The concept of New Game Plus (NG+) is generally for single-player games with a definite end to the story arc. You restart the game, but not entirely from scratch: You can bring over some of what you have earned, and often the challenges are adjusted to account for this. The net result is what hopes to be a fresh play-through despite the story sequence being the same.
So applying the concept of NG+ to online games is generally very tricky because they typically have time-limited events and promotions.
But this can also make it daunting for new players to join late after launch, and make existing players feel their time is monopolized by having to log in or miss out on events.
At the same time, the idea of limited events is precisely to encourage players to constantly stay involved with the game with "FOMO" -- Fear Of Missing Out. The sooner you play, the less events you'll miss.
However, NG+, or at least a re-start without losing your purchases and time-limited events, is often requested -- it's not uncommon to see players inquire about how to restart their game. Maybe more experienced now, they want to avoid some of the "mistakes" they made on their initial playthrough of the stories and mechanics. And often this is not possible at all.
Can online games have NG+?
We think they can, and without unduly affecting FOMO revenue.
In fact, Disney Dreamlight Valley already has a type of NG+ -- You can restart your game but keep your previous Star Pass (battle pass) prizes, your shop currency (Moonstones), and any account-wide awards such as Twitch drops.
We'll use the recently released Honkai Star Rail as our example.
Here's what needs to happen:
Tracking Out-of-Game Rewards / Loyalty Rewards
By out-of-game rewards, we mean such one-time things as pre-registration bonuses, social media promotions, one-time redemption codes, Twitch drops, or rewards from other special out-of-game events. Without being able to retain them all, players become increasingly less likely to restart their game from zero, no matter how much they want to.
This does not include recurring rewards such as daily login rewards or battle pass participation rewards.
We'll call all these types of rewards "Loyalty Rewards". Whenever they are attained, we track them so that they can be re-applied when an account is wiped and restarted.
Tracking Purchases
All purchases also need to be tracked so they are not lost. Depending on the nature of these purchases, they may need to be carefully re-applied when an account is restarted, e.g., a purchase of shop currency that is distributed over several weeks.
Tracking Time-Limited Events in a Historical Events Calendar
Every in-game event also needs to be tracked in a calendar. For example, if an in-game event was run after the first week of the game launching, then we record on the calendar the start date to be Day 8.
Daily login rewards that are always the same every month do not need to be tracked. However if the daily login schedule included a special reward, then that special reward counts as an "event" and should be tracked by the Calendar.
The Calendar is used to determine what events will occur for a player who has restarted their game.
Fast Forward
A mechanic to allow a player to Fast Forward 12 hours should be implemented. This lets them zoom through time if they wish, in order to steadily catch up to the current day.
How to Restart
In order to Restart a game, the player must confirm they want to do so, and on the next server day:
- Their progress is wiped. They begin as if they had just started a new game on a new account. They are Day 1 on the Historical Events Calendar.
- They immediately receive all Loyalty Rewards
- They immediately receive all their Purchases
- They cannot participate in current game events until they are caught up with the present
At this point, they can start playing normally and experience events as if they were starting at game launch.
Whenever they are ready, they can also Fast Forward. Typically, they would do this once they are out of things to do in a day, such as when there is no story or sidequest content to do, and they have already completed their daily quest allotment.
New Experiences from New Game Plus
It is important to note the random results from gacha pulls ("Warps" in Honkai Star Rail) will have to be re-determined in this game restart. Players who felt they were "unlucky" and spent a lot of pulls to get the characters they wanted will have a second chance -- to do better or worse. But conversely, those times they were "lucky" prior to resetting their game will not be guaranteed to recur. So more or less, it evens out and the price of this redo is replaying everything all over again.
Other "mistakes" and unfortunate incidents can be undone in this way. For example, missed daily logins.
Newer players can experience older events and promotions, and have the opportunity to get items and characters from historical events. Long-time players can play through the game with any new mechanics that were substantially changed since launch.
When more content is released over time, the new player experience will change to include for example more maps that were added in installments. A new player would have access to all the maps right from the start, meaning a possibly substantially different experience and character development arc. All this would hopefully add some freshness to actually restarting an account.
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