Text/Isaac

Kuaishou's game label, the first batch of blockbuster self-developed products in the universe, has finally been officially launched today.

This "Endless Dreams", which focuses on the core gameplay of action + meat pigeon (i.e., Roguelike), rose to the top of the iOS free list after it was launched for pre-download yesterday.

Among the many products, this game is really eye-catching. As mentioned in the previous article, this may be the best-looking skin and the hardest overall quality meat pigeon in the PC + mobile double-end game. Its art, temperament, and character design are a bit like the second game, but the main gameplay is rarely chosen by the second game. This has made many people with different needs pay attention to it, intentionally or unintentionally.

And two weeks before the launch, "Endless Dreams" also started a "business war", and clearly released the promises related to the mechanism, and several comparison charts of the payment model, declaring that the price would be lowered...... This subtle publicity, coupled with the producer's appearance, successfully attracted some attention. The video has also been on the hot list on Station B and Kuaishou.

Grape Jun is interested in this product, firstly, because I want to see how they deal with the problem of meat pigeon + long-term operation; The second is that for a long time, "Endless Dreams" may be a representative of the two-end game that is not quite the usual in all aspects. You may also be curious: behind all this, what does Kuaishou think?

01

R&D ideas:

Take coolness as the absolute core

The core idea of "Endless Dream Back" in research and development can be easily summarized: cool, cool from all angles. And the starting point of everything is of course the core gameplay around meat pigeons.

We have also introduced the gameplay: to put it simply, outside the game, players first develop and configure the characters of a team of three according to their needs; In the game, the game breaks up the skill effects of all the characters and makes them into building elements divided into different genres; On this basis, players advance the plot and obtain resources through lawn mowing battles, special levels, and boss battles, forming a cycle of play inside and outside the game.

What's so cool about this process? It is not difficult for those who have played meat pigeons to understand: the core lies in the feeling of becoming stronger, qualitative and turning over in various ways through construction and growth - I am like a paramecium at the beginning, but every time I pass a picture, the feeling of becoming stronger can be verified instantly;

Once you get the key enhancement, trigger the powerful combination, and form a chemical reaction, it will instantly become a full-screen barrage and laser. Using the mechanism to shape this psychological difference of 1+1>>2 is one of the biggest charms of meat pigeons.

In terms of combat, the action experience is to enrich the mechanics and increase the operation space, while the lawn mowing experience can maximize the thrill of building. Building growth + action + mowing, the superposition of these three dimensions makes "Endless Dreams" have a unique feeling that is difficult to obtain in most mobile games - this is also one of the reasons why more and more mobile games use meat pigeon as an entertainment mode or sub-gameplay.

In order to polish and strengthen this refreshing feeling as much as possible to be strong enough, the project team has also thought of a lot of ways. For example, when using Character Mirror Dream, your attack is to shoot lasers. However, when you trigger the Brilliant Echo, your attack will leave behind a magic mirror that automatically fires lasers, which, with some enhancements, will have the effect of freeing your hands. This kind of eclectic and inclusive thinking is really an important part of the research and development of meat pigeons.

What happens when the game makes the core gameplay strong enough in various ways? What I see is that it provides overflow potential energy for Endless Dreams, allowing the project team to develop major modes that meet different needs at a very low cost on the basis of this same framework, such as survivor like, multiplayer large map PVP.

If you like to build and mow the grass, you might as well play Survivor Like to verify the limit of your building strength; You don't like to push and develop, and it's not bad to play fair PVP. Being able to have multiple main gameplay methods with continuous gameplay and different coolness will not only improve the research and development efficiency of the project team, but also allow players to have more lasting motivation to play. Compared with other second games that don't focus so much on gameplay, this is simply the ultimate cost performance.

In addition, not only does it make players happy, but I suspect that the project team is also quite cool when they make this game......

The reason is simple, because whether it is a dream-related theme or a meat pigeon gameplay that can let go of the design of levels and mechanics, there is a lot of room to play, allowing them to cram a lot of small ideas into it. For example, there is a boss called the extreme examiner, and other people's second stages are berserk or something, but he asks the player to answer the questions, and all the answers are correct, you don't need to fight, he dies on the spot...... Similar creativity is also reflected in the design of various levels and adventures.

It is said that today's games are seriously homogeneous, but in fact, many times it is really a congenital limitation, and the acquired efficiency factor is taken into account, so that many ideas cannot be brought into play. Therefore, it is actually quite rare to see this kind of spiritual jump design in long-term products.

02

Fight the "price war",

Not by chance, but by necessity

On the basis of gameplay, "Endless Dreams" also hopes to become a cool game in the long term and payment.

