[Star Chat] Why is it that the global locust disaster is so great that it tortures players, but it is so praised by players?

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Hello, Mina-san, this is Jun Xi_. Today we are not going to talk about technology, but let’s talk about some things in the game that I personally find interesting. Today I want to talk to you about the new event of this version of Star Dome Railway, Universal Locust Plague. Why it was successful and what else I personally think could improve the player experience

What is the global locust plague?

• The Universal Locust Plague is essentially still a variant of the Star Dome Railway simulated universe gameplay, but the project team has given this simulated universe great survival pressure and flexible strategies, which has resulted in the Universal Locust Plague event becoming Star Dome Railway Development This is the most difficult challenge level ever. Before this event was released, there were obvious differences between Krypton players and 0 Krypton players in all levels. Krypton players could even clear the level alone. However, in this event, even if you are a Krypton player, there is no certain strategy to choose correctly. It is difficult to pass the level easily even if the characters are strengthened with blessings. At the same time, this does not mean that 0 krypton players cannot pass the level. After all, the key to this activity is strategy and growth.

• Let’s briefly talk about the main content of the activity. When the game starts, the player first chooses a destiny (each destiny has different abilities and character enhancements, and players often make choices based on the character they choose). Your players will have a foundation. The number of actions you can take will be reduced every time you advance. When your number of actions reaches 0, the Boos at the end of the level will be strengthened every time you advance. Therefore, it is very important to plan your number of actions reasonably.

• Among them, the advancing area has grids with various effects, such as reward grids, event grids, and battle grids. Each time you go through an area or defeat a wave of enemies, you will be given the opportunity to choose a blessing or some fragments used to strengthen the blessing. Players can Strengthen your character by obtaining various blessings. At the end of one area and before the beginning of the next area, you will be given a random sieve, which can have different effects before selecting the next area.

• The ultimate goal of the event is to defeat bosses that seemed impossible to defeat before through the enhancements you gain along the way.

1. What are the things worth learning from?

strategic and tactical

• In the current Krypton gold game environment, it is rare to see activities like this that have similar game experience between Krypton players and civilians. A civilian player can do tens of thousands of damage in one round. If he is a Krypton player, he can do tens of thousands of damage in one round. Hundreds of thousands of damage, but a boss has more than 20 million health. . . This causes the gap between krypton and gold to be infinitely narrowed in this event, allowing players to pay more attention to the choice of team formation and blessings. This has at least two advantages. First, civilian players can finally experience the thrill of Krypton's nuclear explosion through various blessing enhancements. Second, for Krypton, it will not be like ordinary daily brainless cool and brainless instant kills. More It is to combine certain tactics and strategies to enhance the gaming fun of Krypton players.
  

(As an aside, of course many Krypton players spend money just to experience the mindless instant killing and the pleasure of big numbers. If I said above that even Krypton players can’t beat it in seconds, wouldn’t it make Krypton players very unhappy that they spent so much money? Money actually has activities and can't be spent casually? This involves a player's interest curve in the game. To put it in layman's terms, when a player draws a new character, it is undoubtedly the most fresh at the beginning. In the first week or two, I even want to be immersed in the game 24 hours a day. But after a while, players will naturally feel bored after repeating this process. This is especially true for Krypton gold players. Any activities and levels every day For them, every second is a matter of seconds, and they will naturally feel bored in a shorter period of time. Now there is a new event, and even Krypton Gold players can't just hang up and pass it as usual, which will undoubtedly make them feel bored. Their eyes lit up. At the same time, krypton gold is not without its role in the activity. For civilian players, the choice of blessing and the planning of the number of actions are undoubtedly more demanding)

Randomness and uncertainty

• For this activity, I personally feel that the most exciting thing is randomness and uncertainty. Different areas will have different effects, and different fates will have different skills. Before entering the next area, there are A chance to roll dice to determine the triggering of different random effects. In some event areas, your choice will determine whether you will receive enhancements or negative effects. The rewards you receive in each battle or event can be selected from different blessings. The combination of blessings has different effects. If you cannot get certain necessary blessings or a sufficient number of destiny paths corresponding to the destiny path, it will make this world locust plague journey more difficult. The combination of all these uncertainties can almost This makes the player's experience different every time he plays the game. Even if your choice is exactly the same as last time, the final result will be different due to the uncertain events and rewards in the middle.

• Isn’t that what a card drawing game is? All the cards drawn are full of randomness except for the guarantee. Unexpected bursts of good luck will undoubtedly make players keen on this game. Even if the guarantee is not ridiculous, it can make a lot of people popular. It’s time to quit the trap, but when faced with the contrast between the characters they like and the European characters around them, most people still choose to pay for love. This will cause players to want to draw the characters they want more and more if they can’t draw them. Even if you are lucky, you will want to smoke even more. Therefore, excellent randomness design is very important for all aspects of a game and can even determine success or failure.

substantial growth

• During the game experience, players can truly feel that their characters are growing, which is a positive feedback for players’ enthusiasm for the game. In the Universal Locust Disaster event, the project team did a good job. At this point, as the player progresses along the way, when the player continues to choose blessings and enhancements, he will be able to feel obvious improvements in subsequent battles. Some are improvements in damage, and some are improvements in mechanics (such as destroying enemies after strengthening). The energy that can be replenished by the ultimate move has been greatly increased), and some are improvements in survival. In short, these are things that can be fed back to players in real time, allowing players to experience the fun of constantly becoming stronger. At the same time, in this During the event, there is also a skill tree system. As players complete tasks on the skill tree, players can also gain a lot of improvements. These can greatly improve the player's gaming experience. When you reach a certain level, Even civilian players can easily pass the level.
  

