This Game Is Too Realistic

At 7:00 in the evening.

As players went offline one after another, the official website burst into life.

Twelve hours passed since version 0.3 went live. Whether it was the prospective players who had already applied but had not qualified, or players who hadn’t applied, everyone was waiting for information on the new version.

Sending Xia Yan’s meal over to her, Chu Guang hummed a soft song and sat down in front of his computer. He opened the forum and stared at the screen.

The first post he saw belonged to Garbage.

- Finally confirmed today! The tire factory three kilometers north of the outpost is a marauder camp! They have between fifty to one hundred people! I wanted to bring one back with me, but I was outnumbered! Fortunately, they seemed afraid of me. I knocked out the dog that bit my arm and ran away while they were reloading.

- Damn, the dog almost bit my tail off! The marauder I encountered this time is far more fierce than last time!

“...” Chu Guang’s eyes widened slightly.

That’s not what you told me half an hour ago!

From the post, it was clear Garbage went over to mess with them and was injured in his attempt to take a captive. It was clear he wasn’t being honest…

Chu Guang thought for a while, then shook his head.

Forget it, it doesn’t matter.

Usually, the first few posts that appeared on the forum wouldn’t contain too much information anyway.

Regarding Garbage’s adventures to the marauder camp, the veterans in the forum had seen his bragging posts for three whole days already. Who would have thought that he would run away after squatting at their stronghold for so long?

Everyone expressed their refusal to accept his cowardice in the replies.

Quit_smoking: What the hell do you mean between 50 and 100? How many are there?! You are even worse than the Teletubbies as a scout!

Irene: I already took off my pants, but you ran away. (͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

This_lord_is_arrogant_what_can_you_do: Trash, there are less than a hundred of them! What’s the point of running away? Don’t you know how to kite? You just need to kill one at a time, and then you will be able to kill all of them after a few repetitions. Bah, what am I talking about, this game doesn’t exist at all!

Good_names_are_taken_by_dogs: Learn how to move properly in games, noob!

Sisi: You have a special class, but you can’t even defeat a jungle monster, shame on you. You should let me play!

Garbage: ?!?! Kite my ass! Damn it! What kind of jungle monsters know to outflank and release dogs to bite their enemies?!

Quit_smoking: Just give me your access permission and I’ll show it to you.

Garbage: Do you think I’m dumb?!

The post was completely derailed, and it turned into the lizardman arguing with other people. It was just like when Yaya died and went to the forum to beg for forgiveness. ṜÀΝǒʙЕ§

However, no matter how he described the situation, he couldn’t change the fact that he was labeled as a noob in the hearts of other players.

He might only be able to prove that he wasn’t trash at the game when a camera function was released in the future.

… Chu Guang knew very well how good at combat those marauders were.

These people may not have strong equipment and had poor physical fitness and discipline like goblins in fantasy worlds, but they almost maxed out their street fighting talent.

After all, since the first year of the Wasteland Era, those people have never stopped fighting. Predatory genes have long been integrated into their blood and bone, and have been passed on for countless generations.

After appreciating the beautiful profanity in Garbage’s post, Chu Guang closed it and continued to browse around the forum.

It has been a while since the players went offline, and a lot of high-quality content has begun to emerge.

What surprised Chu Guang most was that many new faces he met for the first time emerged in these high-quality contents.

For example, The_escaping_mole made pretty good content.

Chu Guang took a look at his profile. He was a newcomer to the game in version 0.2.

From his message history, it was clear he found the link to Wasteland Online through some forwarded messages that had been circulating in the gaming community.

To sum his life up in one sentence, the dude was someone who didn’t have anything to do at night.

- Mole Express! Hardcore Observations on the New Version! Non-testing players and newbies, please don’t click!

- Hello everyone, I am your big-nosed mole. After I went online today, I found a big update in the game. The development team finally fulfilled one of the promises they made. I really love the new version! They are amazing!

- Let’s start with the conclusion. The newly designed economic system is awesome! Although there are only a few simple supply chains at present, some details are enough to see the ambition of the development team! They are really playing a long game here…

- But I won’t talk nonsense anymore. I’ll briefly talk about my findings, which may help you in some way.

- There are currently two low-requirements and high-return ways to make money recognized in the game; one is to produce cement, and the other is to hunt. The former has stable income and can be operated by a single person, but you need to be fast because not too many people would be hired every day. Hunting is a little more unstable and there is a strong correlation with how good your equipment is. Also, it is almost impossible to do it alone. If you want to become a hunter, it is best to form a team with a perception type player!

