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NetEase's last masterpiece in 2024 is a bit difficult to evaluate

Game Grape 2024/12/28 23:44

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Yesterday, NetEase's "Sixteen Voices of Yanyun" was launched.

It is said that the data is good, breaking some records of NetEase games, and the official then posted a poster of 1 million new arrivals on the first day. Single PC platform, not Steam, only relying on official package channels to get this result, "Yanyun Sixteen Voices" does have something.


When it comes to Yan Yun, many people may think of the official slogans of "resetting all established" and "martial arts games, only Yan Yun and others", which also led many people to label Yan Yun as "3A martial arts open world" at the beginning. And these "labels" have laid the groundwork for public opinion after the game's public beta bounce.

Even now in the open beta, I still don't know what kind of standards and mentality I should use to evaluate "Sixteen Voices of Yanyun". Because in the two days I played the game, I often felt the team's tugging and tangling with this product.

If you want a single-console level experience, you also need a hardcore heads-up and a team combat mechanism, and you have to have an MMO-like peripheral system and social show-off to help the long-term operation and commercialization of the product, but I hope the product can still maintain enough aesthetic tonality......

That's why I say that "Sixteen Voices of Yanyun" is difficult to evaluate, not to say how bad it is, in fact, it has a lot of commendable points. It's just that it does feel tangled.

"Both want and want" is not uncommon in game development, and there have even been many successful cases, but this is by no means easy to achieve, especially since the path chosen by "Sixteen Voices of Yanyun" is still so new.

I'm sure many people have fantasized about putting their favorite Chinese themes into a world-class triple-A masterpiece, and then they can get a coveted product - "Isn't it just a change of skin?" ”

But judging from the actual results, I am afraid that this thing is much more difficult than we thought.

01

How easy is 3A martial arts?

As long as you start the game, everyone should be able to feel the stand-alone flavor of "Sixteen Voices of Yanyun".

The menu on the main interface, the selection of brightness, difficulty, and operation mode, including the layout of the combat skill UI.

Game Grape, NetEase's last masterpiece in 2024, is a bit difficult to evaluate丨Grape point of view

But when you actually play it, you'll find that if you compare it to a good single-player game, there's still a gap.

The most obvious is the 3Cs (Character, Camera, Control). In order to highlight the feeling of strong interaction between friend and foe in the single-player game, the team put a lot of effort into the combat mechanism, such as bounces, flashes, and executions. But as soon as you get started, you'll notice that the core of the combat doesn't feel good - the feedback (audio-visual and joystick vibrations) when hitting, the number of action frames, the handling of attack decisions, and so on. It is understood that this project team is also in continuous optimization.

Of course, Yanyun has now done a better job than many MMO products on the market that stand on the stake and throw skills.

Game Grape, NetEase's last masterpiece in 2024, is a bit difficult to evaluate丨Grape point of view

In terms of storytelling, the game is also trying to create a sense of immersion, and will do a lot of cutscenes, as well as performance-style operation experiences, such as riding a horse to avoid fire attacks, observing the weaknesses of the enemy position before starting a battle, and so on.

Game Grape, NetEase's last masterpiece in 2024, is a bit difficult to evaluate丨Grape point of view

Including guarding dungeons and exploring dungeons, they are all deliberately creating unique themed stories, and creating a plot atmosphere through level layout and puzzle design. The team is ambitious in terms of narrative, otherwise they wouldn't have done a story line like "Bright Tide and Dark Surge", and they wouldn't have put so much effort into character dubbing.


It also tries to convey the mood through the visual composition of some boss battles.

Game Grape, NetEase's last masterpiece in 2024, is a bit difficult to evaluate丨Grape point of view

It's a pity that the narrative is the kind of thing where you don't have a link, and the whole will be a little weaker. When it comes to more specific plot development, dialogue copywriting, and motion capture face capture, the game is almost meaningful.... No way, this piece really needs too much accumulation.

Game Grape, NetEase's last masterpiece in 2024, is a bit difficult to evaluate丨Grape point of view

The exploration of the levels is what I think I did the best, and it's also the single-player indie dungeon I just mentioned. The puzzles in these dungeons aren't very cleverly designed, but they don't feel painful or boring to do, and combined with the backstory, there's still something fun about it.

Coupled with the thaumaturgical design in the game: Ling Xu's One Finger (assassination), Jin Yushou (fixation), Tai Chi (throwing), Shooting the Moon (long-distance fetching), Firefly (lighting up the surroundings...... The player's experience is also rich. For example, you can hide from patrols in stealth, use immobilized NPCs to maintain a certain figure to solve puzzles, use remote fetching to steal key items, and so on.

