Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 295 - 304: The Shadow World Has Its Own Starlight Healer!

Chapter 295: Chapter 304: The Shadow World Has Its Own Starlight Healer!

The online public opinion storm lasted a full three days.

The two factions of players argued vehemently, but in the end, those supporting the officials gained the upper hand.

The players who complained about the nerfing of the Starlight Healer and Dark Chain gradually left the forums and stopped arguing, resulting in later complainants being overwhelmingly attacked by the crowd and quickly defeated.

Everything seemed to be moving in the direction Kang Yong had planned.

However, soon things started to look wrong.

Because data from the backend of "World of Star Spirits" clearly showed that the number of active players online at the same time was rapidly declining!

And so was the game’s revenue.

The revenue model of "World of Star Spirits" and Shadow World was similar, mainly from two sources: first was the time-based charge, including point cards and monthly passes; second was appearance-based fees, including special in-game outfits, pets, mounts, and so on.

Besides not being able to directly buy combat power in the game, there were still many places for players to spend money.

At the same time, there were official channels for exchanging in-game gold coins for top-up currency, allowing players to convert the gold coins they had accumulated into top-up currency to exchange for point cards, monthly passes, or various cosmetic items.

Theoretically, the income from this type of charging model should be relatively stable.

Games that sold combat power and item fees would have large fluctuations in monthly income—sell more combat power in one month, and the revenue would surge; have no top-up consumption activities the next month, and the revenue would plummet.

But for MMORPGs that don’t sell combat power like "World of Star Spirits" and Shadow World, the revenue should generally be more stable and might even steadily increase, as the money players spent on point cards and monthly passes wouldn’t fluctuate greatly.

However, in the past three days, not only the number of active players in "World of Star Spirits" rapidly dropped, but the revenue figures also plummeted!

This alarmed Kang Yong, as the current rate of decline had completely shattered his expectations.

Moreover, this was only data from three days; what would happen if the timeframe were extended to a week, a month?

...

Meanwhile, in the Nitiandang game.

Zhou Yang was dumbfounded.

"No way, did they just bluntly nerf the Starlight Healer and Dark Chain builds like that?"

The events of the past half a month had been quite an eye-opener for Zhou Yang.

Originally, the testing phase for "World of Star Spirits" went smoothly, with the Starlight Healer and Dark Chain builds feeding the game huge popularity as if it were child’s play.

Whether it was drawing in new players or retaining old ones, there had been a significant improvement.

But unexpectedly, after the players enjoyed it for two weeks, those builds were suddenly rendered useless with a single cut!

And it wasn’t just a simple nerf to the numbers, but a direct fix to the underlying mechanics, preventing these talents from being triggered as before.

They were utterly unplayable at the core!

Though Nitiandang didn’t have Shengjing Group’s backend data, the same method could be used, employing plugins to query the server’s concurrent online numbers to roughly determine the player attrition for the game.

Obviously, even though "World of Star Spirits" seemed to have returned to normal, with those online complainants exhausted and disappearing after three days of arguing, the exodus of players was still accelerating.

Su Tong said with a hint of surprise, "Huh? Our game’s online player count is hitting new highs, and there’s a significant increase in the number of new players flowing in!

"Look, Gan Di posted a video. We also have a similar gameplay to the Starlight Healer in our game!"

Everyone was a bit surprised.

"Do we also have Starlight Healers in our game?"

That doesn’t seem right. The game has been online for so long; if there really was a similar build, it should have been discovered by players long ago. How could it only be found now?

Zhou Yang hurriedly went to Gan Di’s homepage and clicked on it, discovering that in the early hours of today, Gan Di did indeed post a video.

The title was: Infinite Starlight Healing solemnly resurrected! "Shadow World" Forest Gale Suit achieves Natural Storm No Cooldown Effect!

Even Zhou Yang himself was a bit confused.

Forest Gale Suit? Natural Storm?

He was, of course, very familiar with these two names. The Forest Gale Suit was the name of the Druid’s Tier-2 set in "Shadow World" and primarily dropped in the game’s second major team dungeon, "Snowy Mountain Summit."

Of course, not all eight pieces drop from "Snowy Mountain Summit." The headpiece is obtained after clearing "Lava Mouth" and performing a quest to open a chest, while the leg piece drops from another boss located on a high-level map in the game.

As for "Natural Storm," the skill, it’s somewhat similar to "Starlight Illumination." It’s also a full-screen ultimate skill that not only heals all ally targets on the screen but also deals a small amount of damage to all enemy targets.

Similar to "Starlight Illumination," "Natural Storm" also has a long initial cooldown of 8 minutes, and its mana cost is quite high, consuming about one-fifth of a player’s mana in one cast.

So far, nearly all teams in "Shadow World" have cleared the normal difficulty of Lava Mouth.

Most stable, organized teams can also clear Lava Mouth on Heroic or Epic Difficulty consistently.

The teams with the fastest progress, such as those of Gan Di and Instructor Ding, have moved on to the early stages of exploring the normal difficulty of "Snowy Mountain Summit" and the Legendary Difficulty of "Lava Mouth" after consistently clearing Epic Difficulty Lava Mouth.

This also means that the first batch of top players in the game has been able to obtain a full set of Tier-2 gear from the normal difficulty.

Originally, not many players chose the Druid class and this Tier-2 set, because its eight-piece set effect didn’t seem that impressive.

The three-piece set effect of the "Forest Gale" suit is quite good — a direct increase of 20% spirit attribute — while the eight-piece set effect merely reduces the cooldown of "Natural Storm" by 30%.

Thus, most players either chose a mixed set of 3+5 or opted for other classes, such as the Priest’s eight-piece set.

Very few players actually chose the Druid’s full eight-piece set.

But quite evidently, Gan Di still believed this eight-piece set effect was useful and put it into practice!

In the video, after equipping the full Tier-2 set, Gan Di briefly demonstrated his skills and talents. Then he began casting "Forest Gale."

A Natural Storm formed around him, involving scores of leaves twirling violently in the pale green storm’s winds; and above the units to his right, green numbers representing healing began to float up.

"Whoosh!"

"Whoosh!"

Together with the sound effects of Natural Storm, it looked quite pleasing to the eye.

At this point, after about 15 seconds of casting, the cooldown of Natural Storm had already reduced to just 4 minutes.

Gan Di began rapidly casting other healing spells. He started by casting a Lightning Storm towards the friendly unit in front of him, followed by a Healing Rain. Finally, he cast a Magma Earthquake, causing the ground in front to violently upheave.

As more green numbers from the heals appeared, the cooldown of "Natural Storm" also quickly reset!

In just seven or eight seconds, "Natural Storm" was ready to be used again!

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.