Unconsciously, APEX Heroes has reached its fifth year. At this stage, a multiplayer online game is the time to test the long-term operation level.
The initial novelty of players has passed, and new content and interesting points are needed to maintain enthusiasm. But at the same time, most players are already familiar with the game's playing method and strategic rhythm, and it is difficult to make too big changes.
How to bring players a richer game experience while preserving the essence of the game, and how to improve environmental issues such as matching mechanism, is a big test for the game development team.
This is exactly the plan of APEX Heroes in its 20th season. Before the official release of the new season, Travel Research Agency was invited to the headquarters of Rebirth Studio in Los Angeles to experience the new major changes in the new season in advance, and also had some in-depth exchanges with developers.
I've been here The S20 season is called "Breakout", which points out the ambitions and goals of this season. The new season did not launch new heroes according to the convention, but focused on the improvement of the game mechanism.
The most intuitive and important improvement is the introduction of a new "hero upgrade" system. This system includes both skill upgrading and armor upgrading, which has brought great changes to the fighting and exploration experience of the game.
In simple terms, in a single game, the hero operated by the player was born at Level 1, and can be upgraded by obtaining EVO experience points through combat and exploration, up to Level 4. At Level 2 and Level 3, players will get two opportunities to evolve their skills, and each evolution has two directions of talent to choose from.
Some of these talents are very simple and crude, which is to increase the damage and range of skills and reduce the CD. Some of them are deeply bound with the play method to improve the possibility of more strategies.
For example, Power Boy, the level 2 upgrade is relatively simple. You can choose to lose less blood when releasing Q skill, or increase your explosive damage. But when it comes to Level 3, you can choose one of two ways to jump, or place one more springboard. It's not hard to imagine how annoying it can be to play with a motivated boy and swallow back in mid air.
Bangalore can choose to upgrade automatic marker to trigger passive enemies at level 3, or automatically regenerate blood in smoke bombs, which is also a strong evolution. The upgrade of Lifeline's big move can even provide a self-help revival. All heroes have 100 new skill talent combinations, so routine inventors have to play.
At the same time, the armor/shield system in the game is also fully bound to the player's level, and is automatically upgraded in the order of white blue purple orange. Only by accumulating enough experience can you obtain advanced armor. The manufacturing mechanism of the game has also been adjusted. Now only shield batteries and blood packs can be produced.
It is easy to see that the key point of these improvements is to encourage players to fight more. Only when you take the initiative to fight and seek to kill, can you quickly upgrade your skills and improve the strength of your shield. If you use the corner squatting game to the end, you can only rely on the whiteboard shield and whiteboard skills to compete, which will be at a very big disadvantage. Two guarantees and one, the play method of contributing equipment to the thigh. Due to the existence of shield upgrade, it is much less meaningful. Everyone should try to play with damage and value.
Vegetable chicken should also fight hard Our demo lasted 5-6 hours. Although the number of players in a single game is limited to 15, which does not represent the actual room situation of the game, the direct and rough rhythm of the game can also be clearly felt.
After the second half of the game, we have basically understood that the team that wants to eat chicken should consider the snowball strategy at the beginning, take the initiative to seek advantageous battles, and also find ways to limit the development of other powerful teams. Although the squads can easily hide in the final circle by taking advantage of the empty map, they lose half of their HP under the ideal condition of the same weapon level, and it is difficult to effectively pull with the developed teams in close combat.
I can't fight to survive in the future The changes that skill talents bring to combat are also obvious. Some blood exchanges that could be fought down hard would be very uneconomical if the opponent had the talent to increase injuries. Some skill talents increase the number of releases. If you don't pay attention to getting more hits when pulling, it's also very annoying. However, the trial time is limited after all. How these skills can be combined and upgraded, and whether they can form a new routine to turn over more unknown heroes, will be known after the season goes online.
Another important adjustment is the return of the ranking mechanism to the previous RP/rank system. At the same time, all the past points were cleared, and everyone started again from Bronze 4.
In recent seasons, although players have paid high attention to and evaluated the operation of the APEX Hero E-sports League, the mass soil of the game competition - qualifying match has not been particularly satisfactory to players. This is certainly not the difficulty of APEX Heroes. All online competitive games will encounter similar problems more or less. It is difficult to tell which side players should prefer in terms of fun, fairness and matching speed. It is even more difficult to take all three into consideration. If players are not careful, they will feel that they are being targeted by the system and are being forced to improve or reduce the winning rate.
