Chapter 25 Section 2 The Eight-Character Policy of Player Needs

For this, I have summed up a eight-character policy: glory, goal, interaction, and surprise.If you list the needs of players, you can list a dozen or twenty or even more, but after screening, my experience, and my discussion with Xiaodao, Xuefeng and others, we finally left these 4 items. 4, from our current level, we think it is enough. But it is unlikely that we can do these 4 items, even though there are only 4 items.So we have to focus and put all our energy on these 4 items.If we can do these four things well, we will be able to excel in China's online game industry. According to Maslow's theory, people have five major pursuits, ranked in terms of importance, the first pursuit is physiological pursuit, that is, to have enough food; the second is safety; the third is social, such as family, friendship, love, etc.; Four are respect; the last is the need for self-actualization.

From this point of view, people who come to play games are not for physiological needs, nor for safety needs. They also have social needs, but due to the characteristics of online games, it should be listed as the first need, but I don’t, I listed it It is glory, why is that?This is the characteristic of online games. There is a gap between the love a person finds on the Internet and the love he finds in reality. In reality, you will shine when you see the opposite sex you like. Can you do it in the game?Won't.Not to mention family affection, friendship is there.This is related to the interaction of my columns.

But the first is glory, which is the fourth pursuit, which is also the first need of players in the game.The number one need deep in the player's heart when they come to the game is actually to gain the respect and glory of other people. How important is glory? Let me use an analogy. People in real estate often say that when investing in real estate, the most important thing is the location, the location is the second, and the location is the third.The same is true for online games. To meet the needs of players, the first is glory, the second is glory, and the third is glory. We should satisfy glory as the primary need of players.

We can often see in the game that when a player with good equipment is called an idol, he is actually very happy in his heart.A trumpet who is usually worthless saves a tuba, and when the tuba thanks him, the trumpet can be happy for ten minutes and feel that he is very important. And when there are group fights, as long as the king is there, no one else will be beaten, and only the king will be beaten, because if you beat the king well, you can go on TV. Another situation is that when I was with the king of the allied countries, the trumpet often said, King, let me kill once, because I want to be on TV.This reflects his inner need for glory.

In "Journey", once a country's escort car is hijacked, those tuba will do everything they can to protect those trumpets and rescue the escort. Why did you go to save the dart?The tuba needs to spend his own money to buy the bamboo dragonfly, and after saving it, it will not benefit him in terms of profit.If you analyze his psychology, he is actually just trying to satisfy his glory, and a thank you from the saved people makes him very happy.If you meet a familiar trumpet and swipe the screen again and say: "Thank you XX for saving my dart." He will be happy for another ten minutes.So in the game, no matter how big or small, what players desire most in their hearts is glory.But our planning lacks this idea.

If we are aware of this, when our planners are working on a function, the first thing that comes to mind should be whether the function I am currently making can satisfy the player's needs for Glory to the greatest extent.If there is this string, most of our functions, 2/3 of the functions can meet the players' needs for glory to varying degrees.This is completely achievable as long as you pay attention to it. The reason why 90% of our current functions do not bring players the satisfaction of glory is not because we can't do it, but because we don't have the string. In the past, when we, including myself, thought of glory, we always first thought of the glory of players with large numbers, well-equipped players, kings, and officials. We ignored the needs of players with small numbers.These trumpets are the same as the tuba, the purpose of coming to the game is for glory.

For a long time in the past, neither I nor our core team paid attention to this point.Once the trumpet glory is satisfied, it will be more exciting than the tuba. Most of our games in China do not pay attention to the glory of the trumpet. If we do it, then our non-RMB players, our online number will be greatly increased.Therefore, here we specifically propose that in addition to the tuba, we will pay special attention to the glory of the trumpet in the future. As long as you pay attention to it, the problem of honor can be solved.We must unify our thinking and regard glory as the first demand of players.

