players need to follow the game rules that cannot be broken by "money ability", and the minimum strategy operation space under the premise of fairness.
In this part, the geopolitical strategy that is commonplace in the land like is a typical case - first of all, the big R player cannot bypass this rule and attack other players directly, and still needs to pave the way before attacking. With the protection of this layer of mechanism, other players can also effectively defend by countering the paving team, turning the battle power competition in the traditional COK like into a strategic game, and ordinary players can also have a certain amount of defensive space in the face of high-paying players.
The second is the geopolitical strategy of leading the soil, players can be stationed on their own plots, they can attack enemy plots and become their own plots, they can only attack enemy buildings that exist around their own plots, etc., with the restraint of troops, etc., most players know that they can already participate in the battle on the front line and enjoy the fun of playing with the enemy. As for the skills derived from it, such as card second cutting and stationing, killing two birds with one stone, etc., it is more used to improve the game space between players.
This is also the advantage of comparing ROK likes and rate soil likes. The real-time strategy brought by RTS in ROK like is indeed incomparable to the semi-commanding operation of the local like, but for the protection of players, ROK like is indeed much weaker, although there is a "shield" mechanism, but this mechanism is more of a passive defense, and it is difficult for defensive players to have the space to take the initiative.
There are also differences between the two in terms of paid experience. First of all, from the perspective of the operation model, although both of them adopt the season system, they adopt a more thorough season system of resetting resources and military generals, and the payment mainly falls on card drawing and daily consumption; The COK like season system does not reset the player's resources and hero development, but GVG → KVK's season promotion mode.
In fact, there is no obvious superiority or inferiority between the two, but the rate of the soil like through the season to reset resources but retain the form of generals will be paid packaging "more cost-effective", that is, the cards drawn this season can still be used next season. It's a pity that the actual depth of payment ultimately comes down to the probability of card drawing and the setting of "lock card", but simply card drawing can be full, and players will not be able to pay without an upper limit (which also reflects that there is also an upper limit to the difference in lineup strength between players).
But objectively speaking, thanks to the fact that the rate of the soil like has a high and wide explorable space in the combination of generals, as well as the luck component of card drawing and combat probability. In the first one or two seasons, with the blessing of cognitive differences and luck, it is really possible for small R players to explode big R players.
For example, the author's luck in the S1 season of "Three Kingdoms: Strategic Edition" is better, 2000 yuan to get together a team of "Zhuguan Zhang" Shu guns with a good tactical configuration, and the level difference even pierces the enemy's tens of thousands of krypton bosses Gao Hongtaoyuan and Wei Qi, which has also become the author's best experience since playing SLG.
On the other hand, thanks to the commercialization model of cards, some core cards have the possibility of maintaining their value, such as: Sima Yi, who shined from S2 to PK season in "Three Kingdoms: Strategic Edition", but the "One Night Gun" player's verbal and written criticism also broke this tacit understanding to a certain extent.
There is no need to say much about SLG's social interaction around the alliance, but under the influence of geopolitical strategy, the alliance has a greater demand for paving, and it has also given birth to the social positioning of execution such as "paving the road", which also leads to a slight difference between the social interaction between the local like and the traditional COK like - there is a greater demand for executive personnel.
But on the whole, whether it is a local like or a ROK like, high-liver Krypton players with higher combat achievements usually have a higher say in the alliance and have a better social experience than other players.
There are gains and losses, although the season-based resource reset and geo-strategy have changed the game experience of the rate of the land-like, and it also has a higher degree of liver than the traditional COK like game, such as competing for limited resources with other players in the wasteland stage, which largely determines the maximum amount of resources that players can obtain in the early and middle stages of the 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 current situation of fighting for two or three weeks in the season and then blocking the city and lying flat may not only be caused by the flaws of the game's own design, but also many players may also hope that the game can have a chance to lie flat after several seasons of liver explosion.
But in any case, from the perspective of player demands and gameplay, the rate of local like is indeed more in line with the taste of players, after all, the premise of wanting players to break the ice and pay, must be to find a "secret weapon" that can catch players and attract players, and stronger fairness, more dimensional strategy experience and closer social needs are the secret weapon of rate local like.
Focusing on the pain points of the category, prescribing the right medicine to become the "basic operation" of the new product
Returning the perspective to the present, SLG, which has been silent for three or four years, is about to become one of the main battlefields this year, in terms of domestic innovation, there are B station "Three Kingdoms: Seeking the World", Northern Lights "World Qiyuan", NetEase "Lord of the Rings: Strife"; COK like directions include Lilith's "Awakening of Ten Thousand Dragons" and Photon's "Heroes of Might and Magic: Lords of Battle". We will also observe these new products from the perspective of gameplay evolution to understand the new direction of the rate of soil likes and ROK likes.
