King of Glory "Kai" is online | Another wave of screen-sweeping activities

" Honor of Kings " recently launched its first original hero "Kai", and the operational activities surrounding the new hero are worthy of attention. Compared with new heroes launched in the past, "Kai" has a very strong topicality. As the first character in "Honor of Kings" without a prototype, "Kai"'s story background, character relationships, etc. can provide enough freshness in themselves. For this hero, "Honor of Kings" also took the opportunity to launch a limited-time event, which successfully swept the screen.

From the Baidu Index, "Kai" has maintained a slow growth since it was launched on the experience server, and quickly climbed after the redemption activity was launched, reaching its highest point on July 15 (Saturday). Compared with all the new heroes that have not been launched before, I am afraid that none of them has a better communication effect than "Kai".

What kind of event is this?

If you have recently joined a WeChat or QQ group related to "Honor of Kings", you may be familiar with this scene.

Simply put, since the game has launched a new hero mark collection activity, players can redeem the new hero "Kai" as long as they collect all 7 marks. When the same type of mark is drawn repeatedly, players can share the excess resources on WeChat and QQ groups and give them to friends.

The fact that an operational activity can bring about such an effect is probably related to two things: 1. The rewards of the activity are fatally attractive to the general public of players; 2. The form of the activity produces a very strong self-propagation effect.

Specifically, first of all, heroes are the core of MOBA games. Every time a new hero is launched, there will be a peak in user activity. Considering that most new heroes in "Honor of Kings" must be purchased with gold coins or points, "Kai" as the first hero that can be "obtained for free online" naturally gained extremely high popularity.

On the other hand, the essence of this event is collection, and each player can share the fragments they have collected, which lays a solid foundation for the spread of the event. The activity rule of "single account can only redeem once" has accelerated the flow of idle resources among players. Once the players' desire to collect is satisfied , they are more willing to give the extra marks to friends who have not collected all the marks. This is why the screen-sweeping phenomenon occurs.

In addition to social networking among acquaintances, such as WeChat groups , social networking among strangers can also be seen everywhere. Many players leave messages under posts in the WeChat game circle, hoping to get more marks:

The characteristic of stranger social networking is that most of the needs will be accurately solved in a "one-to-one" manner, and both parties are online at the same time, and the process is extremely short. However, coexisting with it are the hidden risks. Grape Jun discovered that as the deadline for summoning marks approaches, some players even use cash transactions to publicly sell their excess rare marks, and the asking price basically does not exceed 10 yuan, which is still very cost-effective compared to the direct sale price of 388 points (38.8 yuan) for new heroes.

This operation reminded Grape Jun of the “Collect Five Blessings” activity held by Alipay during the Spring Festival for two consecutive years. “Collect Five Blessings” has dominated the social circles of friends and family during the Spring Festival for two consecutive years, but the activity received mixed reviews when it was launched, and even caused dissatisfaction among some KOLs .

Although the forms are comparable, this time "Kai"'s operation did better in some key points.

First, the threshold for the activity is lower. During the 6-day event, "Honor of Kings" announced the drop rates of these 7 seals. It can be seen that the drop rate of each seal changes over time and is not static. The advantage is that each mark has an exclusive time period with a high probability of dropping. As long as the player stays active every day and accumulates enough summons, collecting a full set of marks is basically not a problem. It is worth mentioning that the first summon on July 15th will get the mark "Armor", while the drop rates on the other days are 0%, 0%, 0%, 7.5%, and 7.5% respectively, which shows that the drop rates are extremely low. Therefore, July 15th became the peak period of player activity, and the Baidu Index curve mentioned above is not difficult to understand.

Secondly, it covers a more concentrated population and can cause the virus to spread within the circle. It is not difficult to find that once all topics about "Armor" appear in the King of Glory theme group, they will be accompanied by a series of interactions within the group, such as "I still lack xx marks, please support me", etc. Similar feedback will also set off the next wave of sharing in the group. The key point is that the field it covers is very vertical, which determines that it will not become a kind of "interference information". On the contrary, players are more willing to actively share and ask for it under the premise of visible input-output ratio.

Finally, the rewards can meet the needs of most players. In this operation activity of "Honor of Kings", the feedback players received was neither cash rewards nor prop rewards such as gold coins and diamonds, but permanent heroes. In other words, free players enjoy the same treatment as paying players, an experience that is not common in historical hero updates of Honor of Kings. On the one hand, the core needs of players are met, and on the other hand, the official has also accumulated a better reputation. On the other hand, when it comes to “Collecting Five Blessings”, the rewards do not meet expectations, which is an important reason affecting word of mouth.

It is worth mentioning that in addition to the above-mentioned operational activities, the official also launched H5 marketing , using games to promote topic publicity and build awareness for players. Perhaps many people were initially unfamiliar with the concept of the Great Wall Guards, and were surprised why there were characters such as Kai, Luna, Li Bai, and Mulan. During this period, the official used self-made mini-games to lay the groundwork for the story background and character bonds, and also solved these questions in the process.

Specifically, the player is appointed as a commander and selects two characters to stand guard at the Great Wall together. Different bonds will trigger different plots, thus affecting the final degree of cooperation. In a relaxed atmosphere, the game explains the relationship between the seven heroes, such as Kai is Luna's brother, and Mulan, a member of the Great Wall Guard, once saved Kai's life, etc.

Through this mini-game, players can get a general understanding of "Kai's" life experience and story, and thus establish some understanding of him. For the authorities, instilling a purely original character with no historical background into the player group means paying an extremely high cost, so interesting guidance becomes particularly important.

It is worth affirming that through this operation activity, players not only came into contact with "Kai", but also got to know new characters such as Su Lie, Baili Shouyao, Baili Xuance, etc. who will be launched in the future. Perhaps, the official is trying to increase the warm-up efforts for new characters, especially for original heroes like "Kai". Sufficient exposure in the early stages will lay a solid foundation, which will help ensure that the characters have longer vitality.

In addition, this event may be able to increase the DAU of "Honor of Kings" by another order of magnitude. Unlike "Collect Five Blessings" which sets a daily scan limit, the player's gaming behavior determines the number of redemptions on that day (MVP and triple kills can each be drawn once more), which also indirectly encourages players to play more games and play more games together.

In short, the popularity of the new hero "Kai" proves that there is still a lot of room to explore in the game's operational activities. Especially in the current fierce market competition, more thorough preparation in the early stage will save a lot of operating costs for the long-term development after the version. As the market gradually matures and the demands of the player group increase, it may be worth more manufacturers' time to explore how to conduct the next operation activity.