Chapter 225 "Cultivation Fantasy"

After finishing the visit to the Dragon Studio, Chen Ba led his team to participate in this year's China Overseas Game Expo.

At the exhibition, he announced the official name of the new game and some of its selling points.

The new game is tentatively named "Xiuzhen Fantasy", a massively multiplayer online role-playing game with a fairy-tale theme.

This is also a pie in the sky...

Although the name and theme of the new game have been revealed, it is obvious that there is nothing about "Xiu Zhen Fantasy" except a few promotional pictures drawn by AI.

There wasn't even a promotional video.

So in the eyes of many people, Brother Ba's move is nothing more than empty promises. The game is definitely not done well, and it may not even have started production yet, but now it's being promoted?

Complaints aside, it’s not the first time that Brother Ba has made promises.

Moreover, compared with the pies he drew in the past, the pie he drew this time is obviously more attractive to players and more exciting.

Xianxia MMO?

Wow! This is the news that shocked everyone for a whole year. Tianba Studio is going to make an MMO? Is the theme still the fairy tale that everyone likes?

It sounds cool! The only suspense is whether Tianba Studio, which has never made an MMO, can make this game well? And what kind of payment model will this MMO adopt? "Brother Ba, does the game require krypton gold?"

This is the question Chen Ba hears most often, and it is also the issue that players are generally concerned about.

MMOs are all money-eating monsters, which is a fact recognized by the gaming industry. Players who have played MMO games know that if such games are point-based, it is fine, but if they are free games...

There is no doubt that in order to compete for the top spot, investing hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars may not even make a splash.

Don’t think it’s an exaggeration! The minimum threshold for MMO is very low, especially for free games, which are filled with a large number of zero-krypton free players. They not only play games for free, but also try every means to make money from the games.

But after removing these zero-spending and small-spending players, the upper limit of MMO games will make people jaw-dropping and even call it exaggerated!

According to Chen Ba's experience, the upper limit of MMO games mainly depends on two aspects.

First, the intensity of competition in various rankings! If the rankings in your area are very competitive, there are many heavy players, and the price level is also relatively high, then the upper limit will be pulled very high.

The second is the upper limit of the game itself.

For some games, a major version update may cost tens of thousands of yuan to reach the upper limit. There is no point in continuing to spend money because the content of this version update is just so little.

Take the Mijia classic card pool as an example.

The new version has a character pool and a weapon pool. The cost of maxing out the characters + the cost of maxing out the weapons is the upper limit of this version.

Both models have their own advantages.

In general, games that control the maximum amount of krypton gold through version updates are generally krypton gold friendly and will not discourage ordinary players.

Because the version cap is here, even if the rich spend a lot of money, they can't create a big gap with ordinary players.

The game itself has no upper limit, and it tests the thickness of the player's wallet. The players at the top of the list may kill a large number of free players with one sword, pure Wushuang mowing.

“We want to be the former.”

Facing the players' worries and concerns, Chen Ba said to Xiao Lu beside him: "Through version updates, we will control the game's kryptonian degree and upper limit. We can't let it become a game where the big guys mow down the grass."

“So it’s still free to play?”

"There's nothing we can do about it. The market environment has determined that players like this kind of free game with no barriers to entry."

Chen Ba said helplessly: "And if we only look at the revenue flow, free games are really amazing! If you launch a more attractive pay-to-win event, you can earn the same amount of revenue from point card games in a month as from a year."

What? You said that point card games have strong vitality, and it is common for a game to operate for ten years? Free games are just fast food, making a lot of money in the first few years and then going downhill in the next few years? You are right, it is indeed like this.

But is there a possibility that the money that other people have earned from their free games in the past few years has exceeded the income that you have earned from operating your subscription games for ten or even twenty years?

Fast food is indeed fast food. It is also a fact that free games cannot last long and become increasingly weak in the later stages.

But everything has two sides.

In the first two years of the free game, it was really profitable! In two years, you can earn as much as a card game would earn in ten years. Who would want to play the game of "slow and steady"?

"Xiu Zhen Fantasy" must be a free game, and it can only be a free game.

Chen Ba thought about charging for point cards, and also thought about operating it for a long time like World of Warcraft, but he gave up in the end.

As the old saying goes, wild boars cannot eat fine bran. If the players choose the free games themselves, don't blame the game developers for voting with their feet.

For free games, the main revenue channel is the built-in game store.

In the game "Xiuzhen Fantasy", Chen Ba has already thought of a general plan for spending money.

