Chapter 876 The Social Game Version of "Plants Vs. Zombies"
It is no exaggeration to say that "Plants vs. Zombies", as an extremely special tower defense game, or as one of the most powerful tower defense games, has become popular all over the world in the past few years. I believe this game has been popular in every country. It not only has a PC client version, but also a Flash version, an Android version, an IOS version, and almost every platform you can think of. An extremely successful classic game.
Whether you are male, female, young or old, regardless of your educational background, you have all experienced the magic of this game and the poison of this game. Its game elements and gameplay modes are very simple, but it is precisely because of this extreme simplicity that all Players can be deeply attracted by this game in the shortest time, it is one of the most immersive stand-alone games.
Although smartphones have not really started yet, the game "Plants vs. Zombies" is not difficult to play on the PC side. Players only need a mouse to operate smoothly and easily. The game "Plants vs. Zombies" belongs to the sequence of super mini games, regardless of the game structure, game elements, graphics and technical difficulty.
Moreover, the most appropriate is that the overall development difficulty and product elements of this game are very simple, much worse than the current "Happy Farm", and not much different from the earliest "Happy Farm".
Think about it carefully, what does the game "Plants vs. Zombies" have? It is nothing more than dozens of plants, dozens of zombies, several props, several modes and one character.
In fact, such games may not be as complicated as the early "Happy Farm". After all, "Happy Farm" has multi-stage elements of nearly a hundred kinds of plants, such as seed purchase, sowing, growth and harvesting. In addition, there are many There are various props to assist in it, as well as a fruit sales system and a farm development and decoration system.
These game elements alone make "Happy Farm" much more cumbersome than "Plants vs. Zombies". What's more, the essence of "Happy Farm" is an online social game with friend interaction, which belongs to one of the online games. species, and "Plants vs. Zombies" is a self-entertainment stand-alone.
However, Li Mu has to admit that even though "Plants vs. Zombies" is very simple and has no technical content, its popularity around the world is far more than "Happy Farm".
The overall development difficulty of "Plants vs. Zombies" is very small. If Li Mu directly gave the complete game structure and style settings, and handed it over to a professional and powerful development team, several artists would design together, and the decision would be made within three to five days. The element design draft of the game is produced, and the overall development of this small game, a game development team of dozens of people, the entire development will take less than a month.
In the last life, the development team of "Plants vs. Zombies" had only four people, and it took three years, but most of the time was spent on repeated polishing and improvement, and most of the time was spent on thinking and trial and error. Compared with the actual development workload much smaller below. <>
It’s still the same principle. People who don’t know the exit of the maze may not be able to get out in a few hours. If they know the route, they can cross the entire maze in three minutes. The difference between a few hours and three minutes is a hundred times calculated!
Dozens of developers, without taking detours, may be able to develop such a small game in more than half a month.
For "Plants vs. Zombies", the moment Li Mu thought about it, he made up his mind to get it out, so now he is not thinking about how to develop it, but how to better integrate it with together.
There is no doubt that "Happy Farm" is the best game with integration at present. After completing the terminal game, it can be started directly from the inside with one key, and the account login is completed, and the entire player network is deeply called, but "Happy Farm" Plants vs. Zombies is not a social game, it is a stand-alone game! How to make it play a social role?
Li Mu roughly deduced the product logic in his mind,
First of all, I have to make it clear that I cannot make "Plants vs. Zombies" a stand-alone game again. In that case, the correct pulling effect is not large enough. Therefore, this determines the first important idea: "Plants vs. Zombies" To develop into a web version!
Having determined that "Plants vs. Zombies" must be developed into an online version, Li Mu began to think about how to make "Plants vs. Zombies" make better use of social connections like "Happy Farm".
If you want to use social connections, there are no more than a few ideas: either everyone can play directly together, or everyone can play against each other.
If you want to play together, player A and player B can guard a house at the same time, plant plants and block zombies from two perspectives at the same time, but in this way, it becomes a real-time strategic mini-game, not for players A long-term goal bundle.
After thinking about it, Li Mu felt that it is still the most important thing to let everyone play against each other, because competition can only be formed by comparison. Once players in a game have the idea of chasing after each other, the player's stickiness will naturally continue to increase.
