Otherworldly Architect

At the end of March, a week after the official launch of the built-in knife wizard in "Idle Heroes", something even more magical happened.

The paid ranking of "Idle Heroes" has not dropped but has risen!

And it is an all-round and substantial improvement-

The average consumption of existing players has increased by 30%, the total number of users has increased by 3.5%, and the online rate of users has increased by more than 50%.

And these ratios are still increasing!

This data report was made internally by Tulong Baodao, and of course it will be kept secret from the outside world.

However, the partners, including the platform, are naturally unavoidable. They can also roughly infer the sales changes of "Idle Heroes" from their own backstage data.

Everyone who saw the data showed a standard confused face.

-Why? The official built-in auxiliary program actually helps to increase sales?

——Isn't it affecting the balance too much and causing a large loss of players?

It's very simple, because the robbery of the knives... oh no, cheating... oh no, the idea of ​​encouraging consumption is beyond the understanding of local designers.

Because they can't understand why "Idle Heroes" has almost no operability and doesn't even require players to fight.

And the most powerful thing is: players still like to play such games?

So they can't understand why these players still pay krypton gold in order to further reduce operations, or even spend tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of cash all at once, in order to "automate" the harvesting process.

However, facts speak louder than words, and players just eat this set.

The emergence of the knife wizard has allowed them to experience the highest artificial efficiency.

At this time, what affects their speed of income is the frequency of the heroes working.

For example, Level 5 Knife Elf harvests a treasure chest every 3 hours, but many players' hero teams come back every 4 hours.

There will be many staggers in the middle, and every 12 hours a treasure chest will be wasted.

And the strategy that can maximize the overall efficiency is to make every operation of the knife elf just harvest the full treasure chest.

So players started racking their brains to get the two frequencies to coincide.

And the easiest way is to draw an orange hero with krypton gold. His passive attribute is to shorten the time of the next instance by 1 hour...

But even if the player's luck is overwhelming, he really draws this hero.

Then what if the little knife elf accumulates enough experience after a week, and upgrades it again, so that it will be harvested every 2.5 hours?

The time has slipped again.

It's easy, friends, regroup your team!

Thousands of choices, resulting in thousands of efficiencies and paths.

After all, "a game is a series of meaningful choices"!

——So you are a krypton gold draw card? Or upgrade your knives with krypton gold?

- Choose!

According to the statistics of the first week, the ownership rate of the knife wizard in "Idle Heroes" is about 7.3%, which is much higher than the industry's speculation, and even slightly higher than Mingyan's previous estimate.

The main reason is that there is an atmosphere of comparison on the forum, and many players also have the idea of ​​​​trying something new.

The people around seemed to have elves overnight, and they were all posting their elves levels, and they no longer had to work so hard to collect food by themselves... Oh no, collect treasure chests.

So whether it is curiosity or vanity, it will easily prompt players to buy one and try it.

Although the one-month knife wizard in the mall is 998 currency (98.8 yuan in real currency), there is also a three-day experience coupon, which can be bought for only 50 currency.

then……

This change by Tulong Baodao Studio not only did not reduce the data of "Idle Heroes", but instead consolidated the existing traffic and opened up a larger player market.

According to the research, a large part of the core player group of this game are even housewives/husbands who have never played games!

They are very able to experience this kind of happiness that is slowly cultivated from scratch, just like cultivating a pot of daffodils. They only spend a small amount of time every day, but they can experience long-term and peaceful happiness.

Yu Bing was actually quite worried about the changes to the little knife elf.

After all, he was still a third-year student. When the teachers in the school were analyzing that "such a model can easily lead to the loss of players", it was inevitable that he began to feel unconfident.

"Knife Elf has further reduced the player's operations," Yu Bing said worriedly. "If things go on like this, will players lose interest in the game? After being offline one time, you suddenly don't want to go online again?"

Ming Yan smiled and said: "The loss of players is a natural law, no matter how good the game is, the user group is slowly losing. The reason why you didn't feel it before is because our recommendation channels are too wide, and people keep pouring in. The number of players completely overwhelms the players who are slowly losing."

It is precisely because of this that each game needs to count the retention rate of one day, three days and seven days. These values ​​are used to analyze whether the game itself can retain players.

As for Yu Bing's concerns...

