Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 643 - 626: Titles and Privileges

Chapter 643: Chapter 626: Titles and Privileges

Chen Tingquan was speechless.

This testing site was quite large, and it supported multiple people testing at the same time. For example, the area used for combat in the Martial Arts Arena was divided into several sections.

But even if multiple people could use it, the number of sections was still limited.

Moreover, the combat test in the Martial Arts Arena involved fighting several waves of monsters.

If it was a later test, the starting wave would be determined by the player’s performance in the previous test.

But this was the first test, so everyone started from the first wave. If some players had already improved significantly by taking Nine Dragon Elixirs, they could hog the Martial Arts Arena for a long time.

So this greatly extended the estimated waiting time.

And one of the unreasonable points of "Reverse Heaven" was that it strictly enforced a 30-minute time limit; when time was up, all queued numbers were invalidated.

Liang Chun also felt helpless: "Ah, it’s my fault.

"If I hadn’t been worried about the best time to test, if we had come earlier, we wouldn’t have to queue for so long."

Chen Tingquan comforted him: "No worries, I was the one who suggested it first, so I’m not innocent either.

"But it doesn’t matter; it’s just a test. If we don’t test at noon, then we can test in the evening. If we don’t test today, then tomorrow. We only need to test 10 times a month anyway.

"We don’t even have to chase the best data. Even if we randomly pick ten times to test, it won’t make a big difference.

"How about we skip the noon test and since we’ve almost completed today’s training tasks, let’s team up to the Barbaric World to complete the sect tasks first."

Chen Tingquan’s proposal was immediately welcomed by the other two.

Because the estimated waiting time from the system had reached 32 minutes, meaning it was likely they wouldn’t make it.

Of course, some players ahead might not wait and choose to skip, but that was more like wishful thinking.

Waiting half an hour for such a small probability event wasn’t worthwhile.

So the three of them were on board, deciding to go to the Barbaric World to complete some simple sect tasks like picking herbs and mining.

To their surprise, the task went smoothly.

The truth was, although the Barbaric World seemed full of crises, it wasn’t that dangerous.

For one, the Barbaric World hardly had players deliberately killing each other because the cost of killing was too high. Even the top whales didn’t want to bear it; plus, there were no real benefits to killing others in this game.

For another, although the Barbaric World had many powerful demon beasts, they were all divided into zones. The outer areas at most had some young Nine Dragons, which weren’t that scary, and running away at first sight was always a good strategy.

So the three happily played for two hours, slaughtered some small monsters, and collected some herbs and ores, which was quite rewarding.

"Let’s put it up in the auction house and see the price.

"By the way, Brother Quan, have you been to the auction house?" Li Wenhao asked.

Chen Tingquan shook his head: "Not yet. Can you sell anything at the auction house?"

Li Wenhao: "I haven’t studied it closely, but I think almost all items can be sold, with only a very few exceptions. Oh, and there are also two types of Spirit Stones in this game: bound Spirit Stones and non-bound Spirit Stones.

"Only non-bound Spirit Stones can be used in the auction house."

This was within Chen Tingquan’s expectations, as it was similar to many online games. If they allowed trading of all Spirit Stones freely, it would lead to serious problems.

Take Spirit Stones for example, if all Spirit Stones could be freely traded, studios could create secondary accounts to take out loans extensively and then use the loans to buy garbage materials at high prices, resulting in the secondary account being scrapped directly.

This way, it would be equivalent to fleecing the official and transferring the benefits to the main account.

While the official could limit this in other ways, it would be more troublesome and difficult to eradicate.

So "Reverse Heaven" chose a more traditional approach. The channels through which players could obtain non-bound Spirit Stones were very limited and mostly linked to recharging.

Of course, it was allowed for free players to obtain rare materials and sell them for non-bound Spirit Stones.

The materials the three of them obtained were mostly from the outer areas of the Barbaric World, not very rare, but selling them was still a good choice considering the current situation.

Because based on past experience with similar games, materials were in high demand and fetched high prices when the server first opened.

The top whales would spend a lot of money to level up quickly, buying materials in large quantities.

In a month or two, when the player’s levels were generally higher and more people were mining, the price of these materials would plummet as the top whales didn’t need rare materials as much.

So, although Chen Tingquan and his friends could use those herbs, ores, and monster materials, they felt it was more worthwhile to auction them off for a good amount of money first.

After all, they still had heavy loans to repay, and any bit they could repay would help.