The game has a tribulation mechanism! Every time you break through a major realm, you will face the baptism of thunder tribulation. If you successfully pass it, your realm will be upgraded. If you fail to pass the tribulation, you will be beaten back to the next level and all your previous efforts will be wasted.

If you want to survive the thunderstorm safely and painlessly, you need to spend money.

Merit can also reduce the power of thunder tribulation.

It’s just that it’s very difficult to obtain merit. In comparison, it’s more cost-effective to spend money to buy Tribulation Pills and Realm Breakthrough Pills.

"Can't I survive the tribulation without krypton gold?"

"sure!"

Chen Ba looked at Xiao Lu as if he was a fool, and said with a curled lip, "If you don't spend money, you can't pass the tribulation. Doesn't this mean that our game will only be for the big spenders?"

Of course, you can survive the disaster without spending any money.

However, the success rate is definitely lower than that of paying players, so it depends more on luck.

A kryptonian player who has maxed out all kinds of realm-breaking elixirs may be able to pass the tribulation in one try. However, a zero-kryptonian player may be stuck in a certain realm for a period of time and need to try several times before breaking through to the next realm.

By the way.

The tribulation mechanism in the game is such that no matter whether you are a paying player or a non-paying player, it is impossible to pass it 100% surely. The highest success rate is only 80% and the lowest is 30%!

"This is a relatively luck-based mechanism. Even a big spender might be unlucky and fail ten times in a row. A zero-spending player might also be lucky and succeed in one try."

Chen Ba explained: "If you want to be more secure, whether you are a krypton gold player or a zero krypton player, the best way is to accumulate merit."

That’s right, merit! These success rates are roughly estimated, excluding the influence of “merit”.

If you add merit, the success rate can be increased to 100%! If you have accumulated enough merit, overcoming the tribulation will be as easy as eating and drinking.

The merits are complete and the merits are immeasurable...

These words fully illustrate how important merit is in a world where immortals and gods exist.

"People with great merits cannot even kill without permission, otherwise it will lead to extremely horrific consequences..."

Chen Ba explained the consequences of a player having great merit but being killed by someone in the game "Xiu Zhen Fantasy".

First, the number of merits that the player possesses will be deducted from the killer.

What if the merit is not enough?

Sorry, you killed a person with great merits, your merits are not enough to deduct, so it will become a negative number. Your life span will also be greatly reduced, which is an act of shortening your life.

In addition, the amount of experience gained from going to dungeons and killing monsters will be greatly reduced, and the various drop outputs will also be reduced many times...

"Shorten your life?"

As if he had heard something extraordinary from Brother Ba's mouth, Xiao Lu asked curiously, "Can immortal cultivators die at the end of their life span?"

"Of course!"

"As long as a cultivator has not achieved immortality, his life span is limited. He is not truly immortal."

Chen Ba explained: "In the game, we set different upper limits on lifespans according to different realms."

For example, the upper limit of the Qi training stage is 100 years, and the upper limit of the foundation building stage is 300 years! This life span will be consumed when using certain powerful secret methods, entering special secret realms, or even practicing in seclusion.

When a player's remaining lifespan reaches zero, that is, when the deadline is approaching, and he has not yet broken through to the next level, he will experience a "reincarnation."

The speed of reincarnation and reconstruction is very fast.

There is no mistake in the poem, post, content, and read the book on 6, 9, and bar!

Moreover, there is another benefit of reincarnation, which is to increase the success rate of overcoming tribulation.

"oh?"

Xiao Lu didn't seem to have expected that this could be linked together, so he asked, "Does it mean that if you are not sure about overcoming the tribulation when the deadline comes, or if you fail to overcome the tribulation, you can reincarnate and cultivate again to increase the basic success rate of overcoming the tribulation next time?"

“That’s right!”

"The game encourages players to reincarnate and start over. That means when their life span is up, they should die quickly and avoid taking any life-extending magic drugs or elixirs to try to stay alive."

Chen Ba said that the purpose of setting a lifespan limit in the game is to encourage players to reincarnate and start over.

There are many benefits to reincarnation!

The only downside is that your cultivation level will be reset to zero and you will need to start practicing from the beginning.

But this is not a big problem. After all, the speed of reincarnation and cultivation is definitely much faster than normal cultivation, and there is no need to overcome tribulations in the middle. Even if you start from scratch, it won't waste too much time.

The later the stage, the more necessary it is to reincarnate and cultivate again to increase the success rate of overcoming the tribulation.

However, at that time, players may face a happy dilemma: there are too many remaining lifespans, how to spend them? "Haha, there is such a thing?"

