作者：Stanislav Costiuc

你们中的大多数人应该听过育碧这四款免费游戏关闭的新闻吧:《The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot》，《EndWar Online》，《Ghost Recon Phantoms》和《Might & Magic：Duel of Champions》。而所有的这些游戏，特别是《Epic Loot》都是我一度非常感兴趣的游戏内容。虽然没多少时间，我还是尝试了这些游戏。这一尝试也推动着我想和你们谈谈免费游戏中的开端体验这一主题。

在任何游戏中，开端体验都是很重要的。对于免费游戏来说更甚，因为它们没有什么金钱上的准入障碍，所以也就没什么离开的障碍，玩家甚至可以一去不复返。而在付费游戏中效果就没这么明显，因为即使开端体验不是很完美，玩家也会因为已经支付的钱而愿意继续往前走看看。所以在免费游戏中，最初的游戏时刻必须能够有效吸引玩家的注意，如此玩家才会愿意留在这里继续游戏。

让我们看看上面所提到的四款游戏是如何处理开端体验的。首先我想说说的是，这四款游戏现在仍是关闭状态。我并不清楚具体原因，但这一情况却告诉了我们单靠最初玩家体验不足以推动玩家继续前进并在游戏中保持活跃状态。

《The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot》

The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot(from 3dmgame)

在我玩过的这四款游戏中，这款游戏拥有最出色的开端体验。以下便是这款游戏所采取的做法：

–最开始呈现的是一个简短的过场动画并以此设定了游戏基调，且快速解释了这是一个充满飞翔城堡的世界。

–然后游戏会建议我们去购买一座城堡并参观一座拥有许多内庭，陷阱和珍宝的富丽堂皇的城堡。

–我们没有足够的钱去买这座特殊的城堡，但重要的是它直接告诉玩家“你将在未来拥有它”，也就是为我们设置了一个长期的目标。

–然后我们将获得一些没有城堡的土地。

–再然后我们将到达教程环节，它将引导我们了解所有游戏玩法元素，即当我们在自己的土地上创建了城堡后，我们该如何去保护它并去侵占其它城堡。

–这也为主要游戏循环，即攀爬“sky city”做好铺垫，我们将通过不同关卡去升级我们的城堡并侵略其他玩家的城堡。

总的来说，《Might Quest for Epic Loot》在最初的几个小时里做了这些事：

–设置了游戏世界。

–设置了长期目标。

–教授了所有基本内容，即不只有一些直接教程，同时也包含获取长期目标的部分体验。

在所有四款游戏中，这也是我最想一直玩的游戏。

《Might & Magic：Duel of Champions》

对于《Duel of Champions》，我的一大抱怨便是游戏的呈现，但我想也有可能是自己经常玩《炉石传说》所以已经非常习惯数字纸牌游戏理念了。

《Duel of Champions》一开始有效解释了如何游戏。而在经过教程后，并且在玩家进入游戏中真正重要的环节前，它还添加了更多机制到游戏中。在这里，所有设置都是完美的。

但是在教程结束后我看到一个很大的问题。你必须从6种类别中选择1个新手桥牌。这里有一个关于桥牌风格和种类的解释，你可以在做出选择前先与AI进行战斗去尝试各种桥牌，但这却是一些过于繁琐的信息。这里不存在能让玩家做出有益选择的方法。

因为即使尝试了桥牌，我也不知道如何有效使用它们，因为这里有太多我之前未曾看到过的纸牌，在这一部分中学习曲线突然变得非常“陡峭”。如果将其与《炉石传说》相比较，你会发现在后者玩家一开始所面对的是不同类别的基本桥牌，并且随着玩家使用这些类别他们还将开启一些全新的基本纸牌。也就是在《炉石传说》中玩家便能够学习纸牌和类别的特征（游戏邦注：并能在之后专注于一个特定类别），但是在《Duel of Champions》中，当完成流畅的机制教程后，游戏便只是把玩家丢进深不见底的水里了。

《EndWar Online》

《EndWar Online》拥有让人觉得非常奇怪的游戏体验，不只是最初的内容。从技术上来看它拥有出色的基于浏览器游戏玩法，并且也拥有这类型游戏所具有的标准教程，能够将玩家有效带进所有游戏机制中。

