This is not a BUG, this is a game feature - #240 - Chapter 240 Merit White List

The Nobug platform has a real-time online number list, which shows the real-time number of online users for each game on the platform.

At the top of the list is “Don’t Leave School: Pinball”, which occasionally breaks one million.

The second place is “Fantasy of Cultivation”.

Although the number of people online at the same time can reach more than 500,000 at eight or nine o’clock in the evening.

But everyone who knows the truth will want to laugh when they see this data. There are 500,000 simultaneous online players, and it would be great to have 100,000 people playing “Cultivation Fantasy”.

The remaining 400,000 people are all running processes in the background, switching screens to play other games!

The games ranked third, fourth and fifth are “Spacetime Investigation”, “Star Emperor” and “Global Evolution” respectively.

Among these three games, “Time and Space Investigation” has risen rapidly in the rankings compared to last month, and the number of people online has also increased by two levels.

This is due to the game’s plug-in-free environment. As the world’s first FPS online game to claim “100% plug-in-free”, “Time and Space Investigation” has attracted many FPS game enthusiasts.

Although after playing it, most people will be speechless by the weird game features such as bullet bending and bullet time, but this does not affect everyone’s normal play.

The remaining two games have experienced varying degrees of player losses, especially “Star Emperor”.

As a once-splendid phenomenon-level online game that broke people’s stereotypes of fighting games, “Star Emperor” has actually become less successful after the release of the 60-series graphics cards.

His Self-Transformation Method was just a reflection of his past, and he just managed to hold on for a while. It was beyond Chen Ba’s expectation that he could survive through a round of version updates.

The advent of the 70 series graphics cards and the release of the Dream Builder 7 engine directly announced the decline of this game.

There is no way, in the era of 30 series graphics cards, a game built with the DreamBuilder 5 engine is still praised by players as “excellent graphics and special effects”, which is a great compliment.

You may not have noticed that the graphics card crisis back then was a shock when it was first released, but it disappeared after two years.

Games that focus on graphics and special effects will indeed not last long. It is impossible for a game to remain popular for twenty or thirty years like “Fantasy Westward Journey”.

“Thinking about it from another angle, “Star Emperor” is actually quite good.”

Huang Qing commented: “Games of the same period are basically out of date now, but “Star Emperor” is still a relatively mainstream game due to the popularity of the GAL League.”

“That’s right!”

“Shen’en Continent was quite popular at the time, but now almost no one buys the personal version. Only the professional version and the customized version are still bought.”

Yang Dong explained: “Back then, “God’s Grace Continent” was criticized for its poor picture quality, and now it’s even more unavailable, so no one plays the regular version.”

The game is evolving so fast!

Take mobile games as an example. Mobile games in the early years generally had relatively simple graphics, mainly in Q-version cartoon style, with very poor light, shadow, and texture details.

But now, excellent mobile games can rival many PC games in terms of light, shadow and texture details.

Ray tracing?

The mobile version is also used!

Because the game industry is developing rapidly, games from earlier years have been eliminated by players. It’s not a problem with the gameplay mechanics, but the painting style looks too old and too eye-catching.

There is a question thread in the Tianba community, which attracted more than 50,000 votes and replies.

The problem is simple.

The poster posted two screenshots of the game, one from “Hanchuang Kudu Simulator” and one from “Global Evolution” with extreme 4K rendering, and then asked: Which of the following games was produced by Brother Ba?

More than 72% of players chose “Global Evolution”, and only 13% of players chose the “all” option.

When the correct answer was announced, other players expressed their disbelief: These two games were actually created by the same person!

The two game screenshots feel like they span a century. They are not games from the same era at all, but they are made by the same person.

This feeling of confusion is a bit like someone telling you that “Snake” and “Red Dead Redemption” are made by the same game producer.

“The picture is getting more and more real!”

Chen Ba lamented: “When I played games in the past, although the game producers tried their best to improve the sense of substitution and immersion, the graphics of the games were still not realistic enough.”

