Chapter 292: The Importance of Fish Pond Depth
The so-called locked perspective means keeping the hero always in the center of the screen, with the camera following the hero’s movements.
Obviously, for games that require constant awareness of the overall battle situation, such as Warcraft and League of Legends, this is practically like gouging out your own eyes.
There is relevant teaching content in the novice tutorial. By pressing the [Y] button, you can freely switch between free perspective and locked perspective.
The default perspective after the tutorial is free perspective.
This means that Wen Lingwei and Chang Xiuya both voluntarily chose to play with locked perspective.
Jia Peng was a bit puzzled: “Don’t you feel uncomfortable all over with the locked perspective?”
“Huh? Why?” Chang Xiuya asked. “Isn’t this very comfortable? You never lose track of where your hero is. It’s like Diablo; it feels really convenient.”
Wen Lingwei also said, “Yeah, it’s much more reasonable than Warcraft.”
Jia Peng: “…”
He watched their gameplay for a while and found it almost unbearable to look at.
Chang Xiuya played extremely, extremely conservatively. Garen, clearly a tank-type hero, was being played by her as if he were a support. When he was still at half health, she would want to turn and run away. She had even bought three defensive items but still didn’t dare to enter the tower’s attack range.
So, the two of them were progressing very slowly, not even having destroyed the inhibitor turret.
Jia Peng could only patiently explain to them.
“Garen can move while using his E skill to spin. You need to make sure your E skill always grazes the enemy hero.”
“You can tank two hits from the tower; you won’t get instantly killed. Just retreat in time.”
“Garen’s ultimate is an execute effect. Don’t just throw it out randomly the moment you see the enemy.”
“You ask why you can’t buy two pairs of boots? Because the effects of two pairs of boots don’t stack. Oh, I know your hero has two feet, but the boots item is a pair, not a single one. Look at the icon.”
…
These were the most basic, fundamental knowledge of League of Legends. For a player like Jia Peng, it was as simple as eating and drinking. He didn’t even need to be taught; he could figure it out on his own.
But for Chang Xiuya and Wen Lingwei, they knew nothing about it and even made many jokes.
In fact, many players make the same mistake as Jia Peng, which is overestimating the gaming IQ of casual players and female gamers.
Everyone knows that for a game to become popular, it must be “easy to learn, hard to master.”
There are many games that are hard to master. For players, anything they can’t figure out, or can figure out but can’t execute, is hard to master.
But when it comes to what “easy to learn” means, different players have different standards.
For a player like Jia Peng, Warcraft is not very easy to learn, COG is relatively easy to learn, and League of Legends is very easy to learn.
But for a player like Chang Xiuya, Warcraft and COG are completely impossible to learn, League of Legends is barely learnable, and Happy Match is relatively easy to learn.
If you limit your perspective entirely to the RTS circle, or to the circle of male players and players with normal control skills, the novice tutorial for League of Legends seems too dumbed down, almost like taking off your pants to fart.
Concepts like click-to-move, orb walking, and last-hitting are so simple that a few lines of text should be enough to explain them.
But what if you expand this scope to include casual players, elementary school students, and female players?
Players in Bronze and Silver tiers are definitely considered “noobs,” fish pond players. Forget about champions like Zed, Yasuo, or Vayne; most of them can’t even play champions like Gragas or Twisted Fate properly.
Take Twisted Fate, for example. Forget about advanced techniques; just basic operations like picking cards, orb walking, and constantly paying attention to the battlefield situation are very difficult for the vast majority of Bronze and Silver players.
And what percentage of the player base do Bronze and Silver players make up?
According to Chen Mo’s previous life data, this number was a staggering 37%.
That’s right, nearly half of the players in this game are so-called “noobs.”
If you add in Gold-tier players, this number rises to about 59%.
Meanwhile, players in Diamond and above make up only 5% of the entire player base.
(Platinum-tier players account for 14%, and nearly 20% of players are underage accounts.)
The data varies by season, but the overall picture doesn’t change much.
This data doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with League of Legends; it reflects an objective fact: the domestic player base is distributed roughly according to this ratio.
A player like Jia Peng might not be able to understand the meaning of this data at all. He would be shocked: “What??? You’re telling me that nearly half of the players are casuals? And many people can’t even play such a simple game?”
But that’s the reality. For many players, League of Legends is already a very difficult game to learn, let alone harder games like Dota and Warcraft.
That’s why League of Legends has such a meticulous novice tutorial, even to the point of feeling a bit verbose.
This overly detailed novice tutorial won’t drive away the experts, but it will keep the casuals and female players around.
Why is “easy to learn” so important?
Because all competitive games, including League of Legends, are fundamentally about “selling gameplay” rather than “selling content.”
Single-player blockbuster games sell content. You experience a new story and world, play through it once, and then put it aside.
But games like League of Legends and Overwatch are about “selling gameplay.” They are replayable games. Every match is a new opponent, a new battle. You can play them for years without getting bored.
For this type of game, the most critical factor in ensuring its longevity is the depth of the fish pond.
In other words, whether there are enough noobs.
Because all the fun in this type of game comes from victory. For most players, mastering a champion and pulling off a 1v5 is certainly satisfying, but the real thrill comes from the moment the enemy’s Nexus explodes.
Whether you carry or get carried, winning is the only thing that brings enjoyment.
If you lose, whether you were the one who dragged the team down, got carried but still lost, or tried your hardest to carry and still lost, it feels terrible.
If the opponents are all noobs, you’ll have a great time. But if there are no noobs on the other side, and everyone is a pro, and you get stomped every single game?
A small number of players will work hard to improve.
But most players will choose to quit the game.
After all, it’s just a game, a form of entertainment. Work is already tiring enough; why should gaming be a chore?
Moreover, for the vast majority of players, while effort can improve your skill, what matters more is your natural talent, reaction time, and hand speed.
A player who is naturally bad at this type of game is born a noob. It’s like someone being born poor and you blaming them for not working hard enough to escape poverty—that’s the “let them eat cake” mentality.
If the fish pond isn’t deep enough, a new player will soon encounter opponents who are clearly much better than them. They’ll get stomped repeatedly and won’t be able to derive any fun from the game.
So, how do you create a deep fish pond?
It relies on a massive player base.
How do you get a massive player base?
By being “easy to learn,” so that even a girl like Chang Xiuya can keep playing.
Therefore, for League of Legends to expand its player base, it had to simplify its mechanics across the board.
Only by fully simplifying its mechanics could League of Legends attract such a huge user base.
If the League of Legends from Chen Mo’s previous life hadn’t had this characteristic, even if Tencent had promoted it, it would have failed.
After all, how many of the games Tencent has picked up as agents have actually survived internal competition and managed to enjoy Tencent’s channel resources?