Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 50 Drenched in Spew!

Chapter 50: Chapter 50 Drenched in Spew!

"Damn it! I refuse to accept this! My decisions were clearly correct, so why can’t I support the Han Dynasty?"

"Let’s go again!"

Chen Tingquan meticulously planned.

Chen Tingquan was in a great position.

Chen Tingquan expressed his sentiments about failing.

Chen Tingquan still hadn’t given up and began to make more attempts.

It was the beginning of another new game, he diligently planned the actions of each of his generals, tried to use different Wolong Strategies, and even analyzed the enemy’s data seriously...

He even tried the "Tilling the Soil in Nanyang" and "Sleeping Dragon Emerges" openings.

But after more than three hours had passed, and it was already 0:30 in the early morning, Chen Tingquan still hadn’t cleared the game even once!

The rounds in "Destiny of the Sleeping Dragon" don’t last very long, ending in a few minutes if quick, and at most less than an hour if lingering until the end of a lifespan.

Yet, even after so many attempts, Chen Tingquan couldn’t find a way to win the game!

"Folks, I feel like this game isn’t even meant to be cleared, is it?

"Look, if I choose the first two stages, ’Crouching Dragon Not Employed’ and ’Personal Farming in Nanyang,’ my lifespan does increase a bit, but that stage is just too dangerous!

"In theory, I could make a long trek to meet Liu Bei and then take control of his growing powers, but Zhuge Liang and Liu Bei are like walking light bulbs, getting attacked wherever they go, and even with hiding and using the Wolong Strategy, they often unexpectedly drop dead.

"Even if I manage to keep Zhuge Liang safe, I can’t protect Liu Bei!

"And when those two destined ones are together, it’s even worse, it’s like they’ve drawn the aggro from the entire map, and a bunch of NPCs suddenly put aside their differences and take turns attacking me! Liu Bei barely has any troops, how the heck is he supposed to fight?

"If I choose the last two stages, yes, I have a stable territory, but the powers of Wei Kingdom and Wu Kingdom are practically solidified!

"What? Attack Wu Kingdom first?

"No, even though emotionally I’d love to cut down those sons of Wu, attacking Wu Kingdom would just hand the unification over to the Sima Family, isn’t that just feeding them the win?

"Darn it! This stupid game seems like it doesn’t want anyone to clear it at all!"

Chen Tingquan’s patience was nearly at its limit, "Alright, folks, today’s stream has gone seriously overtime, I’m logging off! Let’s play this game again tomorrow, and if it still doesn’t work out, I’ll let it roll out of my computer, and we can go back to appraising treasures!"

Having said that, Chen Tingquan promptly ended the broadcast at the speed of light.

Clearly, today this game had frustrated him tremendously!

Originally, he was feeling lazy and didn’t want to do a treasure appraisal, just wanting to play a game for a bit of fun, but he ended up playing until the wee hours.

If the game had been fun, that would have been one thing, but instead, he was left with a belly full of anger!

Actually, Chen Tingquan’s idea was simple, he thought "Help the Prime Minister support the Han Dynasty once, then I’ll sleep," but to his dismay, this simple wish seemed to have turned into a luxury.

Luckily, he realized it timely. Had he played all night long, he would probably have broken down even more.

...

"Oh, giving up already?"

"You humans aren’t very impressive, I thought he could fight through the whole night."

Lilith’s expression was very smug, she even felt like standing up from her massage chair to do a victory dance.

But considering she was a powerful Hell Demon, she decided to maintain some composure, so she stifled the urge.

Of course, it might also be because the pride she had earlier quickly led to a karmic response, so Lilith suppressed her impulse to pop champagne to celebrate midway through the battle.

Gu Fan watched the stream of negative emotions in his view.

[Negative emotion from Chen Tingquan +12!]

[Negative emotion from Chen Tingquan +5!]

[Negative emotion from Ding Qiang +8!]

[Negative emotion tally from "Destiny of the Sleeping Dragon": 572,134!]

Clearly, compared to "Infernal Trajectory" and "Sisyphus," "Destiny of the Sleeping Dragon" employed a different strategy to harvest negative emotions.

