Chapter 231 Unreproducible Bug
Chen Ba didn't know about the situation Guo Mo encountered.
At this moment, he was discussing with Xiao Lu, Liu Jinfu, Li Qizhen and others about the process and results of the players' first team-up raid dungeon.
"The difficulty of the first dungeon is slightly higher. It has mechanisms and values. The overall gameplay experience is pretty good. Players rate it very highly."
When Xiao Lu said this, he suddenly changed his tone and said: "But... the output and difficulty of the dungeon do not match. This is also a common complaint among players."
The first team copy 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 up wasteland in this dungeon is slightly higher, and the mechanism is easy to explain. The key is that for players who have just broken through, the damage is not enough to kill the boss.
The first group of players to open up the wasteland, despite their efforts, used all kinds of auxiliary means such as elixirs, spells, and formations. From 2pm to 6pm, they managed to clear the dungeon for the first time.
Players regretted this.
They put in a lot of effort and cost not only to gain the reputation of being the first to pass the dungeon, but also to get rewards from the dungeon.
But the rewards given by the first pass were all junk, and the dogs shook their heads after seeing them...
There is absolutely no balance between effort and reward!
This is also the issue with the most intense feedback from players on the first day of the second test of "Cultivation Fantasy". The Tianba community has been in a commotion around this topic.
There has never been an MMORPG game that has been so stingy about first-pass rewards, which completely failed the players' efforts and expectations.
Regarding this, Chen Ba’s official answer is: It is normal for the game to drop, and you have no merit!
The item drop rate and rare dungeon output in "Cultivation Fantasy" are all linked to merit. The higher the merit, the greater the output.
certainly!
This has an upper limit. In theory, if you reach 10 points of merit, the copy output will be full. When the merit is lower than 10 points, the output will be reduced step by step, with a minimum guarantee of 20%!
In other words, if the player clears the dungeon, regardless of whether he has merit or not, and whether the merit is negative or not, the guaranteed output is 20%.
Only on this basis and by continuously accumulating merit can the copy output be raised to normal or even "supernormal" levels.
Different copies have different requirements for merit.
The first dungeon, which is the simplest dungeon, only requires 10 points of merit to unlock all outputs.
The second copy is 100 points...
In the later stages, the more difficult the dungeon is, the more merit you need to get high output, and it is not impossible to even reach 10,000 or 100,000 points.
This is a mechanism of the game.
But Chen Ba’s explanation did not win the recognition of the players. Instead, they complained that since he designed the merits to be so easy to use, why didn’t he open up access channels?
The first dungeon only requires 10 points of merit to unlock all the output, but these 10 points of merit are almost impossible to obtain for players in the early and middle stages of Qi training.
As for breaking through to the later stages of Qi training and the Great Perfection state of Qi training, there is a high probability that the merits will reach the standard...
Please! My brother is already at this level, and you still want me to brush up on the dungeon in the middle stage of Qi training? Then you are not allowed to brush dungeons that are in the late stage of Qi training or have completed Qi training?
"The problem does exist."
Chen Ba frowned and said: "It is difficult to obtain merit in the early stage, but you cannot change the rules casually. After all, with this change, the merit will be rampant in the later stage of the game."
Strictly controlling the output of merit is actually to ensure that merit, the third-level currency, is still precious and rare even in the later stages of the game.
If you don't do this and relax the restrictions in the early stage, then in the later stage of the game, who will not be a person with "complete merits and virtues"?
This is also the main reason why Chen Ba, as a game producer, cannot respond to the calls of players.
Players want merit, but their strength is too low. They are only in the early or middle stage of Qi training, so how can they have the chance to make merit?
"How about this? Let's lower the merit requirements of these copies during the Qi training period."
Liu Jinfu suggested: "Take the dungeon in 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 about the imbalance between effort and reward, and that the copy output is too little.
"Okay, just change it like this."
Chen Ba believes that this idea is feasible. Anyway, the output of merit must be strictly controlled. Based on this premise, the merit threshold of the copy during the Qi training period can be lowered.
In this way, novice players who are still in the Qi training period don't have to worry too much about the problem of too little copy output.
As for returning to normal during the foundation building period, that's fine.
When players reach the foundation building stage, the number of combat methods they can use will increase, and the ways to obtain merit will be wider. As long as they spend more time, they will not be stumped by this requirement.
The first copy requires 10 points of merit, 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. By the middle stage of Qi training, the merit is still zero.
"Is there anything else going on?"
"Gone!"
Xiao Lu shook his head and said: "The performance of the second test is normal. Except for the unreasonable output, no other problems have been found yet."
"That's good, that's good!"
After learning that the second test was uneventful and there were no changes or accidents, Chen Ba immediately breathed a sigh of relief.
This is a good thing!
When the second test was officially opened to players, Chen Ba was worried about whether "Cultivation Fantasy" would cause any jokes while sleeping.
No need to worry now.
Since the second beta is so stable, we can consider the open beta date and choose an auspicious day for "Cultivation Fantasy" to be officially launched.
Thinking of this, Chen Ba was still a little uncomfortable with it.
Shouldn't it?
The new game is open for testing, why is it so quiet? Normally, shouldn't problems occur frequently?
Is it possible...
