We're a Legitimate Company

The post read: [I admit it! I couldn't keep my hands to myself! But I couldn't help it—blame it on that 'Toxin Intuition' talent. Anything toxic glows bright green in my eyes. It's an absolute nightmare for my OCD!] *Holy crap?* Chu Guang blinked in surprise before his jaw dropped. "She can identify toxins directly with the naked eye? It's that overpowered?" Still, what were the underlying rules for determining whether something was "toxic"? Was there a threshold limit on dosage? And what triggered the talent in the first place? He had no clue... Chu Guang decided to set aside what he couldn't figure out for now and kept reading. The post continued: [...Following the mission given by the manager, I started out gathering mushrooms and raspberries in the forest. Thanks to my character's talent, I was able to identify basically every poisonous berry and mushroom, so I was pretty efficient. In no time, I had brought back several plastic buckets full of them.] [I figured I had picked clean the area around the sanatorium, so I wanted to head a bit farther out to explore. I kept walking and eventually ended up at a place that looked like a parking lot. There were plenty of mushrooms there, so I picked a whole bunch. Just as I was getting ready to head back, I suddenly spotted a huge, towering concrete pipe that looked kind of like a sewer entrance—and inside, there was a massive patch of green light glowing!] [I didn't think much of it at the time. I just thought that since there were so many mushrooms around, why not take a look inside? After all, I could spot anything toxic, so as long as I didn't touch it, I'd be fine.] [Besides, I didn't see any dangerous monsters nearby, so I walked over and poked my head in to have a look... I swear, I really only took a single peek!] [And then something terrifying happened!] [A hunk of meat... I don't know what kind of meat it was, but it slammed right into my face. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't open my eyes, and soon I couldn't even move. It felt like I was being swallowed whole by something?] [Anyway, even though there wasn't any pain, the feeling was absolutely awful! Almost the instant I lost consciousness, I woke up in reality. Everything that just happened felt like a nightmare.] [At first I thought I got disconnected, so I hurried and put the helmet back on to reconnect. But then I saw four words inside the helmet: 'Connection Severed.' After that, it changed to 'Login Restricted.' No matter how many times I try, I can't log back in! Waaah!] *Incredible!* *She really did just throw her life away...* Chu Guang was left dumbfounded after reading the post. This player was genuinely reckless, literally facechecking the bushes. He certainly wouldn't have dared to do anything like that. The netizens in the comments were not sympathetic in the slightest. A few of them had already obtained closed-beta access and were purely spectating the drama, but the vast majority were users who desperately wanted in but hadn't managed to get an invitation, and they condemned this shameful waste of access. A resurrection cooldown lasted at least three days! Throwing her life away like this was the same as squandering three days of game time! What couldn't you accomplish in that time? Ye Shi: [Lost your head, huh? Headless senpai? (Funny)] Quitting Smoking: [Holy crap?! That's it? That's all it took? If you can't play, please donate your beta slot to someone in need! Dammit! T.T] Indebted Big Eyes: [That really was itching for trouble. Isn't that just feeding? Let me play instead!] Elaina: [Keep updating! Tell us more about what it felt like to be eaten! (Funny)] All Good Names Are Taken by Dogs: [Phrasing it like that gives me the wrong idea. Bro, care to elaborate in private? (Funny)] This was roughly where the thread derailed. What had originally been a genuine call for help had turned into a circus where nobody cared whether her problem was resolved. In the end, likely seeing that the official staff hadn't responded and that the commenters were talking trash, the post gradually evolved into the OP battling the entire forum single-handedly, furiously trading barbs with everyone. This rookie had quite a sharp tongue herself; she was clearly an experienced flamer. Chu Guang couldn't bear to watch any longer. He locked her thread and sent a private message from the backend. "Hello. I