Chapter 462: 462
V1.10
Patch Description
A mysterious force suddenly burst into people’s line of sight. They are powerful AI born from unless data, they are the lucky ones that survived the massacre within the system. The Four Pillars of Divinity that maintain the balance of the ‘main universe’ will be in for a great challenge.
And the internal struggle within the anomalies will slowly surface…
In the latest update, when 6 people queue up for a team scenario (limited to nightmare mode) there is a 0.2 percent chance they will run into the Anomaly. Other than the main mission, successfully killing or helping the Anomaly will earn the player extra reward after the scenario is over (regardless whether the players died in the process or not). The actions and selection of sides taken by the players in the ‘main universe’ governed by the four pillars of divinity will have a certain influence on the development in the future.
New Mode
A new mode, Free Exploration has been added. This mode has no quest system and time limitation (limitation on real life gaming hours is still in effect though), no warning of afk-like behaviour and is only available in solo mode. After activating this mode, the player will be randomly assigned into a singular universe and they can explore it as freely as they wish.
After the assignment of the universe, the players could move between the log in lobby and the scenario through the ‘safehouse’ inside the universe. If you leave the scenario outside the safehouse (This includes being killed, being forced to quit or disconnected), the players’ game Coins, Skill Points, EXP will all receive due punishment. When the players reenter their universe, they will be placed in their previously recorded safehouse. Every time the player enter the free exploration world, it will exhaust 20000 Game Coins.
If the player is not satisfied with their assigned universe or got bored after spending too long in a singular one, they can opt for a reassignment through payment of 500000 Game Coins.
Item, objects and server changes
…
Now player can buy large decors like furniture and ‘design models’ to decorate their conference room and storage. Thriller Paradise will no longer provide the service of exchanging Skill Points for Game Coins.
Self-service barbershop has been opened. Players can change their hairstyle (and even facial hair) to their heart’s content.
Other than ‘consumables’ and specific special items, all items above excellent quality (and some normal, trash, broken quality) items will have ‘bound after equipped’ or ‘bound after used’ property.
“Stamina Points Recovery Potions” have been removed from the game.
Trading center for puzzle cards is now open. Players can auction or trade unneeded puzzle cards here. When browsing at the trading centre, players can directly search for possible deck combo to avoid trade for unneeded cards. The trading centre will accept a very low transaction fee.
Auction House will no longer accept puzzle cards as auctionable items.
The weapon and equipment shops have been given a new batch of itmes. In the new update, players have the chance of encountering excellent quality item in the system shop. Of course, they might not come cheaper than the ones sold at the auction house. Under the players’ strong urge, we have added various dresses into the choices of outfit but they cost slightly higher because they will be paired with a layer of short mini pants.
Regarding the request for further interaction between ‘hugs’ and ‘kisses’ and lightening of the ‘xxxx protection system’ has been permanently revoked. Here, we have to remind that part of the playerbase that… our database is directly connected to the server of the law enforcement.
Ranking Related
Player combat stat ranking and level ranking have been removed
Guild combat stat ranking has been removed
Currently the ranking in the market place are: Guild overall ability ranking and player overall ability ranking.
The ‘hidden’ function on the ranking has been removed but the player has the choice to choose to have their names completely removed from the ranking.
The double buff received by guilds who were on two rankings have been removed; gaming exp buff when queuing up with members of the same guild has been removed.
Now, when members of the same guild are gaming together (when they are in the same camp), they will get a random buff and the power of the buff is dependent on the guild’s overall ability
Adjustment to game-ability
While maintaining the authentic feeling of the gore in game, now the system will add on a layer of manga-style exaggeration. The simulation of pain will now go one step further.
…
The patch content was much longer than that, most keywords had superlink that would provide a more detailed explanation. A reading buff like Feng Bujue naturally clicked on all of them. He not only read them, he further analysed them…
Finally he concluded, the core of this new updates were as follows:
One: The game increases the ways they can take back the Game Coins from the players.
Two: The company has been prepared for this update for a long time already. The Free Exploration mode was made specifically for players who had reached top level.
Three: They have found a way to incorporate the anomalies’ existence into the game (The details about the anomalies in the superlink was basically the same as what Hwa Xiong and Pan Feng told Feng Bujue but in far less details)
These three things were the main reason behind this V1.10 update. The other changes should be considered normal updates… for example, the exchanging service of Skill Point to Game Coins at Thriller Paradise, only a newbie would do that, so there was no reason to keep it around. The adjustment to the ranking system could be seen as a readjustment of the player standing. And the new puzzle card trading centre was a QoL update.
