When it comes to user retention, the highest level is to make users addicted. When it comes to making users addicted, the most powerful is games. When it comes to addictive games, the most powerful is King of Glory. Therefore, I chose the HOOK model to do some summary analysis of Honor of Kings to test my recent learning results.
Reference materials:
1. "Addiction: Four major product logics that allow users to develop usage habits" Nir Eyal, Ryan Hoover (Ryan Hoover)
2. Aurora Big Data: Honor of Kings Research Report in May 2017
3. TalkingData: Honor of Kings Hot Topics Report in the Mobile Game Industry in 2017
(1) Paid trigger
●?KPL Professional League
By holding offline events, it promotes the development of the e-sports industry and continuously improves the influence of the game to attract A larger player base, guiding users to take further actions.
●? Offline advertising
King of Glory has launched offline advertising in shopping malls, subways, bus stations and other channels, as shown in the picture:
●? Line Advertising
King of Glory places advertisements on some information flow products, WeChat Moments and other online channels.
(2) Feedback trigger
●? Cooperate with the live broadcast platform to promote the game through anchors
Cooperate with the game live broadcast platform to help the live broadcast platform sign more contracts anchors, while also providing media resources to help the live broadcast platform promote the anchors, further increasing the influence of the game and attracting users' attention.
●? Cross-border cooperation with other brands (overlapping user groups)
King of Glory often cooperates with some brands that are popular among young people, including: McDonald’s, Didi, Mobike and so on.
●? Organize an online "Black Opening Festival"
By holding a Black Opening Festival, we will give players benefits, including skins, runes, etc., and also set some thresholds to allow old players to Help attract new players and recall old players.
(3) Interpersonal triggers
●?Associate WeChat and QQ friends
King of Glory is based on the social relationship chain of WeChat and QQ. You can see I realize that many of my friends are also playing the same game
(4) Autonomous triggering
●? In-app PUSH
King of Glory has built-in message push settings. Users actively set notification types (check-ins, benefits, gift packages, etc.), and use in-app PUSH to arouse users. At the same time, they cooperate with WeChat and QQ message push to guide users to take further actions.
●? Triggered by boredom
●? Triggered by scenes such as "break at work", "relaxation period in the evening", "time after school" etc.
●? Triggered when gathering offline with friends
●? Triggered at commuting locations (subway stations, bus stops, train stations, etc.)
(1) Pursue happiness and avoid pain
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●?Game confrontation mechanism
The real world is painful, but the virtual game world is happy. If you are a game master, you can kill everyone in the game to vent your dissatisfaction with reality. Even if your skills are not good, you can still vent your negative emotions by hanging up, trolling others, etc. (Of course, game companies do not encourage this method, as it will affect the game environment).
(2) Pursue recognition and escape rejection
●? Playing Honor of Kings has become popular, and not playing means being unsociable
In the past two years, Honor of Kings has become popular among young people. During the holidays, relatives and friends will pull them to play Honor of Kings together, especially during the Spring Festival. This is exactly the same as when students were students and used to play Internet cafes with classmates, all for the sake of fun. Appear gregarious and escape rejection.
●?5-player team cooperation game
A rough review of the history of game development, we can find a trend, more and more games are launching team cooperation game modes, more and more The single-player game also adds a multiplayer cooperative mode.
People all have a desire to express themselves. This attention-grabbing behavior originates from human sexual selection instinct. Just like birds are born with the knowledge of caring for their feathers, humans are also born with the desire to attract the attention of others. instinct. In team cooperation, players can gain the recognition of their teammates in various ways (single kills, capturing people, protecting teammates, helping the team win, etc.).
(3) Pursue hope and escape fear
●?Rank mechanism
Even if you fail in reality, have a low status, and have closed your upward channels, in this In the game, you can obtain a higher rank through technology. A high rank can make you feel the difference in status, give you the hope of gaining a higher social status, and at the same time, it will be recognized by more people.
