name
“Furthermore, as we didn’t have a name, every time someone left the name column blank and searched for keywords; they would all find our restaurant. That was how our visibility had been raised!
“The most crucial point was the rules you have set for our restaurant, such as no taking of photos and changing of the table setting and cutlery according to the dishes served, our wait staff’s breezy and attentive service… all these aspects satisfied our customers’ expectations. Among the ballers, everyone is praising all these!
“The good reputation of our restaurant among the ballers also had an impact on ordinary consumers. Although our dishes are rather expensive, most ordinary customers that came all felt that it was worth their buck. This was precisely because the ballers had sung their praises!”
Lin Canrong continued to praise Ming Yun Private Kitchen’s success model; he wasn’t just bootlicking Boss Pei but was also saying all these emotively. He had personally experienced everything. Initially, he did not understand Boss Pei’s arrangements and had not been optimistic about the private kitchen’s prospects.
Now, all his misgivings had all been cleared and Boss Pei’s astute arrangements had worked! Pei Qian was lost for words. Lin Canrong’s words came in from his left ear and left in the right ear; he didn’t remember much of it. Two names, however, Pei Qian now remembered.
One was Xue Zhebin, and another was Wang Peng. These were the two culprits!
Xue Zhebin had come after seeing Zhang Zuting’s Weibo message; that meant that Zhang Zuting was complicit as well!
Pei Qian now could only think of four words: it was impossible to guard against all sides!
There were too many enemies; he felt like he was completely surrounded.
Pei Qian sighed quietly. Aye, I have to add another three names to my notebook.
“In that case, help me to reserve the private room for next Sunday. Make some variations to the menu from the previous time.”
Pei Qian said this a little feebly.
After hanging up the phone call, Pei Qian felt a mountain of pressure on him; he was not feeling very good.
According to the popularity of Ming Yun Private Kitchen now, it would definitely make money.
However, it won’t make that much.
Ming Yun Private Kitchen had a limited seating capacity; the space was only that big. Even if it was packed for both lunches and dinners, it wouldn’t be able to receive that many customers.
Ming Yun Private Kitchen’s daily expenses were immense. Pei Qian had hired a few top chefs as well as well-trained wait staff, table movers, and ornament movers; manpower costs were significant.
Although the restaurant’s dishes’ prices were considered high, they were astronomically so. That was why Wang Peng had thought his meal had been rather worth it.
Hence, Ming Yun Private Kitchen would definitely make money. However, it was probably impossible for it to recoup all the initial investments in the short-term.
This was a small saving grace. Pei Qian had bought two semi-commercial villas that cost six million in total. The amount recorded in the System Funds would be six hundred thousand.
That meant that before Ming Yun Private Kitchen made five hundred and forty thousand, it was still worthwhile for Pei Qian.
However… it was only a matter of time before it became an issue for him.
Pei Qian felt so much pressure. It was going to be September soon, and it was already halfway into this cycle; there wasn’t much time left till settlement.
He had two most pressing things to deal with now.
One was launching Bloody Battle Song: The Powerful Version and letting it flop, to give Boss Pei some reprieve and assurance.
Second was he had to start implementing his reputation-rating bonus system immediately.
Ever since he had this ‘reputation-based reward’ idea, Pei Qian had already formulated a concrete plan; it was more or less finalized.
The base figure for the prize money would be based on the early-stage investments into a project. A ranking and benchmark would be created based on the project’s reputation. Once the base figure was met, the award would be given to all the project’s members based on seniority and responsibilities.
The most important part of this system was how to determine a project’s reputation.
If he wanted to use external website ratings, some gamers might continuously spam the same review; and so they might not be accurate.
For example, some rating sites might give higher points for a certain type of game while others might give the same game a lower rating; which rating should be used as the benchmark precisely?
Basing it on the combined ratings of all netizens wouldn’t be reliable as well. They could actually be falsified by fake reviewers.
If it was a combined collation of authoritative media sites, gamers’ opinions, and internal company feedback…
How would the last factor differ from him himself coming up with a rating?
Hence, Pei Qian considered this matter and felt that if he wanted to implement this system, he had to have a perfect internal rating system.
All in all, ratings had to be ascertained based on two things:
One was it had to filter out malicious intent, such as fake reviewers and trolls. Another aspect was that it had to be broad-based. Many movie and game reviews had the same phenomenon: the smaller the target base, the easier it was to get a higher rating.
As the target audience was specific, all die-hard fans were willing to give high ratings. Furthermore, before such films were released, those who were not interested in this genre or type would not interact with these videos and wouldn’t give a rating as well. Hence, the ratings would be inflated.
Once these films were released, the ratings would naturally drop.
