In this hard-core track, Tencent NetEase once again spent a lot of money to compete?

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GameLook special manuscript, no unauthorized reprinting!

GameLook reports/Recalling the birth and popularity of tactical competitive gameplay, that was already in 2017. According to the general rule of the game industry-that is, “there is a high probability that there will be major category gameplay innovations every 5 years”, the time for the industry to usher in the next hot category is getting closer and closer.

What’s interesting is that the precursor to the outbreak of major categories is often manifested in the competition between big manufacturers. For example, when “chicken eating” first became popular, NetEase and Tencent launched an “arms race” with each other. And recently, GameLook discovered that Tencent and NetEase are secretly competing in a new category.

On the one hand, Tencent just opened the closed beta of the shooting mobile game “Dark Zone Breakthrough” developed by Rubik’s Cube Studio last month; on the other hand, NetEase also quickly launched “Firefly Assault” on September 6th (international service for Lost Light)’s national service reservation, this product has been well received overseas.

From the perspective of the overall gameplay, the two are very different from the previous shooting mobile games: when a lot of shooting mobile games choose lightweight operation because of the equipment form, the two games do the opposite, and emphasize more. The realness and hardcore of the game gave GameLook the illusion that it was the hardcore shooting game “Escape from Tarkov” that was recently hit by the fire.

But afterwards, I discovered that this was not my own illusion, not just Tencent and NetEase. In the general direction of shooting categories, the big shots who are interested in shooting game tracks seem to be marching to the “Takov Like”.

From “eating chicken” to “escape”, the integration of the three mainstream gameplay

Compared with the basic goal of survival in the “tactical competition” eating chicken gameplay, “Dark Zone Breakthrough” and “Firefly Assault” emphasize the importance of material collection, and a new “evacuation” is added on the basis of survival. The link in the summary is “survival-exploration-collection-evacuation”.

Take the version number of “Dark Zone Breakthrough” as an example.

From the background setting, the world view of “Dark Zone Breakthrough” is closer to the concept of doomsday survival. In the context of the doomsday, the task force played by the player is constantly searching for supplies in the “dark zone” of the main battlefield in order to survive. At the same time, since you are not the only person facing the dilemma of resource scarcity, other players and the wanderers in the “dark zone” will also fight with each other due to resource competition.

The player’s task is very clear, that is to search for resources on the map as much as possible, and evacuate to the escape point in the dark area within the specified time, and take the supplies alive. After a successful evacuation, this part of the materials will belong to the player permanently. If the evacuation fails, all the materials on the body will be lost like “Legend PK”. This is why many players call this gameplay “Great Escape”.

Based on the core gameplay of “material collection”, players can choose two ways to play the game, namely tactical action and camouflage infiltration, and supports up to 4 people in teams.

The “tactical action” mode requires selecting a character created by the player to play the game. Before the game starts, players need to choose equipment for the character, these equipment depends on your account inventory; and “disguised sneak” is to pretend to be a rogue and sneak into the dark zone. In camouflage mode, players cannot bring their own equipment into the battlefield, but use items randomly allocated by the system to start the game.

The gameplay of the two modes is not much different, but considering the existence of NPC settings and the “death penalty” mechanism in the map, the two modes still have their own advantages.

For example, tactical actions can give players more equipment advantages at the start, but they may cause all their equipment to be looted due to death. Although the camouflage mode cannot guarantee the quality and proficiency of the equipment, but fortunately, the player does not have to pay any death price, as long as the successful evacuation can be “no profit”, and ordinary NPCs in the game will not actively attack players in the camouflage mode. .

After the safe evacuation, all the equipment that the player finds can be traded with merchants or other players. This is the player’s main source of income and the fun of the game.

Whether it’s Tencent’s “Dark Zone Breakthrough” or NetEase’s “Firefly Raid”, there is not much difference in the overall gameplay between the two, but NetEase still makes differentiated changes in some gameplay, such as knocking down the enemy Later, you can choose to form an alliance with it and rely on the strength of the team to jointly evacuate the battlefield, but its profit will be lower than that of a kill.

At the same time, players will expose their position in every battle, which means that every battle will increase the risk of failure, but it will also bring high returns. The choice among them requires careful thinking.

It is not difficult to see that, compared to ordinary shooting games, “Dark Zone Breakthrough” and “Firefly Raid” are actually based on the battle royale gameplay, incorporating more MMORPG, and even the gameplay of the big world exploration, and finally created Different gaming experience.

“Takov Like” may be the hardest gameplay

It is said that the game is a mapping of the real world. Judging from the actual combat performance, the two games also incorporate the hard-core and real characteristics of “Takov Like” in all aspects of exploration, shooting, and character attributes.

In terms of exploration, “Dark Zone Breakthrough” completely imitates the exploration process in the real world, that is, when the player plunders other people’s resources or explores, the materials inside are usually in an unknown state, which often requires the player to spend a certain amount of time “turning over the box”.

In order to increase the realism of the game, the R&D team adopted a first-person shooting perspective and erased the iconic left/upper right corner small map in traditional FPS games. At the same time, the game also adds the map war fog effect used in the midfield of the MOBA game. If the player wants to judge his own position, he not only needs to “check on the spot”, but also open the big map rather troublesomely.

In addition, the game can also be called a “ruthless man” in terms of restoring real shooting. In addition to canceling the setting of aiming crosshairs that all use machine sights, even the bullets require the player to load the bullets one by one into the magazine. , And then insert the magazine into the firearm. During the battle, the player has no way to directly observe the remaining ammo capacity of the magazine. As in reality, the player can only remove the magazine to “approximately estimate” the ammunition volume, so there are often empty magazines in the game without knowing it. Case.

