Do you play Monster Hunter on your phone, or do you make Monster Hunter a mobile game?
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “game Awakening” (ID: youxixinzhi), Author: Shaukang.
On March 26, 2021, “Monster Hunter Rise” will be officially released worldwide.
The standard version of the game is priced at 408 yuan, and the deluxe version is 543 yuan. Four million copies have been sold worldwide within three days of launch. It is conservatively estimated that the revenue has exceeded 1.632 billion yuan. According to the hacker group Ragnar Locker, Capcom internally assessed that the sales of Monster Hunter: Rise would reach 9.079 million copies, which is conservatively estimated to be 3.7 billion yuan in revenue.
The previous work “Monster Hunter World (Monster Hunter World)” has sold over 16.8 million copies on all platforms, setting a record high in the history of Monster Hunter IP works and quite out of the circle.
The Monster Hunter series has become the undoubted TOP1 under the co-fighting gameplay. The out of the circle of “Monster Hunter: World” has also brought the co-fighting gameplay to a larger stage.
What is the game of fighting together?
Co-fighting gameplay already exists. “Dougui Zhuan”, “God Eater”, “Soul Sacrifice”, etc. are among the best and tried to get a piece of the Monster Hunter Bowl, and some of them have also won good Word of mouth. However, it pales in comparison to the Monster Hunter series in terms of game sales.
Previously, there weren’t too many works on the mobile terminal of Gongdou games, but in this era when mobile terminal games occupy more than 70% of the market share, the game manufacturers will naturally not let go of the business opportunities brought by this gameplay, and the mobile terminal has become Created a new battlefield for fighting games.
The following is a total mobile game collected from the game’s new knowledge:
“Combat game” is not a formal game category, and there is no precise definition in terms of gameplay. In a broad sense, “combat game” refers to “share with other characters” as a literal meaning. “Games fighting monsters”, in fact, most of the “combat games” are designed with a single-player challenge mode.
Games on the market that are labeled as “Co-Fighting Games” usually have the shadow of the Monster Hunter series. Therefore, the actual meaning of “Co-Fighting Games” is more often equivalent to “Monster Hunter”. like”.
Monster Hunter series works all follow the gameplay logic of “killing monsters—collecting materials—upgrading equipment—fighting more advanced monsters”.
The part that is different from general RPG games is the self-contained monster AI design and smooth and self-consistent action system in the series. Monsters have self-contained AI and become less rigid data. The game pays more attention to the action and interaction between the player and the monster and becomes hardcore. In addition to making the monster lifelike, the simple and rude gameplay has been qualitatively changed. In contrast, the game plot becomes less important and less important. Choose to simplify.
Monsters in Monster Hunter will react differently according to their state, distance and even their environment
In co-fighting games, players are often required to fight against monsters with other characters. The monsters will be deliberately designed to be much stronger than the characters manipulated by the player, resulting in asymmetry in strength, and there is considerable difficulty in the challenge, so players are required To improve oneself while understanding the opponent, it is often difficult to complete the task by acting alone, so the importance of teamwork under the co-fighting game is naturally self-evident.
This is also the same as the social design of most mobile games, and when the difficulty is magnified and a single powerful individual can affect the degree of completion of the task in a co-fighting game, players are more likely to have a sense of dependence.
Due to the radiation of IP such as Monster Hunter, God Eater, and Duguizhuan, the popularity of fighting games has never faded on the host platform. On the mobile side, there are far fewer games of this type. How to match this hardcore gameplay with the mobile terminal and seize the advantage on this track has become the goal pursued by manufacturers.
Mobile co-combatants
“Hunting Soul Awakening”
“Hunter Awakens” began to log on to iOS, Android and PC on January 18, 2018. The time node is just before the release date of “Monster Hunter: World” console platform (January 26, 2018) A few days.
This Netease self-developed co-fighting game can also smell the strong flavor of Monster Hunter from the name. Since then, there is another co-fighting game “Dougui Zhuan”.
