作者：Eric Schwarz

据最新消息显示，基于BioWare热作的热门Facebook RPG游戏《龙腾世纪传奇》已从平台撤离，EA推出这款游戏的单机用户版本，游戏如今已脱离其原生平台。虽然我不是社交游戏迷，但我也花时间玩了许多热门游戏，《Dragon Age》品牌无疑在其中之列。我1年前左右初次体验了这款游戏，虽然沉浸于此的时间不长，但多年之后再次查看EA就这款游戏采取的新举措着实非常有意思。

我从中收获的经验是，脱离其Facebook应用的常规语境，《龙腾世纪传奇》很难进行维持。试验游戏，查看RPG游戏在社交游戏领域的潜力非常值得，但查看该游戏的各种机制和系统如何配合社交平台，同时谈论其他社交游戏的质量同样有趣。

时间 vs 金钱

多数社交游戏都完全围绕于鼓励玩家投入时间，进行重复操作，以促进游戏进展（游戏邦注：这反过来会促使玩家在游戏中投入真实货币，以加快进程，或跳过重复任务）的循环机制。例如，《文明世界》将玩家进程同资源摄取量绑定，完成指南内容后，进程就变得非常缓慢，只有少数操作能够打破其中的单调性。为进入“有趣”部分，在资源包（例如，食物和技术等）中投入真实货币变得颇具吸引力。

《龙腾世纪传奇》不是建立在相同机制基础上——就很多方面来看，它更像是典型的免费模式。虽然玩家可以选择将金钱投入在各式各样的道具和升级功能中，但所有这些都能够在游戏中获得。不同之处在于，这些具有选择性，而非强制性，回到这些“愉快内容”的等待时间几乎被完全消除——你也许会错过若干炸弹或魔药，但没有什么能够阻止你试验地图上的下个战斗。

即便存在能量限制，脱离教程后，玩家技能对于进度的影响要高过限制条件

这同时也揭示《龙腾世纪传奇》的一个独特有趣细节。多数社交游戏都围绕微交易，就连高预算的免费模式游戏也通常会给玩家进度设置上限，进程和技术水平或表现无关。就如上面提到的，在《文明世界》中，这表现在玩家的资源摄取量。你无法改变这一情况——虽然优秀玩家会进展更快，但他/她最终也会受限于刻意设计的限制条件。当然，其中有些旨在鼓励玩家进行消费，有些则是为了促使玩家每日重返游戏，进行简短体验，而非进行冗长的游戏回合。

作为融入策略回合战斗元素的RPG游戏，同时还有成熟的故事内容，《龙腾世纪传奇》的限制条件更加柔和。主角单元是战斗的必备要素，在完成战斗或阵亡后，主角必须进行休息，这由总体能量表决定。但新主角单元由游戏和其他玩家提供，所以有系列好友在体验游戏意味着玩家多半不会耗尽主角单元，除非他们每天在游戏中投入许多个小时。能量会逐步获得填充，也可以通过真实货币进行购买，但玩家能够通过自己的操作（通过赢得战斗）在进度上享有更多的直接控制权。

移除社交网络连接

移除社交平台，玩法呈现的最大变化是，所有基于微交易的内容都变得没有关联性，因此多数都被移除。例如，无法在好友列表中添加好友，这意味主角在战斗之后不会感到疲惫或丧失能力——只要愿意，你可以体验相同的角色，这反过来意味着玩法的主要限制已从桌面版《龙腾世纪传奇》中移除。

这给玩法带来有趣的影响。《龙腾世纪传奇》包含如此多主角单元的一个原因是，游戏进度和你的战斗频率有关。若我的主角在都将在战斗之后陷入5分钟的疲惫状态，我每场战斗有3个主角，而我共有5个主角，那么添加第6个主角就能够有效提高我所能进行的战斗数量。通过有效“耍弄”主角，玩家可以将游戏时间最大化——现在这一策略失去实际意义。

当团队成员存在使用限制时，对峙就融入战略元素，但当玩家能够随时运用任何角色时，战斗就丧失一定的深度

这所带来的后果将体现在剩余的游戏之中。因为和主角的旋转门作战不再是必要条件，它们之间的差异不再重要。类型和武器型号之间的细微差异给实际玩法带来鲜少影响，玩家无需保留自己的魔法师，以进行boss战斗，或是自己的凶猛角色，以应对具备“挥剑如雨”技能的庞大团体，现在真正重要的是纯粹的破坏输出值。遇到自己喜欢的角色，我将不会对其进行改变。换而言之，游戏的一个主要玩法机制已经消失，现在更多围绕策略元素。

