They’re all reborn, what’s wrong with being a little more almighty?

Chapter 232: Our game, the core gameplay is recharge

Zhang Wei was thinking about his trip to the United States, which didn't take much time, so how did Yao Xiaoguang manage to make the game? His efficiency was too fast!

Yao Xiaoguang seemed to see Zhang Wei's confusion and explained, "Making a game is just writing a few lines of code, it's not difficult. But the art design hasn't been done yet. I've temporarily replaced the pictures of the generals with those from Romance of the Three Kingdoms 9."

"Hearing what you said, making games is quite simple!" Zhang Wei said with a smile.

"Simple games are simple to make, and complex games are complex to make." Yao Xiaoguang went on to explain: "In 1997 and 1998, our country's game industry was just starting out, and many games were completed by one person.

You can make a game by writing a simple game engine yourself, or borrowing the game engine of another game, and then writing some code yourself.

Do you know Koei's Romance of the Three Kingdoms series? Many war chess games in China were made using Koei's Romance of the Three Kingdoms game engine. Some of them changed the graphics, while others didn't.

Zhang Wei nodded. "I've played the Three Kingdoms: Cao Cao's Biography. Is this the game you're talking about?"

"The first one was Heroes of the Three Kingdoms. Later, Koei Tecmo launched several sequels based on Heroes of the Three Kingdoms. Cao Cao's Story is probably the most famous and well-made one."

Yao Xiaoguang paused and continued, "When I was a kid, I was particularly fascinated by Diablo, so I taught myself programming. When I was 20, I made a demo using the Diablo template. It was because of this demo that Shanda took a fancy to it.

Later, I started my first business, a game called Diablo Online. I did most of the work, including art design. As you know, the business failed, and I was back to the old days overnight.

"Failure is the mother of success, Brother Xiaoyao, we will definitely succeed this time!" Zhang Wei said comfortingly.

"I also think that we will definitely succeed this time!" Yao Xiaoguang nodded with a firm look.

Zhang Wei sat in front of the computer and entered the game according to Yao Xiaoguang's instructions.

The game is still in the design stage and no server has been rented, so it cannot be connected to the Internet. What Yao Xiaoguang showed Zhang Wei was just a stand-alone game.

The game mainly consists of two contents: one is internal affairs and the other is war, which is also the mainstream setting of Three Kingdoms games.

Internal affairs include military farming, construction and recruitment of talents. Military farming can earn money, which can be used for construction.

The construction in the internal affairs is to increase the attributes of the generals. For example, upgrading the martial arts field will increase the general's strength, and upgrading the academy will increase the general's intelligence. The higher the level, the greater the increase.

Recruiting talents is what Zhang Wei calls drawing cards. If you don't recharge money, you only have three chances to recruit talents a day, and most of them are white generals. There is a certain chance to recruit green generals, and a small probability to recruit blue generals.

If you want to recruit red and gold generals, you have to spend money. If you spend money to buy a recruitment list, you will definitely get a blue general, a certain probability of recruiting a red general, and a small probability of recruiting a gold general.

The content of war is fighting, either attacking others or defending. At this time, what is compared is the attribute value of the generals.

Military generals rely on physical attacks, while civil officials rely on strategic attacks. Military generals' skills are also designed in the game, and different skills have different lethality.

Of course, high-lethality and awesome skills can only be obtained by awesome generals. As for how to judge whether a general is awesome or not, it depends on the color of the general's card.

For example, Lu Bu is a red card and has the most lethal general skills in the game, while Yan Liang is only a blue card and the skills he has are far less lethal than Lu Bu.

The same is true for civil officials. Zhuge Liang is a red card and has the best strategies, while Jian Yong is only a green card and has average strategies.

However, due to the construction bonus, if the building level is high enough, Yan Liang can defeat Lu Bu by relying on the attribute bonus.

Similar settings are very common in Three Kingdoms games, and Zhang Wei did not feel it was out of place when playing.

After playing for a while, Zhang Wei was basically familiar with the gameplay, so he said, "I have a few suggestions. Regarding internal affairs, farming and construction, you set it up to complete tasks, but I don't think that's necessary. It's too complicated.

I suggest canceling this task-doing process, and completing the farming and construction with just one click, simplifying the game system. After all, we are a free game, and we don’t need those complicated processes and lengthy operations to earn points.”

"Just a few clicks of the mouse, wouldn't that be too boring? Even minesweeping requires some brainpower! And if we don't do any missions, then we need to increase the limit on the number of internal affairs. If we can complete the building upgrade by simply clicking the mouse, wouldn't that be too fast?" Yao Xiaoguang asked.

"Of course the number of times can't be limited, but the time can be limited! For example, the time to complete the first level of farming is 30 seconds, the second level takes two minutes, the third level takes ten minutes, and so on. The higher the level, the more time it takes.

The same is true for the construction of buildings. When the level is low, it can be completed quickly. When the level is high, it may take more than ten or even dozens of hours to complete the construction of a building.

