After thinking for a long time, I finally understood "NARAKA: BLADEPOINT".

Text by: Guofu

On April 13th, the official WeChat account of Naraka: Bladepoint released a recruitment tweet for a player meet - and - greet session.

The tweet mentioned that since March, there have been many disappointed voices in the game community. There was a deviation between the studio's ideas and the players' needs, and the studio would enter an "emergency state" to seriously listen to the players' voices.

This is also the real - life situation of Naraka: Bladepoint. Since the beginning of the year, the average number of online players has been gradually decreasing. Even though it was announced two months ago that the game was selected as an e - sports event for the Asian Games, it still couldn't reverse the downward trend of the data.

The data is from the "Xiaoheihe" App.

In the past two months, I've come across many videos criticizing Naraka: Bladepoint. Some people complain that the game planners are not doing their jobs, some accuse the game version of lacking content, and some have even started to directly vent their negative emotions. Occasionally, when playing games with friends, I can also hear their dissatisfaction with the game from their mouths.

Occasionally, when I finally see someone speaking up for the game, looking further down, I find that they are actually just playing the "selling account" meme.

The "selling account" meme

I'm sure everyone, including me, has this question in mind at the moment. After all, when Naraka: Bladepoint was first launched, it sold 6 million copies in 3 months, and its sales exceeded 10 million in less than a year, setting a new record for domestic buy - to - play games and enjoying great popularity at that time.

I've also seen many speculations online. For example, some people think that the studio's current focus is completely on the mobile game. With a more profitable "second child", the PC version has naturally fallen out of favor; others believe that the official has recently paid too much attention to seemingly more cost - effective content, using attention - grabbing methods to maintain the game content, but has lost its original intention.

As a player since the game's launch, I can't help but look back on my more than 600 hours of gaming experience. Only in the past two days have I finally figured out this problem - the problem that the 24 Studio needs to solve now may have existed since the beginning of the game, that is, how to carry out the long - term iteration of Naraka: Bladepoint.

This question has to start with the game's gameplay iteration.

The core framework of Naraka: Bladepoint can be directly divided into three parts: action combat, hero design, and battle royale gameplay. After three years of iteration, the proportions of these three parts have gradually changed and become unbalanced, resulting in the game experience slowly becoming completely different from the initial one.

Among them, action combat is the most fundamental gameplay structure of Naraka: Bladepoint. It uses the design concept of fighting games and simplifies a lot in terms of operation, that is, adopting the "rock - paper - scissors" model. During battles, players often need to conduct repeated move - making games around the mutually restraining relationship among normal attacks, charged attacks, and parries to gain an advantage in the battle.

Parry

In this model, the threshold of fighting games is greatly reduced, and new players can quickly enjoy the fun of the game.

At the same time, highly skilled players can still try more combat possibilities based on free combat scenarios, skills, and combat techniques. For example, the streamer "Klie", often mentioned by players, has performed many amazing operations based on his in - depth understanding of heavy - blade weapons, hero skills, and extremely high proficiency in long - range weapons.

Highlights of the amazing operations of Douyin streamer "Klie"

Unfortunately, although the framework of Naraka: Bladepoint is good, due to the long - term lack of change and in - depth research, most players have found the loopholes in it - there is an unreasonable general solution to the game, which is dodging and combos.

The current dodging operation in the game has a much higher return than operations such as charged attacks and parries. Initially, the disadvantage of dodging was that it couldn't form an effective counter - attack, and it was at most a "break - even" option in the game choices. If operated properly, players could even dodge all of their opponents' attacks.

However, if combos are taken into account, the game logic changes.

Initially, players' research on the game was not that in - depth. Combos might be limited to the "three - hit combo" or include attacks like the rising dragon attack in between. In this way, the attacked player would not be in a stunned and unoperable state all the time, and there was room for continued gaming and attempted counter - attacks.

As "true combos", that is, combos that can stably deal full damage, have emerged one after another, the return of the pure rock - paper - scissors game has decreased, and it has become a situation of dodging each other's damage and seizing the stunned state. For example, the most basic combo "Hookshot Hundred Slashes" can stably deal one normal attack, one rising dragon attack, and one charged attack damage. In extreme cases, players can even defeat their opponents with a single combo.

Hookshot Hundred Slashes

Of course, it is reasonable and normal for fighting games to have combos. Combos are also the result of players' in - depth training. However, the importance of combos has far exceeded the return of the "rock - paper - scissors" game. The most obvious example is that after successfully parrying, high - ranked players often prefer to start a combo based on the stunned state rather than using the execution move.

The fundamental problem exposed by Naraka: Bladepoint lies in the lack of a systematic standard for combat actions and continuous iterative thinking. The priority of this system in the internal evaluation is also not high, which ultimately leads to the contradiction between the "gameplay party" and the "combo party".

A direct manifestation of this situation is that many gameplay details of the game have remained unchanged for a long time, and the motivation for modification is also relatively passive. For example, the design of short - dodging and then executing after parrying, which can ensure that players can successfully deal execution damage after parrying, was officially changed only after players proposed it at the mobile game trial event at the end of the previous year.