In terms of monster design, the familiar monster parts destruction, roaring, and falling to the ground can also be experienced in “Soul Hunter Awakening”, and even more boldly destroying parts with more eye-stimulating “The “severed limbs” form, and equipped with a long inaction control time, the entry barrier of the game is much lower than that of Monster Hunter.
Monster Hunter series works have the characteristics of “strong action, weak plot”, and the MMORPG game attribute of “Hunter Awakens” is relatively strong, and there is a considerable amount of text to explain the background of the game and the plot setting; the guild in MMORPG , Trading, automatic wayfinding, a sweep and other elements are the same in “Hunting Awakening”.
In terms of the mechanism of character weapons, “Soul Hunter Awakens” abandons the strong and heavy texture of the weapons in the Monster Hunter series, and adopts a more brisk action design and interactive experience, and the moves are different from the strange hunting. The simplification of this derivative action adopts the one-key release mode of common skills in MMORPG.
In addition to the above changes, “Soul Hunter Awakens” also independently designed a more gorgeous and complex special weapon “Shadow Sickle”, and added a soul hunting system for players to destroy designated parts of monsters and restore blood. And other auxiliary effects, while making a difference from the Monster Hunter series, the game experience is also more biased towards MMORPG.
“Soul Hunting Awakening” mainly reflects the “co-fighting” through team formation and a partner system. In the partner system, up to 3 partners can be selected to play at the same time. The method of acquiring and developing partners adopts the common favorability system in MMORPG. , And the bonuses of partners releasing skills on the field, attracting monster hatred and fetters can provide players with more critical help, so the development of partners is also a very important part.
In order to adapt to the mobile terminal operation and fast-paced game experience, the monster blood volume of “Hunter Awakens”It becomes visible and the total amount is reduced. A battle usually takes only 5 minutes to solve, and the action system and AI logic are relatively simple and easy to understand. With the powerful auxiliary effect of the partner system, it is difficult to experience in “Soul Hunter Awakening” The hearty after defeating the strong enemy.
Actively lowering the threshold is certainly beneficial to attract more players to try, but it also makes players no longer need to cooperate with other players to pass the level. The buddy system also reduces the need for cooperation between players. The fast-paced game tone has become a team With a less efficient game strategy, “Soul Hunter Awakening” under the MMORPG framework is more biased towards single-player games.
“Hunter Awakening” is currently on the domestic iOS game best-selling list and still enters the TOP100 level from time to time. It can be seen that the game still maintains a certain vitality in China, but it is a different scene overseas.
“Rangers of Oblivion (“Soul Hunter Awakening” Overseas Version)” is published by Youzu Network. The game will officially stop operating in the European and American markets on March 31, 2021.
“Hunting Moment”
Monster hunter-like games are mostly realistic style, while “Hunting Moment” represented by Station B uses a two-dimensional style.
“Hunting Moment” was promoted on its homepage at station B during the initial test, and a large number of UP hosts uploaded videos recorded during the test. At present, “Hunting Moments” has more than 1 million video views under the official account of Station B.
The gameplay still follows the monster hunter-style gameplay cycle of “demolition, collect materials—make equipment to improve yourself—challenging monsters of higher difficulty”. The gameplay is based on team battles. Elements such as damage to parts, ecological habits, and weapon styles are all available.
In the combat experience, “Hunting Time” has returned to the monster hunter-style “turn-based” game, and the duration of the battle has been extended to 5-10 minutes, and the derivation of actions is relatively closer to monsters. The hunter’s system, so “Hunting Moment” was labeled “Monster Hunter like”.
The character actions and weapon systems in the game’s official promotional video are even more the same as those of Monster Hunter. For a while, there was intense discussion among players on major game forums around the argument that “the game is plagiarizing Monster Hunter”. Fifteen days after the release of the PV, the official issued an announcement stating that “all controversial actions should be deleted” and “such as Tang sword, Han spear, Qin crossbow and other characteristic weapons representing different dynasties of China” were added.
Currently, the game has 450,000 appointments on taptap, and the score is also at a high 8.7 points. The official also revealed that the game will be publicly tested in 2021.
