Li Yada was stunned. “Some more? It is already very high.”
Pei Qian nodded, “Higher. I want to double its attacking power. No, wait. Triple it.”
Li Yada, “?”
Previously, Boss Pei had already said that Repent and be Saved had to be an extremely difficult game. Everyone in the project team had to try their very best to think of ways to make players lose.
Forcing players to quit playing had been the number-one mission of the project team.
Lu Mingliang had really been obedient and had followed Boss Pei’s requirements strictly. Bao Xu had also given his constructive feedback.
In the end, Boss Pei was still not satisfied?
Pei Qian also didn’t explain much. He was very clear that even if Lu Mingliang had done according to his wishes, their imagination was still lacking. Increasing the attacking strength of the monsters in the game would definitely be the right move to make.
Li Yada adjusted her glasses as she did according to Pei Qian’s instructions and tripled the attack strength of the monsters in the game.
This way, the originally low margin for error was decreased even more.
After making the alterations, Li Yada stood up and handed the controller to Pei Qian as she stood aside.
She wanted to see how Boss Pei was going to play this game!
Boss Pei was so confident when he asked me to triple the attack strength of the monsters in the game. Could it be he felt that the difficulty level of the game wasn’t challenging enough for him?
Perhaps, Boss Pei was a game god like Bao Xu; he could only find joy in playing games with higher levels of difficulty?
Li Yada pushed her spectacles as she focused all her attention and watched.
Pei Qian took the game controller, sat in his chair, and started playing.
The initial setting was in a small village. This had been a peaceful small village, but many people had lost their souls and spirits and became wandering souls. These people’s clothes were tattered, and their faces were very sullen. They held some strange weapons in their hands. Some held choppers, hoes, sickles, hayforks, and other farming equipment. Others were bare-handed while some held onto rocks.
The monsters were scattered all around the village and were acting rather strangely.
Some with axes were hacking at woodpiles; however, there wasn’t any wood on them. They kept on raising and lowering their axes repeatedly. Others were squatting at the corner of walls, facing the falls and continuously muttering incoherently.
Even more were walking towards the walls of buildings. They had lost all rationality but would still subconsciously walk towards the Road to the Underworld. However, they could not make out that they were facing a wall.
A few were floating about aimlessly in the village and would cry out and scream like madmen when they saw people who were still in possession of their mental faculties.
The protagonist was similar to them. He was also wearing torn and tattered clothing while he was holding a clumsy weapon in his hands.
In the yard of the house that the player had been born in, some basic weapons such as choppers, axes, sticks, and hayforks, etc. were present. During the gameplay, players would obtain other weapons as well. All of them could be used as and when he liked-as long as his stats were high enough.
Pei Qian chose a relatively handier weapon for a beginner – a chopper as he rushed towards the first monster he saw.
This small monster was holding a hayfork and immediately sensed Pei Qian nearing it. Its long hayfork pierced forth even before Pei Qian’s chopper had hacked at it!
With a ‘tsk’ sound, Pei Qian saw that his health bar had diminished by more than half.
Pei Qian hurriedly pressed a button to dodge as the hayfork-holding monster once again attacked when Pei Qian dodged. One more attack pierced Pei Qian, and his health bar was emptied.
“Hahahaha…”
The monster emitted eerier laughter as it turned and left.
All that was left was a black screen.
Pei Qian, “…”
Li Yada, “…”
It was a little awkward.
Chapter 235 - Boss Pei’s Special Weapon
Li Yada had thought that Boss Pei would use his deft skills to overcome the monsters; she did not expect this scene to happen.
She only saw Boss Pei confidently asking her to increase the monsters’ attacking power, Boss Pei confidently wielding his weapon, Boss Pei confidently charging forward, and Boss Pei falling in battle…
Everything had seemed arranged beforehand. The monster’s hayfork had precisely struck when Pei Qian had wanted to dodge and pierced accurately at his body.
Having been so confident, Boss Pei had actually been hacked to death by a puny little monster?
Pei Qian’s face revealed a smile.
Not bad; this game has not disappointed me! This is exactly what I want! In order to force players to stop playing, I precisely need something like this!
Li Yada saw Boss Pei’s smile and was a little surprised.
Boss Pei’s temperament was indeed far superior to ordinary people’s!
If it were normal players—to be pierced to death within two hits of a small monster, that was so frustrating and so infuriating. Boss Pei was actually happy?
Was this because Boss Pei was finally going to get serious and give it his all?
Soon, Pei Qian’s character was revived.
He raised his chopper high and once again charged towards the hayfork-wielding villager.
Five seconds later, the screen turned black once again.
“Hahahaha…”
The sinister laughter of that villager was as sarcastic as ever.
Pei Qian thought about something and opened the editing platform. He asked, “Which setting is for the little monsters’ attacking strength?”
