作者：Brandon Sheffield

《幽灵行动OL》（发行于去年夏天）是育碧的《幽灵行动》系列游戏的第一款，并且一开始便是基于免费模式。尽管整个游戏产业倾向于免费模式，但是对于任何硬核指向型游戏来说，这一业务模式仍是一种挑战。对此我们访问了育碧新加坡的《幽灵行动OL》制作人Adrian Blunt，他与我们分享了创造一款全新免费第三人称射击游戏的5大重要建议。

技能组

《幽灵行动OL》一开始便是基于石头剪刀布原则去呈现游戏技能，并随着时间的发展而分层展开。

Blunt告诉我们：“从根本上来看，我们是基于一些核心原则去创造游戏。首先便是创造一个流畅的覆盖系统。然后着眼于纯粹的系统设计——假设你拥有3种类别的角色，每种角色具有2种能力，那么这些能力将如何才能具有相互抵消的作用？你肯定需要一个始终平衡的系统，所以你可以设计一些较小的组件，确保它们达到平衡，然后再在这些组件上方进行堆加。”

他补充道：“当我们做到这一点时，我们便获得了武器系统，从统计角度来看，并不会有哪个元素的作用压制住其它元素，从而达到了有效的平衡。”最后，我们便获得了一个强大且复杂的内置能力与依赖关系系统。

“我们拥有一些设计师是专注于创造武器。我们的首席武器设计师对于武器的了解远超乎我的想象，她的生活一直是在与各种数字打交道，并确保所有与武器相关的重要元素不会失去平衡。而这些都需要他们投入大量时间进行协调。我们的这款游戏便花费了3年的开发时间。”

地图创造

地图设计的初始阶段是关卡设计师创造出一些他们觉得有趣的内容。

Blunt说道：“因为觉得有趣，他们创造了一张地图，并使用SketchUp进行建造。他们在浏览了整张地图后将其整合到游戏中。因为关卡设计师每天都需要忙碌地测试游戏关卡，所以他们将会说‘我已经完成了地图的设计了。’而我们就需要分配一些开发者继续去创造这一地图，他们将尝试着在地图中进行游戏，并对此进行修改与完善。”

GRO（from gamasutra）

首先，他们将着眼于热点地图，并观察人们在地图上的哪个位置投入更多时间。他们也将讨论用户在每个地图上所经历的故事。他说道：“我们会讨论各种经历，讨论我们所设置的炮战，不管是否有趣，或者是否能够吸引玩家的注意。然后关卡设计师将对此给予反馈。而我们便需要根据反馈进行调整。”

他说道：“早期所勾勒的地图理念都需要经过根本性的修改。我们不仅需要移动点，还要改变各种关卡，也就是在呈现出真正优秀的地图前需要花费一定的时间。因为这不只是关于‘是否存在有趣的游戏玩法？’而是涉及到真正的《幽灵行动OL》游戏玩法。”

反复迭代

在发行后不久，开发团队意识到他们必须修改地图，因为其执行效能不如预期那般出色。Blunt表示，这只是运行服务的一部分。

他说道：“这是一张三点式地图，但是我们却发现最后一点‘C’太容易被攻破了。于是我们便怀疑是否在哪一环节出错了。但同时我们也仍着眼于热点地图，研究玩家占领了这一地图几次。当玩家到达某一特定位置时，他的团队是否能够撵走其它团队？炮战发生在哪里？真正的游戏玩法出现在哪里？所以我们便综合了这些信息以及从社区中所获得的反馈，即玩家们认为这里存在不公平元素。”

他们将这些信息交给关卡设计师，然后关卡设计师便对此进行修改，移动相关点的位置。他说道：“他们创建了更多路障，并将其整合到隧道中，但这么做只能解决一个问题。所以我们便在许多地图上进行多次迭代。有些地图非常巨大，广泛，特别是五点式地图。所以我们在创建新地图的同时也总是在修改着旧地图。”

明确哪些数据是“有用的”

