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Osmanthus wine tastes the sa as I rember… But where are those who share the mory?
~Zhongli
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After settling on his future ga developnt plans, Carl began surveying Netherworld Village with Sophia, looking for areas that could be used as ga maps.
These map areas abandoned by Elysium were genuinely perfect for horror ga stages.
There were eerie and bizarre factories, empty ancient castles, libraries that looked like mazes ford by massive staggered bookshelves, and snowy plains where anyone would lose their way without signposts.
"These are all excellent locations."
Carl walked back and forth through an abandoned factory with Sophia.
Although the atmosphere inside the factory was extrely gloomy, Carl could still tell that this kind of factory had clearly been designed by ga designers specifically for map exploration.
"This is an abandoned map from our Version 3.8. I wonder whether it will be useful to you, Lord Carl?"
Sophia skillfully guided Carl through the entire factory map.
"Of course. After making a few changes to the map, I should be able to use it directly."
As Carl spoke, a map editing interface appeared before his eyes.
This was also one of the permissions granted to Carl by Elysium, allowing him to make certain modifications to Netherworld Village's maps.
In truth, Carl did not change much.
This factory had originally been built for player exploration, but it was obvious that the factory's purpose had been to serve as a farming map where players could grind mobs.
Because of that, the scene felt a little empty.
So Carl added more cubicles, corridors, and several rooms that required specific keys to open.
At the sa ti, Carl set up several trap-like areas inside the factory.
These were trap chanics similar to those found in Lethal Company or extraction-looter gas.
He definitely could not set up malicious traps where a player would instantly die after stepping on one without knowing anything.
Players would curse his entire family for that.
However, map traps that clearly told the player, "This is a trap," but offered generous rewards if they jumped over them, avoided them, or took the risk anyway, would instead increase the players' desire for challenge and excitent.
And more importantly, they would increase the number of hilarious and embarrassing monts players could create.
In this way, Carl and Sophia spent several days renovating and remaking a portion of Netherworld Village's maps.
"The map is ready, but Lord Carl, what should we use as rewards for the players?"
Sophia brushed the dust off the factory floor with one of her tentacles.
Netherworld Village was truly a barren land with nothing to its na.
It was nothing like the main ga of Oath, which could use precious gacha resources like Sacred Contract Stones as exploration rewards.
At present, Netherworld Village probably could not even provide the most basic EXP materials or ascension materials needed to level characters.
"It's fine. Rewards for players don't necessarily have to be the most precious things. They just have to be useful. As long as they can spark the player's motivation and desire to explore, that's enough."
As Carl spoke, he pulled out a small screw from sowhere and showed it to Sophia.
"This is one of the materials needed to upgrade a player's hideout. In fact, forget useful materials. Even if I put a bunch of useless decorations on a table and let players loot them freely, it can still give them the satisfaction of scavenging."
"Scavenging?"
Sophia looked at the large pile of strange little items Carl had placed on a table.
Carl briefly described the fun of scavenging in gas to Sophia.
There were things like vases, small statues, floppy disks, and a whole assortnt of little trinkets that seed completely useless to players in Oath.
Oath did not allow players to randomly loot these things, because it had nothing to do with the original gaplay.
Players could pick up various objects, look at them, and inspect them, but if they tried to put them into their inventory, the item would imdiately return to its original position.
Moreover, given Oath's gaplay, that large pile of small objects scattered throughout the Great World had no real value.
But here, Carl would give these items aning through hideout upgrade requirents, a player trading market, and the simple desire to decorate one's hideout beautifully in order to attract more NPCs to move in.
"I still don't quite understand. After all, the Adventurers I served before were more concerned with strengthening equipnt, PvP, and challenging powerful enemies."
"But Lord Carl, our Netherworld Village might not have that many odds and ends for the Adventurers to loot."
Sophia very thoughtfully pointed out the problem with Carl's gaplay at a glance.
That was, Netherworld Village simply did not have enough strange little items to serve as collectibles during exploration.
And this type of ga absolutely needed to be filled with a large number of strange collectibles to be fun.
"If we don't have any, I'll go buy so. It just so happens that after I recently launched the skin system for Monster Battles, there were surprisingly many players willing to pay for Monster skins and Monster Soul skins. I've earned quite a fortune in paid Contract Stones."
Carl was also exploring monetization thods for his gas at this stage.
His final conclusion was that costic monetization was the most reliable thod, aning that the ga would earn revenue by selling skins.
Players could choose whether to buy them or not.
Buying them was a way to support the ga's continued operation, while players who did not buy them could still enjoy all of the ga's content.
The emphasis was on players paying because they genuinely loved the ga.
As for the buy-to-play model, Carl had considered it before.
However, whether it was Monster Battles or Descent into Netherworld Village, these were gas Carl planned to update over the long term.
Therefore, selling skins was the best operational strategy for sustaining the ga.
And all the Contract Stones Carl earned from players would be reinvested into ga developnt.
For example, he could use them to purchase a large number of stylish collectibles for players to scavenge in Netherworld Village's currently empty maps.
Of course, this did not an Carl was completely selfless.
What Carl wanted