Unexpectedly, Tencent took out a late-stage hero “Wang Shijie”

On April 17, the mobile terminal of ‘Honor of Kings: World was officially launched. So far, this blockbuster product that Tencent has been preparing for 5 years has finally made up the most critical piece of puzzle.

If it is said that the previous PC-side performance is in the black box, it is impossible to judge whether it is good or bad, then the mobile terminal quickly climbs to the top of the download list, more or less is proof of one thing: ‘players are paying the bill’. The experience of the game may vary from person to person, but the real data never lie.

Interestingly, the public opinion field around this product is far more complicated than a string of numbers. On the day of the opening of ‘The World of Glory of Kings’, the evaluation of players on social media has been polarized. Some people are moved to the circle of friends by the high-standard performance effect of CG and the super high restoration of various kings and heroes.

If you only intercept the sound volume section on the first day, it is easy to get an overly one-sided evaluation. Now that you look back at this product a week later, you will find that the discussion atmosphere of the community has turned visible to the naked eye. In the early days, the heat of the topic of concentrated firepower was gradually falling, and it was replaced by more and more in-depth experience sharing of ‘true fragrance’.

It can be seen that most of the praises focus on the mid-to-late content of the game: the plot of the hero side line is well done, the battle reproduction is far exceeding the expectations, and the sense of substitution becomes stronger after the development of the world view. Some players said, ‘I thought it was quite normal at first. After playing the Autumn Water Trilogy, the comprehensive experience was beyond expectations. I played it directly for 50 hours. I can only say that Wang Shijie has something.’

There are also many KOLs and UP masters who take the initiative to speak for the game plot and battle, and even directly release the slice of the plot battle of the main line, the seventh chapter of the main line, and openly slap the face: ‘Yes How much did you give an evaluation after playing this? How can you achieve objective and fairness only for a few hours in the first game?’ Many players also responded and said that they were ‘played’.

In fact, this change is not an individual phenomenon, but is forming a trend: the longer the player who invests, the more objective the evaluation is.

The armor of the armor is reversed, the elegant combo of Yao, and the auxiliary hard control of Xi Shi. The familiar skills logic has been completely moved into the 3D world, and this familiar and unfamiliar fresh experience constitutes the underlying code of the rising favorability. At the same time, the content ecology of the community is also rapidly heating up, from strategy direction, plot interpretation to easter egg excavation, the content of spontaneous production of players is replacing the emotional venting of the first day, becoming the mainstream of discussion.

In other words, the word-of-mouth curve of ‘Glory of Kings’ is not ‘opening high and walking low’, but ‘climbing the slope in the middle’. This is a typical slow-heating content product. It does not pursue to please all players, but tries to give priority to the core audience of King IP.

01

First suppressed and then raised, ‘slow heat’ products

In fact, the ‘delayed release’ of word of mouth is not a product defect, but is deeply bound to the product structure and content rhythm of ‘The Glory of the King’. In my opinion, there are at least three reasons for this ‘first suppressed and then raised’ experience curve.

The most intuitive layer is the heavy content of the plot and the long foreshadowing in the early stage. Many negative comments have focused on the content rhythm: the main line is too long, and the rhythm is gentle and boring, but this ‘slow’ is precisely the necessary price for content-based games.

The reason is that the worldview of the King’s Glory IP itself has brought together many heroes in different periods, different cultures, and even many who have no intersection. It is an unimaginable huge project to bring such a large number of heroes together under a unified world view and operate in a logical and orderly manner. How to bring players into this world view, how to spread out the plot setting, and how to make the interaction between the heroes produce stories are closely related to the rhythm and promotion of the plot.

As a big world game, the practice of ‘World of Glory of Kings’ is: first bring players into this world view in the early stage, and let players slowly explore and excavate in the middle and late stages.

To give a simple example, in the whale gameplay of Guqiu City, the young Yuange was introduced to make Nengfa under the encouragement and company of Zhuge Liang. The puppet of the human voice, later in order to help the senior brother secretly, he pretended to surrender to the enemy and entered the game, separated Cao Ying with the puppet, and helped Zhuge Liang to burn Chibi. ‘I have no desires and no desires, I just wish you always laughed,’ Yuan Ge’s character image stood up.

