Are domestically-produced card games fun?
This was a matter of opinion, as different players had different tastes.
Many people criticized card games for being poorly made, with monotonous playstyles and repetitive content. Indeed, this was the truth.
But it made money.
Making money meant that the players recognized it.
Why did the players recognize it? Because the players thought it was fun.
This was a very strange phenomenon. The players were scolding it while paying for it.
Why could card games make money? What was fun about it?
This was a rather vague question. If Chen Mo were to write a thesis on the core of card games, it would probably take tens of thousands of words.
To put it simply, there were three main reasons why Chinese card games were fun.
The first was the fun of collecting cards and raising them.
This was based on the players' recognition of the card characters.
There was once a mobile game company that made a One Piece themed card game (a complete remake of I Am MT). A tycoon went into the game and spent a few thousand RMB just to get a Hawkeye Mihawk.
There was also a nameless Three Kingdoms card game that was still in beta. A tycoon went into the game and spent five thousand RMB just to get a Zhuge Liang. In the end, the game didn't even have a general named Zhuge Liang.
In the end, the game company worked overtime to make Zhuge Liang.
Just like in I Am MT, many players would farm dungeons like it was their daily routine, collecting purple card shards, or spending a lot of money on ten draws, all in order to get the card they wanted.
The game designer would also purposely adjust the card's abilities to match the story (or adjust it according to the popularity of the character). This was all to cultivate the players' recognition of the card characters.
Only by establishing this sense of recognition would the card become valuable and players would be willing to fork out money to buy it.
Once the value system of the cards was established, it would mean that there was a difference between different cards. The players' desire to collect and raise cards would be satisfied, and they would feel that the money was well spent.
Therefore, the key to making money in card games was to establish a value system that the players could recognize. Just like collecting stamps, constantly selling new cards to the players.
After the players got the card they wanted, in order to make the card stronger, they would continue to spend money to level it up, increase its stars, increase its abilities, etc. Every time the card leveled up, the players could feel their growth, which made him feel that the money was not spent in vain.
This was a manifestation of the "numerical stimulation" that was mentioned before.
This was the core joy of card games. It was a very mature and repeatable model, which was why there were so many mobile card games in his previous life.
Secondly, it was the fun of figuring out the line-up and creating battle strategies.
The combat system of card games seemed simple, but it was actually quite rich. In I Am MT, every card had three abilities: normal attack, skill attack, and passive. In terms of character design, World of Warcraft's combat system was used as a blueprint, and each character had different skills.
Similarly, there were AoE skills such as Blizzard (full screen attack), Whirlwind (front row of three horizontal units), Chain Lightning (three random units), Penetrating Shot (two vertical units), and so on.
Skill damage was divided into magic, physical, single, and group damage.
The same principle applied to healing skills. There were single healers and group healers.
Apart from that, there were damage reduction, resurrection, damage over time, and many other combat abilities. Basically, there were ways to force any skill you could think of into the combat system of the card game.
In addition to that, there were complex factors such as card positioning, attack order, attribute counters, and party leader skills, making the combat system of card games much more playable.
Of course, this combat system couldn't be compared to a client-side game, but it was more than enough for mobile gamers.
As long as the packaging of this combat system was changed, it could perfectly cover most worldviews, such as One Piece, Naruto, anime, or wuxia novels.
There was a cyclical relationship between the various combat abilities. For example, single healer countered instant kill, instant kill countered group healer, group healer countered area of effect damage, and so on. If players really wanted to find the five most powerful cards out of dozens of cards, it would take a long time of trial and error.
This was because the acquisition of rare cards was strictly controlled. Players either had to spend money or spend time. Testing out the actual strength of each card required a lot of investment.
For players, this process was also fun and filled with a sense of accomplishment. Therefore, the combat system of card games was perfectly compatible with the cultivation system of cards. As an enduring classic combat system, it was enough for players to play for 3-5 years without getting sick of it.
Third was marketing strategy and numerical stimulation.
This was a very broad range of content, such as operational activities (seven days of login, check-in, growth funds, etc.), daily benefits (maintenance, diamonds, stamina, online rewards, etc.), early numerical structure …
Of course, this content wasn't exclusive to card games. It was basically the standard for all domestic mobile games. It was also widely used in other genres such as SLG, FPS, and so on.
However, its earliest origin was probably in web-based games, mobile card games, and finally in all domestic mobile games.
Of course, this "Pavlovian" numerical stimulation was criticized by countless players and game reviewers. But even so, no mobile game company dared to not do this.
Why? Because it was simple and effective. Once it was removed, the game's statistics and income would drop significantly.
This was how the numerical stimulation system worked.
First, the game had to be free to attract as many players as possible into the game. These people might not even have the intention to spend money. That's fine, they could just enter first.
After entering, there would be a very detailed guide for new players so that the players could quickly experience the core fun and playstyle of the game. At the same time, there wouldn't be any numerical difficulty so that the players could have a smooth journey.
This was the same logic as the first 300,000 words of online literature being free. Experience first, pay second. Experience first, then pay. If you're not satisfied, you won't pay.
However, this situation wouldn't last long. At most a week, at least three days. Players were bound to encounter some setbacks.
In this type of game, players who paid up and players who didn't were naturally not equal. In order to make players pay, there had to be a bottleneck.
The so-called bottleneck was to make players stuck, causing them to encounter setbacks so that they could pay up to buy combat power and continue to challenge higher levels.
But this created a problem. If a player was unwilling to spend money and encountered a bottleneck, what would happen? There was a high chance that he would give up on the game and stop playing.
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