“Hmm… feels like there are a lot more things to do after I get online…” Feng Bujue mumbled as he moved the mouse to the link to the forum.
…
For these past few days, the forum exploded far bigger than when the game opened for Open Beta. During these two months of Thriller Paradise’ Open Beta, they had reached a registered playerbase of around 3000000. Once the server closed down, naturally the players gathered at the forum. Of course, 60 percent of these people were casual players. This part of people merely logged into the game in between school or work. They looked around the forum for about 10 minutes before moving on with their life.
The other 30 percent were fans of the game. They would log on when they were free and were very interested in any information and news related to the game. These were the people who were normally the most active on the forum. And the last 10 percent were of course the people in the same business, for example, the players from the studios, freelance professional players, workers and maintenance people from the gaming studios and professional 50 cent army… these people were the leader of the topic and the trend on the forum. For them, this forum was a battlefield without any blood being drawn. Words were their bullets and information was their gun. And the battle here was far more dangerous than the wars in the game…
“Creating drama”, “Conspiracy theories” and so on, it was not that hard but… it was not that easy either. One of the more classic examples included: A and B were slandering each other but in reality they were trying to raise each other up.
Some other examples were:
A tried his best to raise B up and then was swiftly face slapped by C. This was actually A working together with C to slander B.
A slandered and scolded C like his intelligence and shame had gone offline but actually he was trying to direct the negative comments towards.
A purposely taunted B’s fan C but in the end was harshly face-slapped by C using actual action but in reality both A and C were both fans of B and this was all a staged performance.
In conclusion, the methods were as varied as you think and every single method could fill a universe class. Some would achieve their goal, some would not. Some were so good at propaganda that after you were swindled, you would still be worshiping at their feet but others were so bad at it that you could not help but feel sorry for them when they saw their attempt. Undeniably, the art of 50 cents army was a deep school of study, one that was incredibly hard to master and incredibly difficult to find someone willing to show you the ropes.
This was a battle of IQ and EQ between two groups of people. What they needed to influence and draw in were those players who would be affected by the zeitgeist, who had no capability to think for them and those who were overly naïve.
“Vote! Who do you think is the real victor!” Feng Bujue saw the explosive title of such a thread and he could not help but laugh out loud. “Hah… at the end of the day, these people are working hard for their coins, their work is not that easy either…”
This kind of threads obviously were the handiwork of the members of gaming studios. Mostly they were from Regulation or Brahman. After all, people from celestia would not release this kind of thread. At most they would send their own people into the thread and toss a vote towards their own Pegasus…
There was another popular thread and the topic was, “Dream Inc fiddled the rules halfway through the tournament. Conspiracies are rife behind the Tournament for the Best, the only way is to reschedule the whole competition!” Now this looked more like the work of people from Zombie Blade.
One thing worth mentioning was, there were clues here and there that showed that the best celebrity player from Zombie Blade, Zombie Blade Victor appeared to have left the Zombie Blade gaming studio. His picture and information had been removed from the Zombie Blade official website. And in Thriller Paradise, the character Zombie Blade Victor had already been deleted. This caused a bit of a stir among the inner circle. Other than the people’s interest behind the man’s sudden departure from the studio, they were also interested in the direction that he was going next. If he did not suddenly decide to register or move into another field, then where would he go? Would he join another gaming studio or become a freelance professional player? In this contract that he had broken with Zombie Blade, was there an NDA that stopped the man from saying anything at this moment?
Even though he was once part of Zombie Blade and that costed him his reputation but in this world of business, if he was truly capable, no gaming studio would shut the door on him. When that happened, they would only repackage his entry with things like ‘he had seen the light’, or ‘abuse of drug was getting on his conscience’, he would still be a celebrity while at the same time, the new studio could take shots at Zombie Blade… one stone two birds.
“Hmm… even though there are a lot of threads but the smell of explosion is not that thick.” Feng Bujue scrolled through more threads and he soon discovered most of the popular threads about the competition where basically 50 cents army hired by many studios to shout at one another. Most of the players’ attention had already moved to the ‘new update’.
Looks like Woody’s attempt at smoke and mirror was incredibly successful. Using a big event like an update to complete cover up the residual problem from the competition, the secret behind the presence of the Anomalies and so on.