Here, I want to say one thing is our TV, from its launch to now, the effect has been very good.When our TV is only serving glory, our TV still plays a big role. Going on TV is a very simple matter, just saying a word on the screen, but players still care about it.It's a small invention of ours, but it does a lot more than a lot of other things in satisfying players' needs.This shows that glory is very important to players. We regard players' needs for glory as the primary pursuit of players, and at the same time regard glory as an important part of the planning work. Any function must pass a glory level, especially the satisfaction of the glory of the trumpet.

Stand-alone games, like online games, have requirements for goals. In a stand-alone game, the goal is the most important, if there is no goal, then the stand-alone game is a complete failure.Relatively speaking, those who have done stand-alone games will have a deeper understanding of the goal. In our planning team, there are almost no people who have done stand-alone games, so we don't pay much attention to target management. Without the target management system, there would be no stand-alone games, and online games are developed from stand-alone games, so the foundation of stand-alone games must be preserved.It is this lesson that we are missing and need to make up for now.

Goals are divided into short, medium and long-term goals.The short-term goal is very short-term. For example, if the player receives a task to fight 20 monsters, then after finishing the 20 monsters and getting rewards, the short-term goal is achieved. What are the mid-term goals?If my package is not enough, I have to work hard if I want to increase it. It may take a few hours or even a day to meet my needs. This is one of my intermediate goals.Long-term goals may be upgrades, equipment, and so on. For players, at any point in time, there should be goals; at any point in time, there should be three short, medium and long-term goals at the same time.Once the player loses the target, it is very dangerous.

