2024/09/25 22:36
Lilith's second key product this year is here, is it a pet and a chicken?
2024/09/25 22:36
Text: Yan Jinyan
Recently, domestic shooting is really volume.
This month alone, several new products have action, "Operation Delta", "White Battle", "Counter War: Future", ...... Each of them is also a big factory background. And just last week, Lilith also joined the battlefield - "Yuanguang 84" opened the first test on the PC side of the national server on September 20.
We've written about "High Light 84" many times before. At the earliest, it was first revealed at an Unreal Engine offline event in 2020, and it was Lilith's first game made with Unreal Engine, and if you count from the time of the project, it has been tossed for at least 5 years now.
Previously, it was launched overseas, and the results were not bad for a while, winning the Google Play 2023 Best Multiplayer Game of the Year award, and it also exceeded one million DAUs purely by natural volume without promotion.
Of course, this achievement is not enough to make it a success. After all, the shooting track is really a volume, and this is a winner-takes-all big DAU track, if you want to get ahead, you must become a leader in the subdivided field.
Therefore, "Yuanguang 84" has been tossing and turning in the past few years, constantly doing large-scale updates, and even completely renovating the game several times. And at the node of the first test of the national server, they tried to do a lot of new things, such as adding a large proportion of pet hunting gameplay. Yes, adding pets to the hero tactical competition, which little clever ghost came up with this idea?
01
Before talking about gameplay, I would like to talk about another differentiating focus of "Yuanguang 84" - content expression.
If you know Lilith's other card game, "Party of the Gods", you should be able to better perceive the art style of "High Light 84", they are all the kind of cool art with a strong sense of inclusiveness.
The most intuitive is their hero design. To give a few examples: the sinner wearing pink ink prince glasses, the overall dress, as if he had just participated in a fashion show, exaggerated and rebellious. According to the production team, they referred to the camp + acid aesthetics when designing the sinner, so that the characters conveyed a crazy psychedelic feeling;
Merchel is a distinctly blend of lolita and rock 'n' roll, giving it a feel of vibrancy; The Phantom, on the other hand, is a street rap style with a hip-hop bias overall, but at the same time it is a cyborg's android. In short, each hero is highly recognizable.
If you look closely, you can also find that in terms of the shoe culture that young people like, Lilith also shows an understanding of "trend". Each character's shoes are exquisite, from function to appearance, or sporty, or gorgeous, or tactical, all of which are completely created in line with the character setting.
Another small detail is that perhaps because Lilith has regarded globalization as one of the company's strategies since a few years ago, many character designs have jumped out of everyone's stereotypes, such as the hairstyle design of the black-skinned character Night Watch, which is not the black dreadlocks that often appear in today's cultural works.
Moreover, the game is also amplifying the personality traits of each hero through various methods such as action performances and voice acting.
For example, the sinner's posture adopts an exaggerated style similar to that of JOJO Li. When he zooms in, he also yells "I'm going to blow them all to ashes", and since Sinner's ultimate can select a large area for bombing, it is an output type of big kill, so this is also the only skill voice where all players can hear the warning. It can be said that as long as you see the sinner, you can feel his madness.
Duck Duck is a representative of funny and cute, and since he is not a regular humanoid character, he can make a lot of more exaggerated comic performances. For example, when opening an ultimate, he will turn into a ball and jump to the sky, Tarzan Duck Top. And in normal times, he will also keep saying "quack" and "hit!" in his mouth. Ahh
This is also the second feature of "High Light 84" in addition to the cool: witty. According to the official description, the overall style of the game is defined as a trendy comedy.
On the one hand, they designed a lot of heroes like Duck Duck, either with cute appearances or skills with a lot of possibilities. The addition of the pet catching system has also strengthened the perception of this aspect to a large extent, which we will mention later.
On the other hand, there are also a lot of funny scene designs in the game map, such as a landmark building is designed as a big duck; An interactive device to gain experience, and also a duck's head...... Well, the project team has a strange attachment to ducks......
However, regardless of the user's acceptance of the content style, I think it's at least the right direction. For hero shooting, content should be a point of focus, which itself is what differentiates the genre from traditional shooting games.
With heroes as the carrier, they can produce a large number of derivative IP content inside and outside the game. As a result, players can discuss the game more than just gameplay, and you can start a series of interesting topics based on the hero setting and background story. Even, players may create a large number of character memes to drive the game's self-propagation; In other words, through high-quality content such as music and PV, the game may also radiate to pan-users outside the core circle.
