Chapter 231 The Unreproducible Bug
Chen Ba was not aware of the situation Guo Mo encountered.
At this moment, he was discussing the process and results of the players' first team-based dungeon attack with Xiao Lu, Liu Jinfu, Li Qizhen and others.
“The first dungeon is slightly more difficult, but it has both mechanics and numbers. The overall gameplay experience is pretty good, and players give it high praise.”
At this point, Xiao Lu suddenly changed his tone and said, "But... the output of the dungeon does not match the difficulty, which is also a common complaint among players."
The first team dungeon of "Cultivation Fantasy" requires players to break through to the middle stage of Qi training before they can explore it.
Moreover, the difficulty of opening this dungeon is slightly higher. The mechanism is easy to explain, but the key is that the damage done by the players who have just broken through is not enough to kill the Boss.
The first batch of players who pioneered the dungeon put in a lot of effort, using all kinds of auxiliary means such as elixirs, talismans, and formations. They worked from two in the afternoon to six in the afternoon and barely cleared the dungeon for the first time.
The players regretted this.
They paid a huge amount of energy and cost, not only for the reputation of being the "first to complete the dungeon", but also for the dungeon rewards.
But the first pass reward is all scrap metal, even a dog would shake his head when seeing it...
The effort and reward are totally disproportionate!
This was also the most heatedly reported issue by players on the first day of the second beta test of "Xiu Zhen Fantasy". The Tianba community was already arguing over this topic.
No MMORPG game has ever been so stingy in the first-clear rewards for a dungeon, which completely disappoints the players' efforts and expectations.
In response to this, Chen Ba’s official response was: Game drops are normal, and you have no merit!
The item drop rate and rare output of copies in "Xiuzhen Fantasy" are all linked to merit. The higher the merit, the greater the output.
certainly!
There is an upper limit. Theoretically, if the merit reaches 10 points, the dungeon output will be full. When the merit is less than 10 points, the output will be reduced step by step, with a guaranteed minimum of 20%!
In other words, when a player completes a dungeon, regardless of whether he has merit or not, or whether the merit is negative or not, the guaranteed output is 20%.
Only on this basis, by constantly accumulating merits, can the copy output be raised to a normal or even "extraordinary" level.
Different copies have different requirements for merit.
The first copy, which is also the simplest copy, only requires 10 merit points to unlock all outputs.
The second copy is 100 points...
The later the stage, the more difficult the copy. If you want to get a high output, the more merit you will need. It is not impossible to reach 10,000 or 100,000 points.
This is a mechanic of the game.
But Chen Ba's explanation did not win the approval of the players. Instead, they complained that since he designed merit to be so useful, why didn't he open up the channels to obtain it? The first copy only required 10 points of merit to unlock all the outputs, but these 10 points of merit were almost impossible to obtain for players in the early and middle stages of Qi training.
As for breaking through to the late stage of Qi training and the state of great perfection of Qi training, the merit will most likely reach the standard...
Please! I'm already at this level, and you still want me to clear the dungeon of the middle stage of Qi training? Shouldn't I clear the dungeon of the late stage of Qi training or the complete stage of Qi training?
“This problem does exist.”
Chen Ba frowned and said, "It is difficult to obtain merit in the early stages, but we cannot change the rules casually. After all, if we change it, merit will be flooded in the later stages of the game."
Strictly controlling the output of merit is actually to ensure that merit, the third-level currency, remains precious and rare even in the later stages of the game.
If we don't do this and relax the restrictions in the early stages, then by the end of the game, who wouldn't be a person with "perfect merit"?
This is also the main reason why Chen Ba, as a game producer, is unable to respond to players' calls.
The players wanted merit, but their strength was too low. They were only in the early and middle stages of Qi training, so how could they have the chance to gain merit? "How about this, let's lower the merit requirements for these dungeons in the Qi training stage."
Liu Jinfu suggested: "Take the copy of the middle stage of Qi training as an example. It only takes a little merit to unlock all the output."
In this way, players will most likely not complain that the effort and reward are not equal and that the copy output is too little.
"Okay, let's change it like this."
Chen Ba believes that this idea is feasible. In any case, the output of merit must be strictly controlled. Based on this premise, the merit threshold of the Qi training period copy can be lowered.
In this way, novice players who are still in the training stage don't have to worry too much about the problem of the copy output being too stingy.
As for the Foundation Establishment Period returning to normal, that’s fine too.
When players reach the foundation-building stage, they will have more combat methods to use and more ways to gain merit. It will just take a little more time, so they won't be overwhelmed by this requirement.
The first copy requires 10 merit points, which is indeed a bit high!
Players at this stage, let alone 10 points of merit, many people don’t even know how to obtain merit, and by the middle stage of Qi training, they still have zero merit.
"Anything else?"
“No more!”
Xiao Lu shook his head and said, "The performance of the second test is normal. Apart from the unreasonable output, no other problems have been found for the time being."
"That's good, that's good!"
Chen Ba heaved a sigh of relief when he learned that the second test went smoothly without any changes or accidents.
This is a good thing! When the second beta was officially opened to players, Chen Ba was worried even when he was sleeping whether "Cultivation Fantasy" would make a fool of itself.
Don't worry now.
Now that the second beta is so stable, we can consider the date for the public beta and choose an auspicious day for the official launch of "Xiu Zhen Fantasy".
Thinking of this, Chen Ba was actually still a little uncomfortable.
Shouldn't it?
