作者：Yaniv Nizan

关于免费游戏的一个悖论便是，用户既想要通过花钱度过挑战，也希望游戏能够保持挑战性。这就像是吃了蛋糕后还想要留住它一样。让我们着眼于这个所谓的“付费获胜”问题，并想办法解决它。

如果你和我一样的话，你也会想拥抱那些执行了应用内部购买的用户，并给予他们整个世界。考虑到你只能从1%至2%的用户手中赚取利益，你便很难凭借着这一方法走得很远。但是这并不是该方法的主要问题。问题在于，当你提供给玩家开启游戏挑战的所有钥匙后，游戏便不再具有挑战性，玩家也会因此对游戏失去兴趣。我们必须理解关于这种悖论的任何解决方法都要求在短期内销售具有立即回报的产品，并在长期内让它变得更加复杂。这是用户同时从两个角度进行思考的结果。所以用户有时候只是想要解决挑战，但是有时候却愿意直面挑战。

以下是关于解决这一问题的一些方法：

剃刀与剃刀片模式（游戏邦注：或称为“搭售”模式）

这一理念是关于提供一个需要现金或游戏内部货币购买的升级道具，但是要求玩家消费一些资源——即玩家拥有但却具有访问限制的内容。以下我将列出一些例子。你可以出售一辆汽车，但是确保玩家需要获得燃料，激光武器会消耗能量，5级Barracks可以训练超级军队但却要求更多金币才能做到。围绕着这些内容创造一个故事并不困难，如果你遵循我在其它文章中提出的建议，你便能够拥有一些有意义的消耗资源（你在这个世界上所创造的），所以我便会建议你使用它们作为杀手的虚拟道具。这便创造了一种情况，即用户在购买了虚拟道具后需要想办法去使用它。这样我们不仅创造出具有挑战性的游戏，同时也赋予了游戏更多复杂性和乐趣。

下一个关卡难度永远都是+n而不只+1

对于数学怪才来说，这一问题将转变成O(n^2)vs.O(n)的难度曲线。而对于普通人来说，这只是意味着下一个关卡将比之前的关卡更加困难。当然也存在一些较简单的关卡和更复杂的关卡，但是关卡将不断提升难度。例如在《部落战争》中，在第5个关卡创建市政厅的费用是第4个关卡的2倍。这将导致付费用户可能会略过一些关卡，但是游戏也会很快追上他。

clash of clans(from d.cn)

随机化

这是一个一般性建议。比起带有已经决定好的结果，包含运气元素的游戏总是更能留住用户的注意。如果一支优越的团队一直获胜，那么任何团队都会逐渐感到厌烦。但是如果用户觉得两个团队都有获胜机会的话，情况就好多了。这便是运气元素的作用，特别是当提到面向付费用户保持挑战性时。“你可以购买更好的道具但是却不能买下胜利”模拟了现实生活，并且是保持游戏挑战的可靠方法。如果在游戏中击败一辆坦克需要发射5发子弹，你便可以销售一种一发子弹便击倒坦克的武器，或者具有20%一弹击倒坦克的几率否则仍需要发射5发子弹才能将其击倒的武器。

这些都不是什么独特的方法，并且大多数成功的游戏都结合了其中的一些方法。最重要的是你需要记得这三种方法都强调提供给用户更多价值，而不是角色。

（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）

Game Economy Balancing – 3 Ways to Prevent “Pay to Win”

by Yaniv Nizan

One of the paradoxes of free to play games is that users want to buy their way out of a challenge but also like to keep the game challenging. That’s like eating the cake and having it too. Let’s take a look into this problem which is also known as “Pay to Win” and solve it.

If you are anything like me, you want to hug the users who make an in-app purchase and give them the world. Well, given that you are only going to get money out of 1%-2% of your users, you wouldn’t get very far by doing that. However, this is not the main problem with this approach. The problem is that once you give the user all the keys the game stops being challenging and the user loses interest. It’s critical to understand that any solution to this paradox requires selling the products that have an immediate reward in the short term but actually make it harder in the long term. This is a result of the user thinking in two hats at the same time. While in character, the user just wants to solve the challenge, but once he is out of character, he actually wants to keep the challenge.

Here are a few ways how to get around this:

The Razor and Razor Blade Approach

The idea here is to sell a great Powerup for cash or premium game currency but actually requiring this virtual good to consume a resource – something that the player has some but limited access to. Ok, this was a bit vague so here are a few examples. You can sell a car, but make sure the player needs to also get fuel, laser weapon consumes energy, Barracks level 5 can train super troops but requires a lot of gold to do that. It’s usually not very hard to build a narrative around it and if you followed advice I gave in other posts, you already have consumable resources that makes sense in the world you built so I would recommend to use it as the resource for your killer virtual good. This creates a situation where the after buying the virtual good the user needs to make tough decisions about how to use it. We have not only made the game as challenging but also more complex and interesting.

The Next Level Difficulty is Always +n Rather than +1

For the math geeks this will translate into an O(n^2) vs. O(n) difficulty curve. For you humans – it just means that the next levels are becoming more difficult in comparison to the last levels. There could still be easy levels and harder ones but the hard levels should get increasingly harder. In clash of clans for example, building a City hall Level 5 will cost twice as much as Level 4 and not 1,000 gold coins more. This creates a situation where a paying user skips a few levels but the game is quickly catching up with him.

Randomize …. Everything

This is a good general advice. Games with a luck component engage users longer compared to games with determined result. Any team sports would have been boring as hell if the superior team always won. Why bother showing up? It works so much better when you feel both teams can win. That’s what a luck component gives your game. This is especially true when it comes to keeping the challenge for paying users. “You can buy better odds buy you can’t buy victory” simulates real life and is also a sure way to keep the challenge. If it takes five shots to blow up a Tank. You can sell a weapon, which blows up a Tank in one shot or you can sell a weapon that has a 20% of making a critical hit and blowing up a Tank in one shot and will otherwise still blow it up in 5 shots.

These are not necessarily distinct approaches and most successful games actually combine a few of these.  The important thing to remember is that while all three approaches give the character less value for they give the user more value.

Will be happy to discuss more about this or any other game economy design topic. You can find me at Google Plus Yaniv Nizan, the SOOMLA blog or on Twitter. (source:gamasutra)