The hard core and reality of “Dark Zone Breakthrough” is also reflected in the gun system. Generally speaking, there are many types of firearms in the game, and each firearm has a high degree of freedom in transformation, including more than 10 transformation positions, and a single transformation position has dozens of assembleable accessories, so many accessory combinations It completely gives players plenty of space to use their imagination.

For characters, “Dark Zone Breakthrough” introduces a realistic physiological mechanism. The character’s health status will be composed of 7 parts of the head, chest, and limbs. Injuries in different parts will affect the character’s state. For example, a head injury will affect the field of vision, an arm injury will affect the search speed and shooting stability, and a leg injury will affect the movement speed.

Correspondingly, there are more than 20 kinds of treatment tools in the game, and different injured states require different drugs to treat. If you don’t treat yourself in time, these injured states will even remain in the next round.

The addition of the stamina bar and the breath-holding bar further simulates the real shooting experience. What’s more detailed is that when the player is aiming and holding his breath for too long, the character screen will appear blurred and trembling, which will affect the process of battle.

Compared with Tencent’s focus on fully restoring hard-core gameplay, NetEase is more inclined to subtract in certain aspects to match a wider range of players.

For example, compared to Tencent and “Escape from Tarkov”, “Firefly Assault” simplifies the loading process and ammunition display, and adopts a third-person perspective. It also retains convenient functions such as front sight and spare magazine bag.

In addition, in order to avoid Mengxin’s inadequate knowledge of materials, “Firefly Assault” also marked the market price of each item, without the need to have the ability to know the market price of materials like “Escape from Tarkov”. Helped new players to get started more quickly.

Excluding the differences in details, the two games are still more biased towards a real, hard-core experience. From the perspective of gameplay, the addition of the above hardcore factors is not only for the purpose of restoring the reality and creating an immersive experience, but also for the players to bring a brand new battle game strategy.

Pigs and geese enter the market with the lead, “Takov Like” or become the next big category?

In terms of time, the hardcore gameplay of “Survival Nuggets” in “Takov Like” can be traced back to 2016, a brand-new military-themed online game “Escape from Tarkov” produced by Russia’s Battlestate company.

The game officially started a long public beta at the end of December 2016. At the beginning of its launch, the game was “abandoned” by many players due to its too hard core. With the rise of PUBG in 2017, the gameplay was once concealed by the light of “eating chicken”. It was not discovered by game anchors at home and abroad until the beginning of last year.

Judging from the popularity of fighting fish games, “Escape from Tarkov” ranked first in the hottest single-player game of fighting fish when it was the hottest, with the game’s popularity reaching more than 5 million. At the same time, according to Esports Charts data, the game popularity of “Escape from Tarkov” in the same period on the foreign live broadcast platform Twitch ranked sixth, surpassing “PUBG”.

In China, NetEase became the first and the most ruthless person. Not only did it quickly launch a game called “Quantum Agent: Escape from Dream Island” at the beginning of this year, but also launched two similar games afterwards—— “Extraordinary Pioneer” and “Firefly Assault.” Among them, “Extraordinary Pioneer” national service official shows that its booking volume has reached a million level.

The first exposure of “Firefly Assault” is a new work that NetEase has iterated after absorbing the research and development experience of “Extraordinary Pioneer”. Compared with its predecessor, “Firefly Assault” has a better balance and restores the real and hard-core characteristics of the category. The game opened a closed beta test in Australia and New Zealand in January. It has been tested three times so far. It has been called “the best Takov mobile game currently” by international players, and the expectations are high.

In addition, there is also a mobile game “Code: X” developed by X studio. From the introduction page of tapap, the game may also be a “escape from Tarkov-like” gameplay. In general, the overall UI and gameplay design of the game are closer to NetEase’s “Extraordinary Pioneer”, and its booking volume has exceeded 150,000, and it is developed with the Unreal 4 engine.

“Code: X”

Players’ enthusiasm for “Takov Like” is also shown in “Dark Zone Breakthrough”. On August 12th, “Dark Zone Breakthrough” encountered a crisis of bombing when it launched the internal beta rushing activity, and the original thousands of internal beta qualifications were also robbed within a few seconds, the popularity can be seen.

But soon, the relevant internal beta activation code appeared on Taobao. Among them, 97 pieces were sold at the most, with a unit price of 350 yuan (the highest sold at 480 yuan). The scalper’s reselling has also led to the game’s TapTap score so far is only 4.8 points.

On the whole, the core reason why “Takoff Like” is valued by Tencent and NetEase is that it combines the advantages of MMO, multiplayer tactical competition and the open world. These three categories now occupy half of the global game market. When there is a game that combines the advantages of the three, it is not surprising that it is favored by the market and players.

At the same time, the potential and value in social networking, e-sports, and games that may be derived from the combination of these three gameplays is also another key point that caused the pig and goose factories and even other studios to compete.

Of course, no one can guarantee that the popularity of the “Takoff Like” gameplay will continue. After all, if the over-hardcore gameplay is to be promoted, it will take a long time to polish it. Otherwise, being too niche will not make it an innovative gameplay that leads the trend of the next era.

But fortunately, at least this kind of gameplay has formed a self-consistent framework, and its future development should not be underestimated as the player’s taste changes.

This Article is curated from Source and we only provide the English version of the Story.

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