- There are no technical skills in producing cement, and I will only discuss the hunter gameplay here!

- A mutant hyena weighing thirty kilograms can be sold directly to the granary for five silver coins, and twelve kilograms of raw meat can be obtained after some of it has been butchered. You would be able to receive forty silver coins in an instant if you cut up the meat properly! Isn’t it amazing?

- Of course, what I’m talking about here is just value! Value! This is the most important thing in the game right now.

- The granary does not accept raw meat, only unprocessed prey and dried meat that can be directly preserved. And like other games, there is a price difference in NPC shops. If we take dried meat as an example, you need five silver coins to buy a kilogram. However, if you sell, you will only be given one silver coin per kilogram. Five times the price difference is really ridiculous!

- If you sell the dried meat that you made from the prey you caught to NPCs, you might earn some money, but if you buy raw meat from the NPC shop and smoke it yourself, you might even lose money!

- But it’s actually not that bad. I’ve seen even worse practices in other games. This is nothing. Especially for online games, where things bought with a thousand game currency that can only be sold for one are almost the common practice. The genius of this game design is that it uses the difference between buying and selling goods in the NPC shop to encourage players to trade, rather than buy inventory."

- Here is a small idea. The hunting team can find one or two players to cooperate to cut the prey up and make it into dried meat and fur.

- Part of the dried meat can be sold to players at a price lower than the NPC. We can even split up a kilogram into ten parts. You can get one to nine silver coins depending on what price you sell it for. It doesn’t matter if you don’t sell out. If you sell it back to the outpost before dark, you can still make money.

- This operation will take more time, but the theoretical income of a mutant hyena can at least double. Isn’t it great?

- Moreover, according to my research, trading is actually also a gameplay, but at present, it is difficult to operate and unprofitable. It takes 5 silver coins to buy a kilogram of bacon at the NPC store, and if you bring it to Brown Farm, you can trade them for five kilograms of grain. Even if you bring it back, it will only be worth 5 silver coins when you bring it back to the outpost! It’s not profitable at all and if you try to trade, you will probably go bankrupt!

- Considering that the name of the current expansion is Winter is Coming, it is estimated that the testing focus of the development team is not on the trading system. I am very much looking forward to the next version where the development team can focus on the development of the trading system.

- An economic system with no exports but domestic sales is incomplete. Isn’t it more interesting to balance the relationship between production and import and export through tariffs and prices? Please consider it! Development team! Of course, only if the server CPU allows it.

Chu Guang finished reading the post and hit the like button, but did not comment.

The idea is good, but it is of little significance at this stage.

Keyboard economists often fall into the misunderstanding of idealists. Excessive grand narratives actually would not help solve his current problems.

From the perspective of the game designer and players, the rich game playability opinion is really good. But from the perspective of Shelter 404’s administrator, it’s a different story.

For Chu Guang, everything in the shelter, even the players, belongs to him. Why should he allow them to do business with his neighbors using stuff that belongs to him?!

Well, unless they were better businessmen than him, but it was clearly not likely…

Even Chu Guang himself was often alienated and suspected by some scavengers on Baker Street because of his accent, and because of his lack of understanding of the market and rules, even if he had previous life sales experience, he couldn’t use it at all.

They were in a wasteland for crying out loud! It was a dystopian made up of scum and villains.

Compared to a well-behaved banker or economist, a scammer who sells bad financial derivatives would live longer in the world.

If he allowed the players to head out there to do business with the natives, there wasn’t a need to mention if they had 1% of his eloquence. Even if they did, the best way to do business at the moment was to bring more men and more guns!

Chu Guang suddenly understood the mentality of the old leech on Baker Street. Oh, wait… He meant the old mayor.

That guy was a real piece of shit! He was ugly enough, and the fact that he took pleasure in exploiting his residents. He also had no long-term plans for the future of Baker Street, and it only made him look worse.

Well… If those scavengers were allowed to deal with merchants themselves, they would definitely be ripped off even more.

That wasn’t just a question of ignorance.

Only those who were naive to a certain level would think that the merchants from Boulder City would be more merciful than the rich natives in the outskirts.

It’s like comparing bats and leeches when it comes to sucking blood.

"It is meaningless to encourage players to trade with indigenous forces. Every large transaction involving exports must be conducted under supervision, such as the establishment of a fixed caravan, the planning of routes and types of transactions, and the prices of listed commodities... Players are the guards, and the NPC is responsible for trading… This can also take care of the less hardcore players and simplify the transaction process."