Now "Yuanguang 84" is trying to show the world view through fragmented methods such as loading interfaces, map introduction interfaces, and character voices. Judging from the existing actions of the international server, they are also exploring other forms of content such as comics and short stories. If the game can continue to strengthen the connection between characters in the future, such as adding dialogue to specific hero combinations in the characters' voices, then I think it will be even more content.
The previous popularity of Overwatch and Valorant has also proved that when a shooter has a certain content longboard, it has the potential to break the circle and attract a larger audience.
02
Of course, no matter how well the content is done, the shooting category is still driven by gameplay. Whether it's fun or not, whether it's new or not, is the key to determining how far it can go.
At present, the differentiation of "Yuanguang 84" in terms of gameplay is also clearly considered, that is, the gameplay characteristics of hero shooting are made to the extreme. This is actually consistent with their idea of enhancing the content based on hero shooting.
On the one hand, the game does hero growth in a single game. Each hero has two basic skills and ultimate, and players can freely add points to strengthen their skill set after leveling up through survival, resource looting, killing, etc.
On the other hand, it adds a completely unexpected pet hunt gameplay.
To put it simply, there are a variety of pets scattered in the map, compared to the traditional pet hunting game, the horn will not move, but will stay in the corner of the map, waiting for the player to catch it with the Horn Ball.
Essentially, Speaker Dick is a collectible one-time skill that expands the dimension of the skill. Some can detect nearby enemies in a wide area, others can act as smoke grenades, grenades, and even customize the next safety circle.
After a full day of playing, I felt more and more that I was a genius to come up with this design. It really elevates the fun of Hero Battle on multiple levels.
First, it gives the hero skills more room to expand. Hero skills and horn ticks are put together, and a lot of combos can be combined, and they can play eye-catching or black-eyed operations.
For example, although the ultimate of the sin is highly lethal, but the forward swing time is too long, and it is difficult to determine the enemy's position, then you can first let the horn detect the enemy's position, or create a wind field, compress the enemy's position, or even control the opponent, so as to achieve precise guidance.
The "Cannon Rat" can shoot the character out
Another example is that Maggie is a highly mobile character, she can use a jetpack to jump up and down on the battlefield, and then use the wind field created by "Wind Drum" to travel with the wind, which can further increase the character's speed and dash distance. And if you release the wind drum in front of the enemy, you can achieve the effect of "I speed up, you slow down, which is equivalent to you being imprisoned". This is simply an artifact for body-type players.
It is conceivable that with the influx of follow-up players, more and more gameplay routines will be developed. I can already anticipate that there will definitely be all kinds of brain-stirring manipulations that will be cut into material and spread in the community.
Second, the battlefield situation is more suspenseful, and the strategy of the game has been greatly improved.
At present, most of the horns can affect the battlefield situation to a certain extent. For example, when a teammate lands into a box, you can directly use "Easy Transport" to teleport the box in front of you, resurrect the teammate in a safe area, and regain the numerical advantage.
For another example, when I was in a finals before, I encountered the opposite side summoning the Emperor-shaped Horn "Storm Queen", which directly blew a tornado in the map, and I had nowhere to escape, so I was directly controlled for a few seconds.
My favorite is the "Transformation Dragon" that can be transformed into a mushroom or wall panel. It's kind of similar to the hide-and-seek in some shooters, running to the right position and camouflaging it as a six.
During the week of the game test, I have seen many streamers become victims, running and running pictures, and suddenly they are darkened by the "street light" next to them. You can imagine how much the show effect would be if this was put in the finals.
In addition to capturing the Horn Tick, the Horn Ball can also store vehicles, weapon depots, as well as buildings such as slopes and baffles. When you walk on an unfavorable terrain, flipping the bell in your backpack is likely to be able to change your life.
Seeing this, I think you can better understand why the official definition of the game is "comedy". The addition of Horn Di really makes the game change rapidly, and the whole battlefield has a more "nonsense" feeling, but if you think about it, there is a lot of room for tactical games.
Thirdly, the surprise feedback from players to loot resources will be stronger.
From the introduction just now, you should be able to perceive that the horn is an extremely core resource, and the distribution of different horns is also random, like other materials. If you can find some key horns, then maybe you're happier than finding an airdrop. This is also an important point for people to indulge in eating chicken.
And after adding the pet hunting game, you can also see that the project team thinks very clearly. In the past, the cumbersome licking bag and equipment in the chicken game can be automatically operated by the system. You just have to think about how to shoot and how to use the horn to win the game. The player's focus will be more on the tactical level.
