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《炉石传说》逐渐变成一款昂贵且复杂的休闲游戏

发布时间:2015-08-24 09:58:14 Tags:,,,,

作者:Daniel Friedman

7月22日,暴雪宣称对其大受欢迎的在线纸牌收集游戏《炉石传说:魔兽英雄传》进行第二次扩展。

这次的扩展名为《冠军的试炼》,将在现有的560张纸牌的基础上再添加132张纸牌。

The Grand Tournament(from polygon)

The Grand Tournament(from polygon)

一方面,《炉石传说》的粉丝们对这次新扩展充满期待。新纸牌将基于一种有趣且难以预测的方式改变元游戏以及原有的桥牌模型。但是另一方面,如果你想要马上在你的桥牌上玩所有的新纸牌,你可能需要投入大量的钱。

而如果你是这款游戏的新玩家或者很久未玩这款游戏,你便会发现这款表面看来很休闲的游戏已经变得非常复杂吓人了,即不管是从游戏玩法还是从纸牌的收集来看。

《冠军的试炼》需要多少钱?

《冠军的试炼》扩展包的大小与去年12月发行的《地精大战侏儒》扩展包一样。这意味着它将拥有20张传奇纸牌,并且在每15或20个纸牌包中你只能获得1张传奇纸牌。

当《地精大战侏儒》发行时,我花了自己用8个月时间收集到的12500个游戏金币去购买纸牌包。在获得128个纸牌包后,我拥有了自己所需要的所有common和rare纸牌,以及大多数epic纸牌,但却只有6张不同的传奇纸牌,而1张传奇复制牌以及大量其它类型的复制纸牌和金子牌只能创造3张左右的传奇牌。

1个组合中只有一半传奇牌。按理说这就足够了;在《地精大战侏儒》中,一半的传奇牌代表“严重事态”,也就是糟糕的意思。游戏并不会要求你不断购买纸牌包去获得像Mekgineer Thermaplugg,Mogor the Ogre和Flame Leviathan,Sneed’s Old Shredder,Mal’Ganis,Vol’Jin和Neptulon等纸牌。但我最终又花了70美元购买了另外60张纸牌。

自12月以来我共收集了12000个金子,但我仍打算继续向前并购买暴雪关于《冠军的试炼》的50美元预购捆绑包,于是我又一次掏空了自己的金子储备。根据我过去玩游戏的经验,我期待着自己大概能够获得10张传奇牌,以及我所需要的大多数epic,rare和common纸牌。但即使在拥有175个纸牌包后,我仍未能收集齐组合中的全部纸牌。

对于全新以及免费玩家来说游戏不再那么平易近人了

2014年5月,那时候只有基本的《炉石传说》组合,我评估了免费游戏选择的能力,并觉得这是可行的方法。游戏中有一些廉价且具有竞争性的桥牌在排行模式中有着不错的表现,如果你坚持自己每日的任务并且不再沉迷于那些不在你的列表中的纸牌,你便能够在几个月内组建最昂贵的桥牌。

有很多早前的分析仍然有效:《炉石传说》的桥牌仍然以30张纸牌为上限,仍然有很多梯形桥牌避免使用任何传奇牌并且能够给予2000以内的dust进行创造,或者等价于20个纸牌包。像《地精大战侏儒》和《冠军的试炼》这样的扩展包并未改变这种设定,因为你从任何纸牌包中获得的纸牌都能够使用你从其它纸牌上获得的dust进行锻造。

然而有限的收集仍会限制你的选择,特别是现在这样的问题更加严重,因为资深玩家和较大的消费者可以使用更大且更多纸牌。许多人都在使用Hunter桥牌,这并不是因为他们喜欢该桥牌或这样的游戏风格,而是因为他们没有能够与Sylvanas Windrunner,Dr.Boom和Ragnaros等游戏中间或之后出现的传奇牌竞争的工具,所以他们必须尝试着更快结束游戏。

在排行天梯上的玩家将遭遇桥牌很早就塞满传奇牌的情况;现在《炉石传说》已经发行了18个月,已经有很多玩家收集到各种各样的纸牌了。

比起其它免费游戏,暴雪在《炉石传说》中给予完成每日任务的玩家的货币奖励更加慷慨,而这也进一步提高了这款游戏的用户粘性以及资深玩家的忠臣度。但实际上暴雪每年提供给玩家足够的金子去购买价值300美元的纸牌意味着今天刚开始游戏的玩家需要花费额外300美元才能追赶上一年前就开始游戏的玩家。结果便是许多新玩家会觉得自己落后太多而不愿再回到游戏中。