After experiments in the past few seasons, Rebirth Studio may finally feel that tinkering is useless. If you want to fundamentally improve the game experience of players, you can only push back and start again. So in S20, RP rank mechanism has returned, MMR hidden points have been canceled, and players will have priority in matching with rivals in the same rank and RP.
According to the development team, the main purpose of this approach is to restore players' confidence in the ranking and matching mechanism first, and then make adjustments on a good basis, so that players will have a better experience.
In addition to two major changes, S20 also brought a new map called Thunder Challenge Arena. This map is suitable for the faster mixed mode, and increases the stand audience who will interact with players. If the player plays a highlight performance, the audience in the stands will cheer and shout. The hybrid mode was originally ignited and fired at each other as soon as it landed, and it was really a bit like the "arena" in the original setting of APEX, with the audience shouting from wave to wave.
Focusing on the change of mechanism, including the production and balance of hundreds of hero talents, S20 didn't update new heroes, but Rebirth Studio took us to visit the office area and EA's moving capture space in Los Angeles.
In the garage, we can also see the painting of Titan Fall 2. When we arrive at the office, it is basically the main space of APEX. Heroes' standing cards are everywhere, and the walls are also covered with the works created by the players.
The Rebirth Studio is basically in a state of collective telecommuting. The office is not too large, but except for a few team leaders who are resident in the office, people usually come to make an appointment to occupy the office area only when meeting or group face-to-face discussion is required. Rebirth feels that the working condition of remote collaboration is very good, and it is also convenient to attract international talents, so it has not required mandatory work.
EA's motion capture studio in Los Angeles is different. Two huge factory areas are responsible for the development of several games. The ground is covered with various auxiliary lines with adhesive tape, and there is an APEX loading interface area marked with blue adhesive tape.
There is also a special scanning/face capture area at the back. We also saw a newly developed photographic scanning system in advance. This kind of system is composed of hundreds of cameras, which can directly generate 3D models from photos with one click, and the scanning efficiency is very high.
Although the technology is not too new, and we have seen similar systems in many other developers, EA is a new system with amazing size and structure. However, it's a pity that we won't be allowed to take photos, so we can't show it to everyone.
Moy Parra, animation director of APEX team, Ryan Wade, the R&D manager of EA, and others introduced the secret behind some APEX heroes to the media. For example, Watson was actually the first character to have his own actors. Previously, characters used general data to process facial expressions. However, the motion capture of Chuji is the most difficult. The unique temperament of this hero is reflected by the combination of the motion capture data of seven actors.
Valkiri is also a hero who impressed the developers. Her actions put forward high requirements for the combination of motion capture and manual animation. The development team thought a lot of ways to make the hero look soulful.
Due to the high accuracy of the motion capture camera, actors must immerse themselves in the role. A slight deviation will lead to the collected data looking stiff or dramatic. Wearing tights specially designed for moving capture is even more difficult. Therefore, in addition to solving technical problems, the animation director should also try every way to make the actors enter the state, whether it is props, action design, or warm-up before the official commencement, every link should be designed in place.
At the end of the two-day event, we had the opportunity to have a conversation with Monica Dinsmore, the head of the global e-sports brand of APEX Heroes. Last year APEX opened the Chinese competition area, and the Chinese team was invited to participate in the ALGS in London as a wild card, and entered the finals, winning the seventh place in the world.
Monica was surprised by the results of the Chinese team and was also moved by the atmosphere of Chinese fans. She told us, The competition of APEX in China is still advancing, and she hopes to hold more competitions and activities. In the long run, the player community is crucial to the success of the E-sports event. She also sent her best wishes to Chinese players and hoped that more players could participate in the APEX e-Sports League and participate in the competition on behalf of the Chinese division.
In the fifth year, APEX Hero has become one of the representative works of chicken eating games. The design of the heroic team still has a unique interest, and e-sports events are booming. In view of some problems in the middle of the game, the rebirth studio pressed the rebirth button. It is believed that this team, which has created countless FPS legends, can take this game into the next generation.
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