Li Yada hurriedly indicated. “This one. If you wish to adjust a monster’s stats, you can input a numerical value. If you wish to uniformly alter values using a template, you have to…”
Following Li Yada’s instructions, Pei Qian opened the module to uniformly adjust the attacking strength of all monsters.
“Indeed, I had thought too much. Boss Pei probably wants to reduce the monsters’ attacking strength now, right?” Li Yada sighed quietly.
She had almost thought that Boss Pei was an ace gamer.
However, Pei Qian clicked on one of the values and actually gave a 1.3 multiple to all the existing numbers.
After adjusting, Pei Qian nodded.
En, this is more like this!
Previously, one hack had taken away around sixty percent of one’s health; after changing it now, that would become around eighty percent.
Since everyone would die in two slashes anyway, this didn’t make much difference.
Li Yada felt a little faint. Even though she had a thick pair of spectacles, she still did not understand what Boss Pei wanted to achieve.
“Alright, I wish to seriously experience this game; you can head out first,” Pei Qian said.
Li Yada nodded. “Alright, Boss Pei. If you encounter any issues, feel free to look for me.”
After Li Yada left, Pei Qian once again entered the game.
“This is great! I’ll use this difficulty level to challenge the game!”
It wasn’t that Pei Qian was overestimating himself. However, if he wasn’t harsher to himself, how could he force players to quit playing? As such, Pei Qian started on his strenuous journey.
After dying more than ten times in the village, Pei Qian felt that he had more or less gotten used to the tempo.
Although Pei Qian’s request had been to make things difficult for players and to force them to want to quit the game, he had subsequently discovered that all high-difficulty games all had the same ending.
Lu Mingliang and Bao Xu had both contributed to this game while Li Yada had perfected it based on this foundation; this game was really something!
This wasn’t
done on purpose but a natural progression.
Whether games were ‘difficult’ or ‘easy’ were actually determined by the following dimensions:
The first was the system design.
It was easy to change the system design to tweak the difficulty of the game by increasing the attacking strength of monsters. If gamers perished very easily, that would do the trick.
However, if the system designed was such that the difficulty level was too high, Pei Qian himself might not even be able to complete the game. The game would then become impossible to complete; it could not even be considered a completed game. Everyone would think that the game had a bug and that it was half-baked.
Hence, there was a limit to how many changes to the system designs that could be done; it could not be done overboard.
The second was the control of movements.
For example, players having to execute a series of specific actions in a certain order or tempo to use a special ability, in order to triumph over a special enemy.
The third was reaction time.
Monsters would use their own extremely fast special abilities; if players could respond in time, they wouldn’t be killed.
The fourth was strengths and weaknesses.
For example, certain stats in the game could allow one to better attack or defeat a certain enemy.
The fifth was unexpected occurrences.
For example, a player was walking on a cliff; and a monster suddenly jumped forth and pushed them down.
Most games had various difficulty levels based on the above five considerations.
However, Pei Qian had to guarantee that he himself could complete the game. Hence, the system design, movement controls, and reaction speeds all had to be within acceptable ranges.
If he just purely focused on system design and gave a boss a million health points while each player attack could only take away one health point-while this might persuade players to stop playing, Pei Qian himself wouldn’t be able to persevere as well.
Along the same lines, if special moves and actions were too difficult to execute and the allocated reaction time was too short, while these would be effective in compelling gamers to quit; Pei Qian himself wouldn’t be able to last as well.
Hence, the difficulty levels for these three areas had to be within Pei Qian’s limitsessentially the limits of an ordinary person.
If he wanted to increase the difficulty further, he could only do so by using strength and weakness attributes or unexpected occurrences.
Such as some monsters that could be more effectively attacked by special weapons or if some monsters might lurk in the shadows and had to be dealt with using unique tools or long-ranged weapons.
Pei Qian could use his understanding of the game (take a sneak peek at the overall design plan) to deal with all these.
For the first three aspects, he could only tweak them to a level acceptable to ordinary players.
Hence, after making changes here and there, the game became a souls-like game again.
Pei Qian wasn’t exactly a fan of souls-like games; he was basically the type that would ditch a game after facing three or four bosses.
However, battling a few weak monsters at the beginning of the game was not an issue for him.
After being tortured by the hayfork-wielding villager a couple of times, Pei Qian got the hang of the game and used his own abilities to get rid of this villager and more.
What came next was something more important: secretly adding a special weapon for himself…
Pei Qian had access to the editing platform. What he wanted to do was very simple.
He was going to randomly pick a weapon model from the art resource and add it into the list of weaponry. He was going to duplicate the stats of this weapon and alter a few of its attributes like its attacking strength and speed.
He was going to design a Special Task and conditions to obtain this weapon.
All in all, it was going to be hidden in a place that no one would think of.Pei Qian took a look at the weapons list in the game. There were all types of weapons, and all had complicated stats and attributes.
