Shooting Eagles Ditches Open World After Just 45 Days — Dev Team Reportedly Banished, Players Roast: 'Why Would Anyone Pick This Over NiShuiHan?'

Just 45 days after launch, NetEase's Shooting Eagles (射雕) — a game built on the legendary Jin Yong martial arts IP — has reportedly decided to abandon its biggest selling point: the open world. According to a post on NGA (China's largest gaming forum), the dev team has made it clear during hiring conversations: open world is out, dungeons and instanced content are in. A game that banked entirely on wuxia nostalgia and open-world hype is now gutting its own identity.

According to the original poster, this revelation came out just before the infamous '天龙人BUG' (Celestial Dragon Bug) incident. The OP was chatting with someone from the Shooting Eagles team and learned that this so-called '10-billion-yuan team' (reportedly a 10-figure budget project) had already been 'banished to the frontier' — physically relocated, and even excluded from NetEase's own 520 anniversary showcase. But since the team was opening new hiring positions, the OP figured it was worth a conversation. The result? The team's stance was unambiguous: scrap the open world.

So why the pivot? The post lays out the fundamental design contradiction that plagued the game from day one. The open-world exploration and the companion (侠士/Xiashi) system were supposed to be the game's crown jewels — the features most deeply tied to the Jin Yong IP and most likely to generate revenue. But they were completely disconnected from the player's own martial arts progression, equipment, and endgame content. Dungeons required group play (since the official drop rates favored parties, and companion AI couldn't handle boss mechanics). Open-world content only rewarded open-world stuff; player progression only rewarded player stuff. Two completely separate progression tracks with zero synergy — open world and character building were basically two different games stapled together.

This created a deeply ironic situation. The open-world experience itself wasn't bad — multiple commenters praised it. One player wrote: 'The open-world exploration felt genuinely great, especially the music. Who wouldn't want to stroll past a teahouse and listen to a tune?' But here's the catch: NetEase's marketing kept hyping the martial arts combat system with classic MMO number-crunching philosophy. The open world was stuffed with combat power rewards disguised as 'treasure chests,' including forced co-op chests that required social interaction. As one player put it: 'Using the open world as an excuse to make players grind their souls out.' Skip any content? You lose attribute resources and fall behind the power curve — 'unless you're a whale with a loaded credit card.'

One commenter nailed the core issue with surgical precision: 'Games like this have a problem where everything is tied to combat power, so open-world rewards that should feel like bonuses end up becoming mandatory grind burdens. They lure you in with the wuxia IP appeal, but it all devolves into chasing DPS numbers. Even Tower of Fantasy's devs understood this better than the Shooting Eagles team.' Let that sink in — Tower of Fantasy, a game that was memed into oblivion for its own problems, is being cited as the positive example. That's how bad the design philosophy was.

Players also called out the laughable AI companion system: 'FF14 can handle AI party members dealing with boss mechanics in 2024, and competent AI teammates are becoming industry standard — but Shooting Eagles can't even manage basic boss phases?'

As for the 'abandon open world, pivot to dungeons' decision? The community reaction was almost unanimously mocking. 'That art style, and you want to focus on dungeons?' one player asked — Shooting Eagles' painterly, ink-wash aesthetic was tailor-made for open-world exploration, not dungeon grinding. Another went straight for the jugular: 'Why would anyone pick this for dungeon content? Without the IP and open world, who would even glance at this game? NiShuiHan Mobile (NetEase's own MMO) is already better.' In other words, by ditching the open world, Shooting Eagles would be throwing away its only differentiator and going head-to-head with NetEase's own established MMO — a suicide play.

The spiciest take cut right to the heart of it: 'Let me just give you the verdict — they got Genshin-brained' — implying the team chased the open-world trend inspired by Genshin Impact but failed to actually integrate it meaningfully. Another veteran sighed: 'Five years of development, and the problems were obvious from the start. They refused to fix anything. Now that launch revenue taught them a lesson, they want to change course? Too little, too late.'

The Shooting Eagles team's current situation is precarious: marginalized within NetEase, physically relocated, cut from company showcases, yet still trying to hire and pivot. A game that hit 'scrap everything and start over' territory just 45 days after launch — whether this is a courageous course correction or a desperate death spiral, only the revenue charts will tell. Another Frankenstein monster falls on the battlefield.