When I write a bug it becomes the core gameplay.

Chapter 594 Gu Fan’s Two Ideas
This is obviously not good news for Gu Fan.

Previously, Against the Heaven's creation of "Endless Fantasy Tales 2" had already caused quite a stir.

Although the card drawing mechanism of Endless Fantasy Tales 2 can barely be considered a pay-to-win, it is a stand-alone game after all, and leveling up is not mainstream, and there is no particularly obvious forced krypton behavior.

What you sell with paid gaming experience is just the character, not the stats directly. There is a big difference between the two.

Even if players are zero-氪 players, they can still draw some good characters and experience the entire plot and big world gameplay of the game.

But this time, "Against the Gods" is obviously no longer so tender and sentimental, it is intended to sell values ​​directly.

Lilith introduced: "This game is called "Against the Heavens", it is a game about cultivating immortals.

“As for the origin of the name, it’s also very simple.

“‘Cultivating immortals is to go against the will of heaven.’ Therefore, we must fully implement this concept in the game and carry it forward!
“And this also happens to coincide with the name of our Against Heaven.

"In short, using selling numbers and immortal cultivation themes as entry points, everyone should use their brains and think carefully about how to do it specifically.

“The most important point is how we can ensure the experience of zero-paying players as much as possible while selling the value, and keep them as much as possible.”

As she spoke, Lilith looked at Zhou Yang.

Zhou Yang was silent for a moment: "Boss Li is indeed wise and powerful. She immediately grasped the key to the problem and raised an unsolvable problem in the gaming industry."

Lilith straightened her back proudly: "Don't flatter me, answer the question."

Zhou Yang also found it a bit difficult. Every time they had a brainstorming session for a new game, they would be called back to be tortured by President Li.

Take this issue for example, it is indeed the biggest problem of pay-to-win games.

Pay-to-win games and pay-to-win models are not uncommon in the domestic gaming community. It can even be said that they have dominated the market for a long time.

From the PC games that feature "massive multiplayer battles on the same screen", to the web games that feature "come and kill me if you're a brother", to various castrated versions of national war mobile games, selling numbers is always the most profitable game mode, without a doubt.

But up to now, this model has become less and less viable.

On the contrary, stand-alone games are becoming more and more popular.

The reason is, of course, very simple. More and more players have figured it out: in this kind of game, they are not players themselves, but part of the gaming experience of paying players.

Being a servant in real life is fine, but do you have to be a servant in the game?

All the pay-to-win games that have survived, or the relatively outstanding pay-to-win games, have basically achieved one thing, that is, they have found a rough balance between the experience of paying players and the experience of free players.

Spending money can give you a great experience and you can be sought after by many ordinary players, but you are not omnipotent. While playing games for free, although you will never be able to beat the spenders, you will not be bullied to the point of having no experience at all, and in many cases you can use your understanding of the game to gain high recognition.

For example, many national war games:

A kryptonian player spends a lot of money and has strong combat power, and can fight many people alone; but he also needs to attract a large number of ordinary players to build his own power, otherwise he will fall into the dilemma of being outnumbered.

Free players, relying on their excellent understanding, can receive military funds and red envelopes from the rich to build the most cost-effective lineup, or help the rich to operate the guild, and they can also have a good sense of presence.

Everyone understands this principle, but it is hard to say whether they can actually put it into practice.

Just like walking on a tightrope, everyone knows that the secret is to maintain balance and not fall, but when it comes to actually doing it, the slightest mistake can lead to complete failure.

After thinking for a moment, Zhou Yang said, “I think we should learn as much as possible from the experience of other similar games.

“We divide gamers into four different groups and treat them separately.

"The first category is top-tier spenders. For this type of people, they don't consider the cost-effectiveness of their money too much. We just need to do our best to set the numerical ceiling and grading system.

"The second category is micro-paying players, who recharge tens or hundreds of yuan every month. We must ensure that there are some high-welfare operations tailored to their consumption habits so that they can maintain this consumption level as much as possible.

"The third category is players who don't spend any money but are very active online. We should try to let them serve as social ties or 'strategists', take on management tasks, and give them ample room to play in the game mechanics.

"The fourth category is players who don't spend any money and are not particularly active online. On the one hand, we need to do our best to..."

However, before Zhou Yang finished speaking, Lilith began to shake her head impatiently.

"What you said is all old news. How can we do this in our game Against Heaven?
“It’s not possible at the root!
"We have to take an unconventional approach and start over."

Zhou Yang was speechless for a moment.

Obviously, this is an expected result. Because if we follow this experience, then judging from the existing national war games, the overall positive emotions collected are not small, which cannot meet Lilith's requirements.

