Source: Roski
"Squad Busters" is scheduled to debut in the world on May 29. This is Supercell's first global release, following the launch of Brawl Stars six years ago.
According to the information that has been revealed so far, Squad Busters is a new crossover competitive 10-player party game. In this game, players need to assemble an army of heroes and engage in fierce battles with nine other opponents for the highest honor.
The core gameplay of the game can be refined into "simplified MOBA experience (skill Timing, in-game development) + heavy card out-of-game development". This combination is rare among the mainstream products on the market today.
值得注意的是，在这六年中，Supercell砍掉了许多项目，包括《Rush Wars》《Hay Day Pop》《Clash Quest》《Clash Mini》《Clash Heroes》《EverDale》《BoomBeach: Frontlines》和《Flood Rush》。
And the previously announced monster hunting-themed game "Mo.co" is still in a soft launch state and is waiting to be released.
At present, "Squad Busters" has achieved outstanding results in regions where soft launches have been launched, and it is at the top of the iOS free charts in many countries.
According to a tweet released by the project official tweet on May 2, the number of pre-orders for the product has exceeded 20 million.
Supercell's forecast is "30 million pre-orders before launch," with a shortfall of less than 10 million. They are confident that they will achieve this goal in the remaining ten days.
On February 14 of this year, Supercell boss Ilkka Paananen repeatedly emphasized the need to "embrace change and break out of your comfort zone" in her annual routine.
In order to seek new growth, he tore down and rebuilt Supercell's old game development model, and the management team changed drastically, carrying out a complete "self-revolution" within the company, giving the entire company a new lease of life.
And "Squad Busters" is a touchstone to test the combat effectiveness of the "new Supercell".
"We will ask the new team to commit to key timelines, milestones, resource plans, and then share them with everyone in the company," Ilkka Paananen said in her presentation. In other words, we will replace the usual fixed budget and approval process with the pressure of transparency. ”
"We believe that new gaming teams have a better chance of success, in part because they are made up of a group of people who are crazy, ambitious, resourceful, quick to execute, not afraid to take risks, and quick to make positive (and sometimes painful/scary) changes."
As the first new product in six years, "Squad Busters" is a milestone for Supercell's future growth, as well as for the overseas business layout of parent company Tencent. Before the official launch, it is necessary to make a preliminary preview of this product.
Basic Operation
A number of foreign media, represented by Android Police and IGN, have made a more detailed introduction to "Squad Busters", and this article has made some integrations and additions on this basis.
First of all, the controls in Squad Busters are very simple: players can tilt their smartphone to attack, swipe the screen to move, and tap and hold in a certain direction to speed up movement.
The goal of the game is to collect as many gems as possible among the 10 participants in the same round while keeping the character alive.
There are many ways to get gemstones. Gems can be obtained by killing players, killing mobs, opening chests, chopping trees, and other actions, which are essentially players' match points.
The top 5 out of 10 players who participate in the game can get the same amount of rewards, and the bottom 5 are much less.
Compared with the traditional MOBA's head/base-based logic of winning and losing, Squad Busters' point competition system puts forward higher requirements for players' strategic level. Participants need to keep an eye on the big picture and "do the right thing at the right time".
In addition, due to the randomness of gem acquisition, the player with the strongest team may not be able to get the best position.
Eliminating other players will eliminate them from the game, while destroying monsters will reward them with gold. Players will also need to spend gold to grow their party (adding new characters/merging to upgrade existing ones).
Maintain your own power and control the balance of competition between maps. These two points are the key to victory.
Cultivation system
The combination of the outside and the inside cultivation system is a big selling point of this work.
In terms of out-of-game development, players need to earn portal energy (purple currency) to unlock new worlds and open treasure chests to get more character shards.
Portal energy can be earned simply by playing the game, and more can be obtained through achievements.
Compared to Brawl Stars' cup size (PK value), Squad Busters uses a system called "Squad Journey" to promote long-term player retention. New characters will be unlocked as you progress through Squad Journey.
This system is only linked to the player's development data, and has nothing to do with the PVP ranking, which can be regarded as a design operation of "numerical value preservation".
This also shows that Squad Busters has a higher krypton level than its predecessor, Brawl Stars, and players need to make more top-ups to get a relatively enjoyable gaming experience. In this environment, it is difficult for low-krypton PVP god players to defeat the big R.
Players are rewarded with gold during the match. Gold is the main means of obtaining Chest Tickets (equivalent to stamina in traditional card games), win streak protection, and shop shopping.
The game reward upgrade mechanism basically follows the tradition of Brawl Stars, and increases the "promotion step" from 4 to 6, and is tied to the player's PVP performance.
The better the player in the game, the better the chest will be when the game is settled (chest quality, number of fragments).
Squad Busters creates an exciting experience by adding an extra layer of randomness to the chest, arguably a classic example of a low-cost optimized gacha experience.
In addition to the rewards of PVP matches, players can also earn free chests by playing the game. You can get it regardless of your PVP score, as long as you have a treasure chest ticket.
