Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 302 - 311 Subtle Renewal?

Chapter 302: Chapter 311 Subtle Renewal?

Clearly, Lilith was quite struck.

Originally, after what Gu Fan had said, she felt as if she had an epiphany. Couldn’t she just reap a massive amount of negative emotions by replicating Shengjing Group’s method?

It was hard to imagine how lucrative it would have been if Nitiandang had developed "World of Star Spirits"!

However, Gu Fan’s subsequent words poured cold water on her, making her realize that this approach might not work.

After all, Nitiandang’s games couldn’t be modified after their release. They couldn’t carry out operations like Shengjing Group’s "slash and burn" tactic with the hot BD, which was indeed a pity.

But Lilith clearly wasn’t giving up. Although she seemed dispirited, she still paced back and forth in the living room, apparently pondering something.

"Gu Fan, I remember you once said that as a programmer, there are no features that can’t be completed. The only real issues are finding roundabout, circuitous ways to indirectly complete a feature and deciding how much time and schedule one is willing to invest to do so, right?"

Gu Fan paused, feeling a vaguely ominous sensation.

Why did Lilith seem to have gotten smarter? With this question, did she have some sort of idea in mind?

Yet Gu Fan could only nod and say, "Yes, that’s true."

Lilith’s statement was indeed something Gu Fan had said, and from a programming perspective, it was also true.

For a programmer, there’s no such thing as an uncompletable program, provided one is willing to invest a lot of time and manpower, and make a billion little adjustments to those unrealistic demands.

Most feature requirements in this world can be achieved through indirect means, which is also a necessary quality for an excellent programmer.

A faint smile appeared on Lilith’s face, and her pigtails seemed to perk up: "So, the method I just discussed isn’t entirely unfeasible, right?

"Although we can’t modify the game after its official release, what if we plant these changes in the game in advance, as part of the game’s features?

"For instance, we could add a restriction in the game where, after the game has been open for over a month, the program automatically adjusts certain values, causing the damage of players’ specific skills to plummet...

"This is totally doable!"

Gu Fan was taken aback, thinking to himself, good grief, Lilith has changed!

During her long gaming career, she had even picked up some programming skills and wasn’t as easy to fool as before!

And the method Lilith mentioned was indeed effective. In essence, it involved embedding these updates and changes into the game program from the beginning, allowing them to trigger automatically.

This way, it wouldn’t count as an official modification to the game, but as part of the game’s content from the start.

Seeing Lilith fully charged with ambitious intentions to put her plan into action, Gu Fan hurriedly spoke up.

"President Li, hypothetically, this could work. But there are a few issues that must be carefully considered."

Lilith’s eyes narrowed slightly: "Oh, what kind of issues?"

Gu Fan cleared his throat twice, beginning to explain: "The first issue is that when we collect negative emotions, the method matters.

"Suppose there are two ways to harvest negative emotions:

"The first way leaves players confused. They feel the game has become annoying but can’t figure out exactly what’s making it unpleasant;

"The second way makes it obvious to players that it’s a deliberate move by the officials.

"Which method do you think will harvest more negative emotions?"

Lilith pondered for a moment. "Well, the first one, of course!"

This is actually easy to understand, just like when netizens debate with others online, when are they the most defensive?

If you know that the other party is a pure idiot or just a paid shill, you don’t actually get as defensive. After all, since they are already like that, why not go along with them? Instead of getting angry, it is more amusing.

On the contrary, if the other party argues with you seriously, and you even start to doubt your own theories, feeling that they might have a point, the more entangled you become, the more defensive you will be.

The same goes for games.

If a gaming company does something particularly stupid, that is blatantly idiotic, and all the players are mocking it, even if players develop some negative emotions, they often won’t last long and may even turn into a sort of for-fun meme.

On the other hand, if the gaming company does something very controversial, and players become divided into two distinct factions, unyielding and constantly arguing, that’s when the most negative emotions can be generated.

Seeing that Lilith agreed with his view, Gu Fan hurriedly struck while the iron was hot and continued, "So, President Li, although your method is theoretically feasible, it still needs rigorous verification to put into practice.

"Overly simplistic and crude methods just won’t work.

"For example, we could set the program so that a month after the game launches, it will automatically cut all players’ damage to a tenth of what it was, making monsters they used to be able to beat unbeatable, and dungeons they could clear impossible to clear.

"While this certainly can generate some negative emotions, it actually isn’t worth it.

"On one hand, because such a change is too outrageous, players will quickly realize it; not only will they stop being angry, they’ll even feel like laughing, unable to continually produce negative emotions;

"On the other hand, our motives become too obvious, and no one will want to play our next game no matter what it looks like.

"All things considered, it’s actually not cost-effective."

Lilith frowned slightly. "So what you’re saying is that this approach won’t work at all? So we shouldn’t even bother trying?"

Gu Fan shook his head. "Of course not, I believe we can still give it a try, but we should do it gradually, step by step, to verify.

"But to think like you, President Li, and to just copy the solution from Shengjing Group, that is definitely impossible.

"Like for instance, we could target a specific BD, and if we preset the program in advance, this could indeed be achieved.

"But the problem is, we can’t predict the future; we can’t know which BD the players will like the most or which will be the most powerful. If we don’t target the right one, we won’t achieve the intended effect.

"So instead of blindly guessing, it’s better to focus our thoughts on certain specific functions."

Lilith’s expression cleared somewhat; Gu Fan’s words were quite persuasive.

With Shadow World introducing an all-class gameplay, this was a bug in itself; Lilith had no idea the players would play like this, so how could she determine what the hot BDs would be?

Even though Shengjing Group had geared their game towards all-class gameplay from the start, they still ended up with completely unexpected bugs like "Infinite Starlight Healing" and "Dark Chain."

If they really could predict the future, Shengjing Group would have fixed these two bugs right from the start, instead of later frantically rushing to patch them.

Since predicting the future wasn’t possible, obsessing over a particular skill or BD was meaningless.

Gu Fan said that we should instead focus our thoughts on some specific functions, which made sense.

Lilith pressed further, "Then let’s do as you suggest, focus our thoughts on certain functions and make some trials to lay the groundwork for better collection of negative emotions in the future.

"What specific core function should we concentrate on?"

Gu Fan fell silent for a moment, then said, "The Equipment System, how about that?"