Author / Xiang Xiang
Operations / Biscuits
Glory of Kings may be the biggest official in the kneeling scene.
The game planners of "Honor of Kings" "took the blame" in an all-round way in the preview of the new version of the live broadcast, and also found Lin Gengxin to "interrogate" the plan on behalf of the players.
In fact, before apologizing with great fanfare on the live broadcast, the "Honor of Kings" planner had already officially knelt down on the forum.
In the official announcement, the planner Yao Tianqi Sheng admitted that the emergence of the chicken paw flow strategy reflects the shortcomings of the current matching mechanism, hero evaluation method, and ranked star promotion mechanism. In order to solve this problem, the official will carry out in-depth refactoring and improvement of the entire system.
With the official start of the new season, a new road to points has also begun.
The "tragedy" caused by "chicken feet"
The apology has reached the first place in the hot search, and it is really the king player who has been suffering from "chicken feet flow" for a long time.
The so-called "Chicken Paw Flow" is a kind of top-scoring gameplay developed by the anchor "Brother Lei" of "Glory of Kings" in early June. Similar to but different from League of Legends' Tower Push Stream, "Chicken Paw Stream" was developed for the ELO mechanic unique to Honor of Kings.
To explain simply, in order to ensure the fairness and playability of competitive games, "Honor of Kings" will match teammates according to the performance of the game through a certain algorithm mode, and evenly distribute the good and bad skills. IN OTHER WORDS, IF YOU HAVE GOOD SKILLS AND KEEP WINNING, IT IS EASY TO MATCH TEAMMATES WHO NEED "CARRY" WITH POOR SKILLS AND BECOME THE "THIGHS" OF THIS GAME.
Winning is a plus, losing is deducted, for players, the ELO mechanism is to some extent an accomplice to kneel (lose all the time) and lose points. In order to climb the "King Rank" each season, players have to play more games to contribute to the daily activity of the game.
The so-called "chicken paw flow" refers to trying not to fight and kill in the game, only focusing on the anti-field push tower, and focusing on a "swing". Due to a long period of passive combat, the game score determined by the system is often much lower than that of ordinary players, and in order to ensure gameplay, the system will begin to assign players with good skills and a certain percentage of human players to increase your chances of winning.
More and more players are openly saying that they have observed an increase in the probability of suspected human-computer accounts during the game, which greatly reduces the fun of the game. At the same time, under the influence of "chicken claw flow", the gameplay of the same idea has also been carried forward among some players, and various routines have been developed to "swing" for victory.
With good players and ELO mechanics as a backing, it's easy to win as long as you don't have a mind and just push the tower. But for players who want to play well, this style of play is undoubtedly a tumor, and the game environment can be said to be extremely harsh.
The end of the season was a critical period for the score, and for a while, the players were angry, and finally to the point that the officials had to come out and give an explanation.
Data anxiety syndrome
In fact, the matchmaking mechanism of MOBA games is often criticized by players, and League of Legends and Overwatch have also faced ELO mechanism controversy. Two years ago, "League of Legends Mobile Game" was also so troubled because of the matching ELO mechanism that it had to be planned to explain and clarify with players.
The plot is very similar to the current stage of "Glory of Kings".
At that time, as a good application scenario of the ELO mechanism, "Honor of Kings" was once an excellent sample for LOLM ("League of Legends Mobile Game") players to compare with LOLM's official comparison, but the feng shui took turns, and the Honor of Kings players who grew to S36 also fell into the same strange circle.
However, there is a common pattern that when a large number of players start to complain about the unreasonable ELO mechanism, it is often the time when the game data is not as good as before.
From the 2015 open beta to now entering the S36 season, Honor of Kings has been an evergreen game for nearly ten years, although it is still often at the top of the revenue list, and it is often used as a key C position in Tencent's financial report, but players know that compared with the days of the day, "Honor of Kings" is really an old game.
The decline in data is inevitable for old games, and as an "old game" that often needs to hold up the cards, many choices in "Honor of Kings" are often compelled to do so. However, from the original successful ELO mechanism, to the conflict with the player to apologize, it is essentially because of data anxiety.
The planners' original intention was simple: to keep players in the game longer each new season in order to maintain daily activity numbers.
