Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 471 - 454: Three Different Player Factions

Chapter 471: Chapter 454: Three Different Player Factions

Zhuge Jun carefully observed his character’s face and noticed that it indeed seemed to have changed.

He couldn’t quite remember what the face he had originally designed looked like, since he had just chosen a template and casually modified a few features according to his preference, and during the gameplay, he was always looking at the character’s back, hardly noticing any changes to the face.

Moreover, during the game, he would acquire some items that might cover the face, such as triangle hats, masks, and Crow Masks of doctors.

Zhuge Jun also liked to change his gear every once in a while, which further blurred his memory of the face he had designed.

Seeing his character’s face by chance at that moment, he had a rather unfamiliar feeling.

And he always felt that the face seemed somehow disproportionate—were the eyes a bit too far apart? Or was the nose a bit too short? Or were the cheeks a bit swollen?

It was unclear, but it just vaguely felt wrong, unnatural.

If it were another player who didn’t care much about these details, they might have just ignored it, but Zhuge Jun was very perceptive and realized that there might be more to it than it seemed.

"It should not be that I remembered it wrong.

"If I had designed such a face at the beginning, I would never have started playing. I would rather choose a new template, as those templates all look quite nice.

"That means... my face has changed as the game progressed?

"Yeah, the prologue! I was wearing an Ancient God Face in the prologue.

"Could this also be part of the game mechanics?"

If this were any other game, it might not mean much, but since "Blood of Lies" made a distinction between two types of character creation and also gave enough hints through the basin scene, the subtle changes in appearance were definitely intentional.

"As the game progresses, will I gradually become the Ancient God Face I saw in the basin?

"Is this a good or bad thing? It doesn’t seem like a good thing at all!

"So how can I avoid this issue?

"Can’t think of a way!"

Zhuge Jun tried to sort out his thoughts, but soon realized that not enough information was available at the moment.

Clearly, face-changing was a bad thing.

The face the player originally designed, whether a normal face or an Ancient God Face, represented the original, normal self.

During the prologue, when players faced the Lie Hunter, the Lie Hunter hinted that players had given up something to come here.

As for what exactly they gave up? It’s still hard to guess because there are many possibilities. It could be integrity, humanity, or even some parts of the body transformed into a puppet.

But this was clearly not good.

The prologue depicted a rather dire future.

Zhuge Jun felt that if he continued to progress through the game as usual, without triggering any special hidden narratives, he would likely connect with the storyline in the prologue and fall into some kind of inescapable cycle, essentially leading to the game’s bad ending.

But to avoid the bad ending, he first needed to figure out what exactly was causing his appearance to change.

Was it because of lying? Or was it because of enhanced Spiritual Vision? Or perhaps the absorption of Unclean Blood?

There were too many influencing factors, so it was also difficult to pinpoint exactly, especially since players still didn’t know enough about game mechanics and plot to make effective deductions.

The only option was to try to achieve an ending for now.

...

Meanwhile, different groups of players were also trying out different playstyles and strategies.

The most mainstream playstyle was, of course, Zhuge Jun’s.

After all, in terms of character creation, only a minority preferred the Ancient God Face, and the mainstream still favored good-looking faces. Moreover, as players of an ARPG game, many were not willing to put too much effort into character design and would just select a template to start the game immediately.

The subsequent training plans, too, mostly defaulted to choosing either the strength system or the agility system.

This was also a kind of path dependency, as, in other similar games, the physical system, especially the strength system, offered the best experience in the early stages, while the magic system required more skill, technique, and understanding of the game.

In similar games, useful, high-damage weapons often had a minimum strength requirement, and many good weapons in the first run were more reliant on strength bonuses.

And to play using spells, many powerful spells were only available in the middle to late stages of the game.

Moreover, magic required specific skill points allocation, focusing on the main attributes related to mana and spells, leaving not many points for health, which could make the early game quite challenging.

But few does not mean none.

Currently, players were still exploring two different strategies, one starting with an Ancient God Face and a Puppet Craftsman’s route, and the other starting with a normal face and a Magic system route.

As for the experience...

One could only say it was similar to the normal starting conditions, all equally suffering.

The so-called puppet routine is actually about finding items that can replace puppet parts as much as possible and transforming oneself into a pure puppet as far as possible.

What are the advantages of being a puppet?

First and foremost is the high damage reduction rate, followed by the unique Fast and Slow Blade action module, and additional bonus points.

The more puppet parts that are upgraded at the Puppet Craftsman’s, the more attributes like durability, computing power, stamina, and power are increased.