"But tariffs are indeed a good idea, this can be implemented! In the future, according to actual needs, I can consider allowing other NPCs to directly participate in the players’ market… under the premise that they can only barter or use shelter currency."

As for being under supervision…

"Free trade? Hah! When I need them to fight, I will naturally tell them with whom to trade freely."

In addition to the guide posts posted by The_escaping_mole, there were also civil engineering players exchanging house building skills, and metallurgical engineering players discussing how to use limited materials to efficiently make steel.

Some people even shared the link to Reddit and otakutranslation blog, changing messaging services to continue the chat. Their actions unexpectedly attracted a lot of new traffic to the website.

The urban legend about the completely immersive virtual reality online game was showing signs of going viral. Although the vast majority of people regard it as some kind of text based game, there were also a small number of people who took it seriously and applied for fun.

The number of applications was growing steadily.

What surprised Chu Guang was that Ample Time, who was usually the most popular player and the person who understood him the best, wasn’t sharing his experience on the forum.

While Chu Guang was browsing the forum, the Bull and Horse Club was also very lively.

Although Light hadn’t been online for some time, all of them basically spoke exclusively about Wasteland Online.

At the very least, their discussions in the morning were all related to the game.

Old White: Ample Time, did you read the post on the official website? The one written by some big nosed mole or something.

Gale: He’s The_escaping_mole.

Old White: That’s not important!

Ample Time: I saw it. The method proposed in that post is a bit interesting, but there isn’t much point.

Old White: Huh? I think it’s great! Selling prey directly to an NPC will earn five silver, and finding someone to butcher and dry it will at least double its value.

Ample Time: Hehe, theory is theory, but he ignores the existence of contribution points.

Night Ten: What do you mean?

Ample Time: You can understand the contribution points as your credit score.

Gale: Jesus, your analogy is incredible...

Ample Time: Now, among all the players, except for the few of us who have already become citizens, Mosquito the carpenter and Teng Teng the tailor are the only ones who can barely earn 2000 contribution points. In other words, except for the six of us, everyone else needs to earn contribution points before thinking about money!

Only a citizen could buy land!

Even a fool could tell that the sooner they bought land, the better their location!

Ample Time: Think about this problem clearly… Of us six, who do you think is more suitable to be a butcher? Do you have experience as one?

Old White: Uh, this is a problem indeed…

Night Ten: No, I just want to ask, is it difficult to cut meat?

Gale:... No one who has been to the supermarket to buy meat would ask such a question.

Ample Time: Night Ten is still a student and has no real life experience. Anyway, the method mentioned in that post is not feasible at present. To do that, we need to find a salesman and a butcher. In this way, after splitting the profit six ways, we will not necessarily earn more.

- Actually, I have already made the calculations, I just haven’t brought it up. When Tomato Eggs becomes a citizen, we can try to talk to him about cooperation, although I don’t think there is much hope.

Night Ten: Why?

Ample Time: Are you stupid? Why would he want to cooperate with us? He can open a restaurant and sell meat by himself. He doesn’t need anyone’s help.

Old White: Damn, based on what you said, it seems that butcher and chef are very lucrative classes in this game?

Ample Time: I can only say that it will only be this way at this stage of the game. It might not necessarily be the case in the future…

Ample Time: Our first priority is to level up, and then to increase proficiency. In any open world game, lifestyle classes are relatively easy to make money at the starting stages, but will fall off eventually. Only those who are truly strong will be able to reign supreme!

Gale: You really understand how to play this game… I have been unable to figure out why you don’t want to become a professional player.

Ample Time: I didn’t have a chance before, but now, hehe, I feel that my chance has come.

Garbage: Boss! Accept my bow!

Mosquito: Me too!

Ample Time: Yes, haha! We are all in the same group. From now on, our guild will be called Bull and Horse Club!

Old White: Ahem, can we change to a different name?

Night Ten: Change it? Why? This is such a nice name. (͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Ample Time: Changing the name or not is not important. But I have to say something. Mosquito should have enough contribution points, but Garbage has been wandering in the forest for the past few days, so he probably needs to farm a little. Your first priority now is to become a citizen, and once you become a citizen, your next goal is to save money. Let’s save money as a team and then build a house directly in front of the resurrection point. The first floor will serve as a shop while the second and third floors will be divided into large rooms.

Old White: In the future, that will be our guild stronghold! (Excited)

Mosquito: Old brother’s plan is really steady!

Garbage: I can’t wait to buy the land!

Quit_smoking: Fuck! I really want to play!!! T. T