而让我感到奇怪的则是游戏的基调。它的背景设置非常不和谐，即游戏以一个引出了各种政治问题的战后环境为背景，但是游戏的对话风格却又如科幻浏览器城市建造游戏那般可爱。这会让我很难真正深入游戏体验中。

《Ghost Recon Phantoms》

当我在《Ghost Recon Phantoms》发行后第一次玩这款游戏时，我注意到的第一件事便是，除非真正花钱，否则我便不能做很多事，并且这款游戏也不是从游戏玩法介绍或任何相关内容开始的。

所以它并未带给我一个好印象。这是一款基于团队的第三人称射击游戏，但从最初的游戏体验看来，如果你不愿意花钱，你便不能着眼于任何数据，所以玩家也就没有理由将时间浪费在这里而放弃其它基于团队的射击游戏了。

你会发现一款游戏的开端体验是如何影响我的分析内容。即在文本的细节，风格和基调方面。当我在博文中批评特定游戏或游戏中的某个部分时，我总是会尝试着避免使用消极语调。因为就我个人而言，比起各种负能量我也更想听到一些有关自己作品的建设性且中立的负面反馈，这能够帮助我更好地去理解如何做出完善。

但是在这篇特殊的文章中，即在阅读了我最初的草稿内容后，我决定不在语调上做任何修饰了—-即不管是关于提供分析的方式还是我作为玩家对于这些游戏的看法以及我如何将这些看法传递给其他人。如果你们觉得我说错了可以纠正我，但我敢保证在阅读了本文后，如果你从未玩过这里说的任何游戏，那比起《EndWar Online》或《Ghost Recon Phantoms》，你更应该尝试《The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot》或《Duel of Champions》。

以下是有关游戏中开端体验的一些经验教训总结：

–设定一致的游戏基调。

–设置一个目标（不一定是长期的，但也不能太短）。

–设置顺畅的学习曲线（虽然说起来容易做起来难，但这点却真的很重要）。

–不要从一开始就迫切推动消费。

–提供给玩家选择你的游戏而不是其它竞争游戏的理由。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Introductory experience in free-to-play games

by Stanislav Costiuc

Most of you have probably heard about the closing of four Ubisoft free-to-play games: The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot, EndWar Online, Ghost Recon Phantoms and Might & Magic: Duel of Champions. All these games, Epic Loot especially, were something that I was interested in trying at some point. So with limited time left, I finally did. And it inspired me to talk about the topic of introductory experience in free-to-play games.

Introductory experience is important in any game, of course. But it can be vital for a free-to-play title – with absolutely no monetary barrier of entry there’s also absolutely no barrier of leaving the game, never to return. In paid games the margin of error is more lenient, as even if there are hinks in the first user experience, or it gets a while to get going, the players are more willing to go through those hinks due to the fact that money were paid. So in free-to-play title, first moments with the game have to really grip players enough so they’d want to stay and keep playing (and later even pay if they want).

Let’s take a look at how the four titles mentioned in the beginning handle the starting experience. Now, what I would like to mention beforehand, all four games are still closing. I can’t say I know the reason why, I haven’t been actively watching them, but what this shows is that first player experience alone is not enough to keep the player going and the game active.

The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot

Out of the four titles that I’ve played, this one has the best starting experience. Here’s what the game does:

– It starts with a short cutscene that sets the tone of the game and quickly explains the world that is full of these flying castles.

– We’re then proposed to buy a castle and take a tour of a huge, awesomely decorated, with lots of chambers and traps and treasure and whatnot, one.

– We don’t have enough money to buy this particular castle, but what’s important is that it immediately shows to the players, “This is what you can have in the future”, setting up a long-term goal that we’d want to achieve.

– We then get some land with no castle at all.

– Then, we get a tutorial section that guides us through all the gameplay elements as we build our castle on the land, and then after we build it – teaches us about protecting it and invading other castles.

– This prepares us for the main gameplay loop of climbing up the ‘sky city’ as we gather levels and upgrade our castle and invade castles of other players.

