Chapter 771: Too Unfriendly to the African Chieftains!

A bloodline detection system, it seems, doesn't sound very friendly to some African Chieftains.

Six words made Chen Xu, Meng Zuo, and the others in the meeting room involuntarily start imagining things.

"Is this a gashapon loot box system?"

Looking at the so-called Blade Resonance System on the screen, Qin Yi asked with a surprised expression.

Gashapon loot box systems were not unfamiliar to them. Many games under Nebula Games, such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Rainbow Six Siege, DOTA, and other multiplayer games that sold skins as their main feature, all had gashapon loot box mechanics.

Across the entire gaming industry, from VR to mobile and web games, gashapon loot boxes had essentially become a standard routine.

However, the aforementioned games were generally online games, while this game, Xenoblade Chronicles, judging from the system introduction and core content just now, was clearly a solid single-player game.

But to include gashapon mechanics in such a single-player game?

"The Blades in the game are divided into Common, Rare, and Epic, and the number of Blades in the gashapon pool is limited," Chen Xu said, smiling at the group.

Listening to Chen Xu, everyone basically had a rough understanding. It was simple: the SR and SSR Blades in the game were limited, and the more you pulled, the harder it became to get them.

In the early stages, 100 Epic Crystals might yield seven or eight Blades, but later on, 100 pulls might not even get you one.

For players with OCD who wanted to collect the complete album, Qin Yi and Meng Zuo could already sense the deep malice of this system.

Especially for some Unlucky Kings, a Lucky King might get the Blade they want with just 10 Common Crystals, while an Unlucky King might not get it even with 100 Epic Crystals.

After all, according to the design concept document on the conference table, besides the three guaranteed pulls at the start, all subsequent pulls were based purely on random luck.

"But Mr. Chen, the appearance of these Common Blades, isn't it a bit too..." Yang Xin couldn't hold back and asked a very pertinent question.

Yang Xin, who considered herself a Lucky King but was actually an Unlucky King, felt a strong sense of malice at this moment.

Of course, this was her feeling from a player's perspective. She hadn't even played the game yet, but just looking at this system...

How unfriendly it was to the African Chieftains!

And look at these Blades! There's no need to mention the Rare and Epic ones, the SR and SSRs. Each has a unique design, a unique voice actor, and some even have special bond dialogues and additional side quests to complete the story of the Blade and Driver.

But what about the Common Blades? What are these?! Black Uncles, Black Sisters, Tall Black Uncles, Black Doggies, and... Black Uncles, Black Sisters, and Black Doggies with hats.

This definitely implies something, doesn't it?

Imagine an Unlucky King saving up 99 Rare Crystals and 99 Epic Crystals, just to pull those last few SSR Blades.

And then all that appears are Black Uncles, Black Sisters, and Black Doggies. This is truly heartbreaking to hear and tear-jerking to see!

Coupled with their unique skin tones, Yang Xin couldn't even imagine the scene.

"Ahem... about that, you're definitely overthinking it!" Chen Xu coughed lightly a couple of times.

Even though Xenoblade Chronicles had countless meme-worthy elements, the Unlucky King implication was truly just a coincidence.

"Alright, besides these, the interactive experience in the game is also a core point everyone needs to pay attention to," Chen Xu said, changing the subject.

In his previous life, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 could definitely be called a masterpiece for traditional RPG enthusiasts, but it wasn't a masterpiece without flaws. In fact, it had many flaws, and some were even fatal.

Before the game's development started in his previous life, most of Xenoblade Chronicles 2's team members were reassigned to another project to work on map creation, and that game was The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This led to the fact that all projects in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 that could be outsourced were outsourced.

For example, game-related guidance content and some subsequent optimizations.

In terms of map design, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 could be said to have astonished countless players. The map, centered on Titans, had a strong sense of three-dimensionality, but the key problem was that the map guidance was terrible. If you were someone directionally challenged, then don't doubt that getting lost in the game was a problem you would inevitably face.

Unlike games like Dark Souls, which focused on exploration, Xenoblade Chronicles 2's map was more inclined towards an open world, with greater breadth.

And as an RPG, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 had very clear objectives. If players enjoyed exploration, then whether the map guidance was bad or good wasn't a big issue, because exploration was their core. But for most RPG players, exploration was secondary; they mostly wanted to advance the story or complete side quests.

And at that point, the terrible map guidance would definitely infuriate them.

Secondly, the new player tutorial was very in-depth, so much so that even when you were about to fight the Final BOSS, the game would still throw a tutorial at you. Of course, this wasn't a major problem, as it was based on story progression and learning new skills, which actually brought players the joy of having another 'toy'.

But the crucial point was that once the in-game tutorials passed, they were gone. There was no opportunity to review them. You either had to restart a new save file and learn everything again, or you had to go online and copy other people's notes.

Also, the Blade Resonance in the game had very vague early guidance, leading many players to think they could just pull whatever. After Rex finished pulling, they realized that the Blade belonged to whoever pulled it. Rex ended up with a huge number of SR and SSR Blades, while the Overclock items needed to transfer them to other characters were treasures found in map chests, not items guaranteed through gameplay. This quickly led to frustration.

There were many other user-unfriendly elements in the game, such as no batch selling of items, Blade Resonance only allowing single pulls instead of ten-pulls, and needing to watch all the entry animations for every Blade, or none at all. There was no option to only see the rare and epic Blades and skip the Black Uncles.

And then there was the arcade mini-game, Tiger! Tiger!, that you had to play to power up Poppi.

As for whether this mini-game was fun, one could only quote Tora from the game: "Trash game, meow!"

It could be said that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was a very extreme paradox. It had ultra-high-quality presentation, music, interesting combat gameplay, and great art, character, and map design, while also having incredibly frustrating guidance and content.

Therefore, Chen Xu would arrange these points better. After all, a game's importance wasn't just about its content; these aspects related to player interactive experience were sometimes even more crucial.

(End of Chapter) <>