According to the data of Tencent's first quarter report in 2024, in the first quarter, Tencent's local game revenue was 34.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 2%; As far as individual games are concerned, "Honor of Kings" was affected by the high base during the Spring Festival last year, and its revenue decreased year-on-year. When the Spring Festival version was not so popular, "Glory of Kings" was as anxious as entering "middle age" and took the "steady" route.
For example, when players are dissatisfied, they start apologizing frequently.
In fact, before the advent of the "chicken paw flow" gameplay, players were also dissatisfied with the ELO mechanism of "Honor of Kings".
A search for the ELO mechanic on social media will reveal a large number of similar complaints from players, stretching the timeline, and even finding content released last year. However, in the long year, with the update and iteration of the version, after several rounds of adjustment of the algorithm data, players finally ran into the ELO mechanism and protested like a passive strike - the replicable "chicken claw flow" gameplay. The official of "Honor of Kings" quickly reacted before the arrival of the new version, announcing that the ELO mechanism would be adjusted.
Facts have proved that just contributing to game operations is obviously not enough to continue the vitality of old games, but only to monetize the accumulated word-of-mouth and consume popularity. This is also the fundamental reason why the planners wisely chose to sincerely "slip and kneel" to apologize, for "Glory of Kings", it is not yet time to let go.
As a ten-year longevity IP, at this stage, it is more important to prolong the vitality. While the official lowered its profile to retain players, the IP of "Honor of Kings" had already prepared for the next stop on the stage and planned to make its debut.
Game Vitality
How to continue the vitality of an IP, the path that has been taken by predecessors is to broaden the boundaries of the story.
The game has infinite possibilities, there are stories - such as the "Honkai Impact Series" that miHoYo is still shining and giving birth to new stories to this day, or the gameplay - "Dota 2" was the first to develop auto chess, and "League of Legends" immediately added the new mode of terminal game Genting Game and the mobile game "Battle of the Golden Shovel".
There are endless possibilities outside of the game, and Blizzard's attempt shows that there may still be a possibility of a waterloo for movie and game collaboration, but the success of League of Legends: Battle of Two Cities is a good demonstration of the potential of game-to-game comic compatibility.
The large question bank left for "Glory of Kings" to "copy homework" is really excellent, and what "Glory of Kings" is best at is undoubtedly the best of collecting hundreds of schools.
In January of this year, "Glory of Kings: Chapter of Glory Broken Moon" was the first to log in to Tencent Video, and at the same time, "King of Chess", "Glory of Kings: Dawn of the Stars" and "Glory of Kings: World" The three games also released rumors early.
The layout outside the game is long-term, and the game is also drastic, and in the past two days, the new season of S36, which has only completed the update, can be said to be "changing the world". In addition to the changes to the game stats on the equipment interface, the absolute protagonist of S36 is the new mechanical hero "Son of Genryu" and the new social scene "Kinoshita Academy".
If "King of Kings" is a benchmark for auto-chess, "Honor of Kings: World" is a benchmark for the open world, "Jixia Academy" is like a localization of the social hall of "Egg Boy Party", and "Son of Yuanliu" is like an MMO experiment in the Honor of Kings game, which is the first multi-class self-selected hero of the king, with different classes having corresponding exclusive skill sets, and you can also switch a variety of weapons in the spring to get different attribute buffs. At present, two classes, the tank and the mage class, are open, and the official introduction will open new classes in the future.
In other words, the popular genres on the market that can make people interested at this stage, "Honor of Kings" are more or less involved, but in addition to the game projects in development, other attempts are more inclined to "taste the beginning".
Although the new version of "Son of Yuanliu" has advantages in terms of values and mechanics, from the perspective of composition logic, the entire "Son of Yuanliu" dress system and career system are still semi-finished products, and it is obviously an experiment that has not yet set the direction and is mainly experimental. At present, it is mandatory to fix it on the homepage, replacing the "Jixia Academy" that originally matched the position, and it is more than one move to play the role of a new entrance.
It's just that these updated dishes, which are still as delicious as "the cake drawn by the boss", can't fully satisfy the player's appetite. Until then, there was obviously only one question that players were more concerned about - how was the matchmaking system optimized?
And the new game content, for a game with a national scale like "Honor of Kings", can really be smoothly integrated into the existing game, or the innovative gameplay like auto-chess, which may be what players are really waiting for.
Source: Weibo, Douban, invaded and deleted.