Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 85: Gamers Want to Curse! (6/10)

Chapter 85: Chapter 85: Gamers Want to Curse! (6/10)

Seeing the "Sky-Defying Sixteen Bronzemen" beaten back as a group, Lilith couldn’t help but let out a happy laugh.

"I told you this game would definitely catch you all in one go!

"Let’s see how much negative emotion has been raked in.

"It’s already 750,000!"

Lilith’s expression was extremely smug, "Hmph, you haven’t even experienced all of my methods, and you’re already struggling? Ah, I have to say, you humans really are a very fragile species!"

Gu Fan had an expression as if to say, "Yes, yes, you’re absolutely right."

Lilith’s confidence had a reason. Up to now, Instructor Ding’s "top-tier adventure team" had merely been operating on the periphery of the Divine Realm, casually picking up some stones and wood. The most dangerous place they had been to was the "Prison of Sinners," and they had the misfortune of being wiped out there.

How far had they really come?

The powerful monsters Lilith had prepared for the players hadn’t even seen action yet!

Like the Medusa Statue, Holy Spirit Cupid, Heaven’s Guardian, and the strongest of all, the Cthulhu Angel...

With these beings standing guard, the process for players to get materials would be fraught with difficulties, and they would surely release a considerable amount of negative emotion!

Lilith, feeling a bit unfulfilled, switched through several live streams.

Instructor Ding and Chen Tingquan were big streamers, after all; they usually only live-streamed during prime time and rarely did things like the overnight grind on "Destiny of the Sleeping Dragon" like before.

This was partly because they didn’t need to push as hard as smaller streamers, and partly to sustain the hype and consider the audience’s timing.

Most viewers had time between 8 PM and midnight. Very few could truly accompany the streamers 24 hours a day. If they were to live-stream overnight, many would only have records to watch later.

Moreover, a game that could have been broadcast for a week being finished in two days would also not be conducive to accumulating popularity.

But those smaller streamers didn’t care about that. Clearly, many would pull all-nighters in hopes of being the first to discover the "core gameplay of the new Heaven-Defying Paradise game," hoping to catch enough viewership.

However, by doing so, they were only contributing more negative emotion to Lilith.

Lilith was very pleased with the current state of the game.

So far, "Prometheus" had generated about 750,000 units of negative emotion.

For comparison, "Infernal Trajectory" had 480,000 before the incident, "Sisyphus" had 780,000, and "Destiny of the Sleeping Dragon" had 570,000.

Just looking at the numbers, the negative emotion in "Prometheus" was still slightly lower than in "Sisyphus," but it was clearly more perplexing!

Because Instructor Ding’s team had only explored 3% of the map, whether inside or outside the Divine Realm, there were still a large number of places unexplored; most teams had only managed to build four or five structures, and the full construction was still a long way off.

In the Divine Realm, there were various powerful monsters waiting for players to deliver themselves to their doorsteps.

This could easily give players the illusion that "it might get better later on."

Maybe later, they would acquire means to counter the monsters?

Maybe they could eventually build on their own?

Maybe there were special mechanisms hidden on the map?

They would inevitably continue to search tirelessly in the game for that non-existent "core gameplay," and during this process, the perilous exploration of the Divine Realm and the monotony of brick-laying would continue to extract their negative emotions.

Lilith was very confident that this time she would be able to redeem her past loss and earn back all the negative emotion she had missed out on in one fell swoop!

...

...

The next day, Monday.

Aside from Gu Fan, all the employees of Heaven-Defying Paradise game had arrived early on the second floor of the cafe.

They each had a grave expression, some looking at backend data, some reviewing player ratings in the game store, and others reading online discussions.

"So, what exactly is the situation?" Art director Guo Hongyu sat next to planner Zhou Yang, asking with concern.

He had already seen the "mostly negative" ratings in the game store but still hoped to get a different answer from Zhou Yang.

Zhou Yang was silent for a moment, "Actually, from the perspective of you laymen, the current state of the game doesn’t look optimistic, as if it might fail any second now."

"But from our insider’s perspective, if no miracle happens in the future, this game has already failed!"

"Just looking at sales data, it’s decent. Whether it’s pure sales volume, conversion rate, or refund rate, they are all reasonably maintained, at least within the standards of a normal game."

"But after two days..."

