453. This is human nature

Now there is a general discussion on the situation of the new DOTA. There are already clear plans for the release time of the new DOTA in the future and the subsequent suspension of the old DOTA updates, but it is still a bit short of Cao Yang.

"The next thing we want to discuss is what activities we will offer and benefits we will give out after the new DOTA is launched." Cao Yang said.

The question Cao Yang asked was to put it bluntly how to achieve a very good publicity effect in the early stages of the launch of the new DOTA, so that more players can be attracted.

This issue is something that each game has to be discussed repeatedly before it is launched. In addition to the quality of the product, publicity strategies are becoming increasingly important.

Although Bomi now has many publicity channels and has a lot of industry voice, the publicity activities when the game is launched are still unscathing.

"We are planning to find some excellent anchors to live the game, and will also provide a one-month benefit for beginners when players go online.

This will contain a lot of hero skins and decorative props in the game." Meng Xiao replied.

In fact, they have been discussing these for a long time and have held many meetings internally, so Meng Xiao's brain reacted very quickly and quickly responded.

"By the way, we have a group of new heroes, and we are under bug acceptance now. It depends on which ones to release them as a publicity stunt." Meng Xiao continued to add.

OK.

Cao Yang nodded.

DOTA is no longer a new game. As a competitive game with a large audience around the world, if the new DOTA does not have enough new content to attract old players after it is launched, there will be certain risks.

This is equivalent to the reason why the AIR game platform needed to bind to the new expansion pack of Warcraft 3 when it was launched in Omeg area. If there were not enough content updates and major changes, it would arouse dissatisfaction among players.

Only higher than the player's expectations are valid.

One of the more typical negative examples is the remake of War3 in the previous life. As a reset version, not only does the artistic effect not reach the level of the old version more than 10 years ago, but also has no new content. It can be said that there is no sincerity at all.

At that time, the old players of war3 were still looking forward to this reset version, but when it was actually released, everyone was really splashed with cold water when they entered the game.

In marketing, this time the refrigeration is really an extremely failure, because when you give players enough expectations, the formal product must be higher than this expectation, otherwise you will face a double collapse of reputation and income.

Although Cao Yang is full of confidence in the picture and quality of the new DOTA game, he still hopes to do the details well and exceed players' expectations in all aspects.

"In this way, you can prepare first and sort out all the content that can be commercialized now for delivery. Then we book a time to have a meeting together the day after tomorrow." Cao Yang said.

...

A few days later, the personnel of the dota project team sorted out the relevant delivery information and brought Boss Cao to a meeting together.

The big framework for the launch of the new dota has been sorted out before. Now the most important thing is to solve the specific delivery content when it is launched.

PPT is played in the conference room, and there are many new dota heroes and related skins in the picture.

"We have already made about 26 hero skins, and then the new heroes that can be launched now include Thrall, Airplane, Poison Dog and Elf."

Meng Xiao explained one by one what the new hero’s skills are and what positioning each new hero has.

In fact, without having to say it carefully, Boss Cao is already clear about it.

The designs of these heroes are exactly the same as those in their previous lives. It can only be said that if Cao Yang did not intervene too much, Bingfrog's thinking would be quite consistent with his previous lives.

In dota history, 6.69 is definitely a very important new version, in which the Thrall, Aircraft, Poison Dog and Elf take over Heroes were launched.

In particular, the Elf also triggered a wave of new tactics of global flow at that time, injecting fresh blood into the entire Dota game, and also caused many tactical and strategic changes, which increased the diversity and richness of the game to a very high level.

The Sar, Aircraft and Poison Dogs in this version later became very mainstream popular heroes. Until the 2020 Dota-related competition, their appearance frequency was also very high.

These heroes can be said to be very powerful and have a high effect on the team.

When seeing these heroes, Cao Yang's mouth rose slightly. Is this wave still unstable?

It is obvious that these heroes will bring a brand new experience, and the old version of Dota will no longer be updated, so many players will definitely come in.

"This time we are planning to launch these heroes in the first month of the upcoming new dota at the rate of one new hero a week." Meng Xiao explained, "I believe that many old dota players will be attracted by heroes at that time, at least they can earn gimmicks in the early stage."

"Yes." Cao Yang nodded, agreeing with Meng Xiao's statement.

In fact, after entering the Internet era, gimmicks and publicity have become more and more important, especially for such competitive games that rely on the number of users. The initial recruitment of new products was extremely critical. It can be said that the first month before was like a war, which determined the success or failure of the future.

This is actually a relatively fast launch speed, but in the early stage of the game operation, it is necessary to start with a new hero every week in the first month.

Then proceed at the speed of launching a new hero every few months.

Continuous updates, freshness and tactical changes brought by new heroes have attracted more attention from players than update skins.

"This is how we designed the skin," Meng Xiao showed off more than 20 sets of skins that have been made now. "These skins are all brand new designs, such as Zeus's Thunder New Skin."

