June 11th, Monday.
Tenda Games Department.
Hu Xianbin and Min Jingchao were seriously brainstorming content for the new DLC “Eternal Cycle” for “Turn Back to Shore.”
Since meeting with Mr. Pei last Monday, Tenda’s game designers had all been bursting with inspiration, eager to turn the DLC concept into reality.
However, after a week, this state of overflowing inspiration had become a form of torture for everyone.
Having inspiration but being unable to immediately start production was quite frustrating.
So frustrating!
It was like an author who had thought of a brilliant idea but couldn’t write it down immediately, having instead to repeatedly consider, polish, and perfect it over two months without writing a single word of the main text—not everyone could endure such torment.
The game department’s designers felt the same way.
They could only perform some minor preparatory work, such as simple brainstorming of game mechanics or making small adjustments to art resources.
But actual project planning, detailed design, formal development, and so on were all forbidden.
As for why, Mr. Pei hadn’t made it very clear. Everyone speculated that it was to allow them to accumulate inspiration and preparation, to avoid rushing, and to ensure they didn’t mess up this good idea.
While this was understandable, it was still very frustrating.
Hu Xianbin and Min Jingchao were in a similar state.
Hu Xianbin had previously developed “Mission and Choice.” The game had stabilized after its release, with no plans for a major DLC or sequel development, so Hu Xianbin spent most of his time thinking about “Eternal Cycle.”
As for Min Jingchao, the spring finals for various GOG regions were about to begin. The game version was already very stable and didn’t need updates for now.
Min Jingchao had nothing else to do and was very interested in the “Eternal Cycle” DLC, so he was also helping with gameplay design and conceptualization.
The more they brainstormed, the more they wanted to create this DLC immediately.
Especially with such unique combat mechanics—just imagining them made the gameplay seem thrilling!
Of course, that assumed the player was skilled.
But Mr. Pei’s orders couldn’t be violated. If Mr. Pei said formal development couldn’t begin, then it absolutely couldn’t.
Hu Xianbin said worriedly, “This feeling of being full of inspiration but unable to formally develop is too frustrating!”
“Mr. Pei asked us to wait two months before formal development, which is well-intentioned. He wants us to accumulate inspiration and be fully prepared before starting production.”
“But… do we need to wait two months? That’s too long!”
“Given the scale of this DLC, we could actually have a rough version ready in two months. After all, the main scenes and monsters won’t change significantly, and many art resources can be reused. Even adding time for testing and optimization, three months should be enough.”
“It seems a bit unreasonable.”
Min Jingchao nodded: “It does feel a bit strange, and the progress seems too slow.”
If Pei Qian had heard their conversation, he would have scoffed and said, “You don’t understand a thing!”
This had nothing to do with being slow. The reason for the two-month delay was to align perfectly with the settlement cycle!
Previous game project planning and development had happened within the settlement cycle, so they could be developed at a normal pace.
But the “Eternal Cycle” DLC was special, as it coincided with the end of the settlement cycle. If they started development now, to be safe, it would take three months, which would interfere with the settlement.
So he decided to delay development by two months to avoid overlapping with the settlement cycle.
But Hu Xianbin and Min Jingchao didn’t know this. They felt something was suspicious, and considering the Tenda Spirit Interpretation Principle of “there must be profound meaning behind Mr. Pei’s seemingly unreasonable behavior,” they naturally had questions.
Earlier, when they were overflowing with inspiration and seriously designing plans, these questions remained buried.
But now, with the design plans mostly complete, they had drafts ready but couldn’t write formal design documents or begin production.
In this agonizing state of frustration, these questions resurfaced and became difficult to ignore.
Both fell silent, each deep in thought.
Hu Xianbin frowned and said, “Do you think Mr. Pei deliberately gave us such a long idle period, deliberately preventing us from starting the ‘Eternal Cycle’ DLC, to hint that there are other things we could be doing?”
Min Jingchao nodded: “I think that’s possible.”
“But what other things could there be? What work could be completed within two months that is somewhat related to ‘Eternal Cycle’?” Hu Xianbin pondered hard but couldn’t think of anything.
Suddenly, Min Jingchao had a flash of inspiration: “Wait, I’ve got it!”
“Could we create a new hero for GOG?”
“Two months is enough time for us to create a new hero, and this hero could use the battle mechanics from ‘Eternal Cycle.'”