The integrity of the plot and background of the event

• The plot background of this event is based on the fall of the Breeding Star God many years ago. Through the plot and conversational text with selections in the event, players are brought to the point where several Star Gods jointly kill the Breeding Star God. On the battlefield, from the cause to the middle process and the final result, the narrative is very complete. This immersive and complete plot can greatly enhance the player's experience of the activity. The plot that is unlocked step by step with exploration will undoubtedly It can also arouse players' interest in continuing to play. In this regard, I have to say that the Star Dome Railway project team has done a really good job.
  

marketing success

• This really has to cooperate with the design of major game companies, and it will greatly increase the flow of up characters when this event is released. First of all, the new life path "breeding" that appeared in the event is almost for the sake of the new character "Yin Yuejun" Custom made. At the same time, the survival pressure is extremely high. Sometimes it is difficult to survive even with three survival slots, which makes players realize the importance of a high-quality survival slot. The second up character is Fu Xuan, who is in the protection slot. Drawing these two Each new character can greatly reduce the difficulty of the activity. Combined with the large number of appearances of these two characters in the previous version to shape the character and MiHoYo's large amount of publicity, it can be said that it is difficult to reduce the sales of this version.
  

award

• The last thing I have to mention is that there is no way, it gives too much. This activity alone can provide players with nearly 30 draws of rewards if not other things. I can only say that after activities like this Be sure to spend more. Rich rewards are also an important measure to provide players with interesting experience.

2. Areas that still need to be optimized

• So many advantages have been mentioned above. Now let me talk about the areas that I feel can still be optimized after my own experience.

Punishment mechanism for failure in battle

• In activities, we often encounter such a situation. Due to problems with training, insufficient selection of blessings, or even some minor flaws in the operation, the BOSS will be instantly killed by focused fire (the BOSS will have charged attacks at the end of these levels). Can directly focus fire to kill people in seconds), and even some elite monsters can focus fire to kill key characters instantly, causing players to have to start over. It is not bad in the previous planes (there are three planes in one exploration, There is a bottom BOSS at the end of each plane). Without unlocking the life paths that can skip levels, it often takes at least half an hour to defeat the last BOSS. Once you fail, you have to start all over again. This half-hour of effort is all In vain, because the difficulty of this activity is quite high, this situation is common. Encountering this situation will undoubtedly make the player very crazy, and will also greatly kill the player's interest in the experience. The challenge difficulty is already high. The fault tolerance rate is still so small that many players don’t want to play again if a similar situation occurs a few times.
• Therefore, my personal immature suggestion is: give players more opportunities in difficult BOSS battles instead of losing everything if they fail once, or there is no need to start from the beginning, but start from scratch on this plane. Reduced penalties for player failure.
  

Not friendly enough to Xiaobai

• Without reading the guide, it would be difficult for normal players to quickly get started with this activity. After all, the mechanism is actually quite complicated. When I first started to experience it, I didn’t read the many explanations carefully, which caused me to spend a long time at the beginning. There has been no strategy or tactics for a period of time. At the same time, why is the skill tree designed so that the previous node must be unlocked before you can see the tasks of the next node? Even if it is to prevent some players from unlocking all the skill trees too quickly, at least let the players know what they need to do in the beginning, because some tasks are very troublesome, and once you are stuck there, you will not be able to complete subsequent tasks. It is equivalent to 0 improvement for players during this period, which is very unfavorable for players who are not sufficiently practiced to experience the game.
• My suggestion is not to use so much text and pictures for the introduction of mechanisms and activities. Many players are actually too lazy to read it like me. Although it is also a good choice for players to experience it themselves, why not do it? How about a reference instructional video? Players can watch the video at any time when they encounter something they don’t understand, but it is more inconvenient to watch it again after watching the novice tutorial. Regarding the improvement of the skill tree, I think if you are afraid that players will brush too fast, why not use the link How to get the task? Limiting the number of attempts at one time can also achieve the purpose of restricting players from filling up the skill tree too quickly. At the same time, if some tasks are more difficult, players can put them at the back of the skill tree until they are almost done, so as not to get stuck again due to training issues. Failure to complete a certain task will cause the player to experience the embarrassment of 0 improvement even if they complete the task, resulting in a problem of reduced enthusiasm for the player's experience.
  

Summarize

• Let’s start with Lightspeed Armor. Some of the above opinions and suggestions are just my personal thoughts. I have not participated in the development of the project. There must be things that I have not considered. The developers of the project team must know more than me and have similar or better ideas. The final version of the solution must be the best solution that the project team considers after considering all aspects. After all, whether it is a commercial game Or for other games, if they want long-term development, the first consideration is how to give players a better gaming experience.
• Welcome everyone to put forward your own ideas in the comment area or communicate with me privately. I believe that exchange and discussion with the best of hundreds of experts is the best help for individuals to develop the game industry! !

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