Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

A fast-paced action adventure

When we talk about RTS games, what is the first thought that comes to mind? Is it a classic old game, a game that can't remember the details and only the aftertaste of victory, or the first contact with e-sports on the game Fengyun channel?

These are the author's memories of RTS games as a player born in the early 1990s. However, RTS, which opened the PC PC game on its own throughout the summer, is widely regarded as an outdated dead game in the era of mobile games.

There are many reasons why RTS's road of self-salvation caused RTS to fall to this stage. Part of the reason is that with the gradual opening up of the industry environment and the rapid progress of game technology, the number of games available to players has been explosively increased, which naturally diverts players' attention and investment to a certain type of game.

Especially after entering the mobile era, all kinds of entertainment take up almost all the disposable time of people. Games not only compete with similar competitors, but also compete with short and long videos, weeding shopping, and even information App for limited user time. This has led to the vast majority of games making every effort to improve player retention and keep users in the game process. RTS games naturally have such a demand, but the unique charm of achieving RTS's monument in the past has become the biggest obstacle to its catch-up times.

RTS, real-time strategy games, split literally can feel that this kind of games require players to make behavior decisions and strategy games constantly in the process of real-time changes. Choose what hero, when to build the building, whether the resources are sufficient, the opponent dynamic detection, restraint of arms collocation, when to open the mine. There are so many dimensions to consider in a simple list, and these may be less than one-fifth or less of what they are in the actual battle.

Moreover, these thinking processes take place in the real-time process of the game, and the situation changes and combat operations greatly reduce the thinking time. It seems that the player's brain needs to be incarnated as CPU in order to handle such a multi-line, short-term and highly concurrent task. In order to buy yourself a few more seconds of thinking time, players need to familiarize themselves with a large amount of data such as buildings, arms, skills, maps, and so on, and do conditioned reflexes to upgrade conditions, arms restraint and other basic settings. achieve the degree of muscle memory for basic operations such as formation screen cutting.

Even skilled veteran players will often take care of one or the other, not to mention the novice rookies who have just come into contact with, scrambling and continuous fiasco is the initial normal for most players. Under such a high learning cost, what you get is a frustrating and powerless game experience, which is more or less dehumanizing.

What is even more frustrating, however, is that even if you can do all of the above, you may not be able to win more and lose less in the game between players. Because in addition to memorizing the numerical mechanism, the outcome of the trend has a great impact on the level of operation of the players. And the upper and lower limits of the operation are extremely large, so the game also has a strong competitive nature, and has become the ancestor category of e-sports germination. But it also isolates itself from mass players.

In order to comply with the development of the times, especially to take the express train of mobile games, manufacturers began to combine their own advantages to innovate and change RTS from all aspects. The core direction is naturally the simplification of the game, especially the simplification of operation.

Taking "second-hand RTS Mobile Games" as slogan's "War Roar", it draws lessons from Warcraft's classic framework on the basic setting. Launch the classic design of Empire, Forest, Dark City, Barbarian 4 camps, and up to 3 heroes in a single game. There are also many salutes in the appearance, positioning and skills of the arms.

Loyal to the original flavor in setting and mechanism, but drastically simplified in the mode of operation. The first to bear the brunt is the formation, the player's minimum control unit expands from a soldier to a service, and the same kind of arms defaults to a whole no matter how many they are. Through the card-type shortcut bar at the bottom of the screen, you can easily and quickly select a certain type of arms, dispatch and command.

The other direction is to change the way of the game, turning the original 1v1-based battle into 2v2. I believe that many people feel the same way as the author, and they will feel tired from within after a showdown, which is a natural reaction to a high degree of concentration and the loss of adrenaline. Adding a teammate to share the tension and pressure of the game can be regarded as lightening the psychological burden of the game on the players.

Alien instruction ≠ alien science fiction + RTS in addition to this kind of generally maintain the RTS "resource management + construction and operation + corps combat" core game change. In addition to simplification, some games also remove a link to further adapt to the operation of mobile devices and their own category preferences.