Just when Chen Ba was thinking whether he was worrying too much, and "Fantasy of Cultivation" was really the most perfect game from Tianba Studio, Yang Dong walked in.
"There is a situation here that I think I should tell you..."
"ah?"
Chen Ba, who had not entered the fantasy time for five seconds, suddenly heard these words, and his expression froze instantly.
Yang Dong ignored him and explained to himself: "A player posted on the forum that an anchor had 10 points of merit when he hung up while playing "Cultivation Fantasy"..."
Does hanging up bring merit?
Hearing this, Chen Ba couldn't calm down anymore.
What is the situation and why do you gain merit by hanging up? It couldn't be a spoof of the P-picture, how could something so outrageous be possible?
"It's true. You'll know if you go and take a look."
Yang Dong said and shared the link of Guo Mo's live broadcast room with Chen Ba.
Chen Ba clicked on it and saw that Guo Mo was live broadcasting at the moment, and he had also broken through to the middle stage of Qi training and joined a dungeon land reclamation team.
Because of the problem of dungeon production, Chen Ba has already explained it to the players, so the entire land reclamation team knows that they are going to play dungeons now simply to familiarize themselves with the mechanism.
As for copy output?
What are you thinking about? You kid doesn’t have 10 points of merit, so what’s the use of your 20% guaranteed output?
"I have merit!"
Facing the group leader's doubts, Guo Mo said proudly: "It's just 10 points of merit. There won't be anyone who doesn't meet the conditions, right?"
Everyone: "..."
The entire team chat channel was filled with ellipses and question marks because of Guo Mo's words.
Worried that people would not believe him, Guo Mo sent them the live broadcast room number and asked them to watch his live broadcast, and he opened his personal panel.
Chen Ba took a closer look.
Good guy! It is really 10 points of merit, not mixed with any water, nor does it show mistakes, it is really 10 points of merit.
what's the situation?
Chen Ba was confused and didn't understand how Guo Mo obtained the merit.
When other players are complaining that merit is too difficult to obtain and it takes a lot of effort to accumulate even a little merit, how can anyone have 10 merit points?
Chen Ba, who felt that there must be a mystery to this matter, checked the player's game records in the background based on Guo Mo's game ID.
Backend records show that Tiandao in the "Cultivation Fantasy" game issued a 10-point merit reward to Guo Mo at 16:37 pm.
This is the source of merit.
But Chen Ba, like Guo Mo, didn't understand why Tian Dao wanted to distribute merits to him, and there were so many in one go.
Tiandao is an independent monitoring program.
This program has a rigid and fair merit evaluation system. It will make discretionary decisions to grant or deduct merit based on the player's game behavior, game performance and other circumstances.
Chen Ba called the program log related to "Tiandao" and found that the reason why it issued merit rewards to Guo Mo was "game behavior".
"Game behavior?"
"This is very general! What specific behavior is it? Can't it be found here?"
"Can't find it!"
Chen Ba shook his head and said that this data cannot be found because "Tiandao" has discretion, so it will make free judgments based on the situation.
In other words, when Tiandao distributes merit rewards to a certain player, the reason can at most be recorded. For example, Guo Mo received the reward for "game behavior".
But the specific process of this game behavior will not be recorded by "Tiandao" because there is too much content and it is impossible to record it in such detail.
There are thousands of game players, and every move of each player is recorded in such detail. So how exaggerated is the computing power of Tiandao in "Cultivation Fantasy"? How much information does the server have to store?
So this cannot be found.
Information that would not have been recorded in the first place cannot be found. However, there is no abnormality found on Tiandao's side, so we can check the players!
By investigating Guo Mo's character information, it is not difficult to find that when Tiandao distributed rewards, the character was in an idle state, did not move, and did not interact or operate.
Then there is a problem!
Is this really the merit of hanging up? This counterintuitive phenomenon 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 issued a merit reward to Guo Mo who was in a "not operating" state.
This is the most reasonable explanation!
After coming to a general conclusion, Chen Ba immediately launched an investigation, hoping to find out the hidden bugs 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, and there were no misjudgments or incorrect rewards.
No joke!
Chen Ba even called up Guo Mo's character information data and directly reproduced Guo Mo's hang-up state at that time. The situation was absolutely the same.
But here comes the problem...
In the same situation, even the character data is the same. He did not trigger the bug to gain merit, but Guo Mo did.
"Why is this?"
Chen Bazheng was confused, Xiao Lu was also confused, and Yang Dong was also dumbfounded.
They have done the process of reproducing bugs countless times. There may be some bugs that have strict triggering conditions and require a lot of luck to reappear.
No matter how much luck is needed, it can always be reproduced if all the prerequisites are met. There is no bug that cannot be reproduced.
An unreproducible bug?
Stop making trouble!
If there is such a bug, wouldn't this thing become a spirit? Would you rather believe that a piece of code is perfect, or that this bug does not exist?
"I think I'm going in the wrong direction!"
Chen Ba doesn't believe in the idea that the code becomes perfect. It can't be reproduced. There is a high probability that the problem is not here.
But this bug definitely exists.
After all, the facts are in front of them, but they have gone in the wrong direction and need to go through it again to find out the real cause of the bug.
Otherwise, ask the person involved?