Many industry professionals had their eyes on Reaper of Souls as well.
Everybody knew about Diablos crippling decline. Players and designers alike were trying to figure out how to reverse the process and extend Diablos life, but nothing conclusive was reached.
Many suggestions pitched by players or designers were quickly shut down by others. These suggestions would always entail changing the core of Diablo or make it decline faster.
As a hack and slash ga, it was natural that people would get bored of it quickly.
And in the eyes of many designers, there was nothing that could be done as in order to solve the problem, the core of the ga must be changed, which would obviously affect how fun the ga was.
The pros and cons of a ga like this were two sides of the sa coin, and improvents difficult to implent.
But nobody expected Chen Mo to double down on the hack and slash elent of the ga.
You think grinding is boring?
Alright, Ill just add more ways to make you grind. Are you still bored?
Many players realised that it wasnt boring, but was actually quite fun!
It was like reverse psychology. Although the ga seed to be even more grindy after the release of ranked seasons and the leaderboards, people gained more enjoynt out of it.
There were even articles analyzing how Reaper of Souls managed to save Diablos post ga.
As soone who got bored of Diablo, its hard to imagine that Reaper of Souls had made such a big change in the ga.
First it increased the content.
The expansion pack continued to maintain its unique atmosphere with mountains of corpses, feeling townspeople, and demons all over the place. This was maintained all the way, and you could feel the world calling.
The best part was the confrontation between the main character and Adria. It was so satisfying to be able to kill that horrible witch again and again!
Whats most surprising was the Nephalem Rift chanic. Different maps and random elents are joined together, making it so every level after being teleported into the realm feels like a crazy fever dream.
And when you kill the last boss, the ground is positively littered with loot, and ancient equipnt would drop almost every single ti. Chen Mo created a simple yet effective system, launch the ga, kill bosses, get rewards, quit the ga. The players can skip over all the convoluted steps and enjoy the best of hacking and slashing.
In truth, through the expansion pack, Chen Mo let us know that the core of the ga is still grinding. Chen Mo used a few new ga modes that suited Diablo really well to revive this ga.
The pros of this ga: Dark atmosphere, adventures, long-lasting satisfaction, and amazing visual effects.
If you like gas where you kill hordes upon hordes of mobs, then without a shadow of a doubt, Diablo: Reaper of Souls is your best pick
Diablos expansion pack, Reaper of Souls, gave a new life to the ga, extending its lifespan, solidifying Diablos position in this genre.
And its unique art style and ga play beca a popular branch under the RPG tree as video ga designers look into it again and again.
And the designer who was most inspired by Reaper of Souls was probably Yan Zhenyuan.
Reaper of Souls arrived after he decided on the post ga of this new project, and even started working on the design docunts of the ga.
After investigating the features of Reaper of Souls, Yan Zhenyuan spent three days making huge changes to the design of the ga.
Although this ant that a lot of work had to be redone, dramatically increasing the workload, Yan Zhenyuan was sure that it would be worth it in the end.
After seeing how Reaper of Souls solved Diablos lack of a postga, Yan Zhenyuan also noticed the problem in his previous thought process.
Yan Zhenyuan planned to incorporate techniques used in online gas to extend the playti, but from the looks of it, this way of extending playti would surely affect the quality of the ga.
And Chen Mos way of solving that sa problem was probably the most ideal thus far.
Of course there were differences in the design concept in VR and PC gas, and as a S-grade videoga designer, Yan Zhenyuan wouldnt blindly copy it. However, he got so inspiration for this and gained a whole new found respect for Chen Mo.
This guy is really sothing else.
The developnt of Diablo wasnt just to pave the way for future developnt of RPG gas, but more importantly, it was a test in many aspects.
Testing the acceptance of players towards third person RPGs.
Testing the acceptance of dark, scary thes.
Testing the acceptance towards grinding.
And Dont Starves release was to test the acceptance of players towards sandbox gas.
Each of these points can be developed into gas of different genres, and was a roadmap for Chen Mos ga developnt in the future.
Following Reaper of Souls great success, Chen Mo had plenty of money on hand.
Diablo sold 9.8 million copies world wide. Although this doesnt co close to thirty million by Blizzard in his previous life, it was certainly a result to be proud of.
Reaper of Souls had sold 2.9 million copies, and this was before its release internationally. Almost all the players who would Diablo bought the expansion pack.
(And the Chinese players in this world finally got a taste of getting a ga before the rest of the world.)
Dont Starve sold 4.35 million copies in China. This doesnt compare to his previous life, but it was almost a miracle for such a tiny sandbox ga to do so well in this world.
Chen Mo managed to gain a lot in terms of popularity and money selling these two gas.
Chen Mo had around seven hundred million RMB on hand for developnt. Diablo cost quite a bit in its developnt, and including Reaper of Souls, it cost nearly two hundred million RMb. Dont Starves cost was barely anything in comparison.
High quality gas like these cost a lot of money after all.
Thankfully, Diablo did equally well in the international market. Chen Mos revenue is as follows:
Diablo Chinese profits: three hundred and forty million.
Diablo International profits: 1.23 billion.
Dont Starve Chinese profits: sixty-one million.
Reaper of Souls Chinese profits: two hundred and thirty six million.
Of course, Onmyoji and Warcraft were still bringing Chen Mo profits.
After working for so long, Chen Mo finally broke a milestone of three billion RMB for developnt.
Reviews
All reviews (0)