am the game designer for Wasteland OL. We have received your feedback. According to the game's death penalty mechanics, resurrection requires seventy-two hours. Please wait patiently for your resurrection cooldown to expire, after which you will be able to log back into the game." Yaya: "Huh? I have to wait three whole days... Can you change it to one day? I can top up! Just tell me how much." Chu Guang: "This isn't a matter of money." Yaya: "Can't you make an exception? Please, mister dev! I really didn't mean to do it. Just help me out, please? By the way, what's your Penguin ID? Can I add you? Typing here is such a pain. Let's chat on Penguin! (Pleading)" Chu Guang: "Rules are rules. I can't help you with this." Yaya: "Can't you really make an exception? (Pleading)" Chu Guang remained unmoved, typing away impassively. "I wasn't finished. In addition to the resurrection cooldown, a player's first death in the game also incurs a deduction of 500 contribution points." Yaya: "A contribution deduction too?! B-But I don't have that much..." Chu Guang: "That's precisely the problem. Right now, you only have 30 contribution points from your gathering mission, which is far from enough to cover the death penalty." Yaya: "What happens if I don't have enough? (Nervous)" Chu Guang: "Under the current mechanics, it will negatively impact the NPC's appraisal of the player. In other words, you will lose favorability." Yaya: "Lose favorability?! Noooo! QAQ" *So now you know fear?* *Where was this caution earlier?* "Clearly, you haven't realized the gravity of the situation. Imagine this: the character you play shoulders the mission to save civilization. Yet as an elite member of humanity sent to support surface reconstruction, not only did you fail to create any value, you also caused everyone such an enormous hassle. Don't you feel the slightest bit guilty?" *You didn't even earn 500 freeloader coins before wasting a whole canister of my active substance.* *Have you no shame!* Yaya: "B-But it's just a game..." "Yes, it is a game, but it's not a single-player game," Chu Guang typed self-righteously. "You've played murder mystery games before, right?" Yaya: "Y-Yeah, I have..." Chu Guang: "This is like a thirty-player scenario where twenty-nine people are taking it seriously, but one person is fooling around—and holding a key role card to boot. You should know full well how awful that kind of behavior is for everyone else." In truth, it wasn't nearly that dramatic. She was just a newbie; dying was just dying. But Chu Guang felt that if he didn't react at all, these players would never learn their lesson. He had to educate them! Yet perhaps his words had been a bit too harsh, or maybe this young player was thin-skinned—or perhaps she had genuinely suffered from griefers in tabletop mystery games before. Sitting in front of her computer, Yaya was on the verge of tears as she frantically typed out apologies. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I was wrong! It's all my fault! QAQ" A rapid barrage of messages flooded the chat window, making Chu Guang, who was about to keep typing, feel slightly embarrassed. *Why does this feel like emotional manipulation?* *Whatever...* *Doesn't matter.* Chu Guang: "There's no need to apologize to me. I'm simply explaining the game's penalty mechanics and why they were designed this way. Later, you can explain this to the other players in your thread. I'll unlock it for you." Chu Guang: "Additionally, I must emphasize once more that Wasteland OL is positioned as a hardcore game. At least in the early stages, there won't be many casual elements—this was decided right from the start when designing the overall game framework. If you truly cannot accept these mechanics, we suggest switching to another game, or waiting until the open beta launches and the content is richer before playing." Yaya: "Nooo, I want to play! I'll die without my helmet! QAQ" Yaya: "Um, mister dev, I have no objections to the death penalty anymore. How can I earn back the lost favorability? Will taking the initiative to apologize after resurrecting work? QAQ" Chu Guang: "It might help a bit, but not by much. The manager's AI personality and behavioral logic are set to Lawful Neutral. His appraisal is primarily determined by whether a player's actions align with the shelter's overall interests. So if you want to make it up to him, show him that you're