In the long run, it's really hard to get cool. Many people understand that this is a pain point for meat pigeons. Even if the meat pigeon is a very replayable gameplay, if you want to do it with a double-end game system developed by multiple characters, you will have high requirements for content, gameplay updates and operation attitudes.

I'm not worried about the gameplay, as mentioned above, the foundation of the core gameplay is enough for them to expand more gameplay, and the solid framework can also iterate on new designs faster; In terms of content, although it is difficult to determine, "Endless Dreams" has said that they plan to update the content on a seasonal cycle, and said that this cycle is definitely shorter than the "other second games". From this point of view, their production capacity should not be too much of a problem. It's just that the specific performance depends on the situation in the future.

It is worth mentioning that "Endless Dreams" also links with other classic meat pigeon games and incorporates some elements. In this wave of launch, "Endless Dreams" first linked up with "Genki Knight", which has been popular for many years, and introduced the latter's characters, skills, and in-game statue mechanism.

The fresh gameplay of the cross-game also adds to the fun of the game to a certain extent. For example, if you salute different statues, you'll be able to increase the barrage effect, get enhanced attacks, or get followers to help you in several battles. This builds on the player's own builds such as echoes and artifacts, which doesn't clutter up the existing mechanics and provides a new dimension of feedback.

Some people will ask, why is it so bold that it is linked with its own competitors when it opens the server? But in fact, most meat pigeon games have a fairly open attitude towards linkage, and the cooperation method is also quite flexible. Behind this, "Endless Dream Back" also released the "Pigeons Two-Way Running Plan", planning to use tens of millions of resources to continue to find product linkage in the meat pigeon category.

This plan is really suitable for meat pigeons with long-term operations. Because if it can really be done, it may mean that "Endless Dreams" has a steady stream of new explosive points and new cool points in the field of meat pigeons......

What about the operational attitude? This is a relatively secure point. Because during the period from the test to the launch, many players can see that this project team is really persuasive. During the first two tests, Grape Jun paid attention to the fact that some KOLs posted evaluation videos, criticizing problems such as the lack of game benefits and the impact on the construction of constellations. As a result, in subsequent updates, the problems mentioned by the UPs have indeed been significantly improved.

Of course, they don't just listen to KOLs. They also replied a lot to the feedback from the community, and accumulated a lot, and continued to make major changes to various aspects such as payment, development, and levels in the optimization plan.

Some tweaks from the last optimization

Swipe up and down to see

During the last test, after some players reported payment problems and insufficient benefits, the producer directly sent a letter in the early morning of the next day to compensate, and also made a "business war declaration......

See watermark for the source

When it comes to payment, they directly coined a new word called "cool price ratio...... The meaning is not difficult to understand, anyway, it is not only cost-effective, but also makes players particularly happy. You see, it's this cool word again.

So what kind of business war is going to be fought, and how is it cool? In general, it can be summarized into three points:

The first is Krypton: they promise that the UP card pool is only 80 draws, 100% not crooked, and the resident card pool will be reduced to 60 draws; The unit price of gacha has also been reduced a bit, although it doesn't seem to be too much...... However, the increase in the shipment rate must have greatly lowered the threshold for players to obtain characters. At the same time, due to the mechanical design of the multi-character meat pigeon in "Endless Dream Echo", the more characters you have, the more reverberations and constructs you can get in the game.

The second is to reduce the liver: "Endless Dream Back" said that it will completely delete the "three-piece set of friends and merchants", that is, the size guarantee, equipment adverbial entry, and weapon pool. The orientation of this set is obvious, that is, it is to make improvements compared with the traditional cultivation mode of the second game, and reduce the difficulty and depth of cultivation. By removing these mechanics, it takes 20 days for a character to graduate with equipment in the game, and resources can be reset, allowing players to flexibly team up and experiment with more options.

The third is smashing benefits: on the basis of reducing the difficulty of character acquisition and cultivation, they added another amount and sent a batch of resources and characters. In addition to a total of 166 gacha resources, there are also many activities that send characters directly. Even if you don't count the characters obtained by drawing cards, novices can hold at least 3~5 five-star characters in the early stage of zero krypton or micro krypton.

In order to show sincerity, the project team also printed ten promises on 10g gold bills and drew them to players as "real gold promises......

I'm sure that even if they make these promises, there will still be players who will find it difficult to trust and feel that there must be some kind of wordplay or blackbox manipulation in them. After all, if they send so much, they really lose money and fight a "business war", how can they make money?