In the picture, the new skin of the hero Zeus is very different from the King of Hills in the old dota. He is no longer a dwarf, but a mythical image with eight-pack abs and two blue lights shot out from his eyes. This is more in line with the skill setting of this character, but it is quite different from the original dota image.

As a new skin, it is necessary to sell money with differences, and Cao Yang knows this very well.

Although everyone wanted to keep the overall style of the game unified when they started playing games, they would eventually find that there are all kinds of skins.

Even games like League of Legends with some Western fantasy worldview, various high-tech skins will appear later.

The same is true for the Peace Elite. At the beginning, it emphasizes realistic combat shooting styles, and there are Gothic, cyberpunk suits, and retro fairy tale suits.

Players actually don’t care whether these skins match the original game world view. The most important thing is that they look good and cool, which makes them feel good, and then they can also take them out to show off and show off to other friends.

Personalization and fashion are the first priority.

...

The meeting lasted almost 4 hours, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Midway through, Cao Yang also asked the young secretary to help order a lunch box for everyone in the conference room.

As the entire meeting is approaching, Meng Xiao also demonstrated the contents of the current new DOTA game, and Cao Yang has a more in-depth understanding of it.

New heroes, new skins, new matches.

The DOTA project team is also preparing to find some professional teams to play exhibition matches when the new DOTA is released.

At the same time, we will also cooperate with the anchors of the live broadcast platform to conduct DOTA's game live broadcast. Now we have negotiated with Station A and have found several more famous anchors. At that time, we can take the water friends to compete in the water friends competition, or organize small competitions on Station A's own platform.

Of course, Bomi Company wants to give money as sponsorship.

Finally, everyone discussed that in addition to the new hero being opened, there are also several new skins that need to be planned to be released in the first month of the novice. The purpose is to be able to be active and retained, so that more players can stay, rather than return to the original old dota game.

And for new players, this will be a brand new multiplayer competition type game that they have never experienced before.

MOBA games bring cooperation and confrontation between people to the extreme. If you shrink to a relatively small-scale multi-player confrontation, it will appear to be a bit strategic and more, and it will become chaotic. It just so happens that the 5v5 mode can bring players an extraordinary gaming experience.

As long as you can get started, Cao Yang will be confident that he can keep players with the fun of the game itself.

"I'm not very worried about newbies now..."

Cao Yang sat on the chair, holding his chin with his hands and thinking silently.

I always feel like something is missing.

Everyone turned their heads and focused their eyes on Boss Cao, silently waiting for what he wanted to say later.

...

"After doing these, do you think you will come to play our games?" Cao Yang suddenly asked Meng Xiao in Taiqing's head.

Meng Xiao was confused when he was suddenly asked.

He was stunned for a moment and quickly replied, "Yes, our game is so good-looking. It's very high-quality, and I want to play it for the sake of new heroes and skins."

Cao Yang smiled but said nothing.

In fact, making games is a very difficult thing. If you don’t like your own games, it will be difficult for you to continue and do it well.

But whether planning can represent players is another unknown.

The best situation is that you are the core user of the game, and the things you do will not go astray.

But when you are doing game design, you will use some professional game production thinking to more or less consider various numerical architectures and system architectures...

These will always leave a certain distance between you and the player.

There is a top-level planner in the world. They can hypnotize themselves after making the game, let themselves forget the details of the game they have made, turn themselves into a piece of paper, and experience the game from the perspective of a pure player.

This kind of top planner Cao Yang encountered one in his previous life, and he was the main project planner when he was in the Perfect World.

This can be said to be a talent. The person can choose to forget the next day after designing the game, so you will find that he can always come up with a different standpoint and propose new things.

This is the genius of making games. When making games, you use planning thinking. After making them, you forget to design and use player thinking to experience the game.

but……

Later, because of repeated jumps, this guy finally became obsessed with practice and became a patient with long-term memory disorders.

That is, after he became habitual amnesia, he was like a goldfish, with only 7 seconds of memory. Maybe he was interrupted in the middle of doing something, and when he turned around, he couldn't remember what he was busy with just now.

Cao Yang still sympathizes with him for this.

Later, the boss was forced to leave the game industry and cultivated at home for a long time. It is said that conscious memory exercise can be repaired through regular work and rest.

However, after Cao Yang separated from him, he did not contact him for a long time, and he didn't know if the boss's memory disorder was cured later.

Cao Yang has seen many very talented game producers in his previous life. In addition to this boss who can immerse himself in the player's perspective by [eliminating memory], there is another boss he met at NetEase. That person can simulate the entire game in his brain, which is equivalent to Guo Jing's left-hand fighting technique, fighting with himself, and finally obtaining the optimal solution through this method.

In fact, it is a very common way of thinking to find problems for yourself, but the boss's depth and breadth of thinking, as well as multiple angles, is unmatched, so it is called the strongest brain by colleagues in the company.

In addition to being irritable and having some flaws in personality, that boss was the most powerful game planner Cao Yang had ever seen in terms of ability.

As long as he ends up with his own mutual discussion, the plan he gave will definitely be something you cannot refute, and everyone can only become his execution.

Yes, what does it feel like?
To be continued...