而暴雪在两次扩展之间所推出的“冒险模式”更新更是不利于新玩家或免费玩家。每个更新内容都包含了30张纸牌,需要花费25美元或3500个金子。暴雪设计这样的内容是为了改变元游戏,即意味着其中的许多纸牌对于那些想要在构造过程中拥有竞争力的玩家来说非常必要。

例如,现在便宜的aggro Huner桥牌便需要来自Naxxramas Adventure的Webspinners,Haunterd Creepers和Mad Scientists以及来自Blackrock Mountain Adventure的Quick Shots。这意味着对于新玩家来说获得这些冒险纸牌是第一步,所以他们需要支付50美元或收集7000个金子才能开始购买纸牌包。每日任务平均只值50个金子,所以对于这些玩家来说这将是一座难以逾越的大山。

如今的《炉石传说》变得更加复杂并要求新玩家更加熟悉更多纸牌,因为只有这样他们才能预见对手丢给他们什么纸牌。当只有经典组合时,理解战士和魔法师的选择比较简单,但现在几乎每个类别中至少有两三种不同的竞争类别。骑士可能会选择Call-to-arms或Quartermaster组合,或者他会操控龙。而战士可能会使用古老的桥牌,或者他会使用go-for-the-face aggro策略,再或者他会使用围绕着包含Warsong Commander和Grim Patron的组合而创建的桥牌。

随着《炉石传说》不断成熟,所有的这些问题也会变得更严重;从现在开始的一年内全新玩家该如何在这里获得落脚点,如果他们需要获得四种不同的冒险模式,并且每种模式都包含一些常用纸牌的话会怎样?

暴雪是如何处理这种情况?

游戏中已经有一些系统能够缓解进入构建模式中的压力。首先有一些模式让所有玩家都能够在同等的领域游戏,不管他们已经收集到怎样的内容。在游戏官方发行前,其大受欢迎的Arena锻造模式便已经存在了,尽管进入Arena需要花费150个金子。

暴雪最近还添加了Tavern Brawl模式,即每周邀请玩家在不同规则集下游戏。到目前为止大约一半的挑战已经提供给玩家预先选择的桥牌而不是要求他们使用自己收集的纸牌。在Tavern Brawl模式中,玩家可以经常完成每日任务,所以现在他们无需进入构建模式便能够完成大多数的每日任务。

Brawl同样也会给予玩家每周第一次的获胜免费的经典组合包作为奖励,几个月前暴雪还添加了每日任务而给予玩家在观众模式下观看朋友赢得游戏经典包的奖励。这些道具能够提高20%的免费纸牌奖励,并且对新玩家来说特别有利,因为资深玩家这时候会选择从最经典的纸牌包中获得dust。

只要《炉石传说》仍是暴雪的摇钱树,并且仍有新玩家愿意花时间和金钱于游戏中,这便是暴雪应该做的事。但是在过去,我们已经看过暴雪为了让之前的玩家更容易回到游戏中并让新玩家更轻松游戏而改变了《魔兽世界》。如果《炉石传说》的玩家获取和用户留存开始下滑,那么这款纸牌游戏可能需要采取同样的方法。除此之外还有一些方法能够帮助暴雪缓解游戏的扩展对于新玩家的影响。

提供给玩家替代方法去获得早前的冒险纸牌

强迫新玩家去购买早前的冒险模式组合是非常讨厌的,而购买翅膀是获得这些纸牌的唯一方式,因为(游戏邦注:与经典组合和扩展组合的纸牌不同)如果没有dust便不能锻造冒险模式纸牌。

如果让玩家从早前的冒险模式而不是现在的模式锻造纸牌的话,你至少需要让玩家能够获得像Haunterd Creepers和Sludge Belchere等纸牌,并且不需要购买昂贵的冒险翅膀。当然了,对于大多数玩家来说他们仍有购买翅膀的动机,因为锻造像Kel’Thuzad和Chromaggus等专门的冒险传奇牌并不比购买翅膀有效。