This kind of example is too numerous to list in the game, such as Dongfang Yao was rescued by his sister many times, and finally transformed from a middle school boy into a mature and stable;

The underlying framework of the MOBA game itself cannot be self-consistent with the content narrative, so the story of ‘Honor of Kings’ requires a new form of expression, and with immersiveness as the core, the big world that pursues comprehensive and in-depth exploration has become the best carrier.

If the slow heat of the plot can still be digested by patience, then the ‘delayed satisfaction’ at the combat level is easier to persuade many impatient players. Different from the beginning of most open world games that give players the core battle pleasure, the ‘resonance’ mechanism of ‘Glory of the King’ pursues the concept of heroic genres, and each hero has different characteristics and constitutes a separate battle system.

The main creative team once said: ‘The resonance is the hero in ‘Glory of the King’, there is no need to spend a lot of time and money to develop, the original intention of the design is to hope that every resonance will It can provide players with a new combat experience instead of becoming a new development target, and players can become stronger through the battle again and again to become stronger.’

For example, Kai pursues the precise blocking of the moment of attack, the multiple transformations of Xishi from control to healing, and the charge and heavy attack of Wang Zhaojun after accumulating ice crystal resources. In addition, the later development will unlock more flows, form more skill derives, and the connection and form between skills will become more complicated.

Coupled with the combo operation comparable to the MOBA game, as well as the exclusive combat system such as perfect dodge and counterattack, breaking the situation execution, and co-streaming skills, each hero needs a lot of time and experience accumulation from getting started to mastering. This is why after a week of launch, there are more and more voices of players who are ‘fighting on the head’, ‘combat, cool’, and the limited combat experience in the early stage was finally released in the middle and late stages.

Compared with the two bright lines of the plot and the fighter, the ones who really make old players are often the easter eggs and hidden plots hidden in the corners. This is also the most easily overlooked first-day experience, but it is also the content that can best reflect the sincerity of the product.

Dongfang Yao, as Li Bai’s little fan, needs to be said in the family’s relevant collections and surroundings; Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang have become wooden fences in the desolate forest Also ‘love each other and kill each other’, which makes people laugh; Luban No. 7 can be preserved because it is incredible to ‘call dad’ online.

Even when you don’t want to do your daily routine, there is still a chance to trigger Ji Xiaoman’s incarnation and fishing king, one-click ‘big touch’, all daily instants are cleared.

Of course, the most commendable thing is that in the seventh chapter of the main line CG, Li Bai and Shangguan Wan’er’s performance on the same stage is amazing. There are even ‘hot knowledge’ of online popularization of players: ‘If you go to the old master of Gaotai after this paragraph, it will trigger the dialogue between Wan’er and the master, which clearly says that Li Bai is on a whim. We started to play in the mountains and waters late at first, but it came to improvisation and Wan’er.’ Many players who didn’t pay attention were later realized, ‘I play less for 5 cents.’

The thickness of the plot needs time to spread, the upper limit of the battle needs time to unlock, and the density of easter eggs needs time to mine. The progressive release of the three layers of content together constitutes the experience rhythm of ‘The Glory of the King’ of ‘Suppression First and Later’. This is why, more and more players have given a completely different evaluation after investing enough time, not that the product has changed, but that it has finally been seen.

02

IP decompression, undertaking emotions

To understand why ‘World of Glory of Kings’ chooses to ‘prioritize serving core players of IP’ rather than ‘all-rounder’, we need to go back to a more fundamental question: what is the meaning of this product?

I think, the answer is hidden in the emotional structure of the king’s IP.

‘World of Glory of Kings’ is essentially like the process of decompressing ‘King’s IP’. In the past ten years, a relatively complete set of emotional systems has been formed around this IP: on the one hand, the king has completed the long-term layout in the field of e-sports, and last year in the KPL year held in Bird’s Nest. In the finals, the tickets were sold out within 12 seconds of the sale, and the number of people on the scene broke the Guinness record, which means that KPL has fully met the emotional needs of players for ‘victory’ and ‘competition’. On the other hand, video content such as the highlights of the live broadcast platform and the short video ecosystem, the highlights of the anchors, and the scenes of professional players are satisfied with the players’ desire to display ‘operation achievements’.