But I think that "Endless Dreams" has overhauled its business model and paid cultivation system, and fought this so-called "price war", not purely to create gimmicks, but something that must be done under this meat pigeon gameplay mechanism. In essence, its gameplay and system are far from the ordinary second game, and it is destined to be explored and adjusted in combination with its own characteristics and rhythm. If you put the template directly, it is inevitable to be sprayed - so after the third test, they immediately slashed the paid one.

For example, many players will point out that there is a core contradiction in the game itself - the meat pigeon is the art of using certainty to fight uncertainty. But in the mobile game, you let the number of constellations outside the game determine the probability of high-quality reverberation in the game, which is equivalent to making the recharge of money become certainty, how can you play this?

Realizing this, the project team quickly changed this part of the design and instead thought about how to enhance the design that had the essential pleasure of meat pigeons without contradiction. For example, the addition of a sleeping wax system that allows you to choose one of three free in the initial room and level, and a large increase in the number of echoes and whimsical artifacts obtained, etc., are all increasing the player's molding speed and building variety, thereby increasing the coolness.

From a longer-term perspective, for long-term meat pigeons, retreating is a strategy that adapts to their own characteristics - first by lowering the threshold and paying, so that players can feel the charm of the core gameplay. Only when this premise is met, will there be the capital to expand the original niche circle of meat pigeon, continue to accumulate users, and develop into a large DAU category and do it in the long run.

The most difficult first level of this "business war" is not the so-called friend businessman, but to see clearly what you are fighting for. For Endless Dreams, the essence of many changes is to serve the gameplay.

Therefore, at this time, it is actually a normal and appropriate thing to give profits and benefits. It's just that on the one hand, they chose to take this thing out as a selling point and attract the attention of a wider range of users in the form of a whole life, which is a smart thing to push the boat down. The current game promotion has to create some gimmicks for yourself, and everyone must be used to it.

From another point of view, even if the payment is cut and the characters are slammed, "Endless Dreams" must also be counted, and they will not let themselves really lose their blood to the end - in fact, as a self-developed project under Kuaishou, they have sufficient R&D financial support, so there is a solid guarantee in continuing to develop more characters, levels and gameplay, and then continue to attract more users, maintain DAU, and form a virtuous circle.

03

There will be players who will need one

A new "way of life"

The last time we talked about "Endless Dream Back", we also sighed that it is 2024, and domestic double-ended meat pigeons really need a high-quality product. But as you can see from the above analysis, it is not so easy to do.

And Kuaishou Games did show a strong determination to this matter this time. Not only in R&D and operation, but also in the marketing of the public beta. For example, offline, they launched a joint activity between Yintai & Bailian to build momentum for the game. Players can participate in missions in a total of 16 cities and 41 stores across the country and receive limited peripherals.

Online, they also released a lot of interesting content. For example, in collaboration with the well-known composer and music producer Chen Zhiyi, he created four game soundtracks about "Dreams", which were included in the first game music soundtrack album "Going to the Dream Covenant" of "Endless Dreams".

Other promotional videos related to the game also highlight the style of the whole game and strengthen the game's positioning in a clever way. For example, the TVC filmed in cooperation with the Wanhe Tianyi team and actors Kong Lianshun and Xiao Ai, the theme is a meat pigeon-style cool drama that counterattacks through one of the three buffs.

After analyzing so much, the bigger question behind it is: why does Kuaishou Games have to do this?

The core reason may be that the significance of "Endless Dreams" is not only the launch of a new product, but also the subversion of categories and product models. You know, in the meat pigeon game, except for a very small number of masterpieces and masterpieces, most of the stand-alone products are monthly throws, or even weekly throws, and players will be placed in the library to eat ash after playing for 5~30 hours. So the production team doesn't need to think too much, fun is everything.

But as a long-term operation of the double-ended game, there is quite a lot to consider. Today's long-term products, especially second-game products, have changed greatly for players, and they are no longer simply a game, but exist as a "financial product" and "lifestyle" that adapt to the rhythm of players' lives and entertainment for a long time. That's why many people are as cautious about new travel as they are about investing and getting married.

In this case, if "Endless Dreams" wants to go its own way, it must not only achieve the highest quality among the double-ended meat pigeons, but also develop a new "lifestyle" - if you are still looking forward to interesting characters, plots and gameplay, but want to change the way, and don't want to be kidnapped by the overly complicated cultivation and payment system, then I will make a concession to ensure that you don't have to work too hard to lose money to have a good time, how about it?

This is certainly a risky move, but at a time when players' weariness and antipathy towards outdated operating methods and forced people are almost at their peak, making this breakthrough is not necessarily opening up a new market.

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