working hard, and stop doing thoughtless things." Yaya: "Understood... Um, can I offer a tiny suggestion?" Chu Guang: "Go ahead." Yaya: "In the future, could you release some microtransaction gifts or something? The kind that increase favorability. I see them in other games all the time, like Big-Nosed Mole Manor... I can pay real money for them!" Chu Guang's forehead broke out in black lines. He typed: "My friend, stop always thinking you can solve problems with money. We are a legitimate company!" Sitting dead in another world, what bloody use was money to him? Could they burn it as hell money so he could spend it? In front of her computer, Yaya froze, fingers hovering over the keyboard, unable to wrap her head around that logic for a moment. *A legitimate company...* *Isn't their whole point to milk money from players?* *A company that doesn't want money is the one that's suspicious...* Closing the webpage, Chu Guang put the newbie player out of his mind for the moment and logged into his Penguin account. Interestingly, the Ox and Horse Club group was in the middle of discussing that very post from the official website. It seemed everyone was quite concerned about the game's death penalty. Spare the Life Under the Blade: [I've played it now, and frankly speaking, this game is truly god-tier. I take back everything I said before. I'm completely sold!] Proud Grandpa What Can You Do: [Holy crap, even a straight shooter like you got bribed by the dog mods???] ("Proud Grandpa What Can You Do" has been muted for 1 hour by an administrator.) Ye Shi: [Bark again, dog?] Lao Bai: [Quit messing around. Did you guys see that thread on the official site? The one from the person who died today.] Ye Shi: [Saw it. Her handle's Yaya, the 180-centimeter-tall leggy girl! Group Leader, find a way to pull her into the group! (Funny)] Lao Bai: [Piss off, do it yourself.] Fang Chang: [I finished reading the post, and I've summarized three points: 1. Losing consciousness or dying in-game will force a disconnection. 2. Excess pain has indeed been removed, which matches my earlier tests. I have to say, the devs are incredibly shrewd! Having zero sensation feels unreal, but too much pain drives people away, so how it is now is just right! Though I stand by what I said earlier: it'd be great if we could adjust it ourselves. (Grin)] Ye Shi: [What about the third point??] Gale: [Allow me to add it: don't court death and you won't die.] Fang Chang: [Bingo.] Quitting Smoking: [I'm sick of this. Why can't I ever get an invitation? I want to play so freaking bad! T.T] Lao Bai: [Uh, why don't you try buttering up Brother Guang?] Quitting Smoking: [I did! He told me to wait. T.T] Ye Shi: [My condolences.] Lao Bai: [Huh? It shouldn't be like that. Did you secretly badmouth him? He does hold a bit of a grudge; his profile says he's a Scorpio.] Quitting Smoking: [No way, how would I dare badmouth him?! I'm Brother Guang's most loyal bootlicker, okay?!! T.T] Lao Bai: [That's weird then. I'll ask him for you another day.] Fang Chang: [By the way, is Scavenger Lv99 online?] Ye Shi: [Dunno, want me to tag him?] Lao Bai: [@Scavenger Lv99.] Scavenger Lv99: [Ahem, what's up? I'm here.] Chatting wasn't nearly as fun as lurking. Besides, in a close-knit group like this, a newcomer who had only joined a few days ago found it hard to chime in. Fang Chang: [I saw your character is a lizardman. When you take off the helmet and return to reality, do you feel anything off? Like any lack of coordination?] Chu Guang, who was also lurking, found his interest piqued at this. He was also quite curious about how it felt for a player entering the game as a lizardman. Especially with one less little tail and one more big tail, he wondered if the guy could get used to it. Scavenger Lv99: [Uh... not really? It feels pretty good. My motor skills in the game are insane, and my reflexes are super fast. After logging out, there wasn't anything weird either. There is one thing that takes getting used to, though: in the game, I constantly crave raw meat, and seeing blood makes my whole body heat up. But as soon as I take off the helmet, it's gone. It's totally miraculous.] Fang Chang: [Dammit! Why can people even play non-human characters, but making a female character is off-limits!] Gale: [Ahem, stay rational, bro.] Lao Bai: [You're starting to scare me.] Fang Chang: [Screw off! I just wanted to see what it feels like. Pure