Chapter 920: This Game Isn't Hard
"Thirty minutes?!"
"Boss, are you joking?"
"A Souls-like battle lasting thirty minutes? You'd drive players into a nervous breakdown!"
"If I were that human, I'd feel like this was a joke... Hunting something like that? Damn..."
Everyone was stunned. Was this for real?
Everyone knew the difficulty of *Dark Souls*. The entire boss fight was high tension; one slip-up and the boss would crush you into dust. And now they were being told a battle of that difficulty had to last thirty minutes?!
Was there no mercy for players?
In a typical Western fantasy game, hunting a flying dragon of that size would require a forty-person raid, right? Or at least twenty-five, no fewer.
Look at that armor, those claws, those horns... A normal human was basically the size of one of its claws. "Filing its toenails" for half an hour? It felt like throwing an egg at a rock...
Qian Kun scratched his head. "Boss, this game... isn't it going to become *Toenail File Hunter*?"
Chen Mo chuckled. "Not at all. *Monster Hunter* won't determine a monster's life based on a health bar; it'll use a much more complex algorithm. In short, the entire hunting process will be infinitely close to a real hunting battle."
"That means you can't beat an Elder Dragon just by attacking its legs. Hitting the legs will only make it limp, affecting its attack patterns. But to actually kill it, you have to break its armor, make it bleed out, or deal fatal damage to its head or vital organs."
Everyone: "..."
This was even harder!
Everyone understood that with this change, the game's difficulty would skyrocket in all sorts of ways.
Because a dragon's natural stance was on all fours. For a player to crawl under its belly and attack its abdomen was far too dangerous. The head was even more out of reach. So, the vast majority of players would probably only be able to attack the legs, since that's all they could reach...
Ranged weapons would be a different story, but if ranged weapons made headshots too easy, the weapons would be unbalanced, which was also a problem.
If you couldn't kill a dragon by attacking its legs, that was a nightmare for many melee weapon users...
Were they supposed to chop off all four of the dragon's legs, turning it into a stump? Oh, not a stump, a dragon stump?
They seriously doubted players would be killed ten thousand times before they managed to turn it into a dragon stump...
Ever since *Dark Souls*, players had long since stopped underestimating Chen Mo's maliciousness in game design. But this game seemed to surpass even the worst of that malice...
Everyone present couldn't help but sweat for the players.
Seeing their tension, Chen Mo smiled. "Don't be too scared, everyone. It's not that hard. In terms of difficulty, *Monster Hunter* will be a bit lower than *Dark Souls*. Well... I can't quite say that. They each have their own challenges, but *Monster Hunter* might be easier for players to stick with."
Everyone looked skeptical. With your insane difficulty, players would find it easy to stick with it?!
Their expressions silently said, "Yeah, yeah, whatever you say. The masochists from *Dark Souls* will love it once it's out. Just keep doing your thing..."
Chen Mo continued, "*Monster Hunter* will use the most advanced AI system, meaning all animals will have their own consciousness. In other words, the core of the game lies in the players' battle of wits and courage against the monsters."
"Players need to venture into complex jungles to track various large monsters living there. When monsters are injured, they'll flee, and when cornered, they'll unleash tremendous potential. So, the entire hunting process will be long and painful. But after defeating a monster, players can gather materials from its body to forge more powerful weapons."
"So, the biggest difference from *Dark Souls* is that the main highlight is the 'hunting' process itself. Players have a lot of freedom in their actions. In other words, there's very little 'malice' in this game, almost no traps, and it mainly tests the player's intelligence and skill."
Everyone suddenly understood. So that was the angle!
All the monsters here would use the AI system?
That sounded intense!
Using that AI system on a dog was kind of overkill.
Because virtual pets were in a cooperative relationship with players, living in peace, it was relatively hard to showcase the brilliance of that AI.
But if you put that AI into a dragon this powerful?
A dragon with the power to crush humans and possessing high intelligence?
Suddenly, it sounded interesting!
But the difficulty... would probably skyrocket too...
Chen Mo continued, "Next, I'll briefly introduce the entire environmental ecosystem of *Monster Hunter* and the targets players will hunt. In short, we're building a complete ecosystem, completely fictional, unrelated to real jungles or wildlife."
"This map right now is one of the seamless maps in the game, called the Ancient Forest. This monster is called the Great Jagras, known for swallowing its prey..."
Chen Mo introduced the various monsters in the game one by one, and everyone roughly understood why he said this game was easier to pick up than *Dark Souls*.
What was the difficulty of *Dark Souls*? It threw players straight into a tough fight with Iudex Gundyr, and most players got their heads handed to them by Teacher Gundyr.
But in *Monster Hunter*, players started by hunting small monsters or herbivores. Even a monster like the Great Jagras was very easy to take down. Even without a *Dark Souls* background, an average player could succeed with some effort.
But looking further ahead, it got more and more insane...
Diablos, Rathian, Rathalos, Pink Rathian, Barroth, Nergigante...
Any one of those would be a brutal beating!
Just from looking at Chen Mo's concept art, without even seeing the stats, many people in the room had a "no thanks" expression.
Take Diablos, for example. Its head, chest, and wings were weak points, dealing higher damage when hit. But who the hell would dare charge to the front and hit its head and chest? As for the wings, they were too high to reach!
At most, you could hit its legs or tail. But hitting those had no damage bonus. You'd be at it until the cows came home...
The more Chen Mo insisted the game wasn't hard, the more everyone didn't believe him.
This wasn't hard? Yeah, right! Who were you trying to fool?!