Even many players felt that if one were to play a strength build, it was essential to choose the puppet starting condition, otherwise missing out on so many attributes for no reason seemed like a huge loss, right?

The high damage reduction, parts less likely to be damaged, and weapon corrections under high attributes, all provided these players with a decent experience during daily map pushing.

However, once they encountered a boss or a powerful Elite Monster, the situation became more difficult.

Since puppets were inherently countered by living corpses, when chopping at those large Beastification Monsters, the blood these monsters spewed could heal human players but would corrode the parts of a puppet.

Therefore, players needed to wear clothes that were more concealing and had higher corrosion resistance, and also needed to rest frequently at gas lamps.

In comparison, if human players played well from the start, they could keep chopping through, and the blood spewed by monsters would heal the players, ensuring their support; the puppet start was exactly the opposite.

But for beginners, the puppet start was still more suitable.

Some players even replaced their legs, only to soon find that their step-in movement module became stiff, not as useful as humans.

But this was not unadaptable, although the hand feel was slightly worse and the start-up time a bit longer, players could compensate by running cleverly.

There is also a problem with puppet starts; lying is easily exposed, and once exposed, it becomes very troublesome.

Not only will boss fights feature attributes that completely target and counter oneself, but some originally accessible shortcuts also get locked, necessitating the search for other entrances.

Players of the puppet start were divided into two camps regarding this issue, one believed one should directly refuse to lie and tell the truth to all questions because this helped reduce Spiritual Vision and advance their puppet transformation process. In contrast, the other camp thought one should practice lying and enhance Spiritual Vision.

But the former believed that wasn’t lying in the puppet start just taking a detour? Then why wouldn’t I directly choose human start?

Both sides stood their ground, unable to reach an effective conclusion for the time being.

Overall, it could only be said that the human and puppet starts each had their own advantages and sufferings, therefore it was still too early to say definitively which was better.

And the life was even harder for Magic system players.

The Magic system, just like the human start in the game, involved three different types of mental attributes: knowledge, faith, and mystery, all influenced by Spiritual Vision.

The more a player lied, the higher their Spiritual Vision, and the more attribute points they would gain in these three attributes during leveling.

Each of these attributes influenced different content in the game:

Knowledge corresponded with attribute counters and vulnerabilities; as players’ knowledge increased, not only were they able to inflict higher damage using the corresponding counter attributes, but they could also cause part damage faster.

Faith corresponded with rituals; there were some special summoning rituals in the game, essentially involving communication with some unknown entity, which would subsequently grant random blessings.

For instance, letting weapons inflict mental damage, after a certain number of hits, the enemy would fall into madness; or allowing weapons to emit a special blue flame without an artificial hand, a flame that would not be reduced by high enemy fire resistance; or directly summoning an offensive ritual to strike enemies using mysterious summoned beings.

Mystery dealt with luck-related negative statuses, such as causing weapons or rituals that could already inflict enemy madness or bleeding to trigger these abnormal states more frequently. Additionally, during combat, players would randomly receive slight enhancements due to luck, while enemies would receive slight debuffs.

Magic system players basically lied whenever they stepped out the door, not missing any chance to stack their Spiritual Vision, but clearly, they suffered the most among the three types of players.

This is because Spiritual Vision had a hidden attribute; the higher the Spiritual Vision, the more likely one was to see many powerful monsters that were normally invisible.

And many of these monsters were somewhat related to the Ancient Gods, meaning that rituals sought from the corresponding Ancient Gods might have minimal effect on them.

Players of the Magic Stream basically needed to level up their mana points a bit higher and then level these three attributes more or less evenly.

This was because knowledge, faith, and mystery all benefited from the addition of Spiritual Vision, and the lower the level, the higher the gains, whereas the cost-effectiveness decreased at higher levels.

But because players had access to fewer rituals early on and many were just special enchantments for weapons, attempting to speedily kill still required cautious close combat, and since they were easy to kill instantly, playing was the most difficult.

However, since they chose Magic Stream, most players were generally psychologically prepared in advance, and there weren’t many specific complaints.

So it goes, the three different player routes differed in their sufferings, but there was one common point in their experiences, that was continuously hopping between "slaps" and "sweet dates."

"Blood of Lies" was intentionally designed this way:

Different routes had their own sufferings to endure, players would find the game increasingly difficult and feel more and more unable to continue, but whenever the players really thought about quitting, the game would throw them a sweet date, giving them a small thrill and a glimpse of hope.

Coupled with promotions by streamers and the debates online, all these contributed to the rising negative sentiment value for "Blood of Lies"!

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