当之后出现更多冒险时,其它替代方法包括将早前的冒险整合到玩家所拥有的组合中,如此新玩家便可以通过购买相对廉价的纸牌包而获得那些纸牌。

将来自之前组合的纸牌添加到现有的“基本”组合中

通过教程模式和英雄升级,你大概可以免费获得150张纸牌。暴雪可以通过添加纸牌而让纸牌收集任务变得不那么可怕,可以包含一些传奇牌,不管是经典组合还是《地精大战侏儒》组合或者是免费组合和自动组合,然后将那些早前组合中剩下的内容整合成一个全新的核心组合。从纸牌包中收集了这些纸牌的早前玩家可能不会喜欢这样的设定,但是暴雪却可以通过改变后的纸牌价值去补偿他们。

创造一个与《万智牌》的“有限”格式一样的构造模式

《万智牌》已经诞生了将近20年,并且已经拥有了数千张纸牌。在所有的这一切都是可行的格式中,玩家将很难了解他们可能会遇到的每一张纸牌,设计师也很难去预测新纸牌和无数现有纸牌间的潜在互动。

结果便是,《万智牌》最初的竞赛模式便是它的“有限”格式,即玩家只能使用来自当前游戏核心组合和最近扩展循环中的迭代的纸牌。暴雪可以为《炉石传说》创造一个有限的阶梯模式,从而让新玩家能够无需担心收集之前的扩展或早前的冒险纸牌而直接进入构造模式。

然而基于这种方式去划分玩家基础可能对无限的阶梯模式来说很残酷,因为全新模式将诱导大多数玩家去组建当前阶梯金字塔结构基础。而如果有限模式变成eSports和竞赛的主要模式,早前的玩家可能会想要这些纸牌,如此他们在游戏中的投资便会大大贬值。

早前纸牌的降价

让玩家更轻松地收集早前纸牌组合的一种方法便是降低金子和纸牌包的价格。然而现在所有稀有纸牌都能够抵消同等数量的dust,而不管它们来自怎样的组合,所以早前纸牌组合的降价将创造出这样一种境况,即从新扩展中获得传奇牌的最佳方法便是购买早前的纸牌包和dust去创造全新的纸牌。

关于早前冒险模式的降价非常有意义,这就跟暴雪添加更多冒险模式到游戏中一样。

很快暴雪便需要采取某些行动了。

在推出《冠军的试炼》扩展包后,《炉石传说》仍然是一款大获成功的游戏。但它也面临着所有纸牌收集游戏所面临的挑战以及不断扩展的纸牌库所呈现的挑战。《炉石传说》同样也向我们展示了如何成为一款具有竞争性的游戏,即不仅能够给与最大消费者以及始终留在游戏中的资深玩家奖励,同时也避免了让新玩家或临时玩家因为面对强大用户的强大收集而受挫。

随着这一扩展包的发行,商店中将出现三种不同类型的纸牌包以及两个冒险包。可能明年将变成五种纸牌包和四种扩展包。经过证明这将成为一系列让新玩家困扰的选择,而游戏设计师也会因为玩家是否会被游戏拥有九种以上的桥牌插槽吓到而担忧。

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

Hearthstone is getting very expensive, and complicated, for a casual game

by Daniel Friedman

On July 22, Blizzard announced the second expansion set for Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, its popular online collectible-card game.

This expansion, called The Grand Tournament, will add another 132 cards to the existing pool of about 560.

On one hand, a new expansion is exciting for Hearthstone fans. New cards shake up the metagame and alter the settled deck archetypes in interesting and unpredictable ways. But on the other hand, if you want to play with all those new cards in your constructed decks anytime soon, you’ll probably have to spend a lot of money.

And if you’re a new or occasional player starting out with Hearthstone or returning after a hiatus, you’ll find that this ostensibly casual game has become pretty complex and intimidating, both in terms of gameplay and in terms of collecting cards.

HOW MUCH WILL THE GRAND TOURNAMENT COST?

The Grand Tournament expansion will be of similar size to the Goblins vs. Gnomes expansion, which launched last December. That means it will have about 20 legendary cards, and you’ll only get one legendary for every 15 to 20 packs you open.

When GvG launched, I spent the 12,500 in-game gold I’d been saving for about eight months to buy packs. Out of 128 packs of cards, I got all the commons and rares I needed, and most of the epics, but only six different legendaries, one legendary duplicate, and enough other duplicate cards and golden cards to craft about three more legendaries using the game’s disenchanting system.