有时候玩家会跟你说有些内容失去了平衡，但是相关数字所指向的却是另一种结果。这时候你该如何进行判断，是听从玩家还是听从数据？Blunt说道：“我们可以采取多种方法去解决这一难题。一种情况便是，如果数据告诉我们某些内容不成问题但是玩家却坚持它们是错的，那么有可能是我们看错数据，或者我们应该坚持少数服从多数的原则。可以说在遇到这种类型的反馈时我们都会认真对待。”

他说道：“在遇到这种问题时，我们总是会进行深入研究。我们将仔细浏览数据。作为反馈环路的一部分，我们告诉社区玩家‘事实上，我们已经致力于解决这一问题了。’然后我们将与社区团队共同研究，并找出真正的问题所在。因为我认为如果大多数人的体验和感受是一样的，那么任何事物都有可能因此而改变。”

“找到事实才是真正具有挑战性的工作。如果数据表明某些事物是正确的，那么是否还存在其它情况？是否存在一些与之相关的内容能够让我们做出调整？”Blunt建议，如果我们想要在玩家认为某些内容不公平时找出问题所在，我们便需要从一个更广泛的角度去研究各种数据。

将生活与新内容团队整合在一起

Blunt表示，在《幽灵行动OL》的团队中，所有人都是“生活团队”中的一员。他补充道：“因为我们所做的一切都会对生活产生影响。我们不喜欢成员在创造内容时完全脱离现实生活，因为我们始终需要获得反馈环路。”

但是该公司还区分了行动团队，即那些在特定时间致力于某些特殊内容的成员。他说道：“我们拥有一个行动团队致力于创建功能组，我们同样也拥有一个行动团队在保障生活服务，确保是否出现什么问题，并且这些问题是否得到解决。这是一些特别小组，不过有时候也会出现一些特定的人员去寻找漏洞，调查出现漏洞的原因，并解决漏洞，从而确保开发团队能够专注于创造功能。”

Blunt说道：“行动团队的一大优势便在于能够让我们在团队中进行深入交流。我们会讨论自己所负责的工作以及团队中所出现的挑战。管理这些行动团队的制作人也将与每个成员展开交谈，从而让他们清楚游戏的进展。除此之外，这一方法也能帮助我们更好地分配成员们的工作循环。如果我们需要行动团队去确保某些功能保持静态，那么生活团队便需要待在更快速的周期中以确保所有内容的有效性，同时他们也能意识到某些内容的创造。不过不管怎么说，这都是基于团队成员间的交流与对话。”

（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）

Ghost Recon Online’s 5 pillars for a new free-to-play shooter

By Brandon Sheffield

Ghost Recon Online (released in summer last year) was the first game in Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon series to be built for free-to-play from the ground up. This business model is a unique challenge for any core-oriented game, as more of the industry leans in that direction. We spoke to Ubisoft Singapore’s Ghost Recon Online producer Adrian Blunt to learn five important tentpoles for the creation of a new free-to-play third-person shooter.

A starting point for skillsets

In the case of GRO, they began with basic rock-paper-scissors principles for their skills, layering and nesting them as time went on.

“Essentially, we’re building the game out of core principles,” Blunt told us. “I think the first thing that we did was work on having a fluid cover system. Then there was a case of looking at purely systems’ design — so you’ve got three classes, they’ve each got two abilities, and so how are those abilities going to work in such a way that they counteract each other? You want to have a system that is always balanced, and so you effectively design the small pieces, make sure that they’re balanced, and then layer on top of that,” he said.

“So, once we’ve got that, then we’ve got the weapons system on top of that, which again, from the stats perspective, is balanced in such a way that you never have something that feels like it’s overpowered against each other,” he adds. At the end of the day, it becomes a huge, complex system of nested powers and dependencies.

“We have designers just completely focused on the weapons,” he added. “Our lead weapon designer knows more weapons than I would ever care to imagine, but basically her life is in numbers, and making sure that those key elements of the weapons do not make something that’s overpowered. The reality is that this is something that’s taken time to tune. This game has been in development for three years.”

Map creation

Map design starts with the level designers creating something they think might be fun.

“They’ll create a map that they think is fun and they’ll build it in SketchUp,” says Blunt. “They’ll run through it, and then they’ll put it into the game. We run daily play tests on our levels. So, the level designer will say, ‘I’ve got this map that’s ready to go.’ And so we’ll get a bunch of developers into it, they’ll play through it, and we’ll do a couple of things.”

