Game development begins with destroying Girls' Frontline.

"Our IP is here, the gameplay is consistent, the benefits are good, and there are favorite characters available, which is enough to attract core players and ultimately create a siphon effect."

According to Hu Xu and others, MOBA is MOBA, and the core selling point of the All-Star event is not the MOBA gameplay, but the characters and skins.

But Lin Li didn't think so.

"Don't think that Tencent's Honor of Kings succeeded just because of Tencent's social media promotion..."

Leaving aside distribution channels and League of Legends for now.

It's Honor of Kings after several years of refinement.

They also possess technical expertise in MOBA games, especially mobile MOBA games.

In this respect, Xinghuo has absolutely no experience.

The demo created by Hu Xu and others is playable, but it falls short in various details.

They want to use IP to support the number of players.

The final product will probably just be a larger version of "Onmyoji Arena".

However, while "Onmyoji Arena" is not exactly a hit, it is certainly not popular, and it has not had any impact on Honor of Kings.

NetEase later created Extraordinary Ones, a game with a comic book style, hoping to enter the MOBA market, but it also failed.

This is still the case even though NetEase has some experience in MOBA development.

For Xinghuo, a complete novice to MOBA games.

They want to use their IP to compete with Tencent.

They could very well get their heads smashed and bleed.

Moreover, after all that effort, all I ended up doing was creating a 2D version of Honor of Kings?

In Lin Li's words.

"This is so unlike Spark."

Chapter 425? I'm a married son?

After the demo test at the end of last year.

The project thus entered a semi-stagnant state.

Lin Li still had Hu Xu and others set up a project team, but the cost investment was not high and the expansion of personnel was extremely cautious. It was more like a technology reserve than a project initiation.

But now.

Tencent has brought out Crossing Void and is frantically trying to convert its League of Legends players.

They also promoted themselves aggressively, using the "anime all-star" concept as a selling point, making it seem like a genuine event.

Lin Li then came up with this DEMO.

From a purely hedging perspective, this demo might not be suitable. However, if the other party is recruiting new League of Legends players, then this demo is perfect.

I made up my mind.

this time.

It's not a question of whether or not to do it, but a necessity to do it.

Lin Li had to dedicate his time to this project.

Ever since.

The next day, Lin Li went to Hu Xu's project team and pulled them into working overtime.

Lin Li's sudden request to work overtime.

Hu Xu was so happy he almost jumped for joy, and even brought over his cot.

This is the kind of treatment only the production team of the legendary "baby girl" series, Battlefront Girls, gets!

~~~

"Our primary goal is to create a playable demo. We don't need many heroes, just something that can run on PC."

"The closed beta test for Crossing Void will start at the end of June, which means we have two months left."

"Time was tight, but it was more than enough."

Two months is indeed a short time, but Hu Xu did some preliminary work, and most importantly, there are already 16 heroes and the map has been optimized for the first time.

All Lin Li needs to do is finalize the gameplay.

That's why Lin Li said there was plenty of time.

As long as the rules of the game can be decided.

~~~

After deciding to create an All-Star MOBA.

Lin Li's first step was to deconstruct it.

The MOBA genre is quite unique. Since the emergence of DOTA, the gameplay has become very fixed over the years.

But overall.

The history of MOBA games is a process of continuously lowering the barrier to entry.

From DOTA to League of Legends, and then to Honor of Kings.

Every time the number of players increases, the barrier to entry decreases.

With Honor of Kings, the barrier to entry has been lowered to almost nothing.

If it goes any lower, it won't be called MOBA anymore.

Why is Honor of Kings so popular?

It's because it lowered the barrier to entry, but still retained the core of MOBA games, while also keeping some heroes that require skill to play.

Therefore, continuing to lower the threshold is not a viable option.

Since we can't go in this direction, we can go in another direction.

Over the years, there have actually been many innovative MOBA games.

For example, Vainglory, or Battlerite, a 3V3 MOBA game that was all the rage last year, in 2017.

However, among so many MOBA games...

It truly impacted traditional MOBAs, such as League of Legends.

Aside from DOTA2, which is even more traditional than League of Legends.

That leaves Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm.

This 2015 game once gave many people a glimpse of what MOBA 2.0 would look like.

From the novel and rich map mechanics to the heroes that everyone is familiar with, to the level of detail in the graphics, team battles, gameplay, number of skills, and dual ultimate abilities.

Anyone who has seen a gameplay video of Heroes of the Storm will sincerely shout this.

"The storm is about to ignite"

Unfortunately, the prediction that Heroes of the Storm would become a hit never came true, even before the game shut down.

However, in Lin Li's view...

Although the storm died, it did not die in vain.

In Lin Li's view.

The storm died because it was too radical.

Not only were the map mechanics changed, but equipment was also removed and a team-wide experience system was added.

In particular, a team-wide experience system was introduced.

This radical change clashes with the core gameplay of MOBAs.

The introduction of the team experience system is intended to enhance team combat capabilities.

However, the overemphasis on team output ultimately became one of the key reasons why Heroes of the Storm never became popular.

In hindsight, MOBA games, while seemingly emphasizing teamwork, are actually typical individual hero games in casual matches.

Playing against four opponents and crushing them from behind is often more satisfying than playing with an advantage.

Furthermore, Heroes of the Storm's team-shared experience system also eliminates many aspects of traditional MOBA game operations, such as individual development, economic curves, and item build order.

In League of Legends.

If you have two or three skilled teammates in a game, the game is basically won.

Even encountering someone who doesn't know how to play.

As long as your teammates don't feed as much as the enemy team, or if the enemy team also has noobs who keep feeding, then you can still win.

But Heroes of the Storm is different.

Heroes of the Storm is a game where even four top players can be ruined by just one bad teammate.

it is good.

Then your game is basically over.

why?

It's very simple: in League of Legends, if an inexperienced player dies, they lose their own economy.

In Heroes of the Storm, if a player who doesn't know how to play dies, the entire team loses economy.

This is a rather absurd concept when you think about it.

It's roughly the same as in League of Legends or Honor of Kings, where if one teammate dies, the entire team loses death coins.

Imagine you're doing well in lane, but the jungler keeps dying, and you watch as your gold, which you've just started to accumulate, is all gone because of the jungler's deaths.

And more importantly.

If one of your teammates dies, the enemy team gets a gold bonus for everyone!

In other words.

Even if you're doing well in lane, if one lane collapses, the person you're laning against becomes stronger.

What the hell is this?

and so.

In Heroes of the Storm, one or two early team wipes can snowball into a major problem.

Moreover, this snowball effect is very difficult to reverse through individual efforts.

Then.

Does that mean Heroes of the Storm is completely useless?

Nor is it.

In fact, Heroes of the Storm brought a lot of innovation to MOBA games, but due to its own failure, this approach was completely rejected.

just now.

Lin Li's first step was to work with Hu Xu to disassemble Heroes of the Storm.

On the one hand, they dissected the various innovations of Heroes of the Storm, and on the other hand, they mobilized Spark's market research department to begin covering the Heroes of the Storm community.

Collect questionnaires.

Before these questionnaires are collected.

Lin Li first adopted the map mechanics, a system that received high praise in Heroes of the Storm.

"Let's try combining iconic anime scenes with map mechanics, and then combine that with the traditional MOBA economic system, and see if it works."

With a clear direction, a new demo was created in just one week.

This map uses the outskirts of Fuyuki City as its setting.

The map still uses the traditional top, middle, and bottom routes.