玩法机制还存在其他更小的问题，这主要源自于缺乏社交网络连接。现在，玩家的堡垒，通常是标准的手机/社交游戏装饰道具（例如，房子），价值降低。虽然这一堡垒带给《龙腾世纪传奇》的影响超越许多其他社交游戏的房子，因为它被用于制作新道具或调制魔药（通过指定工人完成），没有炫耀的好友对象或主角的时间限制，升级和定制堡垒就显得不那么有价值。

但目前最大的问题在于，没有时间限制将玩法分解成小版块，或是通过各种方式进行沟通和互动的好友，核心玩法变得颇为重复和平凡。遵循故事情节能够带来一定程度的满足感，战斗非常精彩，但对抗设计反复融入许多相同的敌人，还有很大的完善空间。10-20分钟游戏回合的趣味性无法得到体现，如果这就是游戏的操作内容。此外，由于游戏不是非常具有挑战性，且在融入新内容时预期玩家会持续在此体验数周，而非几个小时，繁琐操作的感觉更快就出现。

总结

虽然去除其在线游戏语境，《龙腾世纪传奇》算不上款非常杰出的作品，但我发现游戏的最有趣之处在于，稳固但简化的RPG机制。这里涉及存货管理和战利品抛掷。游戏的升级能够带来新技能，这些技能能够给战斗添加许多功能性。战斗本身基于回合模式，跳过指南内容，需要进行若干思考和优化，包含所有优质战斗机制的元素。世界地图之旅虽然大多呈线性模式，但却是最薄弱的环节，因此游戏缺乏多数RPG游戏所包含的分支路线和探索元素。

换而言之，虽然《龙腾世纪传奇》和其他社交游戏相比，本身算不上款值得体验的游戏，但它的意义绝非仅仅来源于这些社交功能。游戏依然包含和其“老大哥”相同的机制和构想，可以说其战斗元素比如今市面上其他的RPG游戏更具深度。这和其他社交游戏（游戏邦注：这些游戏本身不那么有趣，更多是精心设计的成瘾性机制的光鲜表面）大不相同。没有Facebook，这款游戏就显得不那么有趣，但这更多是个内容问题，而非设计问题。

虽然《龙腾世纪传奇》Facebook版本如今已下线，但我希望其他开发者能够借鉴其经验教训。社交游戏代表主流游戏的未来，若所有这类游戏主要通过《Farmville》的无限重复任务和巧妙但空洞框架获取灵感，那将非常遗憾。玩家依然愿意在传统游戏中掏钱，因为它们带来社交游戏所没有的功能和迷人内容——但没有理由说，设计Facebook游戏就必须放弃趣味性和更传统的游戏机制，转而遵循参数和付费获胜模式。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Can Social Games Stand Up on Their Own?

by Eric Schwarz

With the recent news that Dragon Age: Legends, the popular Facebook RPG based on BioWare’s hit franchise, was being taken down, and EA releasing a stand-alone client version of the game, the experience has now been torn away from its native platform.  While I’m not a social gaming junkie by any means, I’ve taken the time to play a number of popular titles, and the Dragon Age brand enticed me, of course.  I initially tried the game out about a year ago, and while it didn’t capture my attention then for too long, all this time later it’d be interesting to see what EA had done with the game since then.

What I learned from the experience is that, divorced from its regular context as a Facebook app, Dragon Age: Legends doesn’t hold up.  While it’s worth trying the game out to see what possibilities exist for RPGs in the social gaming space, it was just as interesting an excercise in understanding how the various mechanics and systems in Legends were specifically tailored for social media platforms… and also has something to say about the quality of other social titles.

Time vs. Money

The vast majority of social games are built entirely around cyclical mechanics that encourage (and often require) players to spend lots of time performing repetitive actions in order to facilitate game progress, which in turn provides the impetus for spending real currency on the game to speed up that progress or bypass the repetitive (and eventually tedious) tasks.  Civilization World, for example, ties player progress to resource intake, and after the tutorials are completed progress becomes extremely slow, with very few actions available to break up the monotony.  In order to get to the “fun parts”, spending real currency for resource packages (food, science, etc.) becomes a big draw.

Dragon Age: Legends is not founded upon the same mechanics – in many respects, it resembles a much more typical free to play model.  While players can opt to spend real currency on a wide variety of items and upgrades, all of them can be obtained in-game.  What’s different is that these are (mostly) optional rather than mandatory, and the amount of time waiting to get back to those “good parts” is almost entirely eliminated – you might be missing out on a few bombs or potions, but there is nothing preventing you from trying out the next battle on the map.