But in fact, there are two core emotional needs, which have never been fully satisfied: the deep emotional link of the hero and the social experience that surpasses the battle scene.

Why do you say that? In the MOBA era, the emotions of players and heroes are relatively ‘one-sided’. Although the official fills the background through skin, lines, and CG stories, in high-frequency PVP confrontation, this narrative is in a state of breaking and fragmenting most of the time. However, the king has more than 120 hero characters and more than 500 hero skins, and each hero has the emotional projection of a large number of players. It can even lead to the concept of ‘benming heroes’ regardless of strength, and it can be seen that the king’s player group has a strong emotional resonance between heroic characters.

If you want to understand their past, take risks side by side with them, experience their life, and enter their inner world, this ‘overflow’ of emotions has exceeded the upper limit that the MOBA framework can carry, and this has also become the meaning and value of the birth of ‘The Glory of the King’.

So, you can see some players who substitute into Xi Shi’s perspective and take risks with themselves in the world of kings; some players personally experience Sun Bin’s flying ability and make them ‘Ace Flying’. ‘Warkers’; there are even more players’ fancy heights of heroes, and finally concluded that the minions are ‘MVP’, and there are also players who show off in fancy, the wife cakes given by the King’s World are really ‘wifes’.

In my opinion, the design logic of ‘Glory of Kings’ is not ‘benchmarking a certain head product’, but a precise reverse ’emotional engineering’. First anchor the emotional gap of IP users, and then fill them with content.

This also occurs in the emotional gap at the social level. Glory of Kings is of course a social game, but if you think about it carefully, almost all of the social experiences related to it operate around the ‘game’, and the social networking is limited. Scenarios and short-term utilitarian competitive goals make social relationships more often at the superficial level of ‘up points together’, and it is difficult to develop more deeply.

You can’t watch the sunset at Jixia College with your friends, and you can’t fight side by side to fight Bifang. Those who can’t take the risk of hang out together are precisely the soil where emotions really precipitate. ‘The World of Glory of Kings’ uses a big world that can be freely explored to catch this kind of social and emotional needs to the greatest extent. The interaction between friends is no longer the only option of ‘one more’, but the possibility of ‘living in this world together’.

From this, it is not difficult to see that from the emotional link of heroes to the deepening of social interaction between players, ‘The Glory of the King’ is transforming the emotional potential energy accumulated by the King’s IP in ten years into an unprecedented complete satisfaction.

03

‘Later Heroes’, the future can be expected

From the perspective of product publicity, the first release of the PC side is just a long journey starting point for ‘The Glory of the King’. With the official launch of the mobile terminal, the multi-terminal communication architecture means that this product is ushering in a real user outbreak period, and it is facing the inspection of more dimensions.

Now, the gradual recovery of word of mouth is also explaining one thing ‘this product is right’. This right flavor refers not only to the sufficient restoration of a certain hero, but also for the precise control of a certain plot, but to ‘stand up’ in the overall IP tone.

More importantly, the underlying assets that support the continuous growth of this ‘world’, that is, the value and precipitation of the King’s IP have been fully tested by the market and players for ten years. It can be seen that in recent years, the King IP has continuously made up the IP territory of the King through e-sports events, animation comics, virtual idols, and IP peripherals. The huge character pool built by more than 120 heroic characters, the thickness of the world view accumulated in ten years of operation, and the social network formed by 260 million monthly active users will all become the foundation of ‘Glory of the King of Glory’ to continue to update in the future.

Therefore, the advantages of ‘Glory of Kings’ as a ‘late hero’, in addition to the ready-made and rich world view, rely on the continuous content supply of the original IP to a greater extent. It never lacks stories to tell, and never lacks people to listen to.

The operation of the big world product is not a sprint, but more like a marathon. The strength of the marathon runners should obviously not be defined on the starting line.