I Just Want Players to Save Money, They Insist on Giving Me!
Chapter 659 - 206: Waiting for Players to Collapse in Agony and Quit the Game!_1

Chapter 659: Chapter 206: Waiting for Players to Collapse in Agony and Quit the Game!_1

After listening to the description from the design director, George.

Conna only remembered one sentence.

"Hard, but fun."

His brain felt somewhat dizzy, struggling to grasp the concept.

Hard, and fun.

These two words... in the gaming industry, they’re theoretically contradictory.

Because a high difficulty level means a higher player dropout rate.

In the end, it only filters out a small portion of hardcore players.

But this segment of players doesn’t contribute optimistically to the game developer’s sales figures.

After all, the ultimate goal for any game is mass appeal.

The more people play, the more money is made, a principle every developer understands.

Therefore, many developers offer several difficulty levels in their games.

To let casual players enjoy the game itself and let hardcore players find pleasure in overcoming challenges with various heroic and challenge difficulties.

So looking back,

How did Elden Ring manage to make most players excitedly scream and keep challenging it while being brutally difficult, without the option to choose the difficulty?

Soon, as Conna’s confusion was voiced,

the employees of Hope Flute’s design department chimed in with some answers.

"I don’t know why, but the immersion in playing this game is incredibly strong... It’s as if the players were really adventuring in this world themselves."

"It’s tough, but not frustratingly hard, and it offers many strategies for solving problems. For instance, if you can’t beat the Big Tree Guardian, you can take a detour, level up, improve your gear, then come back for the challenge."

"And how to fight, what methods to use, are all up to the player. Elden never forces players to stick to a single strategy during the game."

"On the contrary, Elden even subtly encourages the use of different styles, enabling players to experience more fun in gameplay."

"This approach is a pure result of the open-world concept. If it were a traditional linear progression, you could never let players grab later gear to then face earlier enemies. That would cause all subsequent content to lose its anticipation."

Hearing this, Conna latched on to a detail.

"Wait... Are you saying that in ’Elden,’ there’s the practice of going back to defeat bosses after leveling up?"

"Isn’t that quite strange?"

He frowned, staring at the employees, "As you said, if players obtain advanced weapons early or enhance their weapons to a higher level... wouldn’t they lose interest in the early bosses?"

At these words, George’s face was filled with a bitter smile.

"I thought the same initially, but observing the game streamers on global broadcasting platforms like YouTube and Twitch over the past few hours... they’re not only not bored, but also bursting with fervor, and their excitement from defeating bosses has not diminished."

"Why is that?" Conna pondered before adding, "I remember a few years back, when our design style at Hope Flute was still immature, we made similar moves. But it was proven to be a foolish act. How did ’Elden’ succeed where we failed?"

Years ago, Hope Flute had launched a whimsical game.

It was a linear narrative FPS.

The gameplay was that players could get equipment to enhance their weapons before fighting the boss, making the boss challenge a breeze.

The reason for this was simple.

At that time, everyone complained about the monotony of games: fighting monsters, leveling up, fighting more monsters, leveling up again.

So Hope Flute wanted to shock the players!

Let you level up first, then defeat monsters, feeling no resistance from start to end. Isn’t that thrilling?

But in reality, it turned out to be a massive blunder.

That game bombed, which led other developers with similar thoughts to abandon such foolish approaches.

Now looking at Elden Ring again.

Putting its other features aside, just the idea of ’allowing players to tackle bosses out of sequence’ is quite similar to that failed FPS from years past.

Why did Elden Ring receive favor from players?

After some reflection on this question, George provided an answer.

"I believe... it’s still the advantage of open-world games. The existence of an open world introduces a whole new concept... I’ll tentatively refer to it as the ’revenge appeal’ design concept."

"Revenge appeal?"

"Yes, it means if, sir, you were raised in a discriminatory rural setting, where everyone around discredited you. And now that you can afford luxury cars and villas, what’s the first thing you want to do?"

"Ummm... drive the luxury car and bring a celebrity model back to the countryside, making everyone who looked down on me see me in a new light," Conna thought for a moment, answering, "That thought alone feels amazing, really."

George then said, "I think that pleasure comes from the satisfaction of revenge because you’ve become stronger than before, right?"

"It’s the same in games. A boss you could never beat, now lying defeated because you came back with stronger weapons, is proof you’ve grown stronger. ’Defeating a previously unbeatable boss’ is a form of validation in itself."