[Guide] Recently, at gdc2010, Rob Pardo, vice president of blizzard, summarized Blizzard's success and failure on the way to the game over the past decade, we can see that the real reason for success is reflection and error correction.
Diablo 2: the least valuable gold coin/World of Warcraft: You always have a way to spend money
We vaguely remember that in Diablo 2, gold coins may be the most useless thing, because in the game, gold coins are only spent in servicing equipment and purchasing mercenary troops, good equipment is full of monsters, and the punishment for dropping all gold coins after death makes many players remember deeply. It can be said that the economic operating system of Diablo 2 has failed.
However, in World of Warcraft, Blizzard has established a good economic system. Gold Coins in players' pockets are no longer useless metals. You need a lot of money to buy mounts, good equipment on your body requires expensive repairs. You cannot be an all-powerful production profession. You must purchase some raw materials. In World of Warcraft, you have many ways to spend money, you also have many ways to make money. Money is continuously recycled in the game, forming a sound economic operation system.
StarCraft: A hero is a hacker/Warcraft 3: A hero decides the success or failure of a war
The hero system is undoubtedly an innovation that blizzard has made in the RTS game, but it has also failed. In earlier Starcraft, A hero was only a unit that was a little better than a soldier, but its death would lead to task failure. Therefore, most players will hide the hero in the base, however, using a large number of miscellaneous troops to complete the task is truly useless.
However, in Warcraft 3, blizzard presented a brand new hero system. The hero in Warcraft 3 is much more powerful than the average unit. He has the skills and the ability to upgrade, after the death, the altar can be revived, which makes the hero the key to deciding the outcome of a war. In Starcraft 2, blizzard removed the hero system and replaced it with an elite unit. The elite unit spent more money than the average unit, although it was not worth ten yuan, however, when it reaches a certain number, it can play a key role.
"Concentrated coolness" is not the more the better!
Concentrated coolness is Blizzard's philosophy in designing a game unit, that is, to make each designed game unit unique and cool. However, this concept has also led blizzard designers to take a lot of detours. In order to comply with this concept, World of Warcraft designers have no need to design mechanical mounts, so far, there are hundreds of weird mechanical mounts. The only way to get these mounts is to hit the boss and perform tasks, and the mounts have no restrictions on players ?! Eventually, blizzard canceled most of the design.
In Starcraft 2, blizzard designers explained the concept of "concentrated coolness" and tried to make every unit classic. If you want to add a new unit, so it is necessary to remove an old unit. This one-to-one replacement system makes Starcraft 2's game unit not bloated because of its cool pursuit.
Task, instead of listening to NPC nagging and then killing monsters
The task system is a good RPG Game andOnline GamesThe key to success is that although Diablo is a classic, it has to be said that its task system is the biggest failure, because in the game, most of the NPCs speak out a lot of background tasks, it is really boring to let you kill a demon. In contrast, the World of Warcraft task system is perfect. What you need to do is not only kill monsters, you need to complete some column tasks and collect different items in different places to complete the task. However, in World of Warcraft, the task of "Qingshan In the Thorn Valley" also fails. In the endless narration of NPC, the last thing you have to do is to kill irrelevant little monsters.
In the subsequent Lich King data sheet, blizzard took the novice task of Death Knight as a pilot of the new task system. Through a series of tasks, the players learned the background of the birth of Death Knight, instead of completing this process through the NPC dictation.
When a game vendor is not just immersed in their glory, but capable of reflecting on its past, summing up its shortcomings, and paving the way for future success, we believe that, he will surely make the best game of this age. (Text/work Superman)
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