●? Ranking list
King of Glory has a variety of rankings, such as: Great God Ranking, Star Ranking, Hero Ranking, etc. If your rank is higher than that of a star, the invisible sense of recognition will bring you psychological satisfaction and inspire your inner hope. Although more people are not ranked enough to be included in the rankings, it at least gives people a goal to strive for and provides opportunities.
(1) Reduce time cost
●?Shorten the game time
In order to shorten the entire game time and speed up the game rhythm, the King of Glory team has made many changes. Including: shortening the skill cooldown time, improving the game's economy (there is economy without last-hitting, the economy of each wave of soldiers is very high, the amount of economy obtained per second is increased, etc.), shortening the line of soldiers, reducing the strength of defense towers, The refresh time of jungle buffs has been increased, the strength of big dragons and small dragons has been reduced, etc.
In a normal game, the equipment will be ready in about 15 minutes. Once the equipment is complete, as long as a team battle occurs, it can basically determine the success or failure of the entire game.
●? Reduce queuing costs
Since I have no specific understanding of the matching mechanism of Honor of Kings, I personally guess that in addition to player level, the queuing time must be taken into consideration when building the matching mechanism. question. For example: In order to ensure the matching speed, people with similar abilities are matched together through a simple algorithm. Since the algorithm is simple, the probability of making an error is very high. The following are the search results given by Zhihu with the keyword "King of Glory matching mechanism":
At the same time, there is news about the new ELO ranking matching mechanism in the S11 season, which has led to long waiting times for high-level players. significantly increased. Although this new matching mechanism is only for ranked matches, we still concluded that if we want to speed up matching, we must reduce the complexity of the algorithm.
(2) Reduce money costs
●? Free games
Today, the reason why free games are so popular is because they fit the user’s psychology and reduce the cost of money. Address users' concerns and prompt them to take action.
●? Provide weekly free heroes
Like League of Legends, heroes are a very important element of this game. Honor of Kings has hundreds of heroes, and different hero combinations provide a wealth of diversity. However, the heroes of Honor of Kings need to be purchased before they can be used, instead of directly adopting a free model like Blizzard, where all heroes are free. This model has a high threshold, and players always have concerns about in-game spending. A reasonable weekly free model not only provides players with free heroes, but also lowers the psychological threshold for players to spend.
●?Provide free game currency for purchasing heroes
In addition to providing weekly free heroes for players to experience, at the same time, game currency is given away in various ways, so players can not only spend money Use heroes, and you can also spend time earning game currency to purchase heroes.
(3) Reduce physical cost
●? Reduce the difficulty of game operation
In order to reduce the difficulty of operating the mobile game, King of Glory uses a virtual joystick. Dual wheel lock operating mode.
(4) Reduce mental cost
●?Simplified equipment synthesis system
The game has a built-in equipment recommendation system, which also recommends different styles of equipment for novices. Even if you don’t know the attributes of the equipment, you can still synthesize it according to the recommended equipment.
●Simplified CS system
The CS system I know started from DOTA. You have to kill the enemy soldiers at the last moment to get the economy, and kill yourself. The minions can suppress the opponent's economy. In DOTA, last hit is the same basic skill. The suppression of novices by master-level players is obvious. Then in League of Legends, although you can only gain economy by killing your own minions, you can no longer suppress other people's economy through last-hitting.
Finally, in Honor of Kings, the last hit system has been basically cancelled. You can gain economy regardless of whether you can fill up the minions, but the economy you get is only three-quarters of the amount after filling up the minions. The gap is already there. Very small.
1. Social rewards
●?Intimacy
You can set up an intimate relationship in the game, play the same game through ***, or other interactive methods ( Giving away gold coins, heroes, skins, etc.) can increase the intimacy value.
When the corresponding conditions are met, birth effects can be obtained. When the corresponding value is raised, the character will be upgraded and obtain an exclusive avatar frame.
2. Resource rewards
●? Game currency
The game currency of King of Glory is a very important resource. It is used to purchase heroes for free in the game. An important way is that even civilian players can still obtain game currency through constant battles, and then buy their favorite heroes.
The game has a first-win mode. You can get a considerable amount of game coins by winning the first game every day. At the same time, you can get a small amount of game currency in each game. In addition, there are quite a few other ways to get game currency.
