开发者谈任务在休闲益智类游戏中扮演的角色

原文作者：Christian Karrs 译者：Megan Shieh

人们通过玩游戏来完成目标，这一点是很直观的。在任何时刻，玩家们都在试图在某种程度上达到一个目标，这个目标可能是游戏给出的，也可能是玩家为自己设定的。一个相对不那么直观的想法是，目标可以在不同的时间线上存在，若想长期保持高留存率和参与度，游戏通常需要在这些不同的时间点上给出目标。

如上图所示：左边的《Candy Crush Soda Saga》显示，关卡的目标可以很容易地被总结成一小句话或几个简短的词汇；从右侧中我们可以看到《Wizard of Oz Match》试图通过给出多个任务来给单个会话增加目标数量。休闲益智类别的游戏一般提供简洁、极具吸引力的短期目标，长期目标往往居于次要地位或根本不存在。尽管长期目标的设定有可能会为游戏创造更具吸引力的体验，并提高会话频率，但这些相对遥远的目标至今仍处于次要地位。

我们以最著名的休闲益智类三消（match3）游戏《Candy Crush Saga》作为例子。很明显，《Candy Crush》系列以及其他的三消游戏基本上都有明确的短期目标，这些短期目标与三消游戏的机制一样，简单易懂。所有三消游戏的基础关卡都要求玩家将3个相同的东西放到一起。将3个方块连接到一起的玩法容易上手，但是除了简单地匹配方块之外，系统的随机性和内容（除匹配机制外）深度可以达到令人难以置信的地步。这种可访问性和深度是该类游戏广受欢迎的主要原因之一。

Candy Crush Soda Saga(from pocketgamer.biz)

《Candy Crush Saga》中的每个关卡都是围绕着即时的短期目标而进行的：

1. 找到匹配的方块

2. 根据当前目标来确定最佳匹配方案

3. 创建匹配并重复以上操作

对于Saga风格的三消游戏而言，它们的玩家很有可能属于某种程度上的完美主义者，因此我们可以假设长期目标与这类游戏的结构相当合拍:

1. 战胜一个组合里的所有关卡

2. 战胜游戏中的全部关卡

三消手游基本上需要遵循F2P的模式，因此传统‘战胜游戏’的目标就不能再用了，但‘击败每个可玩关卡’的目标可以作为合适的替代方案。将所有关卡分割到地图上的不同区域，逐步清除区域（组别）中的所有关卡，给玩家带来一种进步的感觉。一般来说，为了刷新玩家的兴趣曲线，开发者通常会定期引入新的机制，但在游戏的生命周期中，资金消耗的情况屡见不鲜。因此，如果战胜每个可玩关卡的目标不足以让玩家回到游戏中，或者你想要延长玩家在游戏中投入的时间（也就是会话长度），再或是想要添加另一个能够刺激现有收入流的参与机制，作为一个游戏设计师，你应该采取什么措施？—— 反复地推出任务！

上图摘取自游戏设计师Stone Librande在《Well Played 2.0: Video Games, Value, and Meaning》一书中发表的一篇文章，该图呈现了《Resident Evil 4′s Mercenaries》单次游戏会话的奖励安排。休闲益智游戏提供的奖励通常精确到秒钟和分钟，这种做法意义明确，但却缺乏长期的目标。如果方法对了，‘游戏任务’就有可能成为一个解决方案，从而在游戏的核心回路上叠加额外的长期目标和奖励。《Candy Crush》，《Cookie Jam》和《Candy Blast Mania》中的任务包括‘在规定时间内到达X关卡’，带有排行榜的组队方块收集，等等。这些任务大部分针对现有的玩家基础，旨在提高盈利和会话长度。通过使用明确的奖励来引入次要目标，这些任务多数都能有效地丰富玩家的体验。

例如，在《Storm8’s Hungry Babies》中出现的“Global Events（全球任务）”推出了围绕核心机制（消除方块）的一些次要目标。收集品被指定为任务的重点，收集到的蔬菜将会被添加到收集品的总数中。该作还带有翻倍器功能，用来大面积地消除方块并加速过关，这也为玩家的能力提供了另一层面的奖励。此外，玩家可以通过任务排行榜来追踪收集品的总数，游戏还会将玩家们根据任务类型分组，对表现较好的团队给予更大的奖励。在消除方块的同时，消灭对手！！然而单单只是比赛机制就足够激励玩家了？这点很难说；不过，争取进步的想法肯定会给益智游戏玩家们打鸡血。

重点是，任务可以优化或加强休闲游戏的关键领域，从而提高玩家的游戏体验:

1. 时间安排：人类心理学与时间安排存在很强的关联性。谁不想有个盼头呢？在不同的日程表上安排不同的任务可以让玩家有一些期待的东西，而且如果在任务之间出现downtime，玩家的期待也会在这时慢慢建立。

2. 动态性/游戏深度:不管你的关卡设计得有多好，在为新机制掏腰包后，玩家就可能会对类似的游戏变得越来越麻木。这些任务可以创建一个额外的进步层面，它们的周期性结构也能对F2P游戏带来正面影响。