If you want to speed up the construction process, you can charge money. Get an acceleration card to increase the construction speed, and then get an overtime card to directly reduce a certain amount of construction time. Finally, get a fairy descent or something like that to directly complete the construction of the building.

In short, the point is that as long as you recharge, you will enjoy more benefits than players who don't recharge. The stronger you are, the more you recharge, the more benefits you will get, and the stronger you will be!"

"Okay, I'll take note." Yao Xiaoguang nodded.
Zhang Wei continued, "The second suggestion is that I think we can create some combinations of generals. For example, when Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei are in a team, a buff will be triggered.

Others such as the Five Tiger Generals, the Five Elite Generals, the Four Governors, the Four Pillars of Hebei, the Cao Clan, Crouching Dragon and Phoenix, etc. can also have similar settings. Civil officials can also have the same settings, and several civil officials can get together to form a military alliance.

Even hostile generals can be treated this way, such as the combination of Zhuge Liang and Sima Yi, and the combination of Zhang Liao and Sun Quan, all of which will have additional bonuses. In short, we just need to find ways to increase the number of general combinations."

"I understand. You are encouraging players to draw more cards!" Yao Xiaoguang understood immediately.

"Yes, the more enthusiastically players draw cards, the more we earn!" Zhang Wei nodded.

Many games have such settings, where suits will have additional bonuses to character attributes or bring additional effects. Sometimes, players will find it more powerful to collect a whole set of suits than to collect a few pieces of high-attribute equipment. For this reason, players are willing to spend a high price to collect a complete set of suits.

Of course Zhang Wei will use this tactic when drawing cards.

You have already drawn Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun and Ma Chao. If you don’t draw Huang Zhong, would you be worthy of the title of Five Tiger Generals?

Since you have gathered all the Five Tiger Generals, you have to be given a benefit, otherwise who would bother to gather the Five Tiger Generals? Five people together, the attack power increases by 100%, not too much, right?
In this way, five generals can exert the effect of ten generals, so why not quickly recharge money and draw cards to get all five of them?
The Five Tiger Generals and the Five Good Generals may all be red card generals, which are not easy to gather together, so you can make a blue card combination, or a mixed combination of red, blue and green cards.

For example, Ma Chao plus Ma Dai, Ma Tie and Ma Xiu form a Ma Family Army combination; Li Jue, Guo Si, Zhang Ji and Niu Fu form a Western Liang Iron Cavalry combination; Meng Huo, Meng You and Madam Zhu Rong form a Southern Barbarian Invasion combination; Dian Wei, Cao Ang and Cao Anmin form a One Shot Killing Three Sages combination, all of these are possible.

In order to complete these combinations, players have to draw cards. To get the character you want from hundreds of generals, even if it is just a green or blue card, you have to spend money like crazy.

As for the balance of the game, Zhang Wei doesn't care. After all, it's a web game for making quick money, so who cares about the balance!

The most realistic thing is to let the boss spend money to have fun, spend money to become stronger, spend money to crush other players.

Looking at the game interface, Zhang Wei continued: "Our interface is still missing something, that is, the place for recharge, it is not eye-catching enough!" "I plan to design the recharge option in the operation box below, and put it at the end of the options such as farming, construction, and recruitment." Yao Xiaoguang said.

"That won't do. It has to be placed in the most eye-catching position. I think we should put it right above the interface, making it more eye-catching. And don't call it top-up. Calling it top-up directly is too explicit. We have to change the name!"

Zhang Wei said, picked up the paper and pen on the table, and started drawing on it: "Assuming this piece of paper is our screen, then in the upper row, we need to design several icons like this.

The first position is called "Login Gift Pack". When a new player logs in for the first time, they will be given some game coins, acceleration cards and other props, and then they will be given a few Zhang Zhaoxian Lists to let the player experience the fun of drawing cards.

It would be best if players could draw a red general with 100% probability, so that they can experience the pleasure of being a RMB player first. Only in this way will they be willing to spend money to draw cards in the future.

Normally, as long as you log in to the game every day, you can receive a small amount of props at the location where the gift pack is. And if you log in continuously every week, you will be given a larger gift pack at the weekend.

The second position is called limited time discount, which is our recharge interface. First of all, we need to set up a first recharge gift package. For the first recharge, we will give more props, and the first recharge will be divided into grades. The higher the grade, the better the gift package.

For daily top-ups, we also divide them into different levels and give different discounts according to the levels. For example, if you top up 10 yuan, you will get 11 yuan; if you top up 30 yuan, you will get 35 yuan; if you top up 50 yuan, you will get 60 yuan, and so on.

In short, the more you top up, the bigger the discount, but this discount cannot be offered every day, just two weeks a month. In the other two weeks, we offer gift packages for top-up, and directly give out props according to the level of top-up.

The third position is the activity icon. We launch some activities and then present them to players through this activity icon. Players click on this icon to participate in our activities. "

Yao Xiaoguang frowned slightly. "Are they holding regular events? Is that similar to Fantasy Westward Journey? Fantasy Westward Journey has events like the Twelve Sects Challenge and the Imperial Examination on weekends, as well as a martial arts competition!"

