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

Two months ago, I experienced the second internal test of swimming against the current, and it left a deep impression on me at that time, especially the intelligent NPC and the big world exploration part. Now, the cold hand swim against the current has been publicly tested, this time is very delicate, because it happens to be the summer vacation for students, and the college entrance examination has just ended. So can it attract more new players to join the domestic martial arts MMO RPG? Let's take a look.

The first day of the data is impressive, the first taste of the queue experience on June 27, the cold hand game against the current officially opened the public trial version of the mobile game client download. With a full three days to go before the 30-day public test, it took just one day for Apple's App Store and Android TapTap platforms to become the No. 1 most popular game on Apple's App Store and Android TapTap platforms. The number of downloads that day ranked No. 1 in Apple's App Store game category in China, surpassing Douyin and Wechat.

Such a high pre-download shows that the attention of mobile games against the current is still quite high. According to official data, the number of online bookings of mobile games has exceeded 45 million. On June 27, I also played the game early. When I went in, I found that I could choose the area server and create roles in advance, and take the nickname first, which is still very humane.

However, there was a little accident. The old areas with classic names that used to swim against the current have all been melted down due to the excessive number of characters created, and the recommendation services are all newly opened. Immediately searched on the Internet, the good guy bilibili a lot of countercurrent cold strategy UP has been out of a bunch of public test area registration strategy. Even after a week of service, some of the popular areas are still fused.

Fortunately, the operation of creating a character's pinch face will not pinch half of it to kick you out of the server. after all, the face-pinching experience and effect against the current has been recognized by many players, whether it is bilibili, Douyin or Little Red Book. There are countless pinch face sharing videos, and even a lot of face pinch data can be bought directly on Taobao, it can be predicted that there will be no few female players after opening the service.

From the experience of public testing, although the face pinching system has many adjustable options, it is much less difficult to pinch the face. Professional characters have default faces, and the official aesthetic foundation is there, and simple fine-tuning can have a good effect. Swimming against the current and cold hand also provides AI face pinching function in the face kneading system. For example, this fine-tuning pinching face can intelligently adjust the face style by sliding the center slider. Like the hairstyle I chose, it is more suitable for the style of immortal point and rustling point.

You can also enter some simple words here to describe the style you want, let the system automatically pinch a face for you, or pinch a face through a picture, upload a picture of your favorite star, or a picture of yourself, and let it copy a face for you.

And the face kneading system also has hidden eggs. After selecting some options in the opening CG, you can unlock the hidden pick-dye hairstyle, which is a small surprise.

Pinching the face is very important for the game experience. Some people say that pinch the face into the game map, play strange most of the time to see the back of the character's head, but in the plot kill and dialogue scenes, the character will almost always "face", want to play for a long time to look comfortable pinch the face can be said to be the most important thing, in this respect, the AI face pinching low threshold let players less entanglement, the experience is very good.

Once you have created a character, you will be ready for official service. As expected, the opening day was full of people, but luckily the main server of Wulin where I was located went directly into it. On the opening of the service, there are different opinions in the circle, there are data statistics of UP to 4049 million on the first day of service, and according to the statistics of Qimai, a professional mobile product business data analysis platform, as of yesterday, that is, July 6, the reverse current Cold hand Tour has been the first in the national App Store sales list. Anyway, this is a good start, after all, many players who have just started using Krypton gold spend their money on fashion appearance, especially dyeing and mounts, which is enough to prove that the upstream cold appearance development experience is in place. There are signs of profit that do not sell numerical values.

The plot experience is good, and the main plot, which is still lack of play, is adapted according to Wen Ruian's martial arts novel "against the Cold", and some play and interactive innovations are made on the basis of the original plot. it is very attractive to the old players who are against the current or the new players who have seen the original, but you must watch the dialogue carefully, because in the plot mission. Players often have to make dialogue branch choices of some key nodes according to the clues they have mastered in the world exploration, and the plot direction will be different under different branch choices, and the key information of the follow-up plot will be revealed in the dialogue.

The advantage of this plot is that even after a plot, players can still review the context of the whole story in the system and re-select where there are dialogue branch options to experience more plot trends. Its narrative logic is similar to the visual novel game "Invisible Guardian". Multi-branches and multiple endings will make players ponder the plot over and over again, which is very helpful to understand the world outlook and the whole story.

In addition, the reverse current cold hand swim in the plot also uses a semi-open interactive play, players can use QTE, stealth and other operations to make the character have a more sense of substitution when doing the plot, not boring to watch audio PPT. For example, in the second chapter of the plot, Gu Xichao called me to Gao Ya's inner mansion to save Lily Girl. At first, climbing over the wall was a horizontal 2D pass-breaking game, and entering Gaofu became a sneaking game. The whole plot was more challenging and more impressive.