If the player feels that there is nothing to do when they go online, it means that the player has no goals.Maybe the planner will say that I have set many goals for him.These goals are all from the perspective of your planning. It may be because of the problem of planning level, unreasonable values, unoptimized details, too high difficulty, etc. From the player's point of view, it is not his goal.Therefore, planning cannot replace players. Only when the planning is done and the player accepts it, will the player take the goals you set as their own goals.Once a player feels that he has nothing to do when he goes online, he will not be far away from this player.Therefore, target management is also a key to the success or failure of the game. Let me tell you about a case where a version of "Giant" failed in target management last September.The goal of the novice is not bad. After an hour, he will be promoted to the militia. Players can go directly to the side to receive skills such as swimming, dancing, and lock picking.These things could have been satisfied as the player's mid-term pursuit in the previous week, but they were all given in an instant, and there was nothing to give him in the next week.This is a typical case of goal management chaos. What should be the correct one? As a goal, there is a process. The first is to create pressure. For example, as far as packages are concerned, the explosion rate of the corresponding level should be increased so that he can’t let go of good things. At this time, tell him that you are going to pick up a big package. Task.This big task includes ten small tasks. After completing all ten small tasks, your package will increase.The pressure is created, let him feel the value of the pressure, and then give him a mid-term goal, tell him that you only need to work hard for a few more hours, and the value of this effort can be obtained.During these hours of hard work, the player does not leave, because his goal is clear, because something of great value awaits him, even late at night. At this stage, we can set the time to work hard according to the value. When there is a strong goal, players will not complain about fighting monsters.Once the goal is achieved, the player has a stress release and will be very happy.It's best not to stop immediately after getting this joy, but let him think about it, such as a package, he can immediately put a lot of equipment that he doesn't want to lose. Another example is swimming. If you tell him that you can swim as soon as you come up, he won't feel anything.If there is a task at the beginning that always needs to be done on the other side of the river, and you always need to run half of the city to a certain bridge on the river, after ten or eight times, you tell him that you can learn to swim and swim directly. At this time swimming skills will become very valuable to him. At this time, you tell him that if you want to learn how to swim, you must complete a large task with 10 small tasks, which will take a total of two hours, and the player will happily do it. After learning swimming, when you arrange the next task, let him continue to experience it, ask him to continue to do the task on the other side of the river, release the pressure, and experience the value of swimming as a skill. Because, after a year, players may not care about the skill of swimming.Therefore, after just finishing learning, let the player concentrate on enjoying the value of the skill of swimming. These two cases are to talk about the process of goal design and the importance of goals. Regarding the goal, there are three more points that need to be reminded. First, it is also what often happens in our planning.The planner felt that each time node had set goals for the players, but the player survey found that the players regarded these goals as a burden.It is no exaggeration to say that more than 90% of our functions are like this. That is to say, we like to use our own thinking to judge the player's thinking.This requires our planning to do things from the player's point of view. When setting goals for the other party, we must use various methods to understand the player's needs.This should arouse the general attention of our planning. Second, once a goal is achieved, the player feels lost for a while.Therefore, new goals must be established before the previous goal is achieved.Players cannot miss targets and lose gear at any one time. There is a player who spent 5 million to make several sets of 15-star equipment, which took more than a month. When making the equipment, he went online every day and worked very hard.After completing these equipments, you will not be online or play. Before making these equipments, he had a very strong goal of making equipments.After the goal was achieved, he was lost and didn't go online for a month.Although this example is not universal, the truth is universal.It is because after his goal was achieved, new goals were not set up for him.This lost stage is very dangerous. Third, we must create the value of the target through pressure. At the same time, when to set goals, when to give him value, and how long it will take, all these require a reasonable management.The black dot map we are currently using is a good way to do this. The biggest difference between stand-alone and online games is the interaction. An online game is a community with game elements. From its definition, we can see the importance of online game interaction. If there is no interaction, it is a stand-alone game rather than an online game.The pursuit of players in online games is also different from that of players in stand-alone games. The need for friendship exists in online games, second only to the pursuit of glory.For our R&D personnel, there are two aspects that can be done: the first is to satisfy the way of player interaction as much as possible. In the past, it used language and text, and now it has developed to the voice system. In addition, we should also try to provide a variety of other interactive systems, such as expressions and body parts.Our programs and art should think more about this aspect and enrich the player's interaction system. The second is guidance.Make the relationship between players better through benefit guidance.We have to deal with the same difficulties. To fight a boss is to fight with several people. I think the boss needs to be strong. During the fight, the relationship between friends will get better and better.We must deliberately design a few good friends to share difficulties and share benefits. In addition, hatred is also an interaction, we want to create hatred between players.However, the hatred within the country should be created as little as possible, because the disadvantaged party can easily be driven away by the strong party, and the game is out of play.Therefore, hatred should be used as much as possible between groups, between countries, between gangs. The more hatred between groups, the better, it depends on your own ability.The hatred between groups is different from the hatred