"We don't do that kind of complicated activities. We only have one kind of activity, which is recharge!" Zhang Wei replied.

"Recharge is also called an activity?" Yao Xiaoguang was immediately surprised.

Zhang Wei nodded: "Recharge is of course an activity! In this activity interface, we regularly or irregularly sell various game gift packs, which contain game props. This gift pack must be more cost-effective than directly recharging to buy props.

For example, if you want to buy something in the game that costs 100 yuan, we set the price to yuan, and then players will be interested in buying it in real life.

"If players wait for events to buy gift packs and don't recharge at other times, aren't we losing money?" Yao Xiaoguang asked.

"You can limit the number of gift packs you can buy. A player can only buy one gift pack, and no more. And you can also use your brain when pairing the gift packs.

For example, some props that are usually hard to sell are all put into gift packs. In this way, the price of the gift packs appears to be higher, but their practicality is not that great.

Or you can sell gold card generals or special generals directly in the gift pack. For example, on Valentine's Day, we can launch a Diao Chan gift pack. In addition to various game props, the gift pack also includes a Diao Chan!
This Diao Chan cannot be drawn from the game cards. It can only be obtained through activities. In order to get Diao Chan, players will definitely buy gift packs. By the way, when the artist designed Diao Chan, Diao Chan wore less clothes. "

Yao Xiaoguang grinned. He had known Zhang Wei for more than a year, and this was the first time he discovered that Zhang Wei was so cruel and could come up with such a shameless money-making trick.

However, before Zhang Wei finished speaking, he drew a fourth icon on the paper.

Zhang Wei continued, "This fourth icon is the ranking list. This ranking list will have several more items, such as the ranking of generals' combat power, the ranking of building levels, the ranking of money, etc.

In addition to displaying the top dozens of players on the leaderboard, the player's ranking on the leaderboard must also be displayed, with an icon for improving the ranking set up behind it. As long as the player clicks on this icon, he will immediately jump to the recharge page! "

Yao Xiaoguang nodded suddenly. He finally understood that the core gameplay of Zhang Wei’s design was recharge!
……

In the next few days, Zhang Wei kept making various suggestions for revisions to "The Legend of the Three Kingdoms".

All the suggestions revolve around one core, which is to get players to spend money!

Even many of the proposed changes are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

But Zhang Wei doesn't care about it. The lifespan of web games is not very long. It is impossible for web games to operate for more than ten years like online games.

The purpose of a web game is to squeeze as much money as possible from players' wallets in a short period of time. Once the players get tired of it and the web game has made enough money, the server can be shut down.

Yao Xiaoguang disagrees with Zhang Wei's attitude. Game developers of Yao Xiaoguang's generation all have ideals and want to make high-quality games like Blizzard, pursuing excellence.

However, even though he disagreed, Yao Xiaoguang still modified the game according to Zhang Wei's request. After all, Zhang Wei was the major shareholder, and there was also the DOTA2 project to follow, which was what Yao Xiaoguang really cared about.

If Zhang Wei still has this attitude of making quick money when it comes to the DOTA2 project, Yao Xiaoguang will definitely quit.

……

In the large office, Zhang Wei looked at the artist modifying Diao Chan's character image and felt somewhat dissatisfied.

"This leg skirt is not good. The skirt has a slit here, showing the thighs, preferably to the base of the thighs. And this upper body..."

The artist interrupted with a look of grievance: "Mr. Zhang, the upper body cannot be exposed any more. The chest really cannot be lowered any further. The extent of my painting now is almost catching up with the scale of Wei Deng Shi Shu."

"You also know about Wei Deng Shi Shu, you're such a veteran!" Zhang Wei said jokingly, and then continued to look at Diao Chan on the computer screen.

"The face is drawn beautifully, but the figure is not so good." Zhang Wei frowned and thought for a long time. It seems that this artist's best level is just this.

"The male characters are drawn well, but for the female characters, we still need to find a new artist!" Zhang Wei suddenly thought of someone.

He immediately went to Yao Xiaoguang's office and asked, "Brother Xiaoyao, are you familiar with the game developers in Korea?"

"I do know a few. When I was at Shanda, I had some business dealings with South Korea," Yao Xiaoguang said.

Shanda's "Legend" was introduced from South Korea, and Shanda has been eyeing South Korea ever since, hoping to introduce games from South Korea again and replicate the success of "Legend". Later, Shanda wanted to develop its own games and also poached many game designers from South Korea.

Zhang Wei asked, "Do you know a man named Jin Hengtai?"

"Kim Hyung-tae? I don't have much impression of him. There are too many people with the last name Kim in Korea, and too many people with the name Tai." Yao Xiaoguang replied.

"Then please help me find out about this person. He should be a game artist." Zhang Wei paused and continued, "I plan to let him design the female characters in the game!"

(End of this chapter)