"It's easy to die. Just use those forbidden secret techniques and use up your lifespan."

"It's easy to say, but is there a possibility that these forbidden secret techniques that consume lifespan have a long CD?" Chen Ba rolled his eyes.

When your lifespan is short, you can just go through a few dungeons or enter a few secret caves involving time, and your remaining lifespan will soon be used up.

But when one's lifespan is tens of thousands of years, it is not an easy task to use up the remaining lifespan as quickly as possible and undergo the so-called reincarnation.

What are you doing?

With a life span of tens of thousands of years, if you use the forbidden secret method to burn your essence and blood, it will take a long time to burn out tens of thousands of years of life? Do you really think that skills have no CD?

As for natural death...

Just save your time! In "Xiu Zhen Fantasy", one day in reality only takes ten years to pass in the game!

If you want to die of old age naturally, you have to quit the game for three to five years and not log in again.

"The world of cultivation is very cruel!"

"The low-level cultivators fought each other to the point of bleeding heads in order to fight for a few life-extending treasures. Their dog brains were almost beaten out."

Chen Ba joked, “But in the eyes of those who are at a high level and only one step away from becoming an immortal, a lifespan of tens of thousands of years is actually a burden, because it hinders their progress towards becoming an immortal.”

"It would be great if lifespans could be transferred. Players at lower realms wouldn't have to worry about lifespans all the time, and players at higher realms could also quickly reincarnate and start over..."

Wishful thinking! Hearing what Xiao Lu said, Chen Ba couldn't help but complain: "If we really play it this way, wouldn't the game be a mess?"

Do you think you are Sun Wukong, scribbling on the book of life and death? How can life span be transferred?

"That's right!"

As if he had thought of something, Xiao Lu asked curiously, "Brother Ba, the highest level in our game is the Mahayana realm. Can't we become immortals?"

"I can't become an immortal..."

Chen Ba nodded, which was rare, and then explained: "Forget about becoming an immortal, even the Mahayana stage is probably a distant dream for the players."

These realms were designed without any thought that any player would be able to reach them.

In other words, the purpose of these realms is not to design them for current players, but for players five or ten years from now.

After all, this is the ultimate goal! If it is easy to break through to the Mahayana stage, or even to transcend the tribulation and become an immortal, then what is the point of the game "Xiuzhen Fantasy"? Three days of speed running, right? If it is really so outrageous, then the game will probably have to make a map of the immortal world, after the immortal world is the god world, after the god world is the saint world, after the saint world is the Hongmeng world...

Anyway, there are unlimited nesting dolls!

The maps are changed so frequently and the realms are one after another. Chen Ba feels that it is better to stay in the world of cultivation and play in one world for a lifetime.

The map will be updated, the main storyline will be updated, and the game version will be updated.

Everything will be updated, but these key cultivation realms will probably require server shutdowns. After all, Chen Ba really doesn't like frequent map changes, which makes him feel very boring.

He still remembers a Java mobile game he played in the era of feature phones.

That game is also a fairy tale type.

The game tells players very directly that level 120 is the maximum level, and once you reach this level, you can basically uninstall the game and stop playing.

At that time, Chen Ba was very dismissive. It was not until many years later that he accidentally opened the forum of this game and found out that no one had reached the maximum level 120 in this crappy game until the server was shut down.

It can only be described as outrageous! Chen Ba also borrowed this idea, becoming an immortal means reaching the maximum level, which is the end of the game. But this end may not be achieved by anyone until "Xiu Zhen Fantasy" is shut down.

To be bolder, perhaps after ten years of this game, there will be only a few Mahayana monks left in the world of cultivation.

"Will this..."

“That’s enough!”

Before Xiao Lu finished speaking, Chen Ba interrupted him and said, "Isn't this very reasonable? From a mortal to an immortal, how big is the leap? You can't reach the end of the immortal road in your entire life, and you will always be on the road to immortality. This is my ideal immortal hero."

Some games are clearly about seeking immortality, but it turns out that becoming an immortal is as easy as eating and drinking. Even Chen Ba is speechless.

Please!

When you sell immortals wholesale, have you taken a good look at the theme and introduction of your game? Is it really that easy to become an immortal? If you are still selling immortals wholesale, why not take a look at what the descriptions of "immortals" in those myths and legends are like!

A little-known fact: there are only a limited number of immortals in the mythical heaven, and theoretically the heavenly soldiers and generals are not "immortals".

When I was typing, my left elbow joint hurt a little. I planned to apply hot water and massage it. Today I only have 4K.

(End of this chapter)