“Since the popular new hero Wind Calligrapher Ruan was born, GOG hasn’t had such a flashy and popular new hero for a long time.”
“The few new heroes released recently have received good reviews and have good balance, but none have been as explosive as Wind Calligrapher Ruan.”
“In these two months, we can design a new GOG hero ‘the Jailer’ while accumulating inspiration and preparing for ‘Eternal Cycle.'”
“Then we could first release the new hero the Jailer, then use this hero to promote and warm up ‘Eternal Cycle.’ Wouldn’t that timing be perfect?”
Hu Xianbin suddenly realized, “Yes, that makes much more sense!”
“If Mr. Pei is determined to have us do something in these two months, this is most likely it!”
After considering for a while, both felt this was the most likely possibility.
Besides, they were idle anyway, so why not create a new hero?
Min Jingchao had originally planned to announce the news of the new hero, the Jailer, at the GPL spring finals, but after discussion, they decided against it.
The GPL spring finals were this weekend, which was a bit late compared to the normal spring season schedule—after all, it was already June, and the summer season should be starting soon.
But this was mainly to accommodate the timing of other regions.
Other regions had been formed later, so their leagues started later. Synchronizing the timing across regions would ensure all regions’ summer seasons would be completed by the time the second Global Invitational was held.
The spring finals would have been a good opportunity to promote a new hero, but considering two issues—first, it would be impossible to produce a promotional video within a week, and releasing only text information without video would be uninteresting; second, Mr. Pei had required that any information about Inspiration Class’s copyright development couldn’t be leaked for over a month, and this new hero, strictly speaking, should be considered part of the copyright development—they abandoned this plan.
However, in a little over a month, the summer season of GOG would begin in all global regions.
They could announce the new hero when the summer season starts!
With a goal in mind, Min Jingchao and Hu Xianbin were once again full of motivation.
The inspiration they had accumulated for “Eternal Cycle” and the unique mechanics they had established could be perfectly applied to the design of the new GOG hero. They would strive to develop another hero as popular as Wind Calligrapher Ruan!
…
With their joint efforts, the design plan for the new hero was quickly completed.
This was clearly thanks to the inspiration from Mr. Pei’s original idea and the accumulation of constantly conceptualizing and designing gameplay over the past week.
The new hero was called “the Jailer,” positioned as a physical assassin.
His passive skill was “Breath Control,” which was similar to the breath value mechanism in “Eternal Cycle.”
The Jailer had neither a mana bar nor an energy bar, replaced instead by a stamina bar. Both skill casting and normal attacks would consume stamina.
Additionally, there would be a circular aura effect under the Jailer’s feet that would expand and contract at a certain frequency. This circle represented breath value—expanding meant inhaling, contracting meant exhaling.
When the circle expanded to its maximum range, it was the optimal state for attacking or releasing skills. Frequent attacks under this condition would achieve the breath control effect, making the Jailer’s stamina recover faster, slightly increasing movement speed, and raising block probability.
Conversely, if attacks or skills were used at the wrong time, the Jailer would automatically adjust his breathing to adapt to the attack frequency. But the side effect would be that the breath value would gradually become chaotic.
The breath value state would be indicated by the color of the circle under his feet, just like in “Eternal Cycle.” The initial color was standard white, chaotic was yellow turning to red, and smooth breathing was green.
If the Jailer’s foot circle was green and his stamina bar was full, it was best not to confront him directly.
The Jailer’s first and second skills were “Perfect Parry” and “Step Dodge.”
This mechanic corresponded to the mechanism in “Eternal Cycle” where the protagonist could push the joystick to perform perfect parries or dodges against enemy attacks.
These two skills had certain differences.
Perfect Parry had a short cooldown, no displacement effect, and low stamina consumption, but it had a certain failure rate. The mouse pointer needed to be pointing in the correct direction and the skill used at the right time to trigger a perfect parry; otherwise, it would be an imperfect parry or even a failed parry.
Whether the parry was perfect would affect the damage received by the hero, the change in breath value, stamina consumption, and skill cooldown time.
Step Dodge had a longer cooldown, a short-distance displacement effect, and higher stamina consumption, but it was much easier to operate than parrying, making it more friendly to players with poor mechanical skills.
The difficulty of parrying could be simply divided into three types: normal attacks from enemy heroes were relatively easy to parry; ordinary skills except ultimates would be more difficult; parrying ultimates was the most difficult, requiring not only skill but also good luck to succeed.