"Infernal Trajectory" and "Sisyphus" tend to evoke high levels of negative emotions in a single instance.

For example, when players finally climb halfway up the mountain, only to have the boulder roll down, it can instantly trigger seventy to eighty points of negative emotion.

But "Destiny of the Sleeping Dragon" is different, each outbreak of negative emotions isn’t that significant, often only in the single digits, and there aren’t occasions where it suddenly spikes by dozens or hundreds of points.

But its advantage lies in its persistence!

Because this looks like a strategy game, players’ first reaction isn’t that there’s a problem with the game’s difficulty when they fail to clear it, but that they haven’t discovered the correct way to play.

So they keep trying over and over.

And the game just so happens to have too many different strategies to choose from, plus four different starting points, and each NPC’s actions in every game can vary, piling up these factors makes "Destiny of the Sleeping Dragon" into an extremely complex system.

Players can’t see through this trick in a short time and can only keep trying different methods each time, and during their attempts, negative emotions are generated continuously!

...

...

The next day, Gu Fan strolled into the company for work.

Upon reaching the second floor of the cafe, he saw Zhou Yang somewhat frantically greeting him.

"President Gu! President Gu! This is bad, our game’s negative public opinion seems to have exploded. Don’t we have a PR team? Come on, let’s save this!"

Gu Fan looked at him, "What gave you the impression that our small company has a PR team?"

Zhou Yang was stunned, "Ah? We don’t have one? Then what do we do about all this negative press?

"Players are going crazy cursing online!

"President Gu, I think for our next game release we should choose 12 PM noon, so at least we can remedy issues in time.

"Even if we don’t have a PR team, a simple announcement with an explanation would work, or we could quickly adjust the configuration table, release a hotfix or something, that’s at least better than doing nothing..."

Zhou Yang’s previous game company would mostly choose to release games at noon.

Because noon is still working hours, there are bound to be various unforeseen glitches after a game release, which can then be handled immediately.

Rich gaming companies can get a PR team to delete posts, control reviews, boost ratings and the like.

Technical game companies can have their tech teams work overtime to fix bugs and then quickly roll out a hotfix to minimize losses.

And game companies with neither money nor technology can resort to some "private PR stunt," issue an apology, and at least address some issues.

But a company like Transcendent Heaven Gaming, fixing the game release for 8 PM during off-hours without telling staff to work overtime meant that if any issues arose, they could only wait till the next day!

Those few hours were enough for negative public opinion to ferment into an uncontrollable situation.

Clearly, this was the case with "Destiny of the Sleeping Dragon" at the moment, and the public opinion was quite bleak!

"Don’t panic, let me first see what the situation is now," Gu Fan said, sitting at his desk and quickly scanning the feedback from netizens and some evaluations by gaming media.

On the official platform, the game’s reviews had turned into "mostly negative."

On video sites and gaming forums, it was all criticism.

"Cyber scam! There’s simply no way to help the Han Dynasty in ’Destiny of the Sleeping Dragon’!"

"I played the whole night, and the best I could do was reach Wuzhang Plains! So you’re telling me your broken game is really historically accurate, huh? Once I beat this game, I’ll be awesome enough to time travel back and actually help the Prime Minister restore the Han Dynasty, right?"

"What crap this ’Wolong Strategy’ is. It looks amazing but is actually weak!"

"The ’Destiny’s Chosen’ and ’Demons’ settings, why do I feel they are utterly superfluous? Wouldn’t the game play the same without them? It might even make more sense!"

"Indeed, it feels like these two settings are just there to arbitrarily increase game difficulty, preventing players from clearing it..."

"I started playing this game hoping to help the Prime Minister with his regrets, but now look at me, I’m the one filled with regrets!"

"The story and voice acting in this game are also trash, super trash! I’m telling you, any game that uses fake-AI for its scripts is garbage without exception, am I wrong?"

"Indeed, most of the story dialogues are nonsensical. It would’ve been better if they hadn’t bothered writing it at all—I’m getting sore fingers from hitting the skip button."

"The most outrageous part is the multitude of voice packs they added... It makes me feel like I’m watching some meme video..."