That was only about half the legendaries in the set. Arguably, this was enough; about half the legendary cards in GvG are considered “highly situational,” aka bad. There’s no particularly pressing need to keep buying packs to get cards like Mekgineer Thermaplugg, Mogor the Ogre and Flame Leviathan once you secure Dr. Boom, Sneed’s Old Shredder, Mal’Ganis, Vol’Jin and Neptulon. But I ended up buying another 60 packs for $70.

I’ve saved up another 12,000 gold since December, but I am still planning to go ahead and buy Blizzard’s 50-packs-for-$50 pre-order bundle for The Grand Tournament, in addition to liquidating my gold reserves again. Based on my experience with past sets, I am expecting to get about 10 legendaries, and most of the epics, rares and commons I need, with enough dust to get most of the other essentials. But even after 175 packs, I won’t get all the cards in the set.

THE GAME IS BECOMING LESS FRIENDLY TO NEW AND FREE PLAYERS

In May 2014, when only the basic Hearthstone set was available, I assessed the ability of going free-to-play in the game and concluded that path was pretty viable. There were a number of cheap, competitive decks that were performing strongly in the game’s ranked mode, and if you kept up with your dailies and disenchanted any card that wasn’t on your list, you could construct even the most expensive decks over the course of a few months.

A lot of that year-old analysis still holds true: A Hearthstone deck is still capped at 30 cards, and there are still plenty of ladder decks that avoid using any legendary cards and can be crafted for under 2,000 dust, or the equivalent of about 20 packs. Expansions like GvG and The Grand Tournament won’t change that, because all the cards you can get from any kind of pack can be crafted with the dust you get from disenchanting other cards.

However, a limited collection still restricts your options, and that’s even more of a problem now, since veteran players and big spenders have access to a larger and increasing pool of cards. Many people are playing aggro Hunter decks not because they like that deck or that play style, but because they have to try to end games quickly since they don’t have the tools to compete against mid- to late-game legendary cards like Sylvanas Windrunner, Dr. Boom and Ragnaros.

Players on the ranked ladder will encounter decks stuffed with those legendaries very early in their climb; now that Hearthstone has been out for around 18 months, there are a lot of players with extensive collections.

Blizzard’s currency rewards for completing daily quests in Hearthstone are relatively generous compared to other free-to-play games, which inspires engagement and loyalty from veteran players. But the fact that Blizzard gives you enough gold to buy $300 worth of cards per year suggests that somebody starting today has to spend an extra $300 to catch up to someone who started a year ago. As a result of this, a lot of lapsed Hearthstone players feel they’ve fallen so far behind that it’s pointless to try to return to the game.

And the “Adventure Mode” updates Blizzard drops between major expansions add an additional complication for new players or free players. These releases each contain 30 cards, and cost $25 or 3,500 gold. Blizzard designs these to alter the metagame, which means a lot of the cards in them are necessary for anyone planning to be competitive in constructed play.

For example, the current incarnation of the cheap aggro Hunter deck requires Webspinners, Haunted Creepers and Mad Scientists from the Naxxramas Adventure and Quick Shots from the Blackrock Mountain Adventure. That means getting those Adventures is pretty much the first step for a new player, so they’ll have to lay out $50 or collect 7,000 gold before they even start buying packs. A daily quest is only worth 50 gold on average, so that’s a pretty big hill to climb.

Hearthstone has also grown more complex, and demands that new players become familiar with a much larger pool of cards in order to anticipate what their opponents might throw at them. It was relatively easy to understand how a warrior or a mage was going to play when only the classic set was available, but there are now at least two or three very different competitive strategies for almost every class. A paladin might be going for a Call-to-arms/Quartermaster combo, or he might be running dragons. A warrior might be playing the venerable control deck, or he might be playing a go-for-the-face aggro strategy, or he might be running a deck built around combos involving Warsong Commander and Grim Patron.

All of these problems are going to grow more severe as Hearthstone continues to mature; how will new players get a foothold a year from now, if there are four different Adventure modes they’ll need to acquire, each containing several staple cards?

WHAT HAS BLIZZARD DONE ABOUT THIS?

There are several systems already in place to mitigate the burdens of getting into constructed Hearthstone. First, there are a couple of modes that let everyone play on an even field, regardless of their collections. The popular Arena draft mode has been around since before the game officially launched, though each ticket to the Arena costs 150 gold.

Blizzard also recently added the Tavern Brawl mode, which invites players to play under a different rule set each week. About half of these challenges so far have given players pre-selected decks rather than requiring them to use cards from their collections. Players can usually complete their daily quests in Tavern Brawl mode, so they can now take care of most daily quests without going into constructed at all.

