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This paper makes a simple analysis and personal suggestions on Fantasy Westward Journey from five aspects: game UI design, game play system, economic system and profit model, game balance and player experience. I am a poor scholar and lack of experience. This article is purely personal. Please correct me if there are any inaccuracies.
1.UI design is concise and effective.
Personally, I think it is more appropriate to describe the dreamy UI design with conciseness and effectiveness.
First of all, the novice teaching system is suitable.
As a person who was stopped outside Chang 'an, I am also a new player of Fantasy Westward Journey. After the first day of installation and trial of mobile games, I feel that the novice guide is still in place. Follow the novice story and interface tips, add attributes, combat tips, automatically find the way, hang up, task progress, timely information feedback, the system is simple and easy to understand, and it will be easy to get started soon. Like many games, there are various novice rewards, and the initial level is rapidly upgraded, which I quickly accepted in Skinner Box.
Secondly, the user interface is simple.
In the main interface, except the background, it can be roughly divided into four sections: activities in the upper left corner, shopping mall, guidance and reward, chat system in the lower left corner, people (pets) and current tasks in the upper right corner, and gameplay system in the lower right corner. These icons are not completely scattered around the interface, but are placed in a folded way. First of all, they are concise and players can quickly find the corresponding functions and information. The new voice chat system makes the interaction between players more convenient, which is also a measure taken by Netease to enhance the interaction between players. As for the lovely style of animation, bright scenery, brisk background music and so on, these things transplanted from the end tour will not be expanded here.
2. The characteristics of fair competition system
Generally speaking, the game level is diversified and can meet the needs of different players. In daily activities, in addition to the main task, there are also hang-up occasions and ghost-catching tasks, which are suitable for players who are lazy and only play tricks (it is not surprising that many players team up to catch ghosts all night in the early days of the game); There is a copy of "The Past Is Like a Dream", and there is also a devil incarnate who pays attention to strategy. These tasks need to pay attention to teamwork and the order of killing monsters, which is suitable for strategic players. This also avoids the dream of becoming a machine game with repeated pictures and attracts players who like new ideas; There are plenty of silver coins to reward escort missions, daily master missions, and gang missions to strengthen community interaction. ...
Time-limited activities such as Three Musts and Imperial Examination are simple and rewarding, which encourages some players to insist on landing regularly every day. PVP activities such as arena and PK can better meet the "self-realization" demand of RMB and high play.
In addition, there are martial arts skills such as cooking and architecture, and the stall trading between players takes care of the feelings of many non-RMB players. It is undoubtedly an attractive point to think that besides fighting, you can also cook and trade goods as a small businessman. Because it means another level of economic autonomy and "self-realization".
The design of these activities is unique, such as less computer experience and more rewards for strategic task experience, which also encourages players to participate in the game more manually and interact with other players. (For example, in the dust task, when a player hangs up, other players will tell him not to hang up and tell him to attack a specific monster, thus achieving the purpose of interaction between players).
With the improvement of the level, it also means that players accumulate various values and the task difficulty is diverted. Players are also attracted by bananas and slowly climb the mountain like monkeys (level promotion, sign-in reward, task reward, time cost investment, etc.). ) hanging on a steel wire, you climb higher and higher.
3. Economic system and profit model
Different from the previous end-game time charging system, mobile games are value-added service charging system, that is, the game platform is free and props are charged. Free game platform has become a trend of mobile games in China, which is also in line with Shi Yuzhu's concept of "making rich people make money and making people without money support their popularity".
The game adopts three-track currency system, from low to high, there are silver coins, gold coins and fairy jade respectively. Silver coins are used to buy basic equipment, gold coins are used for transactions between players, and jade is used in shopping malls. Among the three, Xianyu can be exchanged for gold coins and silver coins, and gold coins can be exchanged for silver coins, and vice versa.
The main sources of silver coins are daily task rewards and equipment sales (sold to NPC). This kind of motivation conforms to Skinner's box principle and is one of the motivations for players to keep doing tasks. In addition to daily activities, there are stall transactions between players, such as cooking items. This setting gives players a certain degree of "economic autonomy", and players enjoy the fun of making money and increase the stickiness of players. As for Xianyu, it can only be obtained by recharging coupons, which is the source of profit for the game.