In general, after "High Light 84" added Horn Di, the differentiation has become very obvious. Moreover, the flexibility and expansibility of the speaker system may really make the tactical competition category one step further iteration.
In the past, if you want to add more creativity to competitive games, you will inevitably face many problems. Previously, a producer of the Hero Tactical Competitive category told Grape that as the game is updated, they will inevitably introduce stronger, newer or more accessible heroes, which may force players to adapt to the current version environment, but obviously, not all players like the so-called version of the child.
But for the Horn, it's a more flexible map item. Even if you plan to let yourself go and add all kinds of magical horns, you can quickly balance the game by adjusting the distribution and frequency of the horns. In other words, it gives more control over creativity.
On the basis of controllability, the creativity of the horn is very much in line with the intuition of emergent design. After all, it's essentially a little skill, and anyone can come up with some fun ideas. For example, if there is still a lack of healing characters, could there be a support type of Horn that can help the player automatically fight armor? For example, when facing a powerful trumpet like the Storm Queen, can I also have some counter-trumpeters? Observing the current game community, a large number of players have begun to spontaneously put forward ideas, and there may be the possibility of players co-creating loudspeakers in the future.
Speaking of which, you should be able to understand why I said that the creativity of the pet hunt game is really a bit genius. It's not the kind of particularly groundbreaking, scratch-up design, and it doesn't subvert a category from the root, but on the one hand, it's easy to understand, and on the other hand, it does broaden the gameplay dimension of the category, and there's still a lot of room for imagination. If it can balance entertainment and competitiveness, then it may provide a new micro-innovation for tactical competition.
03
After several years of adjustments, I feel that the current "High Light 84" is already a distinctive and recognizable product. But are you going to say it's enough to conquer all shooters? Or does it have the strength to challenge the top products? There's definitely a lot of room for polishing.
For example, at the Gunplay level, although the game is cartoon-style, you can feel that it pays a lot of attention to the feel of guns. In terms of sound effects, the sound of different guns shooting in different environments is different, and now I can roughly tell a firearm by the sound of a gunshot. And the sound effects such as reloading and loading are also not bad. When it comes to non-realistic shooters, it's pretty good.
However, if you really want to compare the top batch of shooting games, "High Light 84" has its own unique opinion, which is different from the "bloody" reality of realistic games, and they are also trying to fit their art style shooting "cool" feedback.
For another example, the overall design of the game may still raise the threshold for players to get started.
Although, the Horn Tick gameplay not only allows ordinary players to use powerful skills to change the battle situation at a lower cost, but also increases the upper limit of operation for advanced players to a certain extent. However, due to the current small map, fast circle shrinking, and frequent firefights between players, for players who have just opened the game, it is likely that they have played several games and still haven't figured out the skills of heroes and horns, let alone how to cooperate with each other. In other words, players may not even appreciate the fun of the game and be dissuaded.
Of course, these problems are not incorrect. In the previous overseas operations, "Yuanguang 84" has undergone several updates, and several times it is like a different game. For example, the differentiated features of the game today, such as cool art, witty content expression, and gameplay with pet catching heroes and tactical competition as the core, were all finalized after several iterations. In addition, this period also includes a rework of hero skills and a complete overhaul of firearms.
In the game comment area, many old players said that the game has been getting better and better over the years.
This is also in line with what Zhang Zilong, the head of Lilith publishing, mentioned earlier, that one of the company's key words is design-driven. To achieve this, each of their projects goes through meticulous tuning and lengthy testing. At the same time, if you know Lilith, you should also know that since their establishment, they have always emphasized the word "fun", and in this regard, they have a persistent spirit.
And more importantly, on this project, you can see that Lilith has taken a hard-to-die attitude. After several years of research and development and many major changes, they still haven't given up on "Yuanguang 84", and are even innovating. Very few people can show such courage when they first set foot in the field of competitive shooting. This may also illustrate Lilith's determination to step out of the card comfort zone and move towards the big DAU track.
Another interesting thing is that Lilith's overseas brand is called Farlight, which has the same name as "Yuanguang 84". It is not difficult to see that Lilith should have placed more hopes on this project.
As newcomers who have just entered the shooting field, it is difficult to expect "High Light 84" to rush to a particularly high position as soon as it comes up. But in any case, they have now finally found a more thoughtful path to differentiation, with a certain potential and possibility. For Lilith, who is about to step out of her comfort zone, this may be a good sign.
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