3. 为现有机制增添价值：在任务中，如果使用特殊方块所消除的方块可以得到翻倍的点数，那么购买助推器（boost）来击败关卡的这一做法对玩家来说就会是一笔更好的交易。一则，玩家终于可以战胜一直没法儿过的关卡，二则还可以获得额外的点数来挣得任务奖励。
三消游戏已经发展到了一定的程度，许多较新游戏的都包含了在其核心回路任务中出现的元结构（meta structure）。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

It’s intuitive that people play games to complete goals.  At any given moment, players are trying to satisfy a goal on some level, even if it’s a goal they’ve set for themselves.  An idea that may be less intuitive is that goals can exist on different timelines, and that your game will generally need to provide objectives along each of these vectors if you want it to have solid retention and the long-term stickiness indicative of meaningful gameplay.

Pictured above: the left image from Candy Crush Soda Saga shows how a level’s objective can be easily summarized, and on the right we see how Wizard of Oz Match tries to add goals for a play session through quests. While casual puzzle games have traditionally had concise, appealing short term goals, long-term goals have been second priority or nonexistent. Until recently, these further out objectives have taken a back-seat despite their potential for making a more engaging experience for players and increasing the regularity of their sessions.

We can look at the most well known casual puzzle game as an example, the match3 mega-hit Candy Crush Saga. Candy Crush, and match3 games in general, have clear short-term goals tied into their easy to understand mechanics.  For every match3 game, on a base level the player is looking to put 3 of the same things together.  Matching 3 tiles can easily be communicated to the player, but a surprising amount of depth can come out of the system’s randomness and content layered on top of the matching. This accessibility and depth is a big contributor to the genre’s mass appeal.

In the case of Candy Crush Saga, every level revolves around immediate short term goals:

Find matches

Identify the optimal match for your current goal

Create the match and repeat

With the player base for Saga style Match3 games likely being completionists on some level, we can assume the long term goals align pretty closely with the game’s structure:

Beat every level in a group (e.g. “world”, “island”, etc)

Beat every level in the game

With mobile match3 games essentially being required to follow the F2P model, the traditional “beat the game” goal is out, but “beat every available” level is a suitable enough stand-in. The segmentation of levels into different areas of the map adds a sense of progression from clearing all the levels in a group.   To help refresh the interest curve for the player, generally new mechanics are introduced on a regular interval, but it’s not uncommon for funding for these to dissipate over a game’s lifecycle.  So, if beating every available level isn’t enough to keep a player logging back in (e.g. you want to broaden your player base), OR you want to extend the amount of time your players spend in game (i.e. session length), OR you want to add another engaging mechanic that incentivizes existing revenue streams, what’s a game designer to do? Recurring in-game events to the rescue!
The image above, taken from an article by game designer Stone Librande in Well Played 2.0: Video Games, Value, and Meaning, visualizes the reward scheduling for a single game session of Resident Evil 4′s Mercenaries. Just as there can be second-to-second, minute-to-minute, day-to-day, etc. rewards in games (described in an excellent article by Librande here) these rewards can correspond to objectives given to players on the same schedule. As mentioned before, casual puzzle games typically have second-to-second and minute-to-minute objectives well defined, but lack the more long-term goals for players to work towards. When implemented correctly, in-game events are a possible solution, superimposing additional long term goals and rewards over the game’s core loop.  Present in Candy Crush, Cookie Jam, and Candy Blast Mania to name a few, these events range from “reach level X within the time limit” to team based piece collection with leaderboards. The majority of these events are targeted at the existing player base, meant to increase monetization and session length.  Through the introduction of secondary objectives with explicit rewards, a lot of these events meaningfully enrich the player’s’ experience.

For example, the “Global Events” present in Storm8’s Hungry Babies (a game I worked on) introduces any number of secondary goals revolving around the game’s core mechanic: making matches.  A piece is designated as the event’s focus, and collecting that piece adds to your event total.  Multipliers are added for making larger matches and clearing levels, which adds a layer of rewards for player competency.  Additionally, totals are tracked via an event leaderboard and players can be grouped into teams depending on event type, with larger rewards for teams that perform better.  Smash tiles while smashing your opponents!! It’s questionable whether competition alone plays a large part in match3 player motivations, but striving for more boosts is sure to get a puzzler’s blood pumping.

The bottom line is that events modify or strengthen key areas of casual games to improve the player experience:

Improved scheduling:  Human psychology has a strong relationship with schedules. Who doesn’t like to look forward to something? Having different events on different schedules gives players something to look forward to.  If there is downtime between events, then anticipation can build as well.

Dynamism / Gameplay Depth: Regardless of how well designed your levels are, players may become desensitized to similar gameplay after funding for new mechanics is diverted.   Events create an additional layer of progression through event resources and their cyclical structure creates discrete moments of closure F2P games

Add value to existing mechanics: If your event gives x2 points for tiles cleared using special tiles, suddenly purchasing a boost to beat a level becomes a better deal for the player.  The player gets to beat the level that they have been stuck on and get extra points towards earning event rewards.

Match3 games have evolved to the point that a lot of newer titles include the meta structures present in events in their core loop.  （Source: gamasutra.com ）