Therefore, Li Mu decided on a basic idea: "Plants vs. Zombies", like "Happy Farm", adopts a long upgrade and unlock system, so that players can constantly compare and catch up with their friends, so that they can immerse themselves in the game for a long time. In the game, this requires strict level restrictions on the types of plants.
So, Li Mu held back in the office for a long time, and basically came up with a game plan for a social version of "Plants vs. Zombies".
The core rule is: every "Plants vs. Zombies" player, after registration, will have a small villa of his own and a front yard. There are five lateral passages in the front yard, and zombies will attack the villa from the five lateral passages. , and the length of each channel is ten grids, that is to say, a total of fifty plants of various types can be planted, which is the basis;
At the very beginning, the player has only three available plants, namely the single-headed sunflower, the single-headed pea shooter and the small nut wall;
Players have just entered the game, just like Happy Farm, they need to plant sunflowers and harvest sunlight. Only when enough sunlight is accumulated can they grow pea shooters and small nut walls;
The zombie attack is no longer based on the level-breaking system, but the timing system. Li Mu's idea is that players have the opportunity to start a round of [Zombie Attack and Defense] every ten minutes. After resisting this round of zombie attacks, players can Get a certain amount of experience and gold coins;
Experience points are the key for players to level up. Only when the level is reached, can more plants be unlocked step by step. This is the same as the system of "Happy Farm", and Li Mu will not let them upgrade to N level in one day, and must control the rhythm. Make it harder and harder for them to level up and acquire more advanced new plants and props, only in this way can they keep the rhythm of immersion;
The use of gold coins is to buy various props. Li Mu felt that there should be as many game props as possible, so as to motivate players to obtain gold coins and even recharge. For example, various [cards] can be designed, such as the ones that can increase the rate of fire of offensive plants. [Frenzy Card], [Enhancement Card] that can improve the attack and defense attributes of plants, [Acceleration Card] that can increase the speed of sunflower output, [Slow Down Card] that can slow down the attack speed of zombies, or [Weakened] for BOSS zombies Card] and so on, you can also put cherry bombs into prop types, rakes, mines, and all of these are also added to the prop system. <>
As for the [Zombie Offensive and Defense War], why it is set to have a round every ten minutes, the reason is: if players want to level up quickly, they must stay online for the longest time!
If you can only play in the game for half an hour every day, you can only start three rounds of [Zombie Attack and Defense] at most. The experience you can get from three rounds of [Zombie Attack and Defense] is very limited. Your friends play for an hour a day, and the experience value is The speed of acquisition is twice as fast as you. If you want to catch up with him, you have to play the game longer than him, which is the same as the principle of "Happy Farm".
With the continuous upgrading of players, players can open up new land with enough gold coins and recharge assistance. The five horizontal channels cannot be changed, but the pattern of ten grids in each channel can be changed. Players can use gold coins or By recharging, you can open up more grids, such as upgrading from 10 grids per row to 11 grids, which can not only increase the attack distance of zombies, slow down the movement speed, but also grow more plants.
Players will no longer be divided into games in the game. From the beginning, the player manages this area, so he must manage his own site well. At that time, the lifespan of each plant is limited, such as a plant. Sunflower, life is 24 hours, pea shooter is 48 hours, and other plants have different lifespans. Players must constantly eradicate dead plants and plant new plants to ensure their defense is stable and progress. Therefore, players need Continuous consumption, continuous output, and continuous re-consumption, so that they can have the inertia of farming and harvesting in "Happy Farm". <>
As for how to integrate this game with social networking, Li Mu thought of two options.
The first plan: steal!
If you want players to have the same fun as stealing vegetables, then based on the core principles, all plants must be set to output, harvest, and store.