In short, what the Might Quest for Epic Loot does in its first couple hours is:

– Set up the world.

– Set up the long-term goal.

– Teach all the basics, and not just as straight tutorials, but as part of the experience of getting started to achieve the long-term goal.

Out of all four games, this is the one that I would like to keep playing most.

Might & Magic: Duel of Champions

One of my gripes with Duel of Champions is presentation, but I think that I’ve played Hearthstone so much that I’ve just got really used to the idea that digital card games should look like Hearthstone.

Duel of Champions starts out really good in terms of explaining how to play. Tutorial after tutorial, it adds more and more mechanics into the mix until you are introduced to every important aspect of the game. Everything’s good there.

However, I see a huge issue with what happens after tutorials end. You have to select one starter deck out of 6 factions. There is a small explanation of the style of the deck and the faction, and you can try out any deck in a battle against AI before confirming the choice, but it’s just information overload. There’s no way to make an informative choice.

Even with trying the decks out, I have no idea how to properly play them, there’s so many new cards that haven’t seen before, and all in all in this section the learning curve gets suddenly so steep. Compare it to Hearthstone where you start out with premade basic decks for each class, and unlocking new basic cards as you keep using those classes. You get to learn the ropes and specificities of cards and classes and finding out what you really like (allowing you to later focus on a particular class), while in Duel of Champions after a smooth mechanics tutorial you’re basically thrown into the water.

EndWar Online

EndWar Online has an experience that weirded me out overall, not just starting one. Technically, it’s a well-done browser-based gameplay, with a standard tutorial for these kind of games that properly introduces the player to all the mechanics.

What is weirding me out is the tone of the game. There’s a very big dissonance between the setting, which is very serious post-war environment with a lot of political repercussions, and the style of dialogue which is more of a standard cute fantasy browser city builder dialogue. That made it very hard to take in the experience.

Ghost Recon Phantoms

To properly explain Ghost Recon Phantoms first user experience, let me just show some screens of me going through the menus for the first time after launching the game.

Introductory experience in free-to-play games

Introductory experience in free-to-play games

Introductory experience in free-to-play games

Introductory experience in free-to-play games

Introductory experience in free-to-play games

Seriously, the first things you see is that you can’t do pretty much anything unless you make a premium purchase, and the game doesn’t even start with gameplay introduction or anything (and for some reason the pop-up proposing to start a game appeared after I’ve spent 10 minutes in the menus already).

That doesn’t give a good impression. The game itself is an enjoyable team-based third person shooter, but with the first experience showing that you can’t even properly look at your statistics if you don’t pay, there’s no visible reason to choose to spend time in this game over some other team-based shooter.

In the end, you can see how starting experience of a game even defines my shortly-written analyses. The details and style and tone of text. In my blog posts, when providing criticism against certain games or particular parts of a game, I try to stay away from negative tones. I think it’s only fair considering that I personally would rather like to hear constructive and neutral-sounding negative feedback regarding my work rather than negative energy, because it helps me better to understand how to improve.

But in this particular post, after re-reading my first draft, I decided not to do any edits to the tone, – not only this way I provide my analysis, but also show what my impression of these games as a player is, and how I would transfer this impression to others. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that after reading this post, if you haven’t played any of the games you’d rather try out The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot or possibly Duel of Champions than EndWar Online or Ghost Recon Phantoms. And this is how impressions could spread among parts of player base as well, preventing a bunch of players from entering a game because it pushed them away at the beginning.

Of course, this doesn’t include people who just might not be interested in the experience you provide, but feedback of a person simply disinterested in a third-person shooter is much different from feedback of a person who feels to be pushed away from a third-person shooter they might feel interest in.

At any rate, to sum up, these are the lessons I think the four games discussed in this post can teach us about player starting experience:

– Set up a consistent tone of the game.

– Set up a goal (it doesn’t necessarily have to be long-term, but not too short also).

– Have a smooth learning curve (easier said than done, but it’s an important point).

– Don’t push monetization from the get go.

– Provide a reason, whatever it may be, to choose this particular game over a similar competitor.(source:gamasutra)