Three Kingdoms Strategy Edition Sacrifices New Players to Feed the Accounts of Big Spenders: The Return Mechanism

Three Kingdoms Strategy Edition is a mobile game (hereafter referred to as a mobile game) supervised by the veteran Japanese Three Kingdoms strategy game maker Koei, ranked 39th in the Apple Store strategy game rankings, with a total of 19,000 ratings (Apple Store data).

In the two years since the game launched, a total of 30,450,310 orange general cards have been drawn by players, the alliances founded by players have reached 49,393, the in-game letters used for communication have reached 10,417,599, and the total word count is as high as 720 million characters. This is truly an astonishing figure, and the revenue it generates behind the scenes is even more astonishing.

This game has a rather special design, using a seasonal turn-based system, with each season lasting about two to three months. Each time a new season restarts, players have to start over from scratch, farming land and leveling up. The players on the oldest server known so far have already played to the 10th season (abbreviated S10).

The author has just played to the 5th season. I still remember going from a clueless rookie in the first season, cooperating and fighting with other players all the way to today. Some allies have already cooperated for nearly a whole year, and I have also argued with some people for several seasons, and even angered a big spender into running away.

That guy did not quit the game or sell his account; he really gave up on the original season and ran away. It was also because of this that the author learned that Three Kingdoms Strategy Edition has a special game mechanism, namely “return”.

As long as some hidden conditions are met, the game developer will allow players to return from the old season of their current old server (for example, the S5 the author is in) back to the rookie season of a new server (for example, S2).

So what does this produce?

According to other players, that guy, carrying a bunch of fully red generals collected over four seasons at great expense, instantly became a big shot in that rookie season. From the data I saw on my blacklist, his power value was also so high that in my five seasons of playing I had never seen anyone achieve such a high score.

You can imagine how much territory that guy grabbed among a bunch of rookie players, and how much envy he received from a bunch of new players. And based on the author’s previous experience fighting him, that Hong Kong guy’s already rotten and stinking vanity must have swollen to its limit.

But this game mechanism is clearly a game experience mechanism that sacrifices new players to feed the big spenders.

While new players are still painstakingly collecting general cards, the returner descends from the sky with a complete set of fully leveled generals. It becomes such that whichever starting area this kind of player chooses (for example, Hebei), the alliance in that region has an absolute advantage.

In contrast, new players in other regions (for example, Shandong) will be suppressed from the start of the game all the way to the end of the season with no way to reverse it.

What kind of game experience is there in such game rules? Even if you want to follow along and spend hundreds of thousands to draw cards continuously, that is just falling into the game developer’s trap.

Many people may not know (and few will encounter it), but in fact, within a short period of time, as long as you top up a large sum of money, you will be warned that you have reached the limit and be refused further top-ups by the developer, meaning that it is impossible to catch up with a returner all at once.

In addition, many cards simply cannot be drawn at the start of a season. In the game design, new general cards are only opened at different stages, and it seems that some important cards are locked so that you simply cannot draw them.

Even equipment that has been crafted over several seasons (weapons, armor, horses, treasures) cannot be obtained immediately by new players just by throwing money at it, meaning the gap between returners and new players cannot be quickly closed.

From the author’s perspective, the game developer has turned the returner into a carrot 🥕 on a fishing rod, and new players are the donkeys chasing it, and you absolutely cannot catch up within two or even three seasons. This means new players will be continuously suppressed by returners for a very, very long time. This unconventional game mechanism is almost as if it were specially prepared for big spenders, giving them the value of self-satisfaction for their money while also squeezing other players into investing more funds. Apart from the new players’ game experience, it is almost a situation where everyone wins.