《Chaohua Armor》
There are not only monster hunter-like games under the “Co-Fighting Game” tag. Giant Network’s two-dimensional TPS (third-person shooter) co-fighting mobile game “Chaohua Armor” is an example.
This game has already attracted the attention of the industry even before it goes online. In 2018, it won the Best Sci-Fi Concept Character Design Award at the China Science Fiction Conference. Comics and novels around the game IP have been launched on the Giant Network. Planning shows the degree of importance attached to the project.
The co-fighting method of this game is relatively weak.
First of all, in terms of monster design, “Chaohua Armor” does not have a relatively complicated system, and the difficulty is relatively simple, so it is not a monster hunter-like game.
The consequence derived from this is the embarrassing position of team play. The purpose of teaming against monsters has been reduced from “complete the challenge” to “improve efficiency.”
However, after the game was tested, the performance did not meet the expectations of Giant Network. In November 2020, Giant Network stated that the game will not enter commercial operations.
Although “Chaohua Armor” was not officially launched in the end, the game world view setting and character design of the game have a very good foundation, and TPS is used as the main content of the fighting game, plus the two-dimensional game commonThe development of the card, the breakthrough in innovation is worthy of being studied by latecomers.
“Yeager”
“Yeager” is a fighting and hunting game with an alien world as the game background. It is made with Unity 3D engine, and the rendering and motion feedback are of high quality. The game has been tested on the overseas App Store.
This game has the same elements as Monster Hunter, such as part destruction, weapon action derivation, and material collection and creation. Its high-definition quality graphics and seamless large map design, plus the monster action design has the monster hunter The shadow of “Monster Hunter: World” can’t help but associate it with “Monster Hunter: World”.
In the second test, this game opened a total of 4 weapons for players to choose from, similar to the Tachi, Sledgehammer, Double Sword and Light Crossbow in Monster Hunter. Under the world view of the alien world, the game’s character equipment and environment have partial sci-fi designs: such as weapons similar to particle cannons and floating islands.
The game manufacturer is marked as Patrick Er on TapTap. However, the new knowledge of the game conducted an investigation based on the account name of the game on the App Store, and “Yeager” is suspected to be a product of IGG. In the ACT project recruitment information disclosed by IGG, there are also corresponding words such as “U3D”, “3A”, “ARPG”, “MMORPG”, and in the comment area of the related video of “Yeager” at station B, some users also said that the game is working. It is the ACT project of IGG.
Aside from the ownership of the game, the quality of the game shown in the test of “Yeager” is also of a high level, which is different from the seamless large map design of other mobile games. It is undoubtedly also a mobile game. A strong competitor in China.
“League of Valhalla”
The MMORPG co-fighting mobile game “League of Valhalla” based on Norse mythology is developed by Youzu.
The game opened its first test on Google Play in Hong Kong on March 26, 2020, and has opened three beta tests in one year. There is no news of logging on to the iOS system.
In addition to the PVE gameplay, the game also provides 100 v 100, 3v 3, 1 v 1 PVP mode, and the game’s fighting style is also biased towards the simpler style of MMORPG rather than the derivation of strange hunting moves.
Conclusion
Under the influence of the Monster Hunter series of games, all co-fighting games will inevitably be compared with them. Breaking through barriers or pursuing a replica of mobile experience is the way to co-fight mobile games.
Games on the market, such as “The Original God”, also have a similar gameplay in the game. Compared with the design of a separate game for the fight, it is better to embed it in the existing game design.
Through the above games, it can be found that the “combat” gameplay is currently on the market with MMORPG as the carrier. When will there be a benchmark fighting game on the mobile terminal, it may take a long time.
In fact, Capcom has also launched “Monster Hunter: Riders” on the mobile terminal. This game is not a co-fighting game, but a two-dimensional turn-based card development game similar to Pokémon. How to use it on the mobile terminal Launching a fighting game, I am afraid that even the developers of Monster Hunter have no answer.