“But… 90 percent of the threads are seriously talking about nonsense…” Feng Bujue continued to look down the forum and he soon found many interesting things. Just the title of the threads themselves were enough to bring a chuckle out of him. For example, “My opinion on the free exploration mode”, “How difficult is it to kill an Anomaly? Let me show you” and so on… even the newest of players would have a hard time believing these things. There were also some regret threads like ‘I should have sold xx equipment’, ‘looks like the price of equipment is not going to drop anytime soon’. These people were quite reasonable, at least they knew the effect of having ‘bound equipment’ would bring. In the future, the situation where a player could ‘use a single equipment from level 1 to level 10 and then sell it at the auction house to trade for Game Coins’ would not happen anymore.
Obviously, Thriller Paradise’s ‘sudden’ content update objectively had snipped the ‘pre-update trend’ that occupied most other online game forums in its cradle. After scrolling aimlessly through the threads for a while, Feng Bujue started to deal with the private messages that he received on the forum. The messages that he received on his forum account was no lesser than the ones that stuffed his in game mailbox… after all, our Brother Jue was a famous celebrity now…
Thankfully, the mailbox at the forum had the same ‘AI connectivity’ function that joined the in game mailbox, the ban list was connected. In other words, those players who were banned by Brother Jue in game would similarly be banned by him on the forum. He would not be able to see their messages and posts.
But even so… Feng Bujue’s mailbox still ended up with more than ten thousands of mails. He swept through them, deleted them, read them and after some time, he found the message that Xu Huai Shang sent him a few days ago. Now that the tournament was already over, the words meant nothing anymore but at least it proved that Miss Xu was quite a reasonable and honorable player.
…
On the noon of second of June, Dream Inc. finally released the latest announcement on the official website, “The server will reactivate on the midnight of 3rd of June. The update will improve the game version to 1.10, Invasion of the Anomaly”
Once this news was realized, it was time for the 50 cents army to call it quit. Most of the big gaming studios turned their attention back into the game… the initiation of the new update meant a big workload coming their way. They no longer had time to dwell on the tournament that was now in the past. After all, after the past two months, big studios like Regulation, Brahman, small studios like Hyotei, even personal players… all the organization and individual who were in the gaming business could see that… Dream Inc’s attitude towards the outside world could be summed up as: one, come hell or high water, nothing is going to shake us; 2, slander our name if you want, just don’t play it if you don’t like it; 3, if you dare to push further than allowed, we will surely retaliate.
Under such a management style, all the conventional methods… were nothing but pointless.
…
At midnight of 3rd June. Feng Bujue logged into the game in sleeping mode. Lately to train his body, he had adjusted his biological clock and had started to pay attention to food intake. Therefore, since it was already midnight, he definitely would have gone to sleep already…
“Players ranked from 10th to 4th will randomly obtain 3 skill cards that correspond to their highest mastery and 4 skill cards from other random masteries and 5000 Skill Points…” Once Feng Bujue entered the log in lobby, he started to mumble to himself. “Hmph hmph… finally my day has come!”
As someone who had been abandoned by lady luck and spat upon by good fortune, one would have a hard time imagining his joy of obtaining 7 Skill Cards at one time…
He could not wait to open his maibox. As he expected, the mail with the prizes were highlighted and it was placed at the top of the list.
“Congratulation for placing number 10 on the Tournament for the Best”, even the title of the mail was exceptionally mellifluous to his ears. The attachment of the mail was the 7 skill cards. With regards to the 5000 Skill Points, it had already been added to his status. He checked it already when he first log into the game by looking into the game menu.
Currently Feng Bujue’s strongest mastery was fighting. After Tournament for the Best, his fighting mastery had reached level A. So that meant he obtained 3 fighting-type skill cards at one go. But… his bad luck had whipped his ugly head around again because his other 4 skill cards, 2 of them were for sleuthing and the other 2 were for medic.
Other than fighting, Brother Jue’s masteries were respectively 1 B, 4 C, 2 D and he was just ‘lucky’ enough to get the skill cards for the two masteries that he was the weakest at…
Thankfully, these skill cards were not bound, he could give them to the members of Underworld Frontline. If really no one wanted them, he could still sell them. Or worst came to worst, half of his prize would be viewed as rubbish…
“Hmm… I have a bad feeling about this.” Feng Bujue only took a glance of the skill cards’ mastery school and he had a worrying seed growing in his heart. He was a person who would always prepare for the worst so before this, he had considered several most unfortunate situations. For example… all the skill cards that he drew were all Level F.