between individuals. The superior party will have a strong sense of honor, and the individuals on the inferior party will not leave on a large scale because of the weakness of the group.Therefore, we have to guide the love and hate between players, and hate will bring passion to players.If there is no love, the player will not have a sense of belonging. Our planning should have such a process. When designing tasks, we must take into account the interaction between players, so that how much players will love and how much they will hate. "Zhengtu" handles the hatred between countries well, but it handles love poorly, which leads to our bad reputation outside, saying that killing is too heavy, so if love is designed well, Not only do players have a sense of belonging, but we also have a great reputation. Like before, killing monsters is the only way to upgrade. To put it bluntly, killing monsters is a waste of the player's time, and it is human-computer interaction. With the development of online games, more attention should be paid to interaction.It is definitely better to spend a certain amount of time on human interaction than to spend a certain amount of time on human-computer interaction.In the past, there was not much interaction between people. "Zhengtu" has risen a lot, and the proportion of human-computer interaction has dropped a lot. I think that the interaction between everyone will become the direction of online game development in the future, and players will like it more.We must pay attention to the changes in the way of upgrading, and we must keep up with the trend. In terms of interaction, there is one thing that our "Zhengtu" and "Giant" have not done well, and that is the interaction between the strong and the weak.Our interactions are often limited to masters and masters, weak and weak. In fact, players need not only horizontal, but also vertical interaction. We have tried hard in this regard, but failed several times.We have tried on two fronts and failed.The first is the mentoring system, which is to solve the interaction between the strong and the weak, because the weak need protection more, and the strong need the weak to give him benefits.However, we have failed to design several schemes, but there are also games that do well. Therefore, it is not that he cannot design the master-apprentice system, but because the people who do this project are not skilled enough or not working hard enough. The second is that we did not do a good job in bringing in newcomers.Bringing newcomers is very important. If a system of recruiting newcomers is done well, the advertising fee can exceed 100 million.Its rationale is good and required. If the player thinks it's fun, he should invite his friends in reality and on the Internet to play. This basic principle is correct.This is far better than our advertisement.Because what the player believes most is his friends rather than the manufacturer's advertisement. If this system is done well, the significance is very significant.And why didn't we do well in the past?It's because we didn't do our work carefully and were played by players.Because the newcomer he brought was not a newcomer but his own trumpet. In the past, recruiting newcomers was done by fighting monsters, but you can use cheats, and one person can bring dozens of trumpets.If we asked him to spy, he would not be able to use the trumpet. If we asked him to carry darts, there would be a risk of intercepting darts on the road, so he would not be able to use the trumpet. We screen the functions, and some of them can be done by machines, so it cannot be used as a criterion for judging the relationship between them.There are some things that can’t be done by machines, and players will do it, and choosing a few of these at random can make the system of bringing newcomers popular. "Fantasy Westward Journey" has gone from 50,000 in the public beta to over a million online now. The most important thing is its system of bringing newcomers.As for the recruiting system of "Zhengtu", we cannot abandon this system just because there are some problems. Surprise is actually randomness.Its status is also very high. I have such a conclusion: Without randomness, online games will not be replayable; without randomness, there will be no games.Analyzing it, all the activities that human beings engage in have randomness.As long as it is a game, such as playing mahjong.It is said that people all over the country admire the strength of playing mahjong in Chengdu, and the biggest feature of this game is randomness. The same is true for Tetris, because you never know what shape will come out next, which is also random.Casinos too, if it wasn't random, no one would be so keen.So as long as it is a game, there is randomness.But the planners of several of our projects did not pay enough attention to randomness. If our randomness is done well, it’s like playing mahjong. Even if you don’t gamble, even if the reward of the task is small, as long as the process is fun, players are still willing to play and enjoy the process. If our game can be played without experience and money, and everyone likes to play it, and you give experience, money and various benefits, then this game is not a good game? Why is playing mahjong fun? Because it has effort in addition to randomness. When randomness and hard work collide together, it is very subtle, it will have a chemical reaction, and it will give players a strong attraction.Pure randomness is not enough, just like playing cards. After everyone has dealt the cards, everyone shows their cards, and whoever points higher wins. Although it is random, it is not fun, because it does not require hard work. In addition to randomness, mahjong requires hard work. The real game is seven points random and three points hard work. Players play crazy.For online games, I think four points for hard work and six points for randomness is a more appropriate ratio. If it is really impossible, even 50-50.But our game function, half of the random is 0, 100% effort, half is 1 point of effort, 99% random.In the past, our planning did not pay attention to the importance of randomness, especially the combination of randomness and hard work is the greatest charm of the game. Let me cite an example of failure in "Giant" last September, which is pulling a cart.Some players commented on why I always pull white cars, and everyone else has purple cars.Our planning listened to the opinions of the players and eliminated randomness. Originally, the players had hoped for it before, but after canceling the gap between the cars, they saw that no one came to pull the cars.Later, it was changed back. After the change, the popularity of pulling carts rose again.This example shows that randomness is very important. You can think about these two sentences I said: all human games need randomness.Without random, all games will cease to exist. If the proportion of randomness and hard work can be handled well, the gameplay of the game will be greatly improved.

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