curiosity, you know?] Ye Shi: [No no no, we don't know.] Gale: [Speaking of which, Ye Shi, Scavenger, when the two of you went out hunting with the manager today, did you run into marauders?] Scavenger Lv99: [Yeah! Two marauders and a tamed mutant hyena. At the time, they were executing a scavenger. By the time we found them, that guy was already scripted to die! Then we took out those two marauders and took their gear.] Fang Chang: [Tamed? So mutants can be domesticated? I wonder if players can have pets in the future... I'm guessing this is foreshadowing from the devs. (Strokes chin)] Gale: [You killed the NPCs?] Scavenger Lv99: [Yeah, the manager ordered us to attack... That shouldn't count as violating the Resident Handbook, right? I went back and checked specifically later—it only forbids attacking neutral and friendly NPCs.] Ye Shi: [Uh, I think those were just spawned hostile mobs, not really NPCs? Though the bleeding effects they made... were honestly a bit too realistic. I almost thought someone actually died.] Reading this, Chu Guang sank into thought. He had previously speculated whether the world the players saw had a filter applied, and now it seemed entirely possible. However, this filter wasn't necessarily like a beauty camera filter; it was more likely a conceptual blurring or desensitization. Just like how this equipment handled pain. Pain exceeding the limit was blocked by the player's brain, and sensory shocks beyond the threshold of endurance were likely subjected to a corresponding "emotional dampening." Otherwise, if the brain's "circuit breaker" was tripped and a player was scared awake from a "nightmare," wouldn't the connection just be severed? Clearly, these details had already been anticipated by the equipment's designer. Arriving at this conclusion, Chu Guang suddenly felt a twinge of envy. When he had first arrived in the wasteland, it had taken him a very long time to overcome those psychological hurdles. Gale: [Were they speaking Mandarin?] Scavenger Lv99: [What they said was really weird. The pronunciation sounded kind of like Chinese, but it wasn't. Anyway, I couldn't understand it. It's probably procedurally generated by the code.] When depicting alien planets or other worlds, many movies, shows, and games used similar conventions, scrambling the normal phonetic order of a language to invent a "foreign tongue," or simply fabricating gibberish from scratch. Like the Simlish spoken by the little people in The Sims. In Scavenger Lv99's view, Wasteland OL had probably adopted a similar approach. In that regard alone, the game was remarkably well-crafted. Fang Chang: [Yeah, the way this storyline was arranged is actually pretty interesting. I feel like it was meant to remind us of the hidden dangers lurking in this wasteland. Just like the mutant tribe we discovered earlier, the purpose was probably to build up a sense of crisis.] Ye Shi: [Uh, isn't it just a randomly generated event?] Fang Chang: [Everything you see is scripted code. There's no such thing as true randomness.] Lao Bai: [I think Fang Chang has a point. For this to happen on the exact day new players logged on... it feels a bit staged.] Fang Chang: [It's just a guess! But I think we can interpret this event as: as the outpost expands and the players' overall strength rises, conflicts between the players and other factions or mutants in the wasteland will gradually escalate. Competing for survival resources and living space might well be the main theme of the game's next phase.] Fang Chang: [In fact, we can already start preparing for war! At this rate, once the 'Winter Is Coming' expansion pack ends, the next expansion will probably be outpost conflicts.] Gale: [Impressive...] Scavenger Lv99: [6666, solid analysis.] Ye Shi: [Brilliant, Brother Fang Chang is playing 5D chess here!] Quitting Smoking: [F***! I want to play so bad! T.T] Then the group members began exchanging tips on backyard steelmaking and crafting gunpowder, leaving Chu Guang staring at the screen in utter astonishment. *Good grief, things that even I, the game designer, hadn't considered, this guy worked out completely for me.* *What a genius!* Chu Guang sighed in admiration, casually copying and pasting the man's analysis into a document to save it. *You're all right.* *A bunch of seasoned know-it-alls.* If anyone asked in the future, Chu Guang decided he would just use this explanation.