Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 282 - 291: Complex Mechanisms and Rebirth Gameplay

Chapter 282: Chapter 291: Complex Mechanisms and Rebirth Gameplay

March 4th, Wednesday.

The Shengjing Group’s brand-new test version of "World of Star Spirits" called "Ascension Mode" officially launched!

This timing seemed a bit rushed. In fact, from the official development to the online testing of this test version of "World of Star Spirits," it had been less than two months. Even though the entire project team for "World of Star Spirits" was working overtime to rush the work, there were still many bugs that inevitably hadn’t been fixed.

But Kang Yong still forcefully decided to launch the brand new "Ascension Mode."

The reason was simple; they had to release this version now to capture the most hype!

If they didn’t seize the moment, the market environment might change.

During this time, "Shadow World" remained hugely popular!

Contrary to what the bug exploiters online speculated, Nitiandang gaming didn’t respond to this bug at all, and there wasn’t even an official acknowledgement that it was a bug.

In the first week, players played with trepidation, fearing that one day they would log on and find it had been fixed with a snap, followed by a small consolation prize in every player’s mailbox.

In the second week, players continued to play with apprehension, although they had a vague feeling that the official team wouldn’t fix it, they still worried about a sudden comprehensive patch.

By the third week, everyone started to play recklessly, as various signs indicated that the officials probably would not fix it at all!

And as players delved deeper into the experience, they soon discovered many more interesting aspects of the gameplay.

Firstly, this system was far more complex than the players had imagined!

Each profession had three branches, each with a dozen different skills, and more than twenty different talents. Moreover, each skill had four different rune effects that could change the skill’s attributes or specific forms.

The number of different builds that could be produced by combining them was astronomical.

Most critically, the players couldn’t simply determine through the skills and talents and their descriptions whether they would interact with each other.

Some interactions were written explicitly, for example, both the Holy Priest and Holy Knight’s talents include descriptions that increase the healing effect of Holy Spells; such no-brainer selections were definitely correct.

However, many talents from other branches, without actual testing, it was impossible to determine whether they could enhance Holy Spells damage or to quantify the specific enhancement effects.

For instance, some talents converted Intelligence into Spell Power, while others turned Spirit into Intelligence, and still others converted Intelligence into Spell Critical and so on.

The different effects of these conversions, some additive, some multiplicative, raised the question of how to allocate points to maximize benefits; this required a lot of complex testing.

Skills were similar; even within the same branch, the effect of talent enhancements on these skills varied.

Apart from a few legendary skills that were obviously must-picks at a glance, which other skills to choose required more in-depth research.

Some skills were used to maintain their own buff effects, some were used as single-target or AOE damage methods, and others might have had other uses.

In such a vast and complex system, even though all players were researching and testing every day, for the time being, only three or four fairly strong and complete builds had emerged.

This wasn’t to say there were no other builds in the game; rather, players’ testing wasn’t completed yet, and they were still exploring.

So then, if players completely figured out these skills and talents, would they have found the optimal solution?

No!

Because there’s something very important in the game called set effects.

The current version of the game is level 60, with three major team dungeons opened, and each team dungeon has its exclusive sets. Although these sets are class sets, now that everyone can play all professions, it means they could choose from any of the sets!

Each set had a 3-piece, 5-piece, and 8-piece effect.

Generally speaking, the effects of an eight-piece set are the strongest, but there are some peculiar sets where the three-piece and five-piece sets are actually more useful than the eight-piece set.

For example, the Druid’s set "Forest Gale" has a three-piece effect that increases the spirit attribute by 20%, which is a substantial attribute boost. The eight-piece effect, however, reduces the cooldown of the "Natural Storm" skill by 30%.

Everyone agrees that this eight-piece effect seems pretty useless.

Because "Natural Storm" is a Druid skill akin to an ultimate ability. Once activated, it inflicts damage on all enemies on the screen and heals all allies.

Its initial cooldown is eight minutes, and it’s very mana-intensive, consuming about one-fifth of the mana pool in one go.

Moreover, since "Natural Storm" inflicts damage on monsters and is not purely a healing skill, its values are comparatively conservative. It works as an emergency rescue skill when the entire team is losing health rapidly, but it’s impossible to expect that no one will die when this ultimate skill is used.

Even with a 30% cooldown reduction from the eight-piece effect, the skill still has a cooldown of over five minutes, making it impractical to use twice in a single battle.

By comparison, the eight-piece effects of other healing classes, whether providing direct shields from heals or extending the duration of continuous healing, seem far more useful.

In short, even though players generally have a good understanding of skills and talents, as they progress with their raid content, they will find that these set effects can still synergize with skills and talents, and this synergy can potentially turn certain skills or talents from secondary to primary importance.

In other words, research is endless!

Even if players do find the strongest build, the process itself is also full of joy.

At least until players have truly conquered the ultimate raid, the "Burial Grounds," it’s hard to fully grasp this complex system. And to overcome the challenge of the ultimate raid would probably take at least a year to start with.

During this time, this is more than enough for the game "Nitiandang" to develop subsequent versions.

Besides, players have found that the experience of playing with alternate characters doesn’t seem as bad as it was at the beginning!

Of course, the gameplay remains the same; monsters in the wild after level 6 still have relatively high stats, but as players’ expectations change and they get used to this environment and intensity.

As players delve deeper into the game’s systems and explore them, they find some more convenient leveling methods.

First, there’s a unique feature in the game called "Rebirth."

As the name suggests, when players reach max level, they can choose to undergo Rebirth at a specific NPC, which resets them back to level 1 to level up all over again.

Once they reach max level once more, they can receive a treasure chest that may contain Gold Coins, raid equipment, and some special currencies.

These special Rebirth coins can buy specific cosmetics, pets, mounts, large-capacity bags, and so forth—some of these items can also be traded in the in-game auction house.

Lilith originally thought that this method would make players suffer and struggle for a second time.

Because in Lilith’s view, once players reach max level, the negative emotions they contribute would surely diminish greatly.

After all, once at max level, the main activities are raid dungeons. Given their high difficulty, everyone quickly gets used to the team wipes, and the negative emotions produced inevitably start to fade.

But with the Rebirth feature activated, players will level up again driven by the potential rewards.

In this process, they lose all the high-level skills they’ve learned and are forced to endure the limitations of being a newcomer, bringing back those negative emotions, right?

However, with the advent of the all-class gameplay, the "Rebirth" feature took on a whole new flavor!

Even though players forget all their learned skills and talents after rebirth, they remain in an "all-class unlock" state, which means they can visit trainers of different classes at low levels to pre-activate certain specific builds!

Of course, the power of low-level builds can’t compare to high-level ones, but compared to the original classes, they are already quite powerful.

These reborn max-level players, having their own leveling needs as well, naturally start to mentor newcomers, team up for quests, or lead new players into dungeons for challenges, which significantly enhances the newcomers’ gaming experience.

As the new players are boosted by veterans, witnessing the strength of all-class gameplay, they grow increasingly excited for their own max-level adventures and unlocking all classes at the Lava Mouth. It becomes their motivation to persist and level up to the max.

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