For example, the PC game RTS in another classic red alert, after the mobile game abandoned the Corps combat, the national camp, characteristic services, classic maps and other elements are also missing. Only retained the management and construction of the base, basically transformed into a SLG game. In order to obtain the higher LTV of this category.

The latest work of the cool house game, "alien command", although retained these three links, but due to a substantial simplification, and changed the core experience of the game. On the contrary, it makes the expectant players form a kind of myopic effect which looks like a distant look but not a close look.

In terms of resource management, the number of base currencies that need to be collected is reduced from 2-3 to only one "metal", and will be obtained automatically. This means that players do not need to allocate and manage collection units (such as farmers and drudgery in War3). The opening of separate mines has also become easier, and the battle of garrison wild monsters is less difficult. There is no harassment from the enemy, and as long as he is not on the enemy's marching route, he will not be attacked.

Here we have to mention the attack mode of the enemy in the game. In addition to special checkpoints, under normal circumstances, enemy attacking forces will attack our base in the form of waves. At the beginning of the waves, there will be a conspicuous cue pattern, and the map will also show the enemy's route of attack. Apart from that, we will not encounter other active attacks from the enemy. This wave is stronger than a wave of fixed mode is not RTS at all, more like a tower defense game.

This design should be designed to deliberately weaken the two-line pressure, and when players control the troops to fight in the field, they do not have to pay frequent attention to the base for fear of being attacked. The liberated attention can be focused on the part of the exploration and combat that the designer wants to immerse the player in. In fact, in order to achieve this goal, the game in the construction and operation of the base has also been greatly simplified.

The types of buildings that players can build are controlled within 9 types in the game, and defensive buildings account for most of them. This type of building can attack itself after placement, and players no longer need follow-up operations after choosing the placement location (in some levels with defense as the main strategy, it is more like a tower defense game).

At the same time, the game will attack, armor and other technology tree part of the integration into the meat pigeon (rogue like) system. Therefore, in the actual operation, players generally do not need to pay too much attention to the operation of the base after building barracks, population houses, and science and technology towers. You can focus on the combat part, which is the core of the game design.

For combat, the author's actual experience is that the game wants to create a compact, tense flow experience. From many angles can feel the game in the combat design, in the implementation of a "get rid of superfluous thinking, to maintain the continuation of the player flow" concept.

Reflected in the interface layout, you can find that the buttons and functional areas of the game are stored in the four corners of the screen, and occupy a very small area. The props and skills on the lower left, the buildings and military builders on the lower right are hidden in peacetime. When you click on it, it only occupies a row of space at the bottom of the screen. At the same time, the icon style of the game can be called fresh and concise. These should all be to remove the distraction of unimportant information on players and allow them to focus on the current battle.

The release of skills and props also implements this concept. Skills and props are used in a range selection, with a selection box that occupies the size of nearly 1 jump 3 on the screen, allowing players to quickly release the effect and cover the desired unit or area without making too fine adjustments.

It is worth mentioning that the battle rhythm of the game is well controlled, and the density and location of the enemy are highly integrated with the map. Often after a battle, after getting positive feedback from props or troops, there is a brief gasp of blank, followed by the next battle. It is neither too stressful nor too long apart, causing the newly aroused emotional state to be interrupted. The replenishment of soldier units after the victory of the battle has also extended the time for a single exploration and will not have to go home frequently to replenish due to the depletion of soldiers.

For this reason, the map design of the game is also very simple. Generally for multi-directional, circular linear trunk road design, players do not need to remember the route or fork in the road, just need to protrude along the road.

In addition, another detail that is difficult to pay attention to is that the background music of the game also serves this core idea. The rhythm of the music is lively and will not make people feel bored quickly. At the same time, there are some exciting and urgent melodies and drums that urge players not to stop exploring.

The combination of these aspects has realized the original intention of the design very well. The music in response to the situation arouses the mood, the rhythm of the battle is compact, and the trophies after victory continue to give positive feedback. Follow this feeling all the way forward, come back to have passed this pass. The author did get a refreshing combat experience, but also completely forgot about the construction and operation.