This also reveals an interesting detail about Dragon Age: Legends that separates it from the pack.  Most social games centered around microtransactions, and even higher-budget free-to-play titles, often put a hard cap on player progress that is unrelated to skill level or performance.  In Civ World, as mentioned above, it’s your resource intake.  Nothing you can do can really change that – while a good player will progress more quickly, even he/she will ultimately be restrained by those very carefully calculated limitations.  Some of these are, of course, in place to encourage spending, though others exist to encourage daily, repeated play for short bursts rather than lengthy, extended play sessions.

As an RPG with tactical turn-based combat, as well as its own full-blown story, Legends features much softer limits.  Hero units are required for combat, and heroes must rest after completing fights or falling in battle, determined by a global energy meter.  However, new hero units are provided both by the game and by other players, so having a stable of friends playing the game means that players probably won’t ever run out of hero units, unless they spend hours upon hours on the game every day.  Energy recharges over time and can be filled by spending currency, but players have more control over their rate of progress directly through their own actions (namely, by winning battles).

Cables Cut

The most obvious change made to gameplay with the removal of the social media platform is that all microtransaction-based content has effectively been rendered irrelevant, and therefore much of it has been removed.  For example, it’s no longer possible to add friends to your friends list, which means that heroes don’t get tired out or incapacitated after battles – you can play with the same ones as long as you want, which in turn means that the primary limit on gameplay has been removed from the desktop version of Legends.

This has an interesting impact on gameplay.  One of the reasons Dragon Age: Legends has such a huge roster of hero units available is because progress rate is linked to how often you can battle.  If my heroes are all tired for 5 minutes after a fight, I have 3 heroes per fight, and I have 5 heroes, adding a 6th hero effectively increases the amount of battles I can have.  By “juggling” heroes effectively, players could maximize play-time – now, that strategy is rendered moot.

The consequences of this can be felt throughout the rest of the game.  Because fighting with a constant revolving door of heroes is no longer required, the differences between them aren’t nearly as important – the finer differences between the classes and weapon types have very little consequence on actual gameplay, and instead of having to, say, save your mages for a boss encounter, or your rogues for handling large groups with their “rain of arrows”-type skills, now, all that really matters is raw damage output.  Once I found a hero I liked, I never, ever changed him or her out.  In other words, one of the main gameplay dynamics is gone, and with it, much of the strategy.

There are other, smaller issues with the gameplay systems that come as a result of the lack of a social network to plug into.  Now, the player’s keep, effectively the standard mobile/social gaming vanity item (i.e. a house), has been reduced in value.  While the keep actually has more consequence in Legends than the houses in many other social games, because it’s used to craft new items or brew potions (via assigned workers), without friends to show it off to or time limits on heroes to consider, actually upgrading and customizing the keep isn’t very worthwhile.

By far the biggest problem, though, is that the core gameplay, without the time limits added on to break gameplay into small chunks, or friends to talk to and interact with in various ways, is fairly repetitive and underwhelming.  There’s a level of satisfaction there by following the storyline (which is decent enough for a social game), and the combat is certainly decent, but the encounter design, consisting of waves of the same enemies over and over again, leaves a lot to be desired.  What’s fun in 10-20 minute bursts can’t stand up when it’s basically all there is to do in the game.  Moreover, as the game isn’t especially challenging, and new content is added with the previous expectation that players would play over weeks instead of hours in mind, the feeling of grind sets in much faster.

The Takeaway

Although Dragon Age: Legends isn’t an especially great game taken out of its online context, the most interesting thing I noticed about it was that all the underpinnings of a solid, albeit simplified RPG system were in place.  There’s inventory management and loot drops.  There’s leveling up complete with new skills that add a lot of functionality in combat.  Battles themselves are turn-based and, past the tutorial, require some thought and prioritizing, with all the makings of a good combat system.  The world map travel, while mostly linear, is the weakest link, and as a result the game lacks the branching paths or exploration most other RPGs do.

In other words, while Legends can’t really stand up as a game worth playing in its own right, more so than most other social games, it doesn’t derive meaning entirely from those social functions.  It’s still got the same game mechanics and conceits of its “big brothers” and arguably even has more depth in its combat than most other RPGs on the market today. This is a far cry from many other social games, where the game is less fun for its own sake and more a glossy front for a carefully calculated addiction machine.  Legends isn’t really fun without Facebook, but the issue is less one of design and more of content.

Although Dragon Age: Legends is now offline, I hope that the lessons it teaches won’t be lost on other developers.  Social games represent, potentially, the future of mainstream gaming, and I think it’d be a real shame for all such games to draw their inspiration primarily from Farmville’s endless treadmill and cute but ultimately empty framework.  Players are still willing to spend money on traditional titles because they offer features and compelling content that social games don’t – but there’s no reason why designing a game for Facebook has to abandon fun and more traditional game mechanics in favour of rigid adherence to metrics and pay-to-win models.（Source：gamasutra）