Chapter 214: Chapter 148 The True Hardcore yer (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 viting anyws, thus drawing traffic for themselves.


    Many small indie games took this as an opportunity to promote their games, further boosting the poprity of the site and steering its growth towards bing aprehensive forum.


    Logically, as the forum grew in scale, it would inevitably face issues like hacking attacks, me wars, verbalbats, 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 ns to bring in advertisements or capital investment, which made the forum very pure andfortable, 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 topile the game’s random events and others steadily improving variousbinations.


    Some even collected differentbination animations; while most were conventional, the quirky ones were quite entertaining.


    Others had noticed loopholes in the sry system and proposed their ideas. However, their theories were just spection 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 simtion management when ying.


    Thus, although they figured out a solution, because they couldn’t manage it properly, the oues were actually worse than ying the game normally.


    Just as Liuzi was aimlessly browsing the forum, a post suddenly caught his eye.<div>


    “‘I Am The Director,’ the great reveal of Evildoer tactics!”


    The author was a yer 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 ying by the book.


    This, perhaps, was the difference between hardcore gamers and those who yed 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 ying the game or ying 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.


    And through aprehensive post he wroteter, other yers discovered that although the title was notorious, this fellow managed to y in a way that others quite enjoyed.


    Committing acts of infamy yet earning a good reputation, true to the name Xiemen Waidao.


    With curiosity, Liuzi clicked on the post and his heart skipped a beat.


    Inside, Xiemen Waidao posted a screenshot of his endgame.


    From the data in the screenshot, he had obtained the right to direct the Spring Festival G by the 18th year, three yearster than Liuzi, but still an impressive achievement.


    What surprised him most wasn’t this but the list of employees at the end.


    His employees were all from the early stage of the game, meaning he only hired those initial staff members and didn’t hire anyone else afterwards.


    Low-star employees tended to have poor quality and growth potential. Bringing them up required a lot of resources, not possible with a normal ythrough.<div>


    Moreover, these employees seemed to have aged somewhat, but because their stamina attributes were well-developed, they looked quite spirited, each with a cheerful smile on their face.


    Compared to the lifeless, zombie-like state of his own employees by the end, Liuzi grew even more puzzled.


    How did he manage that?


    Could it be that he found a cheat?<div>


    However, upon reading the main text, Liuzi discovered that the method used by the other party was exceptionally simple.


    It was the save/load tactic that every yer would use.


    “I Am The Director” is a rare game by Fang Cheng Studio that allows saving progress.


    The game would present random events at intervals, some of which could be a kind of gambling minigame. Guess wrong and you lose everything, guess right and your principal doubles.


    Some had researched and found that the game had a high probability of a random event urring once a month, so all one needed to do was save at the beginning of the month, then wait for the random event to ur.


    Quietly calcting the funds needed to train these employees, Liuzi realized that the other party might have reloaded saves thousands of times.


    By repeatedly loading and gambling, then loading and gambling again, Xiemen Waidao could start with a massive amount of money and then y however he wanted.


    All that could be said was that it was truly befitting of a yer like Xiemen Waidao, who belonged to the most unorthodox category, spending tens of hours loading saves—he was the only kind of person who could do such a thing.


    This approach was a ssic shortcut and one of Liuzi’s least favorite gaming methods.


    However, seeing the happy smiles of his employees, Liuzi felt a pang of envy out of the blue.


    Perhaps, it wouldn’t hurt to load from a save a few times in the early stage to increase the funds a bit…


    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.<div>


    Not long after his post went up, it attracted a bunch of yers to watch and leavements. The sudden boost in poprity was automatically detected by the forum and consequently topped and featured in the hot section.


    Whether intentional or idental, his post was ced right next to Xiemen Waidao’s, allowing yers to see both posts as soon as they entered and makeparisons.


    One required manual loading, the other had no conscience. Soon, two factions of yers began to amicably discuss in each other’s threads, asionally resulting in heated expletives and being thrown into the “little ck room.”


    Just when everyone thought that these were the only two ways to y 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 G by the 20th year is no problem.”


    The poster was Pingping, a moderately popr YouTuber at the moment and the beloved mascot (in a positive sense) of the “Botanic Garden” yermunity.


    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 yers to want to watch yet not dare to.


    Package tactics had been summarized by quite a few yers 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 yer, having gone as far as summarizing game data into an Excel spreadsheet, just to calcte 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 thebinations the game allowed, there was another lessmonly used feature: detail adjustment.<div>


    This feature was somewhat superfluous, allowing yers to tweak every detail of theirbinations.


    For example, with “sketch + anti-fraud,” yers 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 fune the details of mainstreambinations!


    As Liuzi stared dumbfounded, he saw ament from an anonymous yer below.


    [This is what a hardcore yer looks like, the gamey is so hardcore. Some guy who ims to be a hardcore yer, what do you feel now, huh? Tell me.]


    Liuzi: “…Xiemen Waidao, damn it!”