“It’s different now. It’s hard to tell the difference between reality and fiction when looking at a computer screen. If you play VR games, you might not be able to tell the difference between reality and virtuality.”

“Your description is too exaggerated.”

Yang Dong shook his head: “No matter what, the boundary between virtuality and reality is still very clear, and it is not unclear.”

“However, the game graphics are becoming more and more refined and delicate. This is true. The Dream Builder 7 engine is too strong in this aspect…”

The Tianba engine of Tianba Studio has now been updated to version 4.0.

But the strength of Tianba Engine is not game graphics and material textures, but foolproofing and automation, so in this regard, there is still a big gap between it and Dream Engine.

“Then let’s practice!”

Chen Ba feels that since the Dream 7 engine is so powerful, it can be used as a reference.

There is no such thing as having a great engine, so you can turn your nose up at other engines, or even dismiss them.

Three people go together there must be my teacher!

There is no need to deliberately belittle what others have done well. You must admit it when it needs to be acknowledged, and learn humbly when it is time to learn.

The new game will be developed using the Dream Builder 7 engine and will focus on game graphics!

This was a decision Chen Ba made after a moment of reflection after listening to Yang Dong’s report.

“The new game is a horror game?”

Recalling what Brother Ba once said, Yang Dong said thoughtfully: “I agree with this plan in principle, but will the Dream 7 engine make a horror game…”

What do you want to do?

Dream Builder 7 makes a horror game, and scaring people to death is not worth their lives, right? Do you know how realistic the picture is when Dream Builder 7 is at full blast?

“Isn’t this great!”

Chen Ba said calmly: “Horror games originally pursue a sense of substitution and immersion. The more realistic the picture and the richer the details, the more fun the game will be?”

I don’t know if it’s fun or not, but this game is definitely scary!

After all, as we all know, the quality of game graphics determines how scary a horror game is. The pixel mosaic Sadako, or the 8K extreme light and shadow color Sadako, which one do you prefer?

“Horror games are very plot-heavy, right?”

Huang Qing, who had been listening without saying anything, couldn’t help but ask: “Do you have any plans for the plot?”

“Get ready to customize a script!”

“We’ll talk about who to ask for customization and how to customize it later.” Chen Ba waved his hand.

“Cultivation Fantasy” is only in open beta, and there are still a lot of unresolved issues. Customized scripts for the new game will definitely be arranged after the New Year.

Speaking of this, Chen Ba was suddenly curious about something.

As a conscientious MMO online game, it has been in public beta for almost half a month. How much is the recharge flow of “Cultivation Fantasy”? Can it support eight servers?

“Flowing water is pretty average.”

Yang Dong smiled bitterly and said: “Because we have to operate with conscience and cannot persuade players to quit, the krypton degree of the game is very low. The experience of zero krypton players is not much worse than that of heavy krypton players, so not many people top up.”

This is not surprising.

After all, it was Chen Ba’s personal plan. In the first half of the year, it was run conscientiously. There were definitely not many people recharging, and it was normal for the turnover to be low.

But how low is it?

“Let’s put it this way, this game is currently operating at a loss! Hundreds of thousands of people play in the game every day, and the cost of maintaining the server is higher than the player’s recharge turnover.”

When Yang Dong said this, he was very helpless: “If we want to maintain it for half a year, the cost will be quite high, and the initial investment may not be recovered after half a year.”

“So I suggest that we open up new sources of income and at least ensure that the game is not operating at a loss.”

A new source of income?

Chen Ba deeply agreed with Yang Dong’s proposal. Although “Cultivation Fantasy” is run with conscience, no matter how conscientious you are, you cannot do a loss-making business!

Therefore, it is imperative to expand new sources of income. The question is where to start?

Add a new krypton gold activity?

This is not good, as it can easily expose your appearance and scare away players. The game has just been released to public beta now and is still in the fattening stage, so we can’t scare players away.