The Brawl also awards a free pack of the classic set for the first win of the week, and Blizzard added a daily quest to the rotation a few months back that awards a classic pack for watching a friend win a game in spectator mode. These items improve the rate of free card rewards by about 20 percent, and are especially beneficial to newer players, since veterans are likely to only get dust from most classic packs at this point.

As long as Hearthstone is a cash cow for Blizzard and new players are willing to put in the time or open their wallets to get into the game, this may be all Blizzard needs to do. But, in the past we’ve seen Blizzard make changes to World of Warcraft to make it easier for former players to return and new players to get a foothold. If Hearthstone’s player acquisition and retention start to slide, similar steps might be justified for the card game. There are several things Blizzard can do that might mitigate the impact of the game’s sprawl on new players.

GIVE PLAYERS ALTERNATE WAYS TO GET OLD ADVENTURE CARDS

Forcing new players to buy older Adventure mode sets is really burdensome, and buying wings is the only way to get the cards, since — unlike cards from the classic and expansion sets — Adventure Mode cards cannot be crafted with dust.

Allowing players to craft cards from adventures older than the most recent set with their dust would at least allow budget players to get staple cards like Haunted Creepers and Sludge Belchers for their decks without buying the expensive Adventure wings. There would still be an incentive for most players to buy the wings, since crafting the Adventure-exclusive legendary cards like Kel’Thuzad and Chromaggus would never be more efficient than buying the wings.

Other alternatives, for further in the future when there are more Adventures, would be to combine the cards from older adventures into their own set, so newer players could get those cards by buying relatively cheaper packs.

ADD CARDS FROM OLDER SETS TO THE EXISTING “BASIC” SET

There are about 150 Hearthstone cards that you get for free just for playing through the tutorial mode and leveling up your heroes. Blizzard could make the prospect of collecting Hearthstone cards less daunting by adding cards, possibly including some legendaries, from the classic and GvG sets to this free, automatic set and then combining what’s left of those older sets into a single, new core set. Older players who collected these cards from packs might not love this, but Blizzard could compensate them with the dust value of the converted cards.

CREATE A CONSTRUCTED MODE SIMILAR TO MAGIC: THE GATHERING’S “RESTRICTED” FORMAT

Magic: The Gathering has been around for over 20 years, and has thousands of cards. In a format where all of these are available, it is very difficult for players to learn every possible card they might potentially come up against, and it’s very difficult for designers to predict every potentially broken interaction between a new card and the thousands of existing cards.

As a result, Magic’s premier Tournament mode is its “restricted” format, in which players may only use cards from the current iteration of the game’s core set and the most recent cycle of expansions. Blizzard could create a restricted ladder mode for Hearthstone so that newer players could jump into constructed without having to worry about collecting old expansions or old Adventures.

However, dividing the player base this way would likely make the unrestricted ladder extremely cutthroat, since the new mode would lure away most of the players who form the base of the current ladder’s pyramid structure. And if the restricted mode became the primary mode for eSports and tournaments, older players might feel like their cards and therefore their investment in the game had been devalued.

PRICE CUTS FOR OLD CARDS

One way to make it easier to collect older sets is simply to cut the gold and real-money prices of the packs. However, all cards of the same rarity can currently be disenchanted for the same amount of dust, regardless of the set they come from, so a price cut for old sets could create a situation where the most efficient way to get legendaries from new expansions would be to buy old packs and dust the contents to craft the new cards.

Price cuts for older Adventure modes will make a lot of sense, however, as Blizzard adds more of them to the game.

SOONER OR LATER, BLIZZARD WILL HAVE TO DO SOMETHING

Going into the Grand Tournament expansion, Hearthstone remains a huge success and a thriving game. But it faces the problem that challenges all collectible-card games; the challenge of an ever-expanding card library. Hearthstone also has to figure out how to be a competitive game that is rewarding to its big spenders and its veteran players who remain consistently engaged, without new or occasional players feeling overwhelmed by having to face those power users’ superior collections.

And, with this launch, there will be three different kinds of packs for sale in the store, as well as the two Adventures. In another year or so, there will probably be five kinds of packs and four expansions. That will prove to be a confusing array of choices for new players of a game whose designers have worried that players would be too intimidated by the prospect of having more than nine deck slots.(source:polygon

 


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