There is the adventure mission, you can understand it as an independent story, each story takes about 10 minutes to finish, fun to play, reward is very practical for ordinary players, some send skills and materials, some send card props or tie jade. Anyway, these tasks are not mandatory, and they have nothing to do with the main tasks. Players can do them whenever they want.

However, the experience of the plot task is not perfect. In the basic framework of the open world, players can do a lot of things but limited energy, the richer the content of the game, the more players will experience according to priority. For veterans who are used to traditional MMO RPG, the first thing to do when opening a service must be to rush the grade, brush the copy, get the materials, and use up the vitality value (physical strength), so bilibili's various daily strategy videos are called a detail, and casual players feel that they are anxious about intensity and resist very much.

Do not pursue the physical strength, full level, fully equipped leisure players, the big world exploration has become a top priority, basically wandering on the map, here to open the treasure chest, there to solve puzzles, occasionally take down the NPC or see the scenery, not tired at all. Swimming against the current in the early days of the game provides these big world exploration is very simple, solving puzzles may be a little difficult, but you can basically play a few times, really encounter problems, as long as there is a player nearby is doing this puzzle, a little wait for him to finish, you can also get a reward.

So the problem is that the treasure box and puzzle solving reward are basically internal upgrade materials and some transitional equipment, and you can also get copies and adventures, which is essentially no difference, so the reward feedback from leisure players is not enough. this will cause confusion about the goal of the game, and you don't know what you're playing for a long time. But if you have a time-limited task and give it directly to a set of good-looking fashion, it will be out of print after this season, and the player's motivation will naturally be high.

Another problem is that the current cold does not give a perfect guidance task system for the new game. For example, the windmill in the big world, has played the original god's second to understand, but has not come into contact with the player, the first encounter must be a little confused. In addition, after the player gets the light work, there is only a small guide to fly across the wall in the early plot, but how on earth should the whole light work system be used, how to start, turn, slow down smoothly, and reach the precise position? how to glide on the water needs to be fed officially as a "babysitter".

When the babysitter here refers to the task guidance of a specific method of play, take the light work system as an example, after the player gets the light work, he should immediately receive a task, whether it is hunting down the prisoner or taking an exam, anyway, make up an excuse to set up several different levels, systematically teach players how to start, how to stop quickly, how to fly across the eaves and walls, how to step on the water, how to turn, how to accurately land, and how to use light work to complete the time-limited challenge. After the completion of the task, by the way, reward some props and titles, players learned light work, obtained achievements, but also got rewards, more than one stone.

Now this light work system is basically squeezed out a little bit in the plot or in a specific scene, so that players will feel that the game planner is a riddle person, will complain about how they often can't fly with light work, it is difficult to control when they want to turn, and they fly by carelessly. Landing is always pulled on the wall.

There are a lot of intelligent NPC activities, and you can earn copper coins without krypton. there are a lot of NPC in the cold hand tour against the current. The resulting virtual jianghu society is very huge. The government has laid a large number of humanities-related stories, folklore, culture and history in the game. Even if you are a lone wolf player, you can gain a lot in the rivers and lakes. When you pass the Bianjing Yamen, you will often see someone complaining. When you pass the flower shop on the street, you suddenly hear Cantonese. It turns out that the flower girl is from Lingnan.

Sometimes when you gather around to watch the fun, it will trigger a lot of interesting things. For example, there is a dispute in the satin cloth village, and when you come forward and ask, you suddenly become a judge. You need to find out the flaws of the liar through the dialogue between the two sides, and properly interrupt his debate to reveal his footing. When this "wait a minute" appeared in the picture, I immediately thought of the bullet theory in my mind.

Sometimes I see a couple quarreling on the street. They want to go forward and have fun, but they are dragged by the male master to be "wingmen." you must give advice and make the girl happy. As a result, the girl told a story, and only if she guessed the right answer could she get a fix. You are either an old man or the trigger for breaking up a good marriage.

When you see NPC talking and there are three dots on your head, you can run over and join the dialogue. You can type or chat with them by voice. It's a wonderful feeling. Some NPC lick the dog, some are dandruff, and some see you teasing him and leave immediately. I'm afraid players won't feel uncomfortable participating in this kind of dialogue. Some NPC fights directly with each other, and it is impossible to tell whether the players compete or AI fight each other for a while.

The dialogue between NPC is completely based on identity and human random content, each NPC speech has a different timbre AI dubbing, a strong sense of substitution. It's just that these NPC are not all decent people, and some girls say that no one is worthy of them. If you show her wealth, she will take the initiative to add you. She really doesn't pretend at all. Yes, you heard right, the game NPC will take the initiative to add player friends, date you, and even invite you to a restaurant for a meal, how long you and NPC can get along, it all depends on whether you can flirt or not.