If you don’t take money out of players’ pockets, you have to find other ways to get money from other places.

“If not, just advertise!”

Seeing that Brother Ba was deep in thought and didn’t speak for a long time, Yang Dong suggested: “Isn’t “Don’t Leave After School” just relying on advertisements to make money every day? It shouldn’t be a big problem if we plant a few advertisements.”

“No, no, no, it’s not an ad.”

“The environment of “Cultivation Fantasy” is not the same as that of “Don’t Leave After School”, and the same plan cannot be followed.”

Chen Ba shook his head, and suddenly something seemed to flash through his mind, and he said thoughtfully: “What do you think… let’s start with merit?”

“Merit?!”

Yang Dong and Huang Qing looked at each other and saw the shock in each other’s eyes. Yang Dong was the first to ask: “Are you going to start selling merit?”

This is inappropriate!

Merit is the core system of “Cultivation Fantasy”. If it can be purchased with krypton gold, then this game will completely change its taste and quality.

Yang Dong didn’t understand. Brother Ba had just said that he should operate with conscience and retain players without scaring them away. Why did he turn around and start selling merit?

“you misunderstood!”

Chen Ba explained: “It’s not about selling merit in the mall. What I mean is to find ways to make some money through obtaining merit.”

“Cultivation Fantasy” is a magical game. The magical thing is that players of this game usually don’t play this game, but go to play other games.

Why is this happening?

Because by playing other games, not only can you gain happiness, but you can also get merit rewards along the way. It’s like killing two birds with one stone!

This is also the reason why friends and businessmen basically do not reject and are hostile to “Cultivation Fantasy”.

Why are you hostile to it?

“Cultivation Fantasy” will not steal your players, and even encourages players to play your game. It is so noble and selfless, but it is too late to like it, so how can it be hostile?

Chen Ba decided to start in this direction.

The hundreds of thousands of players in “Cultivation Fantasy”, especially the high proportion of meritorious players, are the chips in his hands.

As we all know, players follow merit!

Since he is following the merits, wouldn’t it be a very easy thing for him to make some small moves to guide players to play XX games?

Anyway, it’s all about earning merit. If you can earn five points in one hour by playing game A, it’s pretty good. If you can earn 20 points in one hour by playing game B, then why don’t I play game B?

Expand it a little more!

When players find out that they can get merit rewards normally by playing game A, but they can’t get merit rewards by playing game B even if they try their best or even kill cheaters like dogs, then which game will they play?

“Protection fees?”

Huang Qing immediately figured out the method, his eyes lit up and he said: “Use merit to guide the hundreds of thousands of players of “Cultivation Fantasy” to where they want to make money from friends and businessmen?”

“What’s the protection fee? Can you please don’t sound so ugly?”

Chen Ba said speechlessly: “We are serious people, what kind of protection fee do we charge? This is called a white list. Do you understand the white list?”

“Ah, yes, yes, whitelist!”

Huang Qing smiled and said: “Then how do you plan to operate this whitelist?”

“Does any action need to be taken?”

Chen Ba turned his head and glanced at him, feeling that Huang Qing had lived such a long life in vain to be able to ask such a mentally retarded question.

With half a million simultaneous online players and millions of active players, what a rich resource is this?

With this confidence, what else is needed? Just knock on the door and ask: Brother Pig/Goose, do you want the player?

Who can refuse so many player resources?

If there is anyone who can refuse, then Chen Bajing is a man. After all, if he asks himself, he cannot refuse such a thing.

If the other party agrees, that’s easy!

The opponent gets the player, Chen Ba gets the money, and the player gets merit and happiness. Three birds with one stone, a world where no one gets hurt is built.

As for whether players will be diverted to this game, is the diversion effect good?

Don’t worry!

Don’t underestimate the players’ obsession with merit in “Cultivation Fantasy”. In order to become immortals, these people dare to do anything…