Each time the player opens a chest, they will get character shards to upgrade to a star in a decimal system. 10 Level 1 fragments are combined into 1 Level 2, 10 Level 2 are combined into 1 Level 3, and so on.
This means that a character needs 1,000 level 1 shards to get from the initial level to full star (level 4).
Since the game is not yet live, we can't tell if Supercell will make any adjustments to this value. However, based on the current lack of treasure chests, the depth of cultivation krypton in "Squad Busters" is not inferior to that of "Clash Royale", and the cost of a single character is likely to be in the thousands of dollars.
In addition, the out-of-game development stats of "Squad Busters" are directly brought into the game, so the same hero will have different numerical strength in the hands of different players, which is considered to be a fusion of card elements on the basis of traditional MOBA games.
In contrast to the concise and vertical outboard development, Squad Busters' in-game design is less common.
Character integration and combination is the core of in-game development.
Players can spend gold to open chests (in-game chests) on the map, randomly draw three characters, and choose one of them to join their squad.
Collecting three identical characters will allow you to merge them, making them bigger and stronger while reducing the number of people in your party.
Players will also need to pay attention to the composition of their squad and make trade-offs when choosing their next role (whether the output is enough, whether there is healing, etc.).
One of the peculiarities of Squad Busters is that the in-game and out-of-game coins are the same coins, and there is no "soft currency" as a cushion for "paid currency".
Characters that players buy with gold in the game can be killed by mobs or other players.
This means that when a player is severely injured or even wiped out by an opponent, they will not only lose points (gems), but also a certain amount of paid currency; The winner will snowball bigger and bigger, killing all kinds of indiscriminately. There is a lack of the necessary guarantee mechanism.
This harsh death penalty isn't common even in some SLG games, and it's unclear if Supercell will tweak it further before the product goes live.
Role classification
Squad Busters currently has six categories of characters: Vendor, Defender, Attacker, Healer, Speeder, and Almighty.
Vendors: Good at getting more gold, and the best choices in this category include Goblin and Penny.
Defender: Good at taking damage and buying time for your squad. The best options in this category include the Barbarian King, the Royal King (or El Primo when you start out).
Attacker: Good at taking out threats, best options include the Witch and the Archer Queen (or Colton at the beginning).
Healers: Keep squads alive, such as Medics and Combat Healers.
Speeder: Able to traverse the map with ease, Boar Rider and Max are very good.
Almighty: Jack-of-all-trades, but without a specialty, provides balanced abilities to the player's army. Elteg and the Barbarians cater to the needs of this category well.
The roles you choose to deploy and focus on convergence will ultimately determine your strategy and are a core trade-off point for the entire game. In addition to the operation, this is the main factor that affects the difference in the player's PVP score.
For example, assembling a team of vendors and speeders means you're more focused on grabbing resources than fighting. And an army of Greg and Boar Riders will allow you to cut down trees and traverse terrain more efficiently.
The tactical mix here is very varied and has a lot of strategic depth. But compared to the classic MOBA game mode, this design is more complex and more expensive for users to learn.
Some issues that need to be improved
资深游戏分析师Jakub Remiar在YouTube播客和Pocket Gamer上发表了关于《Squad Busters》的评论文章。
In addition to some of the points already above, Jakub pointed out several other issues.
For example, Supercell introduced the concept of consumables in this game, allowing players to re-extract the initial characters they acquired during the game, and open those character chests even without gold.
Paid items like the Fusion Key are a game-changer.
Players can purchase 3 Fusion Keys for 4,500 gold. When opening a chest on a map in the game, the player will be able to get a character that has already been fused directly from the chest.
This item has sparked a lot of controversy in the Supercell competitive community, as it is a straightforward "Krypton wins" mechanic.
The game also adds "consumable characters", which are Mega units, similar to the Canyon Vanguard in League of Legends. If the player has them in the inventory, they can appear in chests.
Another issue Jakub sees is the incentives for PVP.
The PVP scenes in Squad Busters are very chaotic, especially at the end of a game, where several character squads are fighting against each other and special effects are flying all over the screen.
But why do you have to fight through PVP battles to get gems and gold rewards? Why not absorb power directly from the enemy?
While players will be given a free chest key after losing a battle, which can open a new character chest that doesn't require gold, you'll need to find that chest on the map and walk next to it.
This breaks the regular snowball mechanic of destroying opponents, and instead resembles the design of devouring opponents in IO/lawn mowers.
If you compare it to Flood Rush, another project that Supercell axed last year, in Flood Rush, units are summoned to the battlefield via Taika energy, similar to Clash Royale.
The player spends the Teka Bubble and pays the unit card cost, and the unit appears on the battlefield.
In Squad Busters, players can only get new squad units through chests, and they can't summon multiple units quickly.
In Flood Rush, it's normal to summon multiple units during combat, as you can collect Taika Bubbles from dead enemy units on the battlefield.
In Squad Busters, this chest conversion slows down the transfer of "Defeated Enemy Power" to your squad, so much so that players must always fight enemy players close to chests.
However, Jakub believes that Supercell's Squad Busters team has already solved the more difficult problems in the first two iterations of testing, so they may be able to fix this last shortcoming before the launch on the 29th.