So, Alien Command is not so much a RTS game as a fast-paced action adventure game that combines operational and construction elements.

The almighty formula of the cool house is invalid? However, the thrill of a fast-paced battle is difficult to stimulate over and over again. The design of faithful service core experience inevitably brings the singleness of game style.

At present, the enemies in the checkpoints are mainly small strongholds scattered on the map, and the conventional configuration is a hive with a number of defense buildings including ground thorns, mines, acid spurts, and a team of soldiers with high and low-level arms. The player's operating space, based on the setting of no formation and automatic attacks in the game, is mainly reflected in the movement and evasion of troops, and the release of their own skills / props.

In the actual process, the player's attention will mainly stay in the operation parts such as avoiding landmine attacks on the ground, moving away from the attack range of acid bombs, and the decision-making part of the scope and timing of skill / prop release. However, due to the small number of enemy types and relatively single composition types, after several hurdles, the freshness and freshness provided by the combat process faded more quickly.

In order to increase the changes in the process of the game, but also to improve the replayability of linear levels. The game introduces the meat pigeon system that cool house is best at. The company's previous "vigor Knight" and "Battle Soul" have been widely praised by players by virtue of the element-rich meat pigeon system.

The randomness of the meat pigeon system in the game is mainly reflected in the victory reward. The props obtained by fighting in the level will not disappear after customs clearance, but can be retained for use in subsequent levels. Collecting props to prepare for the unknown battle has become the original motivation for players to explore outward.

At the same time, the technology tree that is common in RTS games has been integrated into the selection reward for level victory. The upgrade includes heroic skills, soldier units, and building units. Through such a random upgrade, to change the player's fighting style. For example, if you choose a player who has the ability to deliver soldiers, all the soldiers he has built will come directly to the army, and there is no need to assemble at home, which can make it easier for him to rush all the way through the wild like a perpetual motion machine. For example, the players selected in the above picture can rely on the deceleration effect of the freezing tower to carry out relatively stable positional warfare and feel different combat experiences.

Combined with the 4 heroes unlocked after payment and the corresponding arms system, the alien command can provide a good long-term experience even in the form of a single machine. You are not mistaken, boasting the integration of the RTS game of alien instructions, there is no player-to-player mode, only stand-alone experience.

In fact, from the above we can find that alien command can not be called a RTS game. The type of meat pigeon that the cool house is good at cannot be combined with the balanced RTS. Give up the game between players and choose the buyout stand-alone form is an expected choice and in line with the characteristics of the game. At the same time, the competitive products on the market, whether it is NetEase's war roar, or the global action of a small team, have proved that the road for players to fight RTS is not easy.

Although the form of buyout system is common, the price of 25 yuan after the launch of the game has caused some opposition among players.

As can be seen from TapTap's best-selling list, the unit price of most of the top ten games is no more than 20 yuan. Even among all the paid downloads on the platform, there are very few games priced more than 20 yuan. And these relatively high-priced games are either transplants of PC games like Tribe and Machete, traditional high-tone games like Ash and Meow run, or high-volume games like Thalia and Pascal Compact. The newly arrived alien command, without accumulating word-of-mouth, wants to rely on the manufacturer effect of the cool house to achieve the high pricing right of high-score games with time and quality, which is indeed a bit aggressive.

However, it should be noted that the author believes that such pricing is a strategic rash, not an unreasonable amount. Players criticize alien commands, mainly because games with more fun and more content are sold more cheaply than it, which makes alien commands very worthless.

To be fair, in a monthly card 30 yuan, a skin dozens of yuan payment environment, the price of 25 yuan should be within the economic affordability of most players, the internal capacity of a whole game is also far beyond the monthly card and skin. So it's not that alien orders are expensive, but that the market pricing standards for buyout games are on the low side. For a long time, players' willingness to pay for buyout games has always been separated from free games, which requires more game works to gradually promote cognitive change.

Conclusion even though the game is neither real-time nor strategic, there are some episodes off the court. But it is still a product worth a try, and it also brings me an afternoon of alien life, which may be the meaning of the game.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:Coreesports, author: Wu Di

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.