At level 55, players will find it more and more difficult to upgrade their equipment and spend more and more time and cost, which urges some players to gain equipment advantages by recharging. These players include white-collar workers with relatively high time cost, some working-class people, and students who have the habit of charging themselves. After recharging, you can buy the equipment of the mall or the equipment of the players in the main hall. For those players who recharge once, this situation will recur, because he will show that recharging is worth it compared with spending a long time accumulating monsters. This situation will not have much impact on other non-RMB players, because the equipment gap caused by recharge will not be reflected too much except PK. In addition, the diversified gameplay of the game also minimizes this impact.
4. Game balance
In the dream of mobile games, there are physical explosions to kill Datang, physical groups to attack lions and camels, magic groups to attack Dragon Palace, sealing and blocking Fangcun Mountain, treating and assisting Putuo Mountain, and continuously exporting to hell. Each school has its own characteristics, and the overall game balance is still very balanced.
However, the only fly in the ointment is that. Take the hell I play, for example, when I catch ghosts and some copies, I am always rejected by a bunch of Datang and Dragon Palace, and I am not kicked out of the team once or twice. The single skill burst is low, and the group skill has no output. In the efficiency of catching ghosts, it is bound to be inferior to the Tang Dynasty with high outbreak and the Dragon Palace lion camel with high mass injury. Of course, in order to take care of the balance of the game, the game has set up a mechanism that mutant ghosts will escape when there are players from the three sects of Hell, Square Inch and Putuo in the team to make up for their inefficiency in catching ghosts. But the effect seems to be not as good as expected.
In PVP, you will see that Datang is a parent-child, a double-auxiliary mother, the seal department is a father-in-law lineup, and the Dragon Palace and the Lion Camel can only be benches.
In order to improve the balance of the game, we can see that Netease takes care of team diversity in many plot settings. For example, we will always see someone shouting on the chat screen: Qingxuan's task is to come to a local government and ask for a wet nurse. And in some places where people usually kick "suffer indignities", they will also fight back at this time: "Don't you like doing it for us very much? Now you live in Datang by yourself! Call if you need it, kick if you don't need it and be our spare tire. "
This is undoubtedly caused by the imbalance between sects. In addition, the demand for Putuo characters by chatting often shows the scarcity of this sect. The reason is, of course, that this Sect is at a disadvantage among all sects. This is where the game needs to be improved. For example, if the diversity of the team is satisfied, can the team get additional rewards? Additional formation attack and formation defense? For example, in sect PK, different sect combinations will have different additional effects (different combinations are complementary) to encourage players to try different combinations, not just a few seconds of violence. Of course, this measure needs to further consider the impact of this change on other tasks.
5. Is it too powerful?
When the mobile game was transplanted from the end game, the gameplay was simplified, making the operation easier to adapt to the habits of mobile phone users. For example, ghost hunting is simplified, skill upgrading is simplified, a large number of operations are simplified, and processes are simplified.
Although I have done a lot of light treatment, as a mobile game, I still feel too heavy. It takes at least 3 minutes to complete the daily task or brush the activity to 100, which means that the mobile phone can only cook eggs on this interface in these 3 hours. Especially with the promotion of the level, if you want to move on, the number of repeated tasks is increasing, and the time cost is increasing. The mobile phone stays in this "boiled egg" state for longer and longer, which will undoubtedly affect the player's experience and stickiness to the game. It is not difficult to find that at the beginning, we all had to wait in line for a few minutes to go to Fantasy Westward Journey. But after a period of time, the phenomenon of "queuing to travel to the west" disappeared, which has a certain relationship with the severity of the game. (Of course, the popularity in the early stage has a lot to do with Netease's vigorous promotion of players' fantasy plots. Daily tasks that are repeated every day and online for a long time will inevitably reduce the stickiness of some players to the game. Is it possible to achieve more obvious task diversion after upgrading, reduce similar tasks repeated by players every day through high risk and high return, and let players invest shorter game time every day and constantly enter new ways of playing?
Of course, some people think that this aggravation is a new creation in the mobile game industry. As a newcomer, I dare not criticize this view too much. Regarding the future direction of the Fantasy Journey to the West, I hold a wait-and-see attitude while retaining my own views. Generally speaking, this is a very successful mobile game, which attracts players by using Skinner's box principle and takes care of the players' game experience, but there is still room for improvement.
(Supplement: My previous view on the balance of sects was really biased. Now I have found many pairs of 5 Dragon Palace and 5 Lion Camel aircraft teams, and they are also brave in gang wars, and there are still many ways to play, and some players are still developing new ways to play; The combination of different sects in the plot also shows the diversity of sects. Well, I learned a lot from this game. I'm still playing, but it's been 69 for a long time. Slow down. )