Chapter 214: Chapter 148 The True Hardcore Player (Second Update)_2
The website administrators also delegated some management rights, allowing various other types of game development teams to set up their own sub-forums, where they could release trial versions of their games without violating any laws, thus drawing traffic for themselves.
Many small indie games took this as an opportunity to promote their games, further boosting the popularity of the site and steering its growth towards becoming a comprehensive forum.
Logically, as the forum grew in scale, it would inevitably face issues like hacking attacks, flame wars, verbal combats, or orchestrated controversies, but the site’s managers seemed very experienced. They patrolled the forum around the clock, and whenever they spotted something amiss, they immediately intervened, nipping potential troubles in the bud.
As a result, the atmosphere of discussion on the site was quite pleasant. Moreover, Game Inn had no plans to bring in advertisements or capital investment, which made the forum very pure and comfortable, and Liuzi’s favorite forum to browse recently.
While browsing through the “I Am The Director” sub-forum, he noticed discussions on “I Am The Director” were flourishing, with some users starting to compile the game’s random events and others steadily improving various combinations.
Some even collected different combination animations; while most were conventional, the quirky ones were quite entertaining.
Others had noticed loopholes in the salary system and proposed their ideas. However, their theories were just speculation for now, not yet put into practice like Liuzi had done.
Their understanding of the game was not as deep as his, nor did they recognize the important aspects of capital operation in simulation management when playing.
Thus, although they figured out a solution, because they couldn’t manage it properly, the outcomes were actually worse than playing the game normally.
Just as Liuzi was aimlessly browsing the forum, a post suddenly caught his eye.
“‘I Am The Director,’ the great reveal of Evildoer tactics!”
The author was a player named Xiemen Waidao.
Seeing who the author was, Liuzi frowned, wondering what kind of mischief the other party had concocted this time.
Some people naturally get along well together, while others just don’t.
Liuzi felt that he and Xiemen Waidao must have been sworn enemies in a past life, and he still couldn’t stand the sight of the other party in this life.
They had never met, but they had exchanged verbal blows on the forum.
He disapproved of the other’s habit of searching for bugs for amusement and disrupting the game’s environment, while the other disdained him for being old-fashioned and rigid, content with playing by the book.
This, perhaps, was the difference between hardcore gamers and those who played for fun.
However, despite his dislike for Xiemen Waidao, Liuzi had to admit that the guy thought fast and had a sharp gaming sense, often discovering peculiar things and managing to win through inexplicable means.
Of course, sometimes he was so unorthodox that it made one wonder whether he was actually playing the game or playing around with the game.
In the recent game of “The Supreme One,” he had achieved the extremely difficult title of “Number One Evil Person Under The Heavens” through various outrageous methods.
Dispelling this dangerous thought, Liuzi pondered for a moment and then decided to write out his own guide.
It had nothing to do with spreading his own gaming philosophy; he just wanted to smack Xiemen Waidao in the face.
Not long after his post went up, it attracted a bunch of players to watch and leave comments. The sudden boost in popularity was automatically detected by the forum and consequently topped and featured in the hot section.
Whether intentional or accidental, his post was placed right next to Xiemen Waidao’s, allowing players to see both posts as soon as they entered and make comparisons.
One required manual loading, the other had no conscience. Soon, two factions of players began to amicably discuss in each other’s threads, occasionally resulting in heated expletives and being thrown into the “little black room.”
Just when everyone thought that these were the only two ways to play the game, a third post appeared representing a third school of thought.
“Some package tactics summary for ‘I Am The Director.’ You all can have a look. Personally tested it, leading the Spring Festival Gala by the 20th year is no problem.”
The poster was Pingping, a moderately popular YouTuber at the moment and the beloved mascot (in a positive sense) of the “Botanic Garden” player community.
This sister was beautiful and kind-hearted. Despite being disabled in both legs, she was optimistic, cheerful, talented, and watching her for a while would greatly uplift one’s mood.
However, she often spoke of horror stories, causing many players to want to watch yet not dare to.
Package tactics had been summarized by quite a few players already, but for this post to be pushed up, it definitely had its appealing features.
Upon opening the post, Liuzi gasped in shock.
He already considered himself a hardcore player, having gone as far as summarizing game data into an Excel spreadsheet, just to calculate the return on every choice. This alone was already hardcore to a somewhat romantic degree.
But seeing the data provided by Pingping, he felt he was still a bit too conservative.
Beyond the combinations the game allowed, there was another less commonly used feature: detail adjustment.
This feature was somewhat superfluous, allowing players to tweak every detail of their combinations.
For example, with “sketch + anti-fraud,” players could customize the number of actors, the key points in the actors’ lines, where to cut costs in the process, and how to price things.
But with so many details, it was hard to find the key points, and the effects were not very evident, so Liuzi gave up after trying for a while.
Unexpectedly, someone had actually used this feature to finetune the details of mainstream combinations!
As Liuzi stared dumbfounded, he saw a comment from an anonymous player below.
[This is what a hardcore player looks like, the gameplay is so hardcore. Some guy who claims to be a hardcore player, what do you feel now, huh? Tell me.]
Liuzi: “...Xiemen Waidao, damn it!”