The first is the direction of the rate of the land, considering that "The Lord of the Rings: Strife" has been launched overseas as early as 21 years, so it is closer to the traditional rate of like products in terms of gameplay experience, so I will not focus on the analysis in this article. However, it is worth mentioning that the game focuses on the portrayal of the plot part, adding a lot of plot content in The Lord of the Rings, so that the game has a certain RPG attribute.
Coming to the two new products of "Three Kingdoms: Seeking the World" and "World Qiyuan", their commonality is to break through the pain points of players who lie flat after fighting for two or three weeks in the traditional rate of soil like through the two directions of "lowering the liver" and "promoting the vitality of the season". Attentive friends may have discovered that these two points also correspond to the two reasons that cause players to lie flat in the rate of soil like, one is the excessive "liver", and the other is the design flaw of the game itself.
Returning to the two new products, in the "Liver Reduction" part, "Three Kingdoms: Conquering the World" and "World Qiyuan" both started from the most hepatic part of the geopolitical strategy and launched the function of automatic paving and landing, which saved players a lot of time. In terms of "promoting the vitality of the season", the two take different ways, among which "Three Kingdoms: Conquering the World" uses the baggage mechanism, the inability to move the city, the co-construction of the city, and the no-alliance setting to avoid the status quo of "blocking the city and lying flat" from the rule level, while "World Qiyuan" is a new class born through the evolution of the times, creating weaknesses for the "blocking strategy" by changing the behavior of the troops, so as to achieve the effect of refusing to lie flat.
Of course, products that are only aimed at solving category pain points and promoting category development cannot gain a foothold in this SLG war. The tone between different products also needs to be set by distinctive features for the core experience of the product. Among them, the solution given by "Three Kingdoms: Conquering the World" is the "identity system", which uses the functional differences between identities to lower the threshold for entry and strengthen the participation of players, and then change the existing social model to a certain extent.
As for "World Qiyuan", it is to strengthen the core experience of the game with a wealth of era troops, one is to enrich the space for the lineup, and the other is the difference in the behavior of the land, sea and air troops, which can create a matching style of play similar to the coordination of infantry and tanks.
We found that in the two new ROK like products, both began to focus on collaborative PVE content, increasing the proportion of PVE part, with the aim of improving the social and gaming experience of ordinary players.
In terms of specific product performance, "Awakening of Ten Thousand Dragons" not only adds a large amount of PVE content in daily and weekly routines, but also combines real-time strategy gameplay with PVE, and then derives an experience similar to that of multiplayer playing in a group under the premise of certain differences in team functions, making the game experience closer to the diversified direction of MMORPG. With the art style of the game's American cartoon, it also gives the game a bit of a Western fantasy MMORPG flavor.
At this time, the author can't help but wonder in my mind: Does this also mean that "Wanlong Awakening" can be compatible with the huge number of MMORPG players in China, and then convert more MMORPG players into SLG players and expand the SLG user pool? Of course, we will also conduct more detailed analysis and answers to these questions and whether this product can create a new SLG direction in China.
However, at this stage, there are still some fly in the ointment in the current test server of "Wanlong Awakening", such as the core differentiated content such as PVE of team-fighting dungeons, which is not conducive to the transformation of MMORPG players, if it can be brought to players earlier, so that players can understand the charm of this set of RTS+PVE team dungeons earlier. It may be possible to achieve a surprising effect.
Coming to the product "Heroes of Might and Magic: Lords of Lords", it also adopts the setting of enhanced PVE. First of all, the game has added a large number of plot dungeons, and in the process of advancing the main line to develop the area, players can experience a large number of hand-built single dungeons, which can improve the player's single experience; The second is a variety of wild bosses in the big world, from individuals to teams, alliance bosses, etc., covering the player's daily and weekly experience, greatly enriching the player's PVE experience.
Although it may not be as amazing as the team battle dungeons in other products when they first appeared, at least the product fills the game content of small and medium-sized R with a large amount of PVE content, improving the game experience of these players.
From the above examples, it is not difficult to see that whether it is a rate of soil like, or ROK like products, they have accurately cut into the pain points of previous products, and on this basis, they have improved and innovated. At the same time, to the author's surprise, there are also innovative products such as "Wanlong Awakening" that can break the possibility of category restrictions.
Whether it's the SLG category or any other category, there's probably nothing more important than driving the sustainable development of the category. This year's SLG arena is bound to usher in new changes and trends in the category.
Judging from the current track pattern, although the rate of local like products is still the mainstream, there are many ROK like products in the new products, which also indicates the development trend of SLG diversification. We also found that nowadays, the products of the local like and the COK like are getting farther and farther in the direction, and the local like slams on the accelerator in the vertical direction of the gameplay experience, further deepening the strategic experience of the game; ROK like, on the other hand, continues to lower the bar and introduce new elements in an attempt to expand a larger audience.
Perhaps the opportunity for the next node of the SLG category may be the emergence of intermediate products between the two (PVE in the early stage and GVG verification in the later stage), or a new incremental market brought by mini games.