Including the team, the team also made shortcuts, corridors, elevators, mechanism interactions, special terrain and other designs to make the level structure more complex and changeable, rather than a simple road. Compared with some combat-heavy open-world mobile games on the market, the dungeon exploration of "Sixteen Voices of Yanyun" may have a more single-player feel.

Game Grape, NetEase's last masterpiece in 2024, is a bit difficult to evaluate丨Grape point of view

In my opinion, it's not that teams don't want to do better, it's just that some content does require experience. Therefore, some links will present a feeling of "more than enough but not enough" - the horse wants to be more realistic and natural, but the result is awkward and uncomfortable control; I want to make the kind of change in the light that people receive when they go from a light place to a dark place, but sometimes it is too dark.

Game Grape, NetEase's last masterpiece in 2024, is a bit difficult to evaluate丨Grape point of view

Compared with these "unwielded" parts, the team's struggling and entanglement in single/multiplayer and business models may be more obvious.

02

How can a single person be so clear?

Even people who are not very satisfied with "Sixteen Voices of Yanyun" have to admit that the slogans that the team said at the beginning were true.

It's true that the game doesn't sell values at all, only appearances; The game does change a lot of the usual routines and paradigms of MMOs; Although the phrase "martial arts games will only be Yanyun and others from now on" is quite arrogant to classify other games into one category, the product form of "Yanyun Sixteen Voices" is indeed very different from other games, and it is difficult to find a benchmark.

However, the game also comes at a cost to this. After all, not being able to find a benchmark only means that you are different from others, but it does not necessarily mean that you are better than others.

For example, the artistic texture and aesthetic tonality of the game are trying to move closer to the direction of a single host, and the scene art of the game has indeed done it, and many places have shown a thick sense of story that is different from that of previous domestic MMOs.

Game Grape, NetEase's last masterpiece in 2024, is a bit difficult to evaluate丨Grape point of view

However, appearance is the core commercialization source of the game, although the product also provides a lot of realistic clothing appearance, in the mall we can also see the handsome men and women style of some traditional online games - glowing and shining. From other online game experiences, these costumes can be a bonus to income, but this is at odds with the serious story atmosphere that the game is trying to create.

Game Grape, NetEase's last masterpiece in 2024, is a bit difficult to evaluate丨Grape point of view

Game Grape, NetEase's last masterpiece in 2024, is a bit difficult to evaluate丨Grape point of view

Another example is to keep the flow of the player's experience stable and consistent when exploring single-player levels. The game will limit the character's action performance to death, and what scenes can have and how many abilities are divided into details. Some can't ride horses, some can't triple jump, and some can't sprint in the air......

This is understandable, but it also means that the player is more demanded: you have already mastered the triple jump, and by the time you get to the dungeon, you can confidently jump off a cliff and fall to your death.


There are many examples of "taking care of one and losing the other". For example, the game's combat interaction, which emphasizes the single-player experience, will directly fail in multiplayer mode, because you can't let a group of people fight back against the boss, which means that the team-based combat design logic needs to be changed. So in the end, the group is still a classic tactic to fight monsters, and then dodge the red circle of the mechanism.


When you see this, you will probably find that the foundation of the game is actually inseparable from MMO, but in all aspects, the team tries to break through the inherent market perception. One of the breakthrough methods is to learn from stand-alone games and console games.

That's why the game's single-player mode, although only for the player, actually gives people an experience that is more like a single-player MMO than a single-player game.


03

Hopefully it will happen

When I played "Sixteen Voices of Yanyun" in the past two days, I sighed "It's really good" for a while, and complained about "why is this like this" for a while. Sometimes in the process of exploration, I find some careful thoughts and small details of the team, which I think is great, but I feel very annoyed when I see that the big light work is still limited by the progress of licking the map......

I'm sure many people may be like me, when playing AI dialogue, card spraying and other local gameplay, they will find this game a bit interesting, but when you put the whole product experience as a whole, it is difficult for you to firmly give it a "awesome" evaluation.


So as the title says, I think it's really hard to rate.

However, in the bright direction, the sincerity shown by the team, as well as the intention to innovate the category, players will definitely be able to feel it. "Sixteen Voices of Yanyun" may not be perfect, but it must be new enough.

And selfishly, I am always happier to see a game like "Sixteen Voices of Yanyun", which may seem a little reckless and immature, but has a lonely and brave heart. Hopefully, the team will eventually be able to run through and make this path.

After all, the most important thing in this industry may be those so-called mature and stable products that have been verified by countless cases.

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