At the moment of the game update, many people are waiting unconsciously.
Not because they really need a new character, nor do they expect to pick up a bit of good luck from fate, but because day-to-day life requires a kind of allowed fluctuation, and game updates are precisely the easiest to arrange and the most acceptable kind of fluctuation.
Mingchao 2.0 is such an update.
You know that everything has been planned, the character’s appearance rhythm, skill design and even how you might “get high” are all in the calm testing and review of the developers. But you still clicked into the announcement, still staring at the screen, still with a little bit of hidden expectations and fantasies.
The protagonist of this version is Gamora. Ice attribute, five stars, main C, holding a gun.
Her setting is a typical “new generation of strong women”: taciturn and cold, non-attached, unpleasant, skills have not been announced, but it has already aroused a wave of filters among players. She is very beautiful, this is a must-the beauty of game characters is a discipline, a default minimum threshold.
Gamora was quickly interpreted into various meanings: a controlling presence in the new environment, a combat template of cold violence, and a self-projected role tailored for “lonely output players”. She doesn’t need to say too much, she just exists, and then becomes an “owned” object. This is the fictional right of the game, and it is also the most missing part of people in real life – a sense of risk-free control.
The old character Jin Xi was also arranged to be reproduced. She was like a safe memory of the past, and was taken out and put in the window again. She has a new skin, which is part of the “reshaping”. You don’t really need this skin, you just need a reason to prove it – “I’m still playing this game, I still remember her.” In this logic, reproduction is not a step backward, but a product embodiment that serves the “sense of familiarity”.
Sanhua’s new clothes are launched in the form of “free event rewards”. Unlike the sale in the mall, this set of clothes is more like a packaged welfare. It encourages participation, prolongs online time, and triggers task mechanisms, but in a sense, it creates an illusion of scarcity. It tells you: “You are worth it, but you have to pay.”
Let’s look at Rococo. She is a more obvious emotional design result. Powder blue hair, heterochromatic pupils, carnival-style costumes, plus her annihilation attribute setting, and her skill “serving Tsubaki” role function – she is obviously a “helper”, but presented in an “alien” way. The little monsters around her and the suitcase-shaped weapons are all replicating the contemporary subculture label of “weird girl”.
In the eyes of game planners, she meets the substitution needs of another group of players: she has a sense of edge, visual impact, and uncontrollable strange charm, but she is still “useful”. That’s enough. Edge is just a gesture, and efficiency is value.
Of course, there is Treabar. It is not classified as game content, but it plays an actual economic cycle role in the game structure. It makes consumption light and seemingly painless, and it becomes like an active choice rather than a passive compromise. You feel that you are in control of your spending, but you are just being reminded: if you don’t charge, you will fall behind; if you don’t charge quickly, you will miss it.
The updates of Mingchao 2.0 have never exceeded expectations.
The new character Gamora is online, the old character Jinxi is re-engraved, Sanhua and Rococo play auxiliary – these combinations are standard structural adjustments, without breakthroughs or rebellion. All emotions are planned, graded, and guided, and players are immersed in them, but few people realize that this is actually an emotional production model.
But we still need it.
We need these scheduled updates, the short-term uncertainty when drawing cards, and the fluctuating feeling of “I’m still alive” at the moment of failure or success. We are even willing to pay, queue, and stay up late for it, just to confirm that we still have feelings for certain characters and systems in repetition.
The game is a miniature society, and Mingchao 2.0 is another round of aesthetics and structure in this society. It doesn’t have much novelty, but it is gentle enough. It doesn’t have radical expressions, but it knows how to comfort accurately.
What we get in this version is not a character, but a “comprehensible change”.
And this, in the real world, has become increasingly rare.