作者：Mark Robinson

第一人称射击游戏（FPS）是一种基于速度和反应的游戏，并且很大程度地依赖于玩家的用户粘性。为了确保游戏能够让玩家感到有趣， 并确保他们处于无聊与焦虑之间的用户粘性区域中，你就需要使用追踪方法。

FPS(from gamasutra)

尽管这种追踪是关于玩家可能采取的任何行动，但你却不需要为游戏的每一个元素设置相关参数。相反地你应该专注于那些能够创造最具行动力的观点的有用参数。

以下是帮助FPS开发者去追逐各种行动的一些建议：

1.不要去追踪每颗子弹

玩家追踪是理解玩家行为的最佳方式，但去追踪玩家所发射的每颗子弹或采取的每个步骤都会导致你最终拥有的数据超负荷。你最好去追踪一些综合性内容，即在每一轮游戏最后或在每一轮游戏中的关键位置上，如玩家所获得的点数或玩家被杀的地方。这种综合性内容便能够帮助你去了解玩家所发射的子弹数量，玩家击中并杀死了多少敌人等等。比起去结算每个玩家所发射的子弹总数，这种方法能够帮助你更轻松地获得自己想要的内容。

2.追踪类别

FPS设计中经常出现的一个问题便是除了杀掉敌人外不会提供给玩家其它行动任何奖励。在一款成功的游戏中跨越各种类别的游戏平衡非常重要（游戏邦注：《守望先锋》便是一个典型的例子）。因此追踪玩家的效能也同样重要；这意味着支持类别能够追踪工程师的修复，治愈以及破坏能力。使用这一数据你不仅能够创建一个公平的经验值系统，同时也能够调整现有的系统从而有效地去比较玩家的表现。

3.热力图并未唯一方式

关于游戏中的玩家追踪最经典的一个例子便是关于死亡与杀戮的热力图。尽管它们拥有非常出色的地图设计，但是它们却并不能帮助你去平衡游戏，反而需要你投入许多数据，所以这并不是一种实用的开发工具。此外如果你能够调整游戏参数，如提高武器的范围和威力或引进汽车等等，你便可能彻底改变这些热力图。也就是你可以使用热力图，但千万不要只是依赖于它们去了解所有内容。

4.比赛安排是关键

在游戏发行后，射击游戏通常都会想办法去维持游戏最初的玩家体验，同时他们也会想办法去让玩家能够长久愉快地游戏。尽管基于关卡的比赛安排是可行的，但它可能需要同时面对全新玩家与资深玩家的流失问题。真正优秀的比赛安排总是能够快速将新人玩家与资深玩家划分开来并留给新手足够长的学习空间。所以开发者需要执行的第一步便是去追踪玩家在一段时期内的表现并创造相关参数，例如在过去一周里的经验值。

5.系统性能会导致玩家流失

对于PC游戏来说，系统的性能范围很宽，但是对于免费游戏来说，因为许多玩家拥有的是较落后的系统，所以他们便不能获得最优化的游戏体验。尽管去支持这样的玩家是不可能的事，但开发者还是必须清楚哪些玩家是因为糟糕的帧率而流失，哪些玩家是因为游戏问题而流失。追踪GPU，CPU和内存规则对于PC游戏来说很重要，而明确你的游戏的可游戏，不可游戏以及边界线范围也同样重要。

（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）

Tips for tracking first person shooters

by Mark Robinson

First Person Shooters (FPS) are rapid, reflex based and rely heavily on player engagement. To ensure you secure and sustain your players’ enjoyment, and keep them in the threshold of engagement zone between boredom and anxiety, you need to use tracking.

Although tracking is any action initiated by the player that forms an event, it is not worth setting up metrics for every single element of your game. Instead focus on, and prioritize the most useful and desired metrics to generate actionable insights.

To help set the most valuable events we have put together the top tracking tips for first person shooters.

1. Don’t track every bullet!

Player tracking is the best way to understand player behaviour, but tracking every bullet fired or every step taken will lead to data overload. It is better to track aggregate events, either at the end of each round, or at key milestones within a round, such as point captured or player killed. These aggregate events can then track the number of bullets fired, hits and kills, which can more easily be queried, rather than trying to tally up the innumerable individual bullets fired.

2. Track classes fairly

One of the classic mistakes of FPS design is to include numerous light support classes without rewarding for anything except kills. Game balancing across classes is vital in successful games – Overwatch is a great example of this. Therefore, tracking player effectiveness equally is important; for instance, this means for support classes tracking engineer repairs and heals as well as damage. Using this data, you can either build a fair XP system, or calibrate the existing one so that you can compare player performance.

3. Heatmaps are not the only way

The classic example of player tracking in a game and one which is used frequently, is a heatmap of deaths and kills. While they may be excellent for map design, they won’t help you balance a game, require lots of data and are therefore not very practical as a development tool. Furthermore, they can change radically if you modify the game parameters, for example increase range and power of weapons, or introduce vehicles. Certainly use them, but don’t rely on them to show you everything.

4. Matchmaking is the key

After the launch, shooters usually struggle to maintain a good first time player experience, and at the same time keeping long term players happy. While basic level-based matchmaking can work, it may struggle with concurrency if the new player base drops off, pitting new players up against experienced ones straightaway. Good matchmaking will separate novice and advance good players quickly, while leaving beginners on the nursery slopes for as long as they need to. The first step is effectively tracking performance and building metrics for player performance over time, for instance median XP/round over the previous week.

5. System performance causes churn

For PC games the range of system performance is vast, and for F2P games many players will have low specification systems which simply aren’t cut out for an optimum gaming experience. While supporting these may be out of the question, it is vital to know which players are churning because of poor frame rate, and which are churning because of game issues. Tracking GPU, CPU and memory specifications is important for PC games, as well as developing simple categorizations for your game of playable, borderline and unplayable.（source：Gamasutra）