First, they look at heat maps, of course, seeing where people are spending time in the maps. But they also discuss the user stories people have had on each map. “We talk about experiences,” he says. “We talk about the firefights we had, whether it was fun, whether it actually felt engaging. And then the level designers will take that feedback. I think that’s really where the dark magic of level design comes from, taking that feedback and turning it through.

“At the early conception of a map, these maps will go through radical changes. Points will move, levels will change, and it can take a while before we start to hone in on what actually feels great. Because it’s not just about ‘is there good gameplay there?,’ but is it actually Ghost Recon Online gameplay,” he says.

Iterate, iterate, iterate

Not long after launch, the team found that they needed to tweak a map, because it wasn’t performing the way they expected. This is just part of running a live service, Blunt says.

“One of the big things that we did on that map — it’s a three-point map, and it’s actually the final point, point ‘C,’ we found that it was too easy to attack,” he specified. “We had felt that something was maybe wrong with it. But also looking at the heat maps, seeing how many times is this map captured… Are teams able to roll other teams if you get into a certain position? But also where do the firefights happen? Where is the actual gameplay happening? So we took all of that information, plus the feedback we were getting from the community, that they felt there was something about that that was unfair,” he said.

They fed this information to their level designers, who then tweaked it a bit, moving that point a little further out. “They built a little more barricade, turned it more into a tunnel, and that just solved the problem,” he said. “So, that’s the sort of iteration that we’ll go through. And we do that on a lot of our maps. Some of these maps are huge. They’re massive. Especially the five-point capture maps. They’re massive, massive maps. So, there’s always going to be something to tweak. And so we will keep going through while at the same time building new maps.”

Identify what data is “good” data

Sometimes players will tell you something is unbalanced, but the numbers indicate otherwise. How do you know when to listen to your players, and when to listen to your data? “I think there’s a couple of tactics that we can use to hone in on that,” Blunt says. “One thing is if the data is telling us that there isn’t an issue, but we have a majority of players saying there is, who’s right? It may be that we’re reading the data wrong, or it may be that that majority is actually just a really vocal minority. So, we will always take it seriously, when we get that sort of feedback,” he adds.

“Whenever we get that, we will go and investigate,” he says. “We will go through the data. As part of the feedback loop, we will then re-engage with the community and say, ‘Actually, we’ve looked at this. We don’t think that’s the case.’ And then we’ll get into more of it through our community teams and really hone in on what that issue is. Because I think if a lot of people are experiencing something or feel something, then something has to change.

“The challenge is in finding what it is. If the data says that that particular thing is fine, is it something else? Is there something that is related to that that we can make a tweak to?” Blunt suggests that you look at your numbers for a wider perspective, if you want to find what’s really at fault when players feel like something is unfair.

Integration of live and new content teams

Essentially, for the GRO team, everyone is a member of the “live team,” says Blunt. “The reason for that is because everything we do has an impact on live,” he adds. “We don’t want to have that separation of people making stuff and not thinking about what’s happening in live, because that feedback loop always needs to keep coming back to us.”

But the company does differentiate via strike teams, working on specific things at certain times. “We will have a strike team building a feature set, and we’ll also have a strike team that’s really there to make sure that the live service, any issues that are coming up, are being addressed,” he says. “And that’s a dedicated team that can rotate through, but at any given time, there’s a dedicated bunch of guys who will be looking at bugs, investigating them, maybe fixing them, and really being the front barrier for the dev team so that they can concentrate on building features.

“One of the great things that strike teams allows us to do is to have a lot of communication among the teams,” he says. “We have a lot of standoffs where everybody talks about what they’re doing, what the challenges are across the teams. The producers who are project managing all of these strike teams are also talking to each other so they’re aware of what’s going on. But the other thing that this approach allows is that we can have a steady rotation of people coming through. So, if the idea is that we may need strike teams for other features to remain slightly more static, the live team is actually on a quicker cycle so that basically anything that’s coming through, they have awareness of stuff that’s being built. But it’s basically through communication. It’s talking to people.”(source:gamasutra)