Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 263 - 272: Can’t Bring the Alt!

Chapter 263: Chapter 272: Can’t Bring the Alt!

At this time, Instructor Ding started his daily live streaming as usual.

After nearly a week of hard work, his game character had reached level 47.

He estimated that with another week of effort, he could probably reach level 60.

Currently, the fastest leveling players on the server had reached around level 53, and some might reach max level within the next three or four days.

Of course, whether these people should be considered players or accounts operated by studios isn’t very clear, since many accounts are online 24 hours a day, with shifts rotating between two or three operators.

At first glance, Instructor Ding’s level 47 might seem quite high, making one wonder if he had some unique insight into leveling, given that he only livestreamed for a little over four hours a day.

But in fact, to ensure the quality of his livestreams, Instructor Ding had arranged for assistants to help level his account during the day.

When Instructor Ding was live, he would generally skip the monotonous monster slaying and questing, focusing on high-difficulty dungeons instead. This was more viewer-friendly for both him and his audience.

However, today, on a whim, Instructor Ding made a bold decision.

"Brothers, how about we do some team building in the game today? I’m going to take four lucky players to clear Fel Rift! To avenge last week’s arrow!"

Actually, according to the original plan, Instructor Ding was supposed to run a level 50 dungeon, Black Iron Vault, to update his equipment today.

But he had been dungeon raiding for a while now and was starting to feel sick of it.

After all, the low-level dungeons in this game were anything but low-level. Every single one of them could match the intensity of raid dungeons in other games, requiring constant vigilance and focus to avoid a total party wipeout.

Instructor Ding played a DPS class, which was relatively better.

The most suffering roles were the Healer Profession, followed by the Tank Profession.

The Healer Profession had to monitor the health of the entire party, and since there’s only one healer in a five-person dungeon, there’s no room for slacking. With various high-damage mechanics, keeping the party’s health from plummeting was like riding a rollercoaster—any lapse in attention could lead to deaths, maxing out the healers’ stress.

The experience for tanks was slightly better, but not by much. Knowing how many enemies to pull, where to position them, and paying attention to key skills for damage mitigation were all essential skills.

DPS was relatively the simplest role, just needing to pay attention to key targeted skills or area damage abilities, then just focusing on output.

However, this also led to an imbalance in role distribution in the game.

There were clearly too many players choosing the DPS class, and far too few playing as tanks and healers. Healers, in particular, struggled, with people constantly looking for them every time they entered a village or town in the current map area.

Messages like "Level-up team 4=1, need a healer" or "Dungeon progression team 4=1, need a healer" were constantly flooding the screen.

This issue also exists in other MMORPGs, but it was particularly pronounced in Shadow World.

Initially, players thought that Nitiandang, a company known for its innovative spirit, might come up with some mechanism to solve this problem.

But now it seemed that they had no intention of addressing the issue, and if anything, they were making it worse.

Instructor Ding also suffered from this, as it always took a long time to find a healer when forming a party.

So today, he had a brainwave: why not bring along the alternate characters, or "alts"?

Up to now, Shadow World had been quite unfriendly towards alts.

The first batch of players was higher in quality and more patient, barely managing to clear the initial dungeon, Fel Rift, after three hours. As Nitiandang continued to advertise and more new players joined, the overall skill level somewhat declined, and clearing the initial dungeon became a luxury.

Countless players were discouraged by level 6 wild monsters and dungeons.

If so, how about using the main characters to boost the alts?

Not only could this enhance the gaming experience for the alts, but it would also let the main characters enjoy themselves. After all, one absolutely cannot experience the thrill of cutting through enemies like slicing vegetables within dungeons or areas of the same level.

"Alright, let’s do it. I, Little Ding, am going to be the first streamer on the net to level up fans in Shadow World!"

Instructor Ding returned to the Demon Race’s starting area and quickly selected four lucky viewers around level 13.

He also took the opportunity to recruit new members for the guild he had created.

Yes, Instructor Ding had created his own guild during the leveling process, named "Brothers Getting Well Fed Again Roar Brothers," also jokingly called "Brotherhood Guild" by his fans.

Leading the four lucky audience members, Instructor Ding led the team, heading mightily towards the Fel Rift.

So far, there weren’t many people bringing their alts.

Because at this time, high-level players were generally rushing to level, even if they were to bring alts, it would definitely be after reaching level 60.

After all, bringing an alt was not only unprofitable for the main character but also a waste of time.

Instructor Ding decided to lead two rounds, and then go to grind a level 50 dungeon.

With his current level, entering a dungeon of around level ten should be a piece of cake. He wouldn’t need to act himself, just summon his demon big brother, and that would be enough to chop their way through.

Soon, everyone entered the dungeon one after the other.

Instructor Ding slapped his chest and guaranteed, "Alright, brothers, you all just stand at the entrance of the dungeon and soak up the experience, just watch my performance!"

By this time, Instructor Ding’s Demon Sorcerer had already taken a human form. Compared to these newbies wearing tattered newbie gear, his Demon Sorcerer had already assembled most of the high-level blue gear, coupled with the special effects of some high-level skills added on, he looked quite formidable.

"Big brother, go get ’em!"

As Instructor Ding gave the order, the tall demon guardian he summoned charged forward, swinging a forty-meter-long chopper towards the first little monster ahead.

However, soon after, Instructor Ding realized that something seemed off.

"Hey? Why is it losing so little health?"

In theory, at level 47, Instructor Ding’s attributes should be able to crush those monsters, but he found it was barely a scratch on them. On the contrary, these monsters struck back, and the demon guardian’s health started plummeting!

And what was even more outrageous was that when Instructor Ding looked at the icon above the little monsters’ heads, he noticed that the level number "12" beneath the icons was green.

Even after barely managing to kill a little monster, experience points floated up!

The next second, the demon guardian died a valiant death in battle, and the monsters swarmed over, sending everyone back to see the Soul Doctor.

Five minutes later, everyone re-entered the dungeon to revive.

Instructor Ding silently resummoned his demon guardian, applying all sorts of buffs (beneficial effects) to himself, falling into silence for a while.

What was going on here?

After a moment of consideration, Instructor Ding quickly understood.

Clearly, there was some sort of dynamic mechanism in the game’s dungeons! His level had been scaled down!

Seeing the little monsters with the green level number 12, and being able to gain experience points, indicated that Instructor Ding’s actual level must be within 20.

Many MMORPG games have similar settings, where players receive no experience when the level of the monsters they fight is too low or too high, which is, of course, to plug the loophole of players rapidly gaining experience by farming low-level monsters.

The players were also accustomed to such rules.

Just like when a main account enters a dungeon to level an alt, if the main isn’t max level, it won’t gain experience either.

Some games have dynamic difficulty mechanisms, such as a level 47 main entering a dungeon for level 12 alts, where the monsters appear to be level 47 as well.

But "Shadow World" had taken a third approach: it hadn’t elevated the level of the dungeon monsters; instead, it scaled down the player’s level entering the dungeon!

No matter how high the level, it was compressed to the upper limit of the dungeon.

Those high-level skills were still usable, but the values were proportionally scaled down as well.

In other words, could a main account take alts? They could, but only by a little bit.

Although the main would still retain some high-level skills, and the mechanics of these skills greatly increased the margin for error with various controls, combat resurrections, damage reduction, and so on, the attributes were essentially still within the original range set by the dungeon, making solo runs impossible!

Everyone stood at the entrance of the dungeon, looking at each other in dismay.

Instructor Ding was a bit embarrassed, "Brothers, how about... you all lend a hand too?"