Considering that each hero’s skill animation, projectile speed, and other factors all differed, whether a parry could succeed would extremely test the player’s reaction and operation.
And once a parry failed, it meant taking the skill with your face, with severe consequences.
These two skills, plus the breath value setting, were key to whether the Jailer could be flashy.
The third skill was “Change Weapon.” According to the setup, the Jailer was a god of war who mastered various weapons, so he could freely switch between different weapon types.
To avoid excessive complexity, Min Jingchao designed three weapon modes.
One was dual-wielding two-handed weapons. In this mode, attack animations became longer, attack range increased, attack power slightly increased, and sweep attacks had AOE effects, but attack speed notably decreased.
The second was wielding a one-handed sword. In this mode, attack range, attack speed, and attack power were moderate, but there was a slight enhancement to the blocking effect.
The third was dual-wielding daggers, with the shortest attack range and lowest attack power, but extremely high attack frequency, and additional critical strike effects when attacking enemies from behind.
When choosing different weapon modes, the current breath value state and equipment influence also needed to be considered. For example, those wanting to play a harvesting assassin style could build attack speed and critical strike items focusing on daggers, while those wanting a semi-tank warrior style could focus on two-handed weapons.
But players couldn’t stick with one weapon throughout. To encourage weapon switching, each weapon change would provide a short-term damage increase buff and a slight improvement to parry success rate.
This was also easy to explain in the lore: using the same weapon for a long time would make enemies familiar with your patterns, while changing weapons to a different attack pattern would catch enemies off guard, increasing damage.
The ultimate ability was “War God Awakening,” which had both passive and active effects.
The passive effect was that during continuous combat with enemies, each successful parry or attack would weaken the enemy’s breath, shown as a circle under the enemy with four colors: green, white, yellow, and red.
The more chaotic the enemy’s breath, the slower their movement speed and the more damage they would take. When the breath was in a red chaotic state and health was below 8%, the Jailer’s damage would directly trigger an execute effect.
But the prerequisite was continuous attacks. If unable to continuously suppress the enemy’s breath value, the enemy’s breath value would gradually improve, returning to green and eventually disappearing.
There was another passive effect called “Descent into Madness.” When players repeatedly failed parries and accumulated deaths, the Jailer would enter a state of madness, increasing the success rate of his parry skill and even having a chance to trigger an automatic parry effect.
The active effect of the ultimate was entering the War God Awakening state, greatly enhancing the breath weakening effect on enemies. Enemy breath value would recover more slowly, and the execute threshold would increase to 12%. After executing one enemy, the effect would gain a small amount of additional time, making it easier to harvest the battlefield.
However, this execute effect wasn’t mindless; it required disrupting the breath value to execute, so it wouldn’t be overly invincible.
Overall, this was a hero with extremely high mechanical difficulty.
Its game mechanics were very worth exploring. If played well, it would be a strong choice for both duels and battlefield harvesting.
But the conditions for playing well were very strict.
Players needed to time attacks or skills with the breath value, accurately release parry skills against different heroes’ various abilities, correctly choose between parry and dodge, decide which weapon to focus on and match equipment accordingly, adapt to the rhythm of three weapon modes, and correctly choose between split pushing and team fighting.
It was a completely different hero in the hands of skilled players versus those with poor mechanics.
Interestingly, even if players with poor mechanics kept feeding with this hero, they could still maintain a baseline through the madness state, allowing the hero to go in and absorb some skills through the parry effect. Unlike Wind Calligrapher Ruan, who became completely useless after feeding a few times, with only “fun” remaining.
In terms of balance, this hero would be completely different in high-level matches and competitions compared to low-level games.
In low-level games, the vast majority of players wouldn’t be good with him, so there was no need to worry about him being too strong. The madness mechanism also ensured he wouldn’t be too much of a liability.
In high-level games and competitions, enemies could respond by deliberately disrupting his breath value and weapon switching. Moreover, although the Jailer’s parry seemed strong, a failed parry could result in instant death—high rewards accompanied by high risks.
It would be normal for professional players to struggle to show off with him, but when they did, the spectacle would be explosive.
Min Jingchao even had a premonition that the Jailer might form the “joy duo” with Wind Calligrapher Ruan in the future, competing to see who could be more entertaining.
But regardless, no matter how much the Jailer could feed, he would still be much more useful than the joyful Ruan.
This could be considered a great merit for the designers!