I Just Want Players to Save Money, They Insist on Giving Me!
Chapter 742 - 231: Why is Zelda the Sky?_2

Chapter 742: Chapter 231: Why is Zelda the Sky?_2

You could tame them and log their information at the stables, thus making them your mounts.

You might also find a fishing boat in a small coastal village and join the local residents in heading out to sea, where you’d toss bombs into the water to blast out fish teeming with nutritious value.

In the icy snowscapes of the Snow Mountain Tribe, you could race against NPCs to see whose skiing speed was faster.

Or you could nudge a small stone, watching it slowly roll into a massive snowball before giving it a kick off a cliff to squash the Pokoblins below.

In the howling winds of an aerial archery range, you could deftly use "Link Time" to hit every bullseye with your arrows.

You even could craft a balloon from materials, tie it to a heavy object, and let it drift correctly into the sky with the wind, then shoot the balloon with an arrow, using the falling weight to harass the camp below where Pokoblins danced passionately, oblivious to the impending doom.

Climbing a mountain was a must, even without any reward; taking a selfie with the stunning scenery might attract a local newspaper reporter for an interview.

If the trigger location for a side quest wasn’t right, it didn’t matter if there were no reporters; you could still leap from the peak, feel the wind whipping past your ears, and bask in the freedom enveloping you.

For the glider would always be there to catch you – just by spreading it, you could drift lazily between heaven and earth.

You could try cooking various dishes with effects using materials collected from all over, or go dragon hunting on icy mountains.

You might log in the woods, mine in caves, ride seals on sand dunes, beat up Elemental Hilichurls that resembled slimes in appearance, and even trouble the tall centaur-like creatures for better weapons and rewards.

There was so much interesting content to explore, and none of it had any level restrictions.

As long as you came, you could experience it.

In this land, it seemed players were never restrained; all tasks and objectives could be set aside at any moment.

Even not doing quests was okay.

Not taking on quests didn’t diminish the player’s joy by one bit.

This was a real sense of freedom, where you could go wherever you wanted, do whatever you felt like.

Players had never experienced this kind of freedom in any game from Blue Star before.

It was an addiction one couldn’t help but indulge in.

Perhaps many players who experienced the game, even after playing through half of the story, still couldn’t articulate exactly why the game was so enjoyable.

But that no longer mattered.

For players, happiness alone was enough to drive them to play a game.

At that point, what exactly made them happy became insignificant.

...

However, players could carefree and simply focus on enjoying themselves.

For game reviewers, trying to distill the strengths of "The Legend of Zelda" presented a challenge.

Precisely because it had never been seen before.

And because the open world of "The Legend of Zelda" was entirely different from any other.

Although major gaming media, both domestic and international, invariably gave it at least a 9.8, many with a perfect score of 10.

But the language used to review the game was always restrained, complimenting from a safe distance, never going too deep.

Mainly because it was difficult to go deeper.

After all, even many game manufacturers were a bit baffled as to how this game managed to engage players so fervently.

They had never seen a game like "The Legend of Zelda" that was laid bare in front of you, and yet the players still loved it.

And they just couldn’t pinpoint exactly why it was so good...

Game manufacturers are all like this, let alone game reviewers.

And it was at this time.

Wangsi Libeici, a well-known game reviewer from Huaxia Nation, had drawn upon years of in-depth research on top players, as well as an understanding of Designer Ke’s game design style.

He then combined them with the hints and traces displayed within "The Legend of Zelda."

And wrote a review article that was tens of thousands of words long.

This article took a particularly sharp and unique perspective to dissect the true core strengths of "The Legend of Zelda."

Because the article was logical, analyzing from multiple angles including design sensibility and horizontal comparisons—all hitting the nail on the head.

Once the article was published, it immediately caused a sensation among designers worldwide, who rushed to read the review.

Wangsi Libeici thus captured on paper the merits of "The Legend of Zelda," which had puzzled numerous industry insiders.

The title of this review article was: "Why is Zelda Divine? How Should We Properly Understand the ’Open World’ Genre? Impressions from Playing ’The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’."

The first part of the content was the usual opening remarks, along with high praise for "The Legend of Zelda."

And soon, Beici delved into the main topic.

"’The Legend of Zelda’ has been on the market for half a month, and I believe everyone has seen its sales and popularity, even surpassing the previous ’Elden Ring’."

"In the context of a stable overall player base, it is extremely rare in the history of gaming for a game to surpass the pioneer of its genre."

"So, today let’s discuss why ’The Legend of Zelda’ has achieved such great success."

"Over the past six months, I’ve played countless open-world games from various manufacturers, including ’Divine Land’ released last month by the world-renowned Blizzard team."

"Indeed, each of these open-world games has its strengths, but they share a common trait—perhaps highly engaging in the early to mid-game, but as progress reaches the later stages, they begin to rapidly decline, leading to fatigue. Any old gamer with a slight understanding of the gaming scene can look at the player retention statistics for these open-world games in their latter halves and see that what I’m talking about is not baseless."

"Having analyzed all open-world games released in the past six months, I have reached a fairly accurate figure—49.3%, which is the average rate at which players abandon open-world games. This data comes from samples of players who still played for more than two hours, so there’s no need to worry about those who refund after playing for just a few minutes skewing the overall percentage."

"This abandonment rate also affects ’Elden Ring’; as a pioneer of the open-world genre, ’Elden’s average progression rate is 63.8%."

"That is to say, more than half of the players choose to give up the game, temporarily or permanently, around the 64% mark."

"Let’s now look at the current performance of ’The Legend of Zelda.’"

"Since ’The Legend of Zelda’ was released 15 days ago, the average completion rate for players who have played for more than two hours is 79.7%"

"This means that once players get into it, the probability of them abandoning the game becomes very low, at least they will finish the first playthrough."

"Moreover, this is only data from 15 days; many players are still in the midst of their gaming journey and have not reached the end, which has lowered the average to some extent. If we wait two to three months and then look at the data, I estimate that the rate will probably soar to over 90%."

"Let’s not talk about the future; let’s just look at the present. An abandonment rate of just 20% is undoubtedly a miracle in the history of gaming, and before this, I’ve never seen such high cohesion in any game type, not to mention open worlds."

"So, what kind of magic does ’The Legend of Zelda’ have to achieve such a miraculous retention rate and captivate players?"

"To elaborate, it is of course due to the top player design team’s countless days and nights spent refining the details and earning player’s high recognition with the sincerest quality."

"But these words are too lofty and impractical for analysis within the game industry, and it does not facilitate the in-depth study and learning from the excellence of ’The Legend of Zelda.’"

"So, I will only talk about the more core elements."

"After comparing ’The Legend of Zelda’ with countless other open-world games, I believe the success of ’The Legend of Zelda’ lies in the following three crucial points."

Beici then introduced what he considered to be the three key concepts.

1. Lighthouse Effect

2. Triangle Design

3. Framework Structure

"Let’s begin by briefly discussing the first point in the design philosophy of ’The Legend of Zelda’—what is the Lighthouse Effect?"