However, he still had to think deeper about which weapon he wanted to alter.
If he chose a long-ranged weapon, that would definitely greatly reduce the difficulty of the game.
However, the problem was that as this was an action-based game, there weren’t many long-ranged weapons. There were only bows and crossbows. Just like the Dark Souls game, these weapons also couldn’t be used as primary weapons but only as secondary ones.
This was done to achieve a balance between melee weapons and long-ranged ones. In this kind of game-if one had a long-ranged weapon with a massive range and high attack damage and could be used continuously, it would definitely overpower other near-ranged weapons; that would spoil the fun of the game.
Hence, according to Lu Mingliang and Bao Xu’s original plan, regardless of whether it was a bow or crossbow; these weapons’ damage was extremely low and the interval between each attack long. This was primarily done to lure monsters.
If he really made a sniper rifle or machine gun and tweaked the stats so that these weapons could immediately destroy all monsters, the system would definitely not allow this.
Hence, although Pei Qian intended to secretly sneak a weapon into the game, he couldn’t go overboard at that.
Chapter 236 - Pudu
Pei Qian did a holistic analysis of all the weapon types.
Although he wanted to change a weapon’s stats, he wanted as much as possible to retain the weapon’s original stats. After altering the weapon, it still had to match with the weapon’s unique features and appearance.
If not, this game would be crude.
Pei Qian took a look at all the weapons.
He had wanted to choose a single-handed sword. However, after thinking for a moment, while single-handed swords were useful; he couldn’t change the attacking strength too much. Also, as the attacking distance was short, it was more dangerous.
Finally, Pei Qian’s glance was concentrated on longer weapons. He saw a less popular weapon; a staff.
Pei Qian searched the weapon’s ID and realized that it was actually an ordinary tool in a ruined temple.
After walking out of the newbie village and heading to a nearby town, this ruined temple was situated near the latter. A crazed old monk was inside the temple; he could be considered to be a miniboss.
After defeating the crazed old monk, this staff would be left behind. The ruined temple also had a treasure chest with damaged Buddha beads.
These Buddha beads were a special weapon in the early stage of the game. It could temporarily control monsters and could be used as a revival item after certain intervals. It was considered a rather important early-stage weapon.
Furthermore, the staff’s stats weren’t very strong. It would be seen as a mere ordinary weapon in the early-stage design of the game.
This was also very ordinary. The game had tens of weapons; some naturally were more useful while others weren’t. It was hard to create a perfect balance.
This staff was the more trashy type of weapon that was just there to fill a quota.
“I’ll choose you!”
By choosing a less popular weapon that had a weaker sense of presence, Pei Qian’s changes to the game could be done at the bare minimum without being easily found out.
Pei Qian did not change the existing staff’s stats but had created a separate new weapon that copied the state of the original staff. He then greatly elevated the basic attack and leveled-up attacking stats of the new staff.
He then examined the staff’s attacking moves.
They were more or less as expected. Normal attacks were horizontal sweeps that were rather cumbersome and slow. However, leap-attacks and dodge-attacks were smashing moves that attacked faster.
Subsequently, Pei Qian also arranged the procedure to obtain this staff.
Pei Qian did not intend to make it that com
plicated. If he created a new setting or made the mission overly complicated, he had to custom-made a whole new plot; and that would have to involve the entire project team.
Hence, Pei Qian thought for a while and decided to use the existing game design to hide this weapon.
According to the original settings, this ruined temple was just a filler scene near a town; players could choose to enter and battle or not. The crazed monk’s strength would be between that of elite monsters and minibosses.
If this monk could be defeated, the staff would be dropped; and damaged Buddha beads could be obtained from the treasure chest.
Pei Qian then stealthily changed the old monk’s settings.
He made the monk’s holistic battle strength much weaker; he became even weaker than an ordinary little monster.
This change was reasonable. After all, the monk was already so old; and it wasn’t that appropriate for it to have a miniboss’ strength. He should be weak and frail.
Whoever could find their way here would have already undergone bloodbaths in the newbie village and in the town nearby. They would naturally be extremely wary of such NPCs and would definitely be cautious in striking.
Of course, even if players didn’t make a move, this old monk was in anoffensive mode and would proactively attack players.
If gamers killed the old monk, they would obtain the ordinary staff and Buddha beads as per normal.
As the Buddha beads were very useful while the staff was a special weapon, most players would definitely kill the old monk; they wouldn’t pay any attention to anything else.
Pei Qian decided to add a feature to this old monk. As long as players died six times cumulatively at the hands of this monk—the seventh time they were revived and came here, this old monk would become a friendly NPC and would not proactively attack them anymore.
This feature could be explainable as well. As players repeatedly died, the old monk managed to recover a little of his mental faculties from their perished souls.
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