Why is it so quiet when a new game is open for testing? Normally, shouldn't there be frequent problems?
Could it be that...
Just as Chen Ba was wondering if he was worrying too much and that "Cultivation Fantasy" was really the most perfect game from Tianba Studio, Yang Dong walked in.
"There's something going on here that I think I should tell you about..."
"ah?"
Chen Ba, who had not even entered his fantasy for five seconds, suddenly heard these words and his expression froze instantly.
Yang Dong ignored him and explained: "A player posted on the forum that a streamer got 10 points of merit while playing "Xiu Zhen Fantasy" by hanging up..."
A merit gained by hanging up the computer? Upon hearing this, Chen Ba became upset.
What's going on? Why can I gain merit by AFK? It can't be a prank, how can such an outrageous thing happen?
"It's true. You'll know when you go and see it."
Yang Dong said as he shared the link of Guo Mo's live broadcast room with Chen Ba.
Chen Ba clicked on it and saw that Guo Mo was broadcasting live at that moment. He had also broken through to the middle stage of Qi training and joined a dungeon pioneering team.
Chen Ba had already explained the issue of dungeon output to the players, so the entire pioneering team knew that they were now going to play dungeons simply to familiarize themselves with the mechanism.
As for the copy output?
What are you thinking? You don't even have 10 points of merit, so what's the point of the 20% guaranteed output?
There is no mistake in the poem, post, content, and read the book on 6, 9, and bar!
“I have merits!”
Facing the leader's doubts, Guo Mo said proudly: "It's only 10 points of merit. There won't be anyone who doesn't meet the requirements, right?"
Everyone: “…”
The entire team chat channel was instantly filled with ellipsis and question marks because of Guo Mo's words.
Worried that people might not believe him, Guo Mo sent them the live broadcast room number and asked them to watch his live broadcast, while he opened his personal panel.
Chen Ba took a closer look.
Wow! It really is 10 points of merit, not mixed with any water, nor is it a display error, it is really 10 points of merit.
What's going on? Chen Ba was confused and didn't understand how Guo Mo got the merit.
When other players were complaining about how hard it was to get merit and how hard it was to accumulate a little merit, how could someone have 10 merit points? Chen Ba, who felt that there must be something mysterious about this, checked the game records of this player in the background based on Guo Mo's game ID.
Background records show that the Heavenly Dao in the game "Xiuzhen Fantasy" awarded Guo Mo 10 merit points at 16:37 in the afternoon.
This is the source of merit.
But Chen Ba, like Guo Mo, did not understand why Heaven gave him so much merit at once.
Tiandao is an independent monitoring program.
This program has a rigid and fair merit assessment system that will give or deduct merits based on the player's gaming behavior, performance and other factors at its discretion.
Chen Ba called up the program log related to "Tian Dao" and found that the reason it gave merit rewards to Guo Mo was "game behavior."
"Game behavior?"
"This is very general! Can't we find out what the specific behavior is here?"
“Nothing!”
Chen Ba shook his head, indicating that this data could not be found, because "Heaven's Way" has the power of discretion, so it will make free judgments based on the situation.
In other words, when Heaven issues a merit reward to a player, it will at most record the reason, for example, Guo Mo received the reward because of "gaming behavior".
However, "Tian Dao" will not record the specific process of this game behavior, because there is too much content and it is impossible to record it in such detail.
There are tens of thousands of game players, and every move of each player is recorded in such detail. How much computing power must the "Cultivation Fantasy" have? How much information must the server store? So this cannot be found.
Information that is not recorded in the first place, naturally cannot be found. However, since Tiandao cannot find any abnormalities, can we check the players? By investigating Guo Mo's character information, it is not difficult to find that when Tiandao issued the reward, the character was in an idle state, did not move, and did not interact or operate.
That's a problem! Is it really the merit gained by hanging up? This phenomenon that goes against common sense attracted Chen Ba's attention.
He suspected it was a bug...
The Tiandao in the game, affected by an unknown bug, made a wrong judgment and awarded merit rewards to Guo Mo who was in the "no operation" state.
This is the most reasonable explanation! After reaching a general conclusion, Chen Ba immediately started to investigate, hoping to find the hidden bug in the game based on this problem.
But when he tried to reproduce the bug, he found that no matter how he tested it, Tiandao was operating normally, with no misjudgment or erroneous rewards.
No kidding!
Chen Ba even called up Guo Mo's character information data and directly reproduced Guo Mo's AFK status at that time. The situation was absolutely exactly the same.
But here comes the problem…
The same situation, even the character data are the same, he did not trigger the bug to gain merit, but Guo Mo did.
"Why is that?"
Chen Ba was confused, Xiao Lu was also confused, and Yang Dong was also dumbfounded.
They have gone through the process of reproducing the bug countless times. Some bugs may have more stringent conditions for triggering, and they need a lot of luck to reproduce them.
But no matter how much luck you need, you can always reproduce it if all the prerequisites are met. There is no bug that cannot be reproduced.
A bug that can't be reproduced?
Stop it!
If there is such a bug, then wouldn't it be a spirit? Would you rather believe that a piece of code is a spirit, or believe that this bug does not exist?
“I think we’re going in the wrong direction!”
Chen Ba doesn't believe in the saying that code is a spirit. The inability to reproduce the problem probably means that the problem does not lie here.
But this bug definitely exists.
After all, the facts are right in front of them, but they just went in the wrong direction and need to go back to the drawing board to find out the real cause of the bug.
Or, go ask the person involved? (End of this chapter)