What Lilith wants is subversion, and to be able to collect as much negative emotions as possible with fewer players quitting the game.

However, Zhou Yang's safe and sound plan obviously didn't work.

Thinking of this, Gu Fan said, "Boss Li, how about I briefly talk about my opinion first, just as a starting point."

Lilith nodded: "Yes, sure." Gu Fan explained: "I think that in the current gaming market environment, this kind of krypton gold game has been increasingly rejected by players.

"Correspondingly, people are becoming more and more accepting of stand-alone games.

“Players who spend money want to kill as many players as they want, and the more they kill, the better. However, players who don’t spend money don’t want to be chased and killed by players who spend money. This contradiction is indeed difficult to resolve.

“If we continue to use the old ideas, the players will be able to see through it at a glance, and it will definitely not work.

"If we want to get out of these two ways of thinking, fundamentally speaking, we need to shift the contradictions so that the game between paying players and non-paying players is no longer a zero-sum game and the contradictions are no longer so sharp.

“I think there are two different approaches.

“The first approach: We try to make the map as big and complex as possible.

"For example, on the big map, everyone can build their own cave and hide away. Besides practicing, they can hunt monsters or collect spiritual medicine.

"Zero-paying players can improve themselves secretly, and although paying players can easily kill zero-paying players, they may not be able to find them. Moreover, when paying players want to hunt high-level monsters, they may be ambushed by zero-paying players when both sides are hurt.

“This is a way of dealing with things: although this world is still a world where the strong prey on the weak, it is highly random and changes very quickly, so it can support the entire system relatively well.

"Within this system, we can play some more tricks."

After listening to this, Lilith shook her head slightly: "Not good."

Obviously, she felt that this method could retain zero-氪 players, but it would not generate much negative emotions.

Even adding some disgusting settings will not necessarily lead to improvements.

Gu Fan continued, "There is also a second way: we try to establish a very clear and very strict rule.

“Players who spend money on a game must not kill players who don’t spend money on a game.

"However, we have used other methods to give both paying players and non-paying players enough reasons to continue playing."

Zhou Yang was very surprised: "Is there such a method? In the world of cultivating immortals?"

Gu Fan nodded: "It doesn't exist in the traditional world of immortal cultivation, but it does exist in the real world.

“Isn’t the Henggang Middle School simulator a similar system?”

Everyone had different expressions, and Gu Fan continued to explain.

Lilith frowned and listened carefully, but from her subsequent expression, she was obviously gradually agreeing with Gu Fan's statement.

How to deal with the conflict between kryptonian players and civilian players?

The reason why kryptonians spend money is to experience the game, and killing civilians is the best gaming experience. In the past, kryptonians paid to maintain the server, and civilians played for free, which was generally balanced.

But with the development of the game industry, civilians have come to their senses and no longer want to be grandsons in games. After all, with the improvement of consumption levels, everyone can afford stand-alone games, and there are more and more stand-alone free games.

Since the kryptonians can’t find any civilians to kill, they will naturally quit the game, and the whole cycle will naturally collapse.

The second solution proposed by Gu Fan is to cut off this contradiction from the root, so that the greatest pleasure that krypton players can get from the game is no longer killing civilians, but other goals.

This goal, of course, is of a PVE nature, just like the kryptonian in "Endless Fantasy Tales 2" who builds a full-star galaxy battleship and then goes to take on high-difficulty challenges to brush up on time.

The difference is that in Endless Fantasy Tales 2, the connection between players is not close, so the kryptonian players who form a galaxy battleship don’t have many opportunities to show off.

Of course, correspondingly, there will be fewer negative emotions generated.

"Against the Heavens" aims to further strengthen the connection between players, reduce the antagonism between kryptonians and civilian players, and make them become a cooperative and symbiotic competitive relationship as much as possible.

Of course, the ultimate purpose of doing this is to free up space to facilitate some incredible operations to better collect negative emotions.

Gu Fan continued, "We assume that the cultivation of immortals in this game is not the same as in the novels about cultivation of immortals, but is more similar to the involutionary model of Henggang Middle School.

"Everyone has a common goal. For example, at Henggang Middle School, everyone wants to get into college. Under this goal, everyone is in a delicate competitive relationship:

"Although there is involution and the number of places is fixed, there are too many people participating, so students in the same class or school do not directly form a competitive relationship. Therefore, they can still establish a certain degree of cooperation and make progress together.

"Of course, I know what you want to say.

"In reality, the students of Henggang Middle School have to play due to the pressure of reality, but in the game, players can choose not to play.

"So, if we want this system to work well, we have to establish a good 'internal circulation mechanism', that is, to allow ordinary players to gain enough benefits to support them to continue playing.

"To put it simply... we have to give them money in reality."

(End of this chapter)