Chapter 66: The Self-Cultivation of an Unlucky Player
As the days passed, the launch date for "Holy Spring Guardians" and "I Am MT" drew closer and closer.
Qiu Bin had been a bit nervous these past few days. After such a long period of buildup, the "I Am MT" anime had gained significant traction.
More and more viewers were following the anime, the content of the Azeroth Universe was growing richer, and more players were discussing it on the forums. Fan works and illustrations related to Azeroth had even started to appear.
Although this anime still fell far short of those blockbuster hits in the parallel world, it posed a real threat to Qiu Bin, because "Holy Spring Guardians" didn't have this kind of extra boost.
Emperor Dynasty Interactive's distribution channels were indeed powerful, but that didn't mean every game they pushed would become a hit. Qiu Bin was still worried he might fail.
Especially after roughly studying the content of the "Azeroth Universe," Qiu Bin's feeling of unease grew even stronger.
This world-building was way too grand!
Two major factions, several races, and such a massive story background! Not to mention the major cities and large-scale scenes—just the characters in the anime alone already numbered over a dozen. That was far richer in content than "Holy Spring Guardians"!
What kind of game was Chen Mo trying to make? Could he actually reproduce all of this?
Qiu Bin didn't believe it was possible to recreate these scenes in a mobile game. First, Chen Mo was only a C-grade designer whose previous works were all casual games—his ability was insufficient. Second, four months simply wasn't enough time to make all of this!
Even if Chen Mo had started developing a new project immediately after "Plants vs. Zombies" launched, the time still wouldn't be enough.
And even if Chen Mo barely managed to finish it, what about testing time? Time for feedback and revisions? If the game launched with a bunch of problems, wouldn't that be suicide?
Qiu Bin was completely baffled now.
In his view, for Chen Mo to win, he had to create a game that comprehensively surpassed "Plants vs. Zombies" in quality. But judging from Chen Mo's current actions—making an anime, building a website—how much time was actually left for game development?
Qiu Bin could only keep revising "Holy Spring Guardians." Who would actually win would only be known after the games launched.
...
These past few days, Wen Lingwei was very happy, while Jia Peng was very unhappy.
During the testing phase of "I Am MT," Chen Mo topped up 8,000 runestones for everyone every day, letting them do ten-pulls until their hands went numb.
Moreover, based on the daily arena rankings, there were additional top-up rewards.
Note that these were top-ups, not system gifts. This meant everyone's VIP levels were also steadily increasing.
This arrangement was mainly to test whether the power gap between high-level VIPs and mid-to-low-level VIPs met expectations, and also to see if the experience for players at different VIP levels matched Chen Mo's design.
As a result, with the same amount of money, card-matching skill and luck became the deciding factors.
Wen Lingwei had experimented the most with team compositions and had great luck with ten-pulls. She consistently held the number one spot in the arena.
Meanwhile, Jia Peng's unlucky nature was fully exposed. He often got only monster purple cards from ten-pulls, and the cost of obtaining main character purple cards was much higher for him than for others. He was on the verge of despair.
Now, in the arena, Jia Peng was completely dominated by Wen Lingwei.
If Chen Mo hadn't been giving out runestones every day, Jia Peng probably would have quit the game from the crushing disappointment.
Jia Peng complained to Chen Mo repeatedly that this game was too unfriendly to unlucky players and was practically unplayable.
Chen Mo really wanted to reply to him, "Friend, have you heard of Onmyoji?"
However, given Jia Peng's utterly miserable experience, Chen Mo almost thought he had made a mistake in the probability settings. He checked the drop rates for various cards several times.
The final result of the check was suffocating: Jia Peng's card-pull probability was far below the average Chen Mo had set. It could only be said that this was the nature of an unlucky player at work...
To this, Chen Mo could only sigh, "Luck can't save the unlucky, and spending can't change fate."
With two days left until the game's launch, Chen Mo had made numerous numerical adjustments to the game, including stage difficulty, level-up experience, card stats, VIP benefits, and so on. He had basically fine-tuned everything to what he considered a perfect state.
The anime's preheating was also about done. Although it certainly wouldn't be as popular as in the previous life, Chen Mo estimated the conversion rate would be enough to meet the basic user count needs for the "I Am MT" mobile game.
Reaching this level was sufficient for Chen Mo.
Once the game officially launched, the test data would be wiped. Wen Lingwei and the others would have to play on the official server just like everyone else.
Jia Peng was still tirelessly grinding through dungeons.
Wen Lingwei, while admiring her own lineup, said to Jia Peng, "Stop struggling. The data wipe is the day after tomorrow. What's the point of grinding dungeons now?"
Jia Peng didn't even look up. "I'm standing my post until the very end!"
Wen Lingwei: "..."
Now, Wen Lingwei and the others were all thinking about how to start fastest on the new server and which lineup was the strongest. Only Jia Peng was still tirelessly grinding away.
It could only be said that unlucky players were indeed more dedicated than ordinary ones.
Suddenly, Jia Peng jumped up from his seat, ecstatic. "I got a purple card! I got a purple card!"
Chang Xiuya came over. "Really? Congratulations! You finally got a purple card!"
Wen Lingwei said, "Ohhh, even an unlucky guy like you can have a change of luck?"
Chen Mo patted Jia Peng on the shoulder. "Great. Although you're the last one to get a purple card, it's still worth celebrating."
Jia Peng said excitedly, "I need to take a screenshot! A screenshot for the memory!"
Everyone else wore expressions of sympathy.
In certain specific elite stages, there was a chance to drop a full monster purple card, but the probability was low. Chen Mo had set it at about 0.5%.
This setting was originally meant to be a very luck-based mechanic, mainly to give players a pleasant surprise.
However, what no one knew was that Chen Mo had actually implemented a fake probability system for this setting.
Although the base drop rate for purple cards was set at 0.5%, Chen Mo had added an additional rule: based on the time since the player created their account, this probability would increase by 3% each day.
After the first purple card dropped, the probability would reset to 0.5%. If a long time passed without another drop, the probability would rise again, but it would never exceed 5%.
This design was mainly to ensure that the vast majority of players could experience the joy of getting a purple card drop, without causing the cards to depreciate in value.
In other words, Jia Peng's current purple card drop rate was probably over 80%...
Everyone else had already gotten their purple cards two weeks ago, and Jia Peng was only getting his now. In Chen Mo's eyes, this could only be described as a "miracle."
"If I ever develop 'Onmyoji' in the future, should I even tell Jia Peng about it..."
Chen Mo began pondering this very serious question.