The all - directional parry design originated from the controversy caused by the ultimate skill of the hero Jiana. After the modification, Jiana can charge up from a long distance and then flash to the opponent's side to release the skill when activating the ultimate. Although it helps to improve the depth of the game's actions, to some extent, this design is also a response to the community's voice to prevent Jiana from being too overpowered.

The modified Jiana's skill

It is not difficult to see that the action system itself lacks priority in the internal evaluation system, which forms a contradictory relationship with the game's initial positioning of fighting gameplay.

The simplified "rock - paper - scissors" framework has been broken, and the game has returned to the traditional fighting game's real - time combat mode of competing in moves and seizing stunned states for combos. And the existing action system is not rich and profound enough to support the battle royale gameplay scenarios, resulting in the current weak foundation of the basic gameplay.

The official may also be aware of this problem. For example, the introduction of the knuckle blades that allow players to retain the charge even when dodging and the throwing knives that can freely adjust the attack direction are new attempts at the mechanism level, aiming to cover the gameplay with more diverse weapon content.

On the contrary, it is more obvious that they have prioritized the iteration of heroes in the past two years.

This is, of course, a solution. On the one hand, heroes can enrich the game's content background and provide players with more diversified choices. Moreover, in the context of long - term operation, continuously launching new heroes is a "must - do" thing. On the other hand, interesting hero skills can also make up for the weakness of the action system. In short, continuously updating heroes can ensure the lower limit and raise the upper limit of the game.

The game's hero interface

Then the answer is obvious - Naraka: Bladepoint has gradually changed from the initial positioning where hero skills were supplementary to a mode where skills are the main focus and actions are secondary.

However, new problems have emerged from this. The concept of heroes in Naraka: Bladepoint is different from the characters in traditional fighting games. In traditional fighting games, characters are closely related to the game's gameplay and gaming ideas. Different characters correspond to different combos and solutions. Each new hero means a new gameplay.

But Naraka: Bladepoint is not like this. It splits the character content of traditional fighting games into two major systems: weapons and heroes. Heroes determine special skills, and weapons determine move variations.

This was okay in the early stage of the game, and the two systems were relatively balanced. At that time, hero skills were more focused on providing effects such as control and healing, and were more functional overall. The focus of damage output was not very high, and the overall experience was still mainly based on action combat and weapon moves.

Among them, the two heroes closest to the feel of a fighting game are Jiana and Jicanghai.

For example, Jicanghai's ultimate skill provides invincibility and energy recovery, which has given rise to the "wok - tossing" gameplay. That is, by relying on the energy recovery provided by the ultimate skill, players can continuously use the rising dragon attack of the katana to knock opponents into the air until their health bars are emptied. Of course, because this operation was too simple and powerful, Jicanghai once became the mainstream hero for players.

The "wok - tossing" of the Fire Man (Jicanghai)

Jiana has diverse displacement skills, and her ultimate skill can make her invisible. Combining with various movement techniques, she can continuously harass opponents, so she is also a hero often used by advanced players.

After the game's public beta, the design of skills seems to have changed. For example, the first new hero, Yueshan, is obviously different from others, and the importance of skills has started to rise sharply.

As characters whose ultimate skills provide "transformation", the design logic of Yueshan is significantly different from that of Tianhai, a launch - day character. The latter is obviously more cumbersome. To deal damage, players must aim and catch the opponent like in a shooting game, and its greater role is to provide a standing - field deterrent for teammates. While the former has a smaller model, is not affected by stuns, and is very flexible, and can easily influence the battlefield in multi - player games. Therefore, to this day, Yueshan is still one of the more common characters in multi - player games.

Cui Sanniang, who was updated later, has an instant and powerful group control skill, which directly gave birth to the game's first invincible "ultimate - skill - based" lineup. Players using Ning Hongye, Tianhai, and Cui Sanniang can win without the opponents being able to resist from start to finish. The only operation required is that the player of Cui Sanniang needs to cover more than two opponents with her ultimate skill.

Although players who now understand the importance of dodging can basically dodge to prevent being wiped out in one go, the ultimate - skill - based lineup undoubtedly had absolute dominance in the player community at that time.

The "one - wave" lineup's double - grab of the Great Buddha (Tianhai)

After this, Naraka: Bladepoint did not launch a hero with a powerful long - time hard - control ultimate skill for a long time, until Yulinglong was introduced later.

During the time since its launch, the direction of the game's hero skills has been diverse. Heroes such as Yaodao Ji and Takeda Nobutada, whose ultimate skills have powerful attack damage, have appeared one after another. Wuchen can teleport teammates or opponents, Yin Ziping provides everyone with a chance of resurrection, Hadi can fly around in the sky, and Liu Lian can capture opponents like Pokémon...

Undoubtedly, the diversified hero design has brought a lot of unexpected fun to Naraka: Bladepoint, but it has also weakened the proportion of action combat, which is a mixed blessing.

Based on this, players have created a "combat mantra" in the past two years, and the end of each section of the mantra corresponds to the hero's ultimate - skill voice.