For example: sunflowers produce sun, and if players don’t harvest, a considerable part will be stolen by friends; another example, the pea shooter has a certain number of peas, and 10 or 20 peas are produced at regular intervals, and the player must harvest enough peas Peas can accumulate enough "bullets" for the pea shooter to kill zombies. The principle of the ice pea shooter, pea machine gunner, corn thrower, cabbage thrower, and watermelon thrower is the same. If the player does not plant, If you don't harvest, then there will be no bullets available, and the plants will not be able to withstand the attack of zombies;
Once all the plants need to be produced and harvested, the player can go to the friend's house to steal the fruit, steal some sunshine, steal some peas, steal some corn and watermelon, the more bullets you steal, the more you can accept [ Zombie attack and defense], get more experience points and gold coins, and this cycle;
In this case, it is natural to develop a storage system. For example, each person's granary can only store 300 units. If you want to store more, you must upgrade. What is the upgrade? special material! Where do special materials come from? After successfully defending against the [Zombie Offensive and Defensive Battle], you will be rewarded immediately...
At the same time, create a sunlight collection system and store the collected sunlight in it. The principle of the upgrade system is the same as that of the crop storage system;
In this way, the enthusiasm of players to steal each other's fruits will be greatly increased, and the interactivity will come up immediately.
And Li Mu believes that friends can't just steal, but also interact in the form of mutual assistance!
For example, each person can water five friends' crops that are about to die every day. After watering, they will have a certain experience reward, and their friends' plants can also get a certain lifespan extension;
In addition, each player can bind three special friends. When the player can't bear it at the critical moment of the [Zombie Offensive and Defense War], he can urgently call the special friend for help, and the special friend can buy a plant at the critical moment. Gifts to the opponent can be either offensive or defensive, but the plants donated are only valid in this round of [Zombie Attack and Defense]. After the [Zombie Attack and Defense] ends, the system will take back the plants regardless of success or failure;
The second option: a copy!
Each player has a plant bank that he can buy when he reaches a certain level. Depending on the level, there are more or less plant banks. The system can give players the opportunity to break through the copy. If you enter the copy mode, you will enter the original stand-alone mode of "Plants vs. Zombies". No matter the success or failure, the player's original "base" will not be affected;
If the player invites friends to join the dungeon, the more players, the more zombies in the game. For example, one player can play five lanes, two players can play ten lanes, three players can play fifteen lanes, and the upper limit is four players. Twenty passages. In this case, players must cooperate closely with each other, because zombies are likely to focus on attacking certain passages, and one person cannot resist them, so they must rely on the cooperation of everyone;
Moreover, due to the different levels of friends who play dungeons together, the higher the level, the stronger the weapon strength, and the more friends there are hoping to play dungeons with him, making high-level users a sought-after item among friends!
The advantage of this is that it not only gives high-level players more vanity, but also gives more low-level players more motivation to improve their level.
The dungeon is designed to be more and more difficult. As long as you make good use of the random combination of various terrain materials and the logic algorithm of various zombie strength and quantity bonuses, the number of levels can theoretically be infinite.
The more levels, the higher the player's playability. At the same time, the more dungeon levels the player completes, the more extra rewards they will get. At the same time, when playing dungeons, everyone can experience the pleasure of teamwork. It's something that a normal tower defense game, or "Happy Farm", or the original "Plants vs. Zombies" doesn't have.
As long as these points can be achieved, Li Mu believes that the social game version of "Plants vs. Zombies" will definitely surpass "Happy Farm" and completely swept the world in a short period of time, becoming the most loved social game by people all over the world. ! Moreover, once this game is launched, it can be popular for at least two or three years.
At that time, Li Mu will completely bind "Plants vs. Zombies" with special technical means, and the binding is a little more conservative, so he adopts the strategy of not accepting players to register directly and only accepting account login, thus forcing those Players who are not players must register numbers;
If the binding is a little more radical, you can set the startup method of "Plants vs. Zombies" to one-click startup. Only after downloading and downloading "Plants vs. Zombies" can you start and log in to "Plants vs. Zombies" with one click. Zombies, otherwise you will not be able to log in or log in if you just download Plants vs. Zombies, and naturally you will not be able to play.
At present, it has already become popular among the elites in the United States, and it is believed that it will soon spread to the elites in Japan, South Korea and Europe, and the overseas version of "Happy Farm" is now ready to promote, and the groups outside the non-elite are absorbed in advance. Users, on this basis, if you can take out the social game version of "Plants vs. Zombies", the combined strength of this whole set of punches will probably fly!
(To be continued., Your support is my biggest motivation.): 33:20