If you are a secular veteran, it is not bad to play with flowers, such as flirting with Gao Ya. Is the plot at the beginning of the forced redemption of Lily girl, you beat up the dude Gao Ya, what if you confess your love to him? It is obvious that Gao Ya was confused at first and was patient and calm. Later, I was so angry that I braved the emoji bag, but in the end, I just changed the subject. I guess I can laugh for a day when I encounter something like this.

As for krypton gold, in the evaluation of the second internal test, I mentioned two major Krypton gold spots that swim against the current, one is fashion, mounts, hair dyeing and other appearance attributes, and the other is character draw. In terms of fashion and mounts, after the public test, the mall can directly buy free mounts for zero yuan, and fashion can go whoring directly through tasks, unless you are absolutely good-looking and pursue the best-looking, most expensive or dyed ones, otherwise you don't spend money at all.

In terms of role drawing, a cold hand swim against the current shows that it is a character draw, but actually draws role skills, that is, the knight-errant skills in the game, ostensibly characters, as well as purple cards, gold cards, and six-star stars similar to the constellation. The promotion effect of rising stars is also very obvious. PVP has the greatest impact on the game experience of players, but players can only bring one knight-errant skills, and the jade tied to the world exploration and mission can also draw cards, whoring slowly, and casual players do not need to draw cards in Krypton in order to catch up.

However, in the public test experience, I found that I had ignored the third Krypton gold point, that is, copper coins. As a market currency in the game, copper coins are directly linked to the top-up currency striped jade, and the two can be exchanged for each other, or you can buy copper coins directly from krypton gold, while copper coins can be earned through auctions of materials obtained by life skills and forged products. So if you want to earn copper coins, as long as you unlock your identity, pull up your life skills, such as mining, medicine, fishing, cooking, etc., and then make materials and sell them to be self-sufficient. Even make money. At present, the official promise of non-liver and non-krypton gold has indeed been achieved after the start of service, which is indeed a bright spot in the current domestic MMO RPG.

IPad experience is the best, but optimization still needs to be worked on. At first, I experienced a public test with a second-generation Snapdragon processor, which is the highest performance in the Android camp. After entering the game, the system provides four image quality presets, and the high frame rate mode option cannot be turned on under the last fine image quality, so I directly use the standard image quality plus high frame rate mode to play.

Looking at the picture quality alone, I think the performance on the mobile phone is OK, coupled with the fluency of the whole game in high frame rate mode is also quite good. But in the actual play, there will still be frequent and intermittent sudden stutters in cold hand swimming against the current, which does have an impact on the game experience. To verify my judgment, I tested it with frame rate testing software Scene, and the results were a bit unexpected.

Before the test, I turned on immersion mode and shielded others (other players) in a cold hand swim against the current, and set the number of players on the same screen to zero in the screen settings, and then chose the map of Taoxi Village, which is not too loaded. 20 minutes of big world exploration, play strange, do not click on the full function menu, do not transfer the map, the final average frame rate is only 40 frames, which can be seen through the frame rate curve. At first, it can be stable at 60 frames, but after more than 4 minutes, the number of frames begins to fluctuate sharply, often locking 30 frames, and the highest power consumption can reach 8.9W.

But the problem is that even so, the highest temperature of the fuselage is only 40.2 degrees, far from hot. Later, I changed to an iPad (tenth generation) to play, the stutter dropped the frame greatly reduced, the whole game experience is too smooth, only a few very sporadic small Catton. Since there is no iPhone on hand, I don't know how iOS's game performs, but from the comments of players on platforms such as Little Red Book, the frame drop problem caused by burning is also more obvious.

At present, the most suitable device for playing this mobile game is still the iPad. I hope the authorities can pay attention to this problem and optimize it as soon as possible. After all, if you look at the picture quality and game fluency performance on the iPad and PC simulators, the strength of swimming against the current in the domestic martial arts MMO RPG is worth affirming, but the positioning of the cold game against the current is mobile games, and there is obviously a gap between the performance of the mobile phone and the expectations of the players.

Summing up the popularity of the game after the public test is obvious to all, after entering the game, I am also like the internal test before, enjoying the game's beautiful characters pinch face, rich big world exploration, classic main plot and jianghu stories, intelligent NPC and a variety of rich ways of playing, for light leisure players like me who do not pursue intensity, backwater cold swimming is really fun, neither liver nor krypton This in the current domestic MMO RPG games, there is no lack of bright spots.

But its defects are also obvious, such as weak guidance for beginners, insufficient performance optimization of mobile devices, and problems with the ability to hit the skills favored by PVP players, which not only affect the old players of traditional MMO RPG, but also affect new players, especially game optimization problems, it is really easy to persuade them to quit.

The good news is that the authorities are already working with major chip and mobile phone manufacturers to solve the hot equipment problem. There will be a formal response these two days, and players are always welcome to use the new equipment to swim against the current for testing. I hope that in the next update, the official must solve the problem of game optimization as soon as possible, simplify the game, and further dig the depth of the game. only in this way can the IP last forever.

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