That was not impossible… the reward detail wrote that “Players ranked from 10th to 4th will randomly obtain 3 skill cards that correspond to their highest mastery and 4 skill cards from other random masteries”. The keyword that was missing here was… it did not specify the quality of the skill card themselves. Therefore, theoretically speaking, a player could draw all 7 Level S Skill Cards or on the other hand… all 7 level F skill cards…
This rewards that was highly dependent on a person’s luck looked pretty interesting. If a person really did get all 7 Level S skill cards, then the gain he obtained would be greater than the reward received by the top 3 players. Even if 4 of the seven cards where cards that he would never use, he could trade them for money or give them to his friends. But if someone was that unlucky to get 7 Level F skill cards… then, there was nothing to be said. It was even worse than the reward given out to people ranked 100 to 51… The reward of 10 double Exp buff cards, 20000 Game Coins, limited edition T shirt was definitely much better than 10 level F skill cards. Thankfully, the top 10 still got 5000 Skill Points and that was always a gain.
“No way…” Feng Bujue put aside the four Medic and Sleuthing Skill Cards for now and started to unveil the first of the 3 fighting type skill cards:
Name: Rankyaku
Skill Card Property: Active, Permanent
Skill Type: Fighting
Effect: Unleash a slightly weak long distance slash (Cool down is 15 seconds)
Exhaust: 15 Stamina points
Learning Requirement: Fighting Mastery F
Remark: Using a high speed swing to create a slash of wind and that turns into an aerial cut. Ps. This skill is really not related to Rankyaku!
“What the fuck!” Feng Bujue roared in anger. “This is a total pirate! The exhaust is one tenth of Rankyaku but the power level is not even one tenth of the original! And this time has a 15 seconds cooldown timer?”
Indeed, this skill would need to be abandon without any consideration…
Brother Jue, as a player with level A fighting mastery and more than that, knew the actual Rankyaku had no reason to learn this pirated Rankyaku. Furthermore… a player only had 12 skill slots and Feng Bujue already equipped 11. There was no reason for him to take this with him.
“Fine! Good! One of the seven rewards is already so useless…” Feng Bujue groused. “But actually, one of three is already so useless…” He lifted his head and it was unclear who he was addressing, “Ah! And I thought someone would be watching over me… looks like I have completely misunderstood? Didn’t you want to win the bet?”
If course… no one was going to answer to his accusation.
“Hmm…” Feng Bujue waited for several seconds and seeing there was no reply, he had to give up. After all, he was only giving it a try. He turned his focus around and picked up the second skill card…
Name: below the belt shin kick
Skill Card Property: Active, Permanent
Skill Type: Fighting
Effect: Ignoring mastery level, a player can trip a monster that can be tripped in theory 100 percent and use that to taunt it to come attack you (no cooldown)
Exhaust: 500 Stamina Point
Learning Requirement: Fighting Mastery A
Remark: you look so cute falling face flat on the ground!
“Ha! Ha! Ha! Oh God almighty… no wait… damn you to hell!” Feng Bujue laughed loudly for 3 seconds. Looks like he was quite satisfied with this skill. Indeed, this was the permanent version of the 3 time-use only below the belt shin kick that he picked up at the early stages of the game. This was a typical ‘tactical’ skill. The level A standard and a high 500 Stamina Point exhaustion was enough to prove its value.
“Hmm mm…” Feng Bujue soon stopped laughing. “Calm down… I have to calm down… I cannot lose my temper due to great loss and I shan’t show too much joy from good luck either… Oommm…”
Actually, this was a strange thing about our Brother Jue, when he was around other people, he would be able to play a character to his maximum potential… but when he was alone, he would occasionally reveal his Sophomore Syndrome side. That was probably the aftereffect of him cooking too many ‘sophomore dishes’ when he was staying at home all alone.
“Okay… as long as the third one is not too bad…” Feng Bujue finally picked up the last fighting mastery skill card and placed it before his eyes.
Name: Yakyūken Lv1
Skill Card Property: Active Skill, Permanent
Skill Type: Fighting
Effect: Use both of your fists and launch a close quarter attack on the enemy who is standing right before you (can be activated any time even when there is no target. Cool down timer is one hour; the player is limited to using this skill for only 10 times in a single scenario. But the player can use this skill endlessly in free exploration mode)
Exhaust: 3 Stamina Point
Learning Requirement: Fighting F
Remark: The skill will increase in level with the increase in the number of usage. Every 60 instances of Yakyūken will increase its level by 1, there are 10 levels in total.