Why I played Fate/Grand Order
Fate/Grand Order is onHere is the example how ae of the most successful mobile game on the earth, which has grossed more than $3 billion in worldwide revenue. FGO comes from a famous ACG franchise Fate Stay Night, an R18 AVG published in 2004, after that the company decided to produce the animation for this game without the adult content. Due to the different endings in the FSN which is very helpful to make the AVG more interactive and player's choices meaningful, this game was transferred into 3 animations talking about different endings in recent ten years. Because of the huge success on animation, Aniplex made sure that it was their time to exchange so many fans into royal consumer, so that here came the FGO. FGO was published in 2015 in Japan and it entered China during 2016, after that, it was published in the USA in 2017, as a three years old mobile game it still domains the whole ACG market and keeps raising massive money from the players all around the world even in the more and more competitive game industry nowadays.
The reason why this game is so successful is not only that this game has a bunch of fascinating stories but also they use those story to sculpt hundreds of characters. Besides, the love of these characters from the fan players help the game generate a very huge active community which can maintain the connection between players and game.
Story
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The story in this game comes from the settings of the FSN, however, the designer changed some features to make it more like an online RPG instead of an AVG.
The story in this game comes from the settings of the FSN, however, the designer changed some features to make it more like an online RPG instead of an AVG. Here is a video made by the player community which tells the first whole story of this game ( spoiler warning!). The story is a very classic hero's journey talks about the player save the world by traveling through different ages, meeting different people and correcting histories as a master with the Demi Servant Mash Kyrielight whos was combined with the servant Sir Galahad and finally defeat the final boss.
Every time I watch this video my face will be covered by tears, I can still remember how I felt when I saw Arash sacrifice himself to protect the player from the Rhongomyniad with shout out "Stella!!!", this video also reminds me of Bedivere spend 1500 years to find the Artoria Pendragon to return the Excalibur with a human body. The saddest part is during the ending of the story, our friend turns out to be the Solomon and he sacrifices himself to break the defense of the final boss which drive hundreds of thousands of players to mourn him on the Internet and FES. I think royalty and sacrifice can play a very important role in storytelling.
In the original FSN world, the story usually is about a master who is a human magician and can use special legacy to summon and control servant in a different class to fight with each other and the final master can win the Holy Grail to realize any wishes he/she want. Servants in the original FSN world can be divided into 7 classes, which includes Saber, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Caster, Assassin and Berserker. Besides, they are all famous heroes who have a certain influence on the world, for example, Gilgamesh and Heracles. While in this game they changed the story into several different settings.
First of all, they design a final boss Goetia who change human history in France AD 1431, Rome AD0060, Greek AD1573, London AD1888, North America AD1783, Egpyt AD1273, and Babylon BC2655 so that the modern world was burned down because of the wrong history process. I think the reason why the designers select these places in the world is that these places are that these places are famous enough to generate the hero's journey story, even more, these cultures already have their own hero's journey story which is very helpful to tell the story. Besides, I think humans are all fond of stories with some sam plots which means it would be very convenient for designers to use these existing stories which indicate the process that how to use IP which is already famous to generate your own stories and transfer those stories to your own IP world.
Second, in this game, players can summon many servants which is very different from the original rules in FSN world which provide the player more experiences with more varieties because if the player uses different servant and form the team with different servants to enjoy the stories the player story will totally become different not only in different stages but also in different players.
However, FGO still inherits the perfect features from the FSN which is the dialog selection system which means when you are playing the game, there will be some dialog selection for you to choose, and after you choose the different selection the emotions of the characters will change and the scripts of the next plot will also change which makes the game more interactive and it perfectly help the player to express their emotions during playing this game. The memory which impressed me most when I played the Assassin's Creed Odyssey is that they ask me whether to kill my father after I know he abandoned me because I killed a governor during the ceremony. So that I think this is the most fascinating part of the game that a game can receive the emotions from the player and give a different response.Furthermore, this feature will also enhance the relationship between the player and the servants which is the most significant reason why players will spend so much money on these characters.
Character
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There are already 237 servants in FGO and most of them all come from the culture in different famous cultures which means no matter what culture or certain heroes among human history you like you can easily find your favorite character or it would be easy for you to find some character to love based on those stories. Besides, this game has many features to turn your favorite character into your friends. After you set one character as your favorite servant, you can see them on the main user interface, you can see them in the personal room, and if the day is your birthday, when you enter the game you will receive a Happy Birthday dialog from the character which provides the perfect gameplay experience because these features are the best rewards for the player who spends so much money to get the character they like.
Here is the example indicates how a special character can generate massive money for a game. During the year 2016, Kings of Glory conquered the top-selling list for 364 days except for the day that Jeanne d'Arc[Alter] was published in FGO. There are several reasons for this interesting result.
There are several reasons for this interesting result. Jeanne d'Arc[alter] is not only the first main character in the story of Order I: The Wicked Dragon Hundred Years' War: Orleans but also she is best and most powerful character during that time. The reason why she is the best and the most powerful character is that the Chinese server is later than the Japenese server for one year which means the Chinese players have already know that she is the tier 1 servant in this game for a long time until the designers have to change the mechanics of boss battle in this game by adding additional HP bars because she can kill almost every enemy just in one turn.
On the other hand, the story of this character is very different from other characters and the traditional Jeanne d'Arc. She is a special servant with a unique class, Avenger which indicates that after she was burned at the stake she became a servant with the ceaseless anger but she still loves the humans in her heart which produced huge conflict on this character which makes her become one of the most favorites. So that I learned a lot that it is helpful to add conflict elements to the character if a game designer wants to design a popular character.
Last but not least, I want to also introduce the concept of the limited servant which means you can only get this character during this period. That is another reason why players are so eager to get this servant. I think this theory can be used in other games if you want to use a limited reward to indirect control of your players.
Activity
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The limited servant usually is published with the limited activity which means the designer will design a special activity for this character and make this character another reward for these activities, for example, if you have Jeanne d'Arc[Alter], you can not only get more material in this activity but also she has an additional attack reward in these activities. This feature can be easily found in Japanese IP gotcha game because profit driving system is a very effective method to persuade players to spend money. I do not think players hate profit driving system, I think we just need another dimension for other players to get the same valuable items, like time. Activities are also a good tool to maintain the PCU and ACU for a game like FGO because they will ask the player to log in every day and will change the experience by providing players with different activities.
Community
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Because of the IP, FGO has a huge community for game players and this so active community comes from the fans who love the characters most. Players of this game will make videos for this game, cos characters they love in this game, and write game documents about how to use character and how to finish the mission in activities of this game. Besides, social networking will also be extended into real life.
This is a photo of a coser who dressed as a servant Nero Claudius, the last emperor of Rome and the background is the same as the noble phantasm of Nero. I took this picture when I was in the FGO Expo in Shanghai. This the first and biggest mobile online game party in China which has ten thousand participants, I meet cosers, friends, and also other players. This party shows how strong and active the FGO community is and how players love this game. That is why I love this game so much because I am not alone to play this game.
Other Relative Information
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One of the most interesting parts in this game is the gender reverse, for example, King Arther is a girl, Nero Claudius also is a girl, even the Miyamoto Musashi is a girl. However, not every servant in this game are female, which let me think whether the gender will affect the player to play this game.