However, just as Chen Tingquan was about to go to the auction house to sell his materials, Liang Chun anxiously called out: "Brother Quan, don’t sell the materials yet!"

Chen Tingquan was taken aback: "Huh? Why?"

Liang Chun quickly said: "Take a look!"

Confused, Chen Tingquan walked over to Liang Chun and looked at the nearby stake training field.

Because the game’s time flowed much faster than reality, during their time in the Barbaric World, they had accumulated more optimal training time.

Clearly, Liang Chun wanted to train a bit more on the stakes to improve.

But what shocked them happened suddenly.

Because the stakes and many players’ titles had changed!

The stake labels read: Reserved for Outstanding Disciples of 1 Year; Reserved for Outstanding Disciples of 10 Years; Reserved for Outstanding Disciples of 100 Years. Reserved for Excellent Disciples of 1 Year; Reserved for Excellent Disciples of 10 Years; Reserved for Excellent Disciples of 100 Years.

And many players also had different titles above their heads.

Outstanding Disciple of 1 Year: 92 points.

Excellent Disciple of 1 Year: 85 points.

Outstanding Disciple of 10 Years: 93 points...

The titles were quite prominent.

"Brother Quan, look at this leaderboard!" Li Wenhao said in shock.

By now, the noon testing time had passed and the results were already out.

The leaderboard could be seen around the Martial Arts Arena and throughout the sect. By approaching, one could view the detailed list.

In simple terms, it was a ranking board listing the disciples by year: 1 Year Disciples, 10 Year Disciples, 100 Year Disciples, each having separate tabs.

Within each tab, a title was given according to the rank.

The top ten by score were Outstanding Disciples.

From the 11th to the 30th place were Excellent Disciples.

The rest were all ordinary disciples.

A glance at the stakes on the field immediately revealed something amiss: there were 10 stakes for Outstanding Disciples of 1 Year; 15 stakes for Excellent Disciples of 1 Year; and similar stakes for 10 Year and 100 Year Disciples.

Ordinary stakes, usable by all disciples, however, numbered only 75.

This disparity was shocking!

Out of the top three categories of disciples, there were only 30 Outstanding Disciples, and the field had exactly 30 designated stakes.

There were 60 Excellent Disciples across the three categories, but only 45 designated stakes.

Ordinary disciples, estimated to number over 200, had only 75 stakes.

This meant that Outstanding Disciples could always have a stake to use, with no competition.

The lower the ranking, the bigger the queue to use a stake.

Not only that, Chen Tingquan soon discovered something even more outrageous.

He saw a player clearly titled an Outstanding Disciple of 1 Year, yet brazenly walking to an ordinary stake.

The stake was originally being used by an ordinary disciple, but the Outstanding Disciple directly interacted with the stake, interrupting the ordinary disciple’s training and taking over.

Chen Tingquan was stunned; he immediately stepped forward: "What’s the meaning of this? Don’t Outstanding Disciples have their own stakes? Why are you taking over an ordinary stake?"

The other player just glanced at him and typed a reply: "Because I can."

Chen Tingquan was shocked, was this real life?

They had their own designated stakes but came to take others’, and were righteous about it!

This was pure malice with no benefit to oneself, what kind of spirit was this?

But clearly, it wasn’t all the players’ fault; "Reverse Heaven" was just ridiculously supporting this from its bottom-line rules!

The game could have set it so "Outstanding and Excellent Disciples cannot use ordinary stakes," thus avoiding this situation entirely.

But not only did the developers not do this, they added an extra rule: when an Outstanding Disciple wants to use an ordinary stake, they get priority and can even interrupt the ordinary disciple’s current training.

Likewise, Excellent Disciples could interrupt ordinary disciples, and Outstanding could interrupt Excellent.

This effectively created a further division based on test scores within the player community.

And there was no use in Chen Tingquan getting angry; it was the game’s mechanics. What was he going to do, kill the player? Aside from the sky-high fines, he was too weak to win a fight anyway.

"What now, Brother Quan? We made a mistake!

"This game is truly inhumane, openly discriminating based on scores?

"We have to do tonight’s test. At least we need to get the Excellent Disciple title. Otherwise, we’ll always have to queue for stakes, which is too inconvenient!"

Chen Tingquan nodded gravely: "We must test, indeed.

"I’ve set an alarm for 9 PM tonight.

"Who designs such infuriating game mechanics, geez!"

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