To be honest, when I saw the news that "Dream Cake Shop" was coming back, my first reaction was not "Ye Qing is back", but "What underlying values have been changed in this wave of updates?" 🤔 As an old player who watches KPL all year round and studies version changes, I am actually quite sensitive to the word "nostalgic version" - after all, many games are under the banner of nostalgia, but in the end they secretly change a bunch of economic curves and skill cooldowns, and it doesn't feel like playing at all.
But this time the official said that it was "a sincere recast of the original Centaur", so I felt a little more relieved. However, from the perspective of simulation management, this version is actually not inferior to MOBA in terms of "competitiveness". If you think about it, the essence of a cake shop is resource management: the order refresh frequency, the cost-effectiveness of oven upgrades, and the customer flow bonus of decorations. Once these values are adjusted, the entire meta will change. For example, in the previous version, "Strawberry Cream Cake" was the T0 choice in the early stage. It took a short production time, sold at a high price, and was fast-paced like a strong assassin jungler in the early stage. But if this version secretly increases the price of flour or lengthens the baking time, then it will have to transform into "pudding flow" or "macaron development" in the early stage, and the operating ideas will be completely different.
Another key point is mutual gifting between friends and order collaboration. This was an "auxiliary function" in the previous version, but after the version update, if the probability of gift output is adjusted, the gap between single players and team players will be widened, just like the requirements for jungle control in the Dragon Soul version of LOL - if you carry alone, and five people on the opposite team gather to get resources, you will not be able to withstand it in the later stage. Therefore, in this wave of nostalgic version, what I am more concerned about is not how cute the painting style is, but whether the "mutual gift mechanism" has been changed to a hard social threshold. If you have to collect a lot of gifts every day to maintain the popularity of the store, it will not be very friendly to trumpeters. This is a balance issue.
Of course, as a viewer, what I like to watch most is the "BP Game" in high-end cake shops. For example, when you enter the store and see that the other party has arranged "European-style display windows + crystal chandeliers", this is obviously a route to increase customer flow, and the pressure in the early and mid-term is extremely strong; if the other party puts up a bunch of "green screens + log shelves", then there is a high probability that the store will shrink and rely on high-priced customized cakes in the later period to make a comeback. If the attribute weight of decorations is adjusted in this version, the "decoration genre" will be reshuffled, just like the version that strengthened shooters. If you used the mid-lane mage to earn money in the previous version, this version will have to follow the same pattern.
Finally, I would like to say that it is recommended, but I hope the official will not turn "nostalgia" into "numerical rework". After all, we old cake lovers came back to get back our old obsession of "saving money to buy an ice cream machine", not to study the "cake interest rate curve". Of course, if this version really adjusts the depth of management, then there will be nothing less to talk about in this game than a peak showdown. At least I will seriously write an article "Looking at the Rhythm of Simulated Management from the Fantasy Cake Shop" for review after the game. 😏
In short, I rushed forward to this wave of comebacks. After all, the voice of 60 million cake lovers is not a joke. After two days of actual testing after the server is launched, I will report to you the "new version jungle efficiency" - oh no, it is the "oven upgrade efficiency". 🍪