Zhou Yang did not continue, but everything was left unsaid.

Guo Hongyu still had some hope, "But I remember ’Destiny of the Sleeping Dragon’ was initially met with the same kind of reviews."

Zhou Yang glanced at him, "’Destiny of the Sleeping Dragon’ had bugs, does this game have any?"

Guo Hongyu scratched his head, "But we didn’t catch the bugs in ’Destiny of the Sleeping Dragon’ either. Maybe this game has some..."

Zhou Yang was momentarily left without a response.

Why do the sales, conversion rate, and refunds of this game seem okay? Even obviously better than the previous games from Nitiandang.

It’s simple, because it benefitted from the success of the previous games!

’Prometheus’ game mechanics are more complex than any of the previous games, so players can’t figure them out before the refund time is up, and trusting the reputation of Nitiandang games, they choose to keep playing.

It’s precisely the presence of the previous games that have led players to believe in the existence of some kind of "core mechanic."

As long as they can find this core mechanic, not only will the game become enjoyable to play, but they will also have the chance to win an official pure gold trophy and even become "the first player to discover the core mechanic" and enjoy all the internet traffic that comes with it.

But what if, this time, there is no "core mechanic"?

It’s hard to imagine the fury Nitiandang will face from players.

As for whether this game truly has a core mechanic...

No one knows! It’s certainly not written in the design document, and none of the staff, all acting as testers, could figure it out.

Zhou Yang anxiously clicked to check the players’ discussion threads.

"Nitiandang has once again subverted my understanding of games, to think that a building game could be all about moving bricks without the freedom to build!"

"Didn’t the Supervisor say that once you complete a certain number of buildings, you get to build freely?"

"Nonsense! My buddies and I played overnight until 8 am, got knocked back three times, but managed to build about a dozen buildings, and there’s still no option for free building! This is cyber fraud!"

"Am I the only one who wants to rant about the ridiculous job skills in this game? Warriors can grapple with small to medium-sized monsters, but in this broken game, at least eighty percent are big monsters! The only small monster I encountered was a little spider, and it was squashed by a teammate with a spade!"

"Jester is the most ridiculous job – the profession itself is a joke, a pure wipe-out engine."

"The Store System is a mess too! At first, I bought a lantern, a spade, and a pickaxe, all of which seemed quite useful, so I thought why not save up more money? Then after scraping together everything I had, I bought a crossbow arrow, only to discover it’s practically useless! The monsters I can’t beat remain unbeatable!"

"So many monsters in this game are invincible plus one-hit kills, I say that bow and arrow costing 100 gold coins are pure scam! Not as useful as a spade, if you ask me."

"The most outrageous thing is that these monsters can perform combo moves, do you know how devastated I was the moment the Gazing Statue and Medusa Statue appeared together?"

The Gazing Statue is a grotesque stone carving of a massive crying angel that only stops when a player looks at it; the moment it’s not being watched, it instantly kills the player, which simply means "can’t look away".

On the other hand, the Medusa Statue is a giant stone carving of Medusa’s head that also moves at great speeds, but once a player gazes at it, they gradually turn into stone, which simply means "can’t look".

And when the two statues appear together, players are doomed whether they look or not.

"Ah, but all these are still bearable, I could still play it like an adventure game, but what’s up with the selection mechanism of Flame Thief? Why is it that the one I least want to enter is always the one constantly selected? Is it just my imagination?"

"I agreed to play this game with a girl, and we had it all planned out, I’d explore, and she’d build. But every single time, she turned out to be the Flame Thief... Now the girl has quit the game and even blocked my contact..."

"I could accept the difficulty of adventures, but what’s the point of it? After all the hard work and finally bringing back a bunch of materials, it’s bad enough I can’t build myself, but then an earthquake knocks everything down? Is this what humans do? Is it recreating the Tower of Babel?"

"But this game does have its merits, like the building system. It’s done quite meticulously, even allowing building down to the voxel level."

"Meticulously my foot, isn’t that just the most expensive template on the official platform? You can use it straight after buying! And what infuriates me the most is that the template was originally designed for free building, yet ’Prometheus’ has restricted this feature! How deceitful is that!"

"...It’s over, this is purely taking the worst and discarding the best. It looks like Nitiandang has finally goofed up, and it’s likely to crash and burn this time!"

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