"Actually, it's quite normal for idle games to have such a situation, but the small knife wizard can play a positive role in it." Ming Yan said, "Do you know that the human subconscious will make excuses for their actions?"

Yu Bing blinked and said obediently, "I don't know, please ask the teacher for advice."

Ming Yan said: "People's subconscious will justify themselves. It means that if a person does something wrong, then his subconscious will attribute the error to an external cause; or he simply does not think it is a wrong thing, so as to avoid I am tortured by guilt. The principle of our kryptonite is actually the same - when a person invests too much money for games or other entertainment, his subconscious will justify and rationalize the kryptonite, so that You won't have any guilt."

Yu Bing: "..." What the hell! !

Very thoughtful.

Ming Yan smiled and said: "It sounds very scary, as if you have a devil in your heart. In fact, it shows in many trivial matters of life. For example, have the elders in your family bought anything expensive and useless? ?"

Yu Bing suddenly remembered it and said, "My mother bought an automatic massager, which is said to prolong her life by ten years! She used it every day after buying it, and then she almost dislocated her arm..."

"Yes." Ming Yan said, "because if something is useless, her money is wasted, which is an obvious mistake. So she will firmly believe that this thing is useful, and the more useful it is, the better. Then she didn't do anything wrong, it's just that you don't know the goods."

"..."

Yu Bing's expression was like seeing a real devil.

He could understand it, he could understand why Ming Yan was the God of Wealth and the Dragon Saber "robbing money" everywhere.

——This person really has a certain level of understanding of human psychology!

Others are still at the level of trying to please the players, but Ming Yan has already stood at the height of the mountains and knows the players' psychology well.

For example, the mode of drawing cards makes use of human gambling psychology;

The systems such as skin and title all make use of human comparison psychology;

The current little knife elf is taking advantage of human laziness and desire for something for nothing...

——It really is the reincarnation of the devil who plays with people's hearts!

The scary thing is that the current industry has already conducted research on the Dragon Saber, but it is completely elusive and opaque.

The "God of Wealth" behind the Tulong Baodao Studio has officially become synonymous with mysterious power in the circle.

Although Bluestar's design is imaginative, everyone can still see the cause and effect, at least know why its games are so popular;

But the design of the Dragon Slayer Sword is really as ever-changing as the devil, making it completely incomprehensible.

"Defying the Sky", "Card Alliance" and so on are not bad, at least there is still a little room for manipulation; but this "Idle Hero" really subverts almost all the traditions and rules of game design, the more professional people are. On the contrary, it is easier to be confused.

On the contrary, the more people who don’t usually play games, the more fun they can experience this game.

GamingStudio reported on April 30:

[If Bluestar Studio is a genius in the game industry, then Dragon Slayer Studio is a genius in the game industry. 】

[This year may be the year when our game history ushered in a turning point. Throughout the past, authorities often do not know that they have stood at a fork in history, and every step they take will become an important decision point. 】

[In the past, our great games were predictable and learnable. We know roughly what this year's Game of the Year will look like, it will have the most perfect combat system, it will have a logical backstory, it will have great graphics and soundtracks - we are all working towards that, And firmly believe that this is the truth of the game design industry. 】

[But now, times are different. 】

[Chief designer Ming of Bluestar Studio told us that the game can have a thousand paths. "Minecraft" is known for its plasticity, and "Blue Star Doom" is like an interactive movie. This once seemed almost unimaginable to us, just as a frog in a well could not imagine the sea. Maybe this is the sense of smell of genius, the creative idea of ​​genius, which makes people infinitely fascinated. 】

[The successor can only continue to explore on the road he has already walked, but so far, no one has been able to walk out a different path again. We may learn from success stories, but we dare not imitate the mind of genius. 】

[The chief designer of Tulong Baodao Studio told us another truth: the game has no path at all. The creed we believed in was once the golden rule in game design, and all violators would die without a place to be buried. It's like we used to be superstitious that "all players must be in absolute balance"...]

[But even that was broken. If the Chief Master Ming is a genius, then the chief designer of the Dragon Saber must be a genius. In the eyes of everyone in disbelief, he personally broke all the shackles of game design, destroyed all our superstitions, and maybe still laughing at our ignorance and paranoia at this moment. 】