●?Title system
After each game, the hero used by the player can obtain a certain amount of glory and combat power based on the performance of the game, which can be obtained through the total combat power value. title. Titles can be divided according to different regions such as districts, cities, provinces, etc., as shown in the figure above.
●?Skin system
During the event, you can obtain treasure chests through game battles. The treasure chests have a very low chance of getting skins, and they can also get skin fragments. Get enough fragments. Can be exchanged for corresponding skins.
3. Self-emotional reward
●? Level system
As the level increases, you can obtain rune slots. By inlaying runes, you can Get improvements in abilities.
The operation difficulty of Honor of Kings is not high. As the time of playing the game becomes longer, and as the understanding of heroes, equipment, and skills deepens, players can feel that their own strength has also improved significantly. .
●?Team red envelopes
Team red envelopes can promote interaction between team teammates. By setting minimum activity and rank requirements for recipients, the team leader can also reward team members with outstanding performance through red envelopes. At the same time, players who issue red envelopes will also receive certain team activity point rewards.
(1) Content with storage value
●Virtual products: heroes, skins, rare skins, etc.
Heroes, skins, and special rare skins Etc., these virtual items with storage value require a considerable amount of time or money investment to obtain.
●? Data: titles, rankings, game achievements, etc.
Titles, rankings in various rankings, and game achievements, etc., all require a considerable amount of money. It requires a large investment of time and even a certain amount of game talent to obtain it. Of course, it can also be obtained through tricky methods (such as paying for power leveling).
●?Virtual relationship: master, apprentice, lover, best friend
Throughout the game career of King of Glory, you will make some game friends and best friends, find a powerful master, or Taking on several rookie apprentices requires a considerable amount of time to maintain relationships with each other.
(2) Load the next trigger
●?First win reward
I have also talked about a very important resource in the game of Honor of Kings before: Game currency, and the first win is the only way to get a lot of game currency every day. For any player who wants to buy heroes for free, it is an irresistible temptation, and it will continue to attract you to log in to the game and start fighting.
●?Kill sound effects, victory special effects, etc.
Like other MOBA games, Honor of Kings has special kill sound effects, as well as special effects of base explosion when victory is achieved. These sound effects and special effects are effective means to stimulate the secretion of dopamine in the human brain. They are also the reason why the game is addictive, which is why users are willing to continue to log in to Honor of Kings to play games.
I am not a game addict myself, so I may not have a thorough understanding of some functions. For example, a very unique LBS gameplay in Honor of Kings is not included in the addiction model. Time is limited, and many places are still missing, but the overall framework is quite satisfactory, and that’s all I can do for the time being.
Through the analysis of the entire HOOK model, I feel that the success of Honor of Kings lies largely in its great efforts in reducing user time, energy and other costs. After all, the addictiveness of MOBA games has been verified on the PC side. How to better port it to the mobile side is a challenge it faces, and the Honor of Kings team has solved this problem very well. However, we have all noticed that the popularity of King of Glory today is far less than it was a year ago. Today it faces huge challenges.
In this way, the shelf life of Honor of Kings is only three or four years, or even shorter. All games face the same problem. League of Legends has solved this problem very well by organizing professional e-sports. This is why League of Legends remains evergreen. Every game can attract a large crowd. If you are careful, you can find that this year, whether RNG won the MSI mid-season championship or LPL won the Asian Championship, tens of millions of people watched it. After the game, the Internet cafes were full. . These phenomena can show that the current League of Legends still maintains considerable popularity, which is incredible for a game that has been born for 7 years. I can’t even remember the game released in the same year as League of Legends.
Glory of Kings definitely wants to replicate this success, which is also the main reason for the birth of KPL. Nowadays, KPL has considerable influence in the country, and the number of people watching the games has exceeded 10 million. But the real problem is that KPL's global influence is far less than that of League of Legends. After all, I don’t understand the e-sports industry, so I won’t comment. I believe that the Honor of Kings team will still make efforts, and we will wait and see.