No Grinding, No Player: A Game Design Comparison - Example of KOF Allstar
TLDR; KOF AllStar is a decent mobile game driven by nostalgia. However, its later updates did not adhere to the ideas designed in the original release. The grinding and reward systems are broken, making it seem like the game is a combination of two separate games.
In a sea of hundreds of thousands of games, only a select few manage to transcend time and captivate generations of players. These gaming gems have earned their place in the annals of history, while others fade into obscurity, leaving little more than a faint digital footprint. A lucky few might stumble upon fleeting success, only to disappear without a trace, leaving behind no lasting impact or memories.
With a plethora of games available, it can be challenging to find the time to play them all. Instead, I'll focus on a title that I've recently had the chance to play. This example highlights poor game mechanics that may ultimately lead to a decline in player engagement. The game is called KOF:Allstar.
The game in question has been around for years, so it's not necessarily a bad game. In fact, it's a nostalgia-driven title that draws inspiration from the classic King of Fighters series produced by SNK decades ago. As such, it has a solid fan base and may appeal to gamers who grew up with these iconic characters, likely ranging in age from their 30s to 40s.
Despite its nostalgic value and loyal fan base, the game's recent updates have unfortunately made it unplayable for many dedicated players. The changes to the game mechanics have seemingly been more detrimental than beneficial, causing frustration and disappointment among those who had grown accustomed to the original experience. Don't get me wrong - the game has great character design and very nice graphics. Most of the fighter skills and moves are also remarkably similar to the original games.
Problem 1: Lazy Character Design
Yes, the original KOF games have many iterations, and many of them feature the same characters with slightly different skills and skins. It's a good start to implement such subtle differences in multiple characters, and perhaps staying loyal to the original design would attract more fans.
There are some good examples in KOF Allstar, such as:
For example, this variant is problematic compared to previous ones as it is much stronger and paired with better enhancement (gears):
The worst-case scenario would be repetitive characters with absolutely no collection value for the old (or free) variants. The old ones might even look highly similar to the new ones. The developers might think that the different "skills" (damage system) would have collection value, but they were not aligned with the challenge system. This means that simply paying for and obtaining the new characters would be better in any circumstance rather than wasting time playing with the old ones and being inferior in the game. Because of this greediness, the free characters immediately lost their value.
One of the successful examples is EVE Online. In its game mechanics, the ships (characters that players control) also have a hierarchy. While higher-level ships can produce higher damage, they also retain certain disadvantages compared to low-level ships. Therefore, all classes and levels have a place in the gameplay and will hardly be replaced by one another. Such a mechanism also gives players their own choice of play style, thus providing much more freedom and fun.
This is one classic example that game designers could learn from.
Potential solutions:
- Design a challenge system specifically for the old characters to retain their usefulness, in addition to their collection value. The reward could be linked or directly contribute to the new character's number (growth) systems.
- Limit the new characters' access to the old challenge systems (which has been implemented in later updates of the game, after the "UX" levels, but it's too late). Meanwhile, improve the "relation" between old and new characters, which will make improving the old characters meaningful.
- Improve the current "Core" system, giving extra upgrades to old characters to make them effective in new challenges. Of course, the upgrades need to be obtained through another challenging system. (Unfortunately, what we see here is that the core system is essential but easy to maximize, and remains useless once it's maxed out, meaning all the cores are needed with no flexibility. Unlike the talent systems in WOW or Diablo that offer the capability to customize, this core system in KOF AllStar is more of a leveling up system rather than one that provides flexibility. The recent version added an extra core board to the new characters, but still not to the old ones, and the number designs are terrible).
Problem 2: Endless horizontal expansion (bloating) of characters.
It seems that the operating team understood that the characters were well-designed in the early version. So they decided to bloat the game with endless new characters to make players pay for them. One piece of evidence, in addition to the repetitiveness mentioned above, is that they utilized the "memory" system (for character upgrades) and made it extremely difficult to obtain once the promotion period passed. This means that if players want to get stronger characters, they have to pay for the currently promoted ones. In such cases, players can't just keep playing for free for a long time to obtain the free rubies and get equally good / desired characters to fulfill the new challenges. This is a thoughtful design but fails to take the collection value into account.
For example, it is extremely difficult to obtain the "SS", "BS", or "EX" memories once the promotion period ends:
The original release of the game seemed to consider this point as they implemented the "memory exchange" system, but this mechanism did not persist in the subsequent design. I'm guessing the original designers were not involved in the game once it went public.
The game currently has some old exchange systems, which require effort to obtain and make the challenges worth repeating:
Potential solution:
Problem 3. The Killer: Broken challenge systems. Grinding is not Fun!
The initial release of the game had a decent challenge system built for existing characters. However, later updates seem to only focus on the linear growth of numbers rather than the interactions between several systems. Simply put, the updates merely increase the difficulties of the challenges (by increasing numbers) corresponding to the release of new characters (who are stronger and can produce higher numbers). This is a very simple design of "level up" without additional fun. Just like the poor design of the "core" system mentioned above, once a player reaches a certain level, the previous ones immediately lose their value. Even grinding (repeating gameplay and accumulating materials) becomes meaningless and boring once players obtain a stronger character. This is simply because the stronger/new characters are too overpowered in previous challenges.
The course of game updates seems to focus on expanding characters rather than building good challenges that correspond to those characters. Maybe collaboration with other cartoons and games was the trick to make the game live this far, but I think the game is losing a huge number of players right now given its slowing updates and even poorer methods of releasing new characters. Even when new challenge systems are built for new characters, they seem to be boring due to the lack of involvement of old characters, and the purposes of these new challenges are clearly aiming for pay-to-win.
Let me break them down into a canvas map. Here, I have summarized the character system and challenge systems in KOF Allstar and highlighted the problems with red and green lines.
Potential solution:
- Of course! Improve the grinding system and design better challenges that can make all characters interact.
Summary
Overall, it is quite clear that the current version of KOF Allstar feels like two separate games combined together: the original one and the expansion. As many players have complained, the game is unfriendly to newbies, and its pay-to-win aspect is emphasized too much.
The operating teams are clear; they could adjust the small numbers and rewarding systems and look at the big data to decide which in-game tools should be used to motivate players to spend real money. However, they are too lazy to connect these tricks to the original designs and absorb an even larger player base while keeping loyal fans.
It is quite evident that the people operating the game are not following the original design or intention, perhaps due to their calculation of manageable profit for the game. To me, it feels like the team responsible for game operation has completely abandoned the original design and lost contact with the original designers. The updates after the game went online were completely done by a group of lazy people who are only willing to add replicates to the game content rather than finishing up the missing parts.
However, keeping the game running definitely requires adding new characters (as they have been doing for years), which requires designers and researchers. Why not make it better?
I know this game has been out there for years, which beats most of the crappy pay-to-win mobile games. However, it is a shame to just waste such a good start, a rich player base, and the huge resources invested in developing the graphics (not only characters but also cards, skins, and music). It could have had the potential to live at its peak for a few more years.
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