Hence, after taking into consideration all these elements, Pei Qian finally decided on a Tengda internal reputation-rating system. He had also thought of a more westernized name: TPDb, which was the acronym for Tengda Project Database.
This database would take note of all of Tengda’s projects as well as conducting a holistic assessment based on the following criteria:
Tengda High-Level internal review, Tengda ordinary employee review, Authoritative media holistic review, Consumer review, and Netizens’ review.
Every type of review would have different weights.
Tengda internal employees’ opinions would weigh more than ordinary netizens. All employees’ reviews had to use their real names, and only a small number of high-level executives (like Pei Qian) could see who had commented what.
While Pei Qian could not completely eliminate his employees giving troll reviews or friendship points to their comrades, at least everyone would treasure their right to review as these reviews could be traced and were recorded.
If they gave their own projects higher ratings to get a higher reward or if they purposely posted low ratings for their competitors’ projects, Boss Pei would take all this into account as well.
Consumer reviews and netizens’ reviews also carried different weights. For players who had bought a game and those who hadn’t, the formers’ views would be more highly prized.
Naturally, regardless of what system was used, some would feel that the ratings were not accurate.
If Pei Qian kept on giving the loss-making projects more rewards—while that would accelerate losses, the employees from other projects would definitely become suspicious. This would then seem unfair.
Hence, Pei Qian had thought of using TPDb as a professional rating database. As there were a rather holistic and fair system and benchmark in place with the reward given based on the ratings in the database and the initial investment amount of each project, everyone would be more appeased by this. At the same time, there would be differences in the release of rewards for different projects as well. The longer a project had been ongoing, the more times rewards would be given.
Take Upwind Courier stations for ex
ample. As Pei Qian intended for this project to last forever, he could consider giving a reputation-based reward quarterly.
For a game like Repent and be Saved which was a buy-to-play game, he could just give rewards twice or thrice. When a downloadable content was launched subsequently, Pei Qian could then give more rewards based on the downloadable content’s reputation.
Of course, Pei Qian also had to achieve a balance among all his projects. Although Boss Pei was more biased towards projects like Upwind Courier stations that would burn money in the long run, he couldn’t make his bias too obvious.
After finalizing all these plans, Pei Qian happily gave the proposal to Assistant Xin.
“From next month, all project bonuses would be based on these criteria.”
Chapter 250 - Rectifying the Crescent Blade’s Vertical Hacking Speed Bug
In order to set up the TPDb ratings, a website was required.
As there was still space upstairs, Pei Qian decided to hire a group of people to manage the website’s operations. They would be situated next to Zhongdian Chinese Network.
TPDb’s website would list out all of Tengda’s projects, including all the games it had developed before, all the short videos that Fei Huang Workspace had shot, each and every Fish-Catching Internet Cafe branch, Zhongdian Chinese Network, Upwind Courier stations, etc.
The site would be categorized simply into games, films, lifestyle, experiences, etc. for easy filtering and searching.
If Tengda were to venture into new industries in the future, the number of categories on this site would be refreshed as well.
There wouldn’t be too much of an introduction to each of these projects. Every one of them would only have a simple profile page with some basic information.
The focus of the website would be on ratings as well as relevant details regarding it. The ratings were divided into internal, media, consumer, and netizens ratings. The final ratings would be based on these four big groups with different weights apportioned to each.
The website was on the open register. However, Tengda employees’ accounts had special access rights that allowed them to enter the ‘internal ratings’ intranet page and to see the ratings that had been given by other employees.
Ordinary users would only be able to see the overall stats of the ratings Tengda employees have given; they could not enter the intranet.
The media ratings would take into account some established media companies’ ratings as well as some of their posted reviews.
Consumers and netizens would have their separate rating pages. Only those who could give their registered account record with Tengda would be able to access the consumer rating page; ordinary netizens couldn’t. As for the specific ratings, TPDb would also adopt a more complicated rating system. Every account would have a different weight attached to it; the specific weight would only be viewable to Tengda employees with higher levels of clearance.
Some inappropriate behavior would have a negative impact on accounts’ weights. For example, if some Big V had been given money to give a 1/5 rating on a project that had an average of 4/5 rating, or if someone gave 5/5 for a project that had an average 2/5 rating, this would definitely impact this account’s future rating weight.
Of course, this wasn’t trying to get rid of any form of dissent; after all, ratings should be an individual and very subjective thing. It could also be possible that some people didn’t like others giving 5/5 and praising a so-called masterpiece; hence, they really wanted to give a 1/5 rating instead. However, such revenge-like behavior was already contravening the objective and fair principle behind ratings; this would have a negative impact on this account’s future ratings.
At the same time, if someone continuously used bogey accounts-accessing accounts all from the same IP address; these accounts’ weights would be reduced as well.
All in all, Pei Qian wanted to eliminate as much of the subjective ratings as possible, allowing each project’s ratings to be as close to its intrinsic value as possible.
Pei Qian gave Ma Yiqun and company the task of setting up the preliminary website for the moment. As Zhongdian Chinese Network had already been set up, Ma Yiqun and company were no longer as busy as before.
After the preparations for TPDb had been completed, he would then find someone suitable to manage it.
September 1st…
Fish-Catching Internet Cafe…
Qiao Liang sipped his coffee that a waiter had brought from the bar counter; he felt that his life was so relaxed and at ease.
His fans were continuously bombarding him with messages; he couldn’t read all of them in time.
For the past weeks, Qiao Liang hadn’t been paying much attention to his fan groups. He had been having a life-and-death battle with Repent and be Saved. Qiao Liang had to play eight hours of the game daily, and the pressure was on.
Furthermore, Repent and be Saved’s gameplay couldn’t be divulged; he had signed a contract and he had to keep mum.
However, Qiao Liang had recently gotten a knack of the game; and he was progressing speedily. He wasn’t as pressured as before.
After briefly looking through his fans’ comments and taking a break, Qiao Liang once again logged into Repent and be Saved. He was prepared to kill the Mengpo boss that he had been stuck at for a long time.
After entering the game, a new notification popped up. “Oh, another update.”
Qiao Liang was already used to this. As he was playing the developer edition of the game, Repent and be Saved’s project team was continuously making changes to the game; and there would be new updates daily.
There were both major and minor updates. Minor updates were just a few hundred kilobytes and might be regarding the addition of a new configuration table; major updates could actually be up to a few hundred megabytes and would be updating an entire new setting
The update this round wasn’t that huge. As the internet cafe’s internet speed was very fast, it was completed in a few minutes.
“I wonder how much alteration has been made based on my conversation with Boss Pei the last time.”
Qiao Liang actually had a little hope for this.
A week earlier, Boss Pei had come over to ask him about the game. Qiao Liang had given his opinion in detail;
The difficulty level of the starting village and town was too high. As players were entering the game for the first time and hadn’t gotten used to this gameplay, they could potentially be easily dissuaded from the game. However, as one progressed in the game, it actually got easier.
What Qiao Liang hinted at was reducing the difficulty level of the game at the start while maintaining the status quo subsequently.
With regard to weapons, Qiao Liang had felt that the chopper was a very useful and agile weapon in the early to mid-stages of the game. The chopper’s attack speed was fast, and its damage was high as well. Also, the crescent blade’s vertical hacking was very useful.
Qiao Liang wanted to say that other less popular weapons were a little cumbersome and perhaps they could be improved on.
When the game had undergone updates the previous few times, Qiao Liang had kept his hopes up that the design team would make some changes based on these comments; however, he had been disappointed time and again.
Perhaps these changes in the balance of the game required more time and couldn’t be done swiftly. Finally, the moment Qiao Liang had been waiting for had come.
After the update was completed, Qiao Liang took a look at the update log and realized that many changes had been made to the balance of the game!
“Boss Pei is indeed a designer who is good at listening to gamers’ opinions!”
Qiao Liang sighed emotively.
He opened the balance changes details page and took a good look at it. He wanted to see which unpopular weapons had been strengthened so that he could use these modified weapons to face the Mengpo boss.
“The monsters in Three-Life Stone, River of Forgetfulness, etc. have had their a
ttack powers elevated; the type of monsters and attacking styles as well…
“Reducing the overtly high damage that the chopper has when it leveled up; to compensate for this, a slight increase in its charged-attack damage…
“Rectifying the Crescent Blade’s Vertical Hacking Speed Bug…”
Such balancing changes abounded; however, most of them were weakening balances!
The weapons that Teacher Qiao had felt rather good to use have essentially all been nerfed.
The chopper’s basic attack damage increase when it leveled up was nerfed[1]. This way, players would no longer be able to mindlessly use the chopper all the way from early to mid-stage.
Of course, this weapon was still good to use as the charged attack damage had been increased. However, this attack required a longer charging lag time; and the chopper’s nimbleness would be blunted. Using it would now require more technique.
The same thing happened with the crescent blade. After removing the bug that made its vertical hacking strike so quickly, Qiao Liang couldn’t mindlessly use this attack continuously on monsters. He needed more skill for this now.
Naturally, as for whether this had been a bug or not, only Pei Qian himself knew.
Qiao Liang was in a daze. He couldn’t believe his eyes.
“All the weapons that I felt were good to use… have been nerfed? How am I supposed to kill Mengpo today? I might not even be able to defeat some puny monsters!”
Qiao Liang looked at his leveled-up chopper and crescent blade as he sat in his chair.
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