Many designers in the industry are paying attention to the expansion film "Scythe of the Soul".

The decline of Diablo is in everyone's eyes, and although players and designers are thinking about how to reverse the decline and continue the vitality of Diablo as a boutique game, the jury has not been reached.

There were also some players or designers who made suggestions, but they were quickly rejected by other players. These suggestions will more or less alter the original nature of Diablo's gameplay, or further overdraw its vitality and make it cool faster.

Diablo is a game where brushing is fun at its core, but this unlimited brushing is very boring.

This is an endless cycle in the eyes of many designers, and if you want to solve this problem, you will definitely have to change the game mode of brushing, but in doing so, it will inevitably reduce the core fun of the game.

Fun and flaws seem to be two sides of the same coin, so it's hard to improve.

But what everyone didn't expect was that Chen Mo adopted a way that no one thought of, that is, to go all the way to the dark and continue to strengthen this kind of brushing gameplay.

Do you find brushing annoying?

Okay, I'll continue to stimulate you to brush and brush through various means, how about it, are you still annoyed now?

Many players find that they are not annoyed, and they are very emotional!

It's like crash therapy, and while the game seems to get a lot more out of the seasons, ladders, and so on, everyone has a lot of fun.

There are even gaming media outlets that have done a review of "Soul Revenator", which comprehensively analyzes how it actually saves the late gameplay of Diablo.

"As some players who are tired of playing Diablo, it's hard for me to imagine that Soulbreaker would be such a comprehensive twist."

"First of all, it enriches the content of the game."

"The eerie and silent scenes in the expansion continue the style of Dark, with mountains of corpses, citizens fleeing frantically, evil spirits everywhere, possessing every living creature that can breathe, and this atmosphere is maintained until the end, and you can clearly feel that the world is calling to you."

"The most exciting thing is that Chen Mo arranged a duel between the protagonist and Adria in the plot, this disgusting old witch is really worth brushing a hundred times, no, a thousand times!"

"What's even more surprising is the secret realm system, where different maps and environments are randomly combined, making every journey after entering the portal a crazy and passionate dream."

"When you kill the final boss, all kinds of equipment fall like snowflakes, and almost every time an epic piece of equipment drops. Chen Mo has created a very simple but effective system, that is, go online, kill the boss, get rewards, and go offline. This allows players to skip those tedious steps and enjoy the thrill of brushing directly. ”

In fact, Chen Mo used this expansion to tell us that the real core competitiveness of the game "Dark" is to brush and brush. Chen Mo used a series of new gameplay methods that meet the characteristics of "Dark" to save the game. ”

"The strengths of this game: dark atmosphere, adventure mode, lasting sense of achievement, variety of visual effects."

"If you like binge-and-brush games, then there is no doubt that Diablo: Scythe of Souls will be the right choice for you."

……

Diablo's expansion pack "Scythe of the Soul" completely complements the game, allowing it to gain more longevity, thus establishing the foundation of Diablo as a game in the "brush game".

And its unique style and distinctive features have also become a typical branch of RPG games, which has been repeatedly studied by many later designers.

And the designer most inspired by "Scythe of the Soul" should be Yan Zhenyuan.

After he finalized the later gameplay of the new project, and even started to prepare a specific design plan, "Scythe of Souls" was long overdue.

After an in-depth analysis of the characteristics of the Soul Snatcher expansion, Yan Zhenyuan spent three days overhauling some of the game designs that had already taken shape.

Although this caused some overturning and redoping, which objectively increased a lot of workload, Yan Zhenyuan knew very well that it was worth it.

After seeing the solution of "Scythe of Souls" to the boring problem in the later stage of "Diablo", Yan Zhenyuan also realized the problem of his previous plan.

Previously, Yan Zhenyuan planned to solve this problem by increasing online gameplay and lengthening the game time, but now it seems that although this method can alleviate the problem of fatigue in the late game to a certain extent, it will damage the characteristics of the game itself.

And Chen Mo's solution is the best solution that can be seen so far.

Of course, there is a difference between the design concept of the VR side and the PC side, and Yan Zhenyuan, as an S-level designer, will definitely not copy it all. However, he still got some inspiration from it, and was a little impressed by Chen Mo.

"This guy is not easy."

……

Diablo's greatest significance is not only to pave the way for the development of RPGs in the future, but more importantly, it is a test in many ways.

Test the player's acceptance of the third-person perspective.

Test the player's acceptance of the dark, cult style.

Test the tolerance of players for the liver-blasting gameplay.

The launch of "Don't Starve" is a test of players' love for sandbox games.

Each of these can be expanded to derive many different game types, and will also guide Chen Mo's future development planning.

With the great success of "Scythe of the Soul", Chen Mo has an unprecedented amount of money on hand.

Diablo sold 9.8 million copies worldwide, which is far less than the 30 million copies sold by Blizzard in its previous life, but it is already a very proud achievement.

"Soul Reaver" has not yet been launched overseas, and the domestic sales alone have reached more than 2.9 million copies, and almost all players who have bought "Diablo" are considering buying this expansion.

(Domestic players in this world have finally tasted the thrill of the blockbuster version leading the world.) ）

The sales volume of "Don't Starve" in China is 4.35 million units, although this sales volume is not as good as in the previous life, but in the parallel world, it is already a miracle that a sandbox game with such a small investment can get this sales.

Both games were all big hits, and while accumulating a lot of popularity for Chen Mo, they also brought him a huge amount of income.

Originally, Chen Mo had about 700 million R&D funds on hand, and the cost of developing "Diablo" was relatively high, including the expansion pack of "Scythe of the Soul", which cost nearly 200 million, compared to the R&D cost of "Don't Starve".

After all, this kind of boutique game is too much money-burning.

However, fortunately, the performance of "Diablo" in the international market is also good, and so far, Chen Mo's income is as follows.

The revenue of the domestic version of "Diablo": 340 million.

Diablo international version revenue: 1.23 billion.

"Don't Starve" domestic income: 61 million.

The revenue of the domestic version of "Scythe of the Soul": 236 million.

Of course, during this period of time, "Onmyoji" and "Warcraft" continued to provide income for Chen Mo.

After tossing for so long, Chen Mo's R&D funds in hand finally achieved a relatively critical growth, breaking through the 3 billion mark.