Spending 100 million yuan in cash and reigniting the passion for GVG, is there going to be a major change in the SLG market again?
Compared with the past, the SLG market has clearly become more stable in recent years. An obvious phenomenon is that even though new products with various features keep emerging, the overall landscape of the entire sector has not changed significantly. Instead, innovative products like "SLG + x" that attract new peripheral users have become the mainstream trend.
For some established SLG products, they have reached a stage where they need to seek change or even must change. And their specific operations may also have an impact on the future development and changes of the SLG sector.
A few days ago, "Three Kingdoms: Strategy Edition" (hereinafter referred to as "Three Kingdoms Strategy") invited many core SLG players to hold a communication meeting in the nature of a "face - to - face with the planners" in Guangzhou. At the meeting, Three Kingdoms Strategy announced a series of core changes for the game's future. For example, they plan to rectify game studios and carry out a series of optimization measures around the product itself. Even more surprisingly, the official also said that they will allocate 100 million RMB to the alliance players who achieve hegemony in each server.
The scene of the ecological strategy communication meeting of "Three Kingdoms Strategy"
When announcing these contents, the official has always emphasized "returning to the original intention". Just looking at these operations, many people may think that Lingxi has just found a new marketing gimmick. For example, rectifying game studios and innovating gameplay are just routine operations in game version iterations, and there doesn't seem to be much to say. And the 100 - million - RMB bounty doesn't seem to have much to do with returning to the original intention. It just seems like a "benefit feedback" for players.
But after actually participating in the ecological strategy communication meeting and witnessing the players' reactions, I always feel that there is a more profound market significance behind Three Kingdoms Strategy's operations this time.
Returning to the Original Intention
Why does the Three Kingdoms Strategy project team mention returning to the original intention?
This question is actually very interesting and important. From the perspectives of the company and the players, "returning to the original intention" is actually a two - way choice and the result of joint guidance. It sounds a bit like "finding the original joy of the game".
Three Kingdoms Strategy hopes to find the original joy of the game
Players who have in - depth experience of SLG games should have a common understanding. Especially for season - based SLG games, players need to spend a few months experiencing several novice seasons before they can officially enter the PK season. For a long - term operation product like Three Kingdoms Strategy, accumulating more than 20 distinctive PK season contents is its real "killer feature". This also means that SLG is a product with a threshold. The so - called "original joy" often forms a positive feedback after the first entry into the PK season.
This also leads to the currently popular trend of "reducing the grind and burden". Its essence is actually to lower the entry threshold first, or to bring forward the positive feedback as much as possible. But this also gives rise to another problem: As we all know, SLG is the most representative category that pursues long - term development. In the long - term product iteration process, is "reducing the grind and burden" really the optimal solution?
In the view of Zeng Lingpeng (Brother Pig), the distribution producer of Three Kingdoms Strategy, the primary core of the game is to be fun and interesting, and the core fun of Three Kingdoms Strategy is GVG. Prioritizing and perfecting this experience to the extreme is the solution suitable for Three Kingdoms Strategy. "Reducing the grind and burden is more like a false proposition. There is no end to it. It needs a target." In the most extreme case, not playing at all is the easiest - but this obviously goes against the design intention of every game.
What Three Kingdoms Strategy is going to do next is to address the pain points of the above - mentioned GVG experiences
The Remedy for Reform
In this situation, Three Kingdoms Strategy wants to "prescribe the right medicine" to innovate and optimize the GVG experience.
First of all, the most core element is actually the determination to change. For a product like Three Kingdoms Strategy that has been successfully operated for 6 years, it is difficult to change the existing state. If the team cannot sort out a self - consistent optimization path to continue to create a better GVG experience, this reform may neither gain players' recognition nor may it put more pressure on the project team. It may even damage the relatively stable operation state of Three Kingdoms Strategy.
Precisely because of these concerns, the project team chose to hold this communication meeting to inform the players in advance and listen to their voices. Brother Pig also frankly said, "When we first started, we actually didn't know how players would react. We were also worried that players might not accept some major changes."
Fortunately, judging from the on - site situation of the face - to - face meeting, players were quite happy with the contents announced by the official this time, and some new contents even received applause and cheers from the whole audience. In the subsequent session where players talked to the planners, people's feedback mainly focused on the details after the implementation of these measures.
The planners answered players' questions on site
Specifically, the "prescription" given by Three Kingdoms Strategy this time actually boils down to three points: maintaining a healthy and fair competitive environment for the game, reducing the burden on players caused by management, and adding more passion to players' GVG experience.
For example, rectifying game studios and internalizing some functional systems actually meet the first two points.
The innovation idea of Three Kingdoms Strategy
The overall process rhythm of each season in Three Kingdoms Strategy basically includes resource - gathering at the beginning, paving the way and occupying cities, and subsequent troop deployment and GVG battles between alliances. Based on the iteration of each season, players are basically familiar with the early stage of resource accumulation. Therefore, with limited time and energy, many players will choose to let game studios assist in the early - stage development.
In this way, players don't need to carefully calculate the time for each link, sacrifice their sleep time to get up in the middle of the night to operate for 2 minutes and then log off, or interrupt their work due to intermittent and fragmented operations to keep up with the rhythm.
To put it simply, reasonable assistance from game studios is also part of the SLG player ecosystem. Generally, the official won't easily intervene. The former producer of Three Kingdoms Strategy, Uncle Bing, also said that the official standard of Three Kingdoms Strategy is to reduce official interference with players. It can be seen that from the very beginning of the game, Three Kingdoms Strategy has adhered to the principle of allowing players to form a stable ecosystem. They won't easily break what players recognize.
But this situation is relatively special. In addition to helping with the early - stage development, game studio assistance has also brought an undeniable problem - group control. In the later GVG stage of the game, the battles between alliances are often affected by various factors, such as the response speed of the troops under the players, the degree of following commands, and the cooperation and coordination among alliance players.
Game studios controlling accounts have extreme control over the troops under their command, which will quickly eliminate the possibilities and randomness brought by player communication. Just imagine how powerful a troop that can execute commands without delay and unconditionally at any time and is completely commanded by one person would be in an ancient battlefield.
In this situation, alliances that don't use group control are naturally at a disadvantage. They either join in or get beaten.
Thoughts on the game studio phenomenon
As a result, the GVG game experience, which should be composed of a large amount of player social interaction and collaboration, quickly turns into a situation where most players just scan the code and hand over their accounts, leaving only the top players to command the confrontation. To put it bluntly, most players become "tool people" who work to raise their accounts and provide troops for the alliance, without any real game experience of participating in it.
In this situation, the official has decided to intervene in the account - controlling problem without hesitation and will not let it develop randomly. The core principle of their handling is to "return the fun of GVG to the alliance and the social interaction of the alliance to the players".
Regarding account - controlling behavior, the official of Three Kingdoms Strategy is currently preparing to set up a series of judgment criteria and use programs for real - time monitoring to completely crack down on the group - control operations of game studios. Relatively, the official has also carried out some mechanism - based optimizations according to players' needs to avoid canceling some necessary services for players. For example, in GVG, if players really have no time or are unable to operate, they can temporarily entrust their troops to allies without triggering the group - control restriction mechanism.
On this basis, the official also provides built - in automatic optimization solutions for some trivial and unnecessary operations in the game. For example, players' troops can automatically replenish soldiers without repeated commands from players, thus reducing players' need for game studios.
In addition, the game has also carried out a series of optimizations for alliance management. For example, a more convenient task - assignment system has been developed. Managers can assign specific tasks to each member, and players can see them in the system when they log in, reducing the communication cost within the alliance.
"Get rid of trivial matters and focus on fighting"
These all conform to the slogan written at the ecological strategy communication meeting - "Get rid of trivial matters and focus on fighting", that is, to highlight the core experience of GVG and allow players to more directly experience more meaningful contents, such as the friendship among comrades - in - arms. The celebrity player Li Naiwen once mentioned that after playing for more than five years, his most unforgettable experience in the game is still getting up in the middle of the night to support his allies.
The scene of the ecological strategy communication meeting of "Three Kingdoms Strategy"
Repaying Users and Making Competition More Fun
In addition to the in - game optimization, the official of Three Kingdoms Strategy has also done something very meaningful for the game and players this time - they invited notary public staff and announced on the spot that they will allocate 100 million RMB as a bounty to the hegemons (the alliances that ultimately achieve hegemony) in the game's PK servers and S1 gold - farming servers, and promised to distribute it "within one year".
Allocate 100 million RMB to repay players
Non - SLG players may not quite understand its significance. After all, it sounds more like a marketing strategy for the official to attract new users, retain existing ones, and maintain stability. The only thing that might be a bit of a gimmick is probably the exclamation that Lingxi is really willing to spend a lot of money.
Actually, it's not the case. In SLG games, the relationship between players is not just pure competition or alliance. For example, sometimes alliance leaders will spend RMB to "hire" specific players to spend more time to complete specific tasks to improve the alliance's strength. This situation is also common in Three Kingdoms Strategy. And players who pay in this way are generally called "gold sponsors".
Therefore, in essence, the official of Three Kingdoms Strategy has done two things this time.
One is to provide an attractive bounty to make the competition for hegemony more meaningful. Setting up a bonus not only gives alliance players a clearer and common goal but also allows the winning players to really get tangible rewards. Moreover, this is indeed an amount that can stimulate core players.
According to the official introduction, this bonus mechanism will cover the PK servers and the subsequent S1 seasons. And specifically for individuals, the maximum annual bonus for a single person may reach tens of thousands of RMB.
The other is that the official acts as the gold sponsor and repays players in the most straightforward way - instead of using this 100 million to advertise and attract players, it is better to directly distribute it as rewards to players, creating a win - win situation. In the final calculation, the consumption pressure on gold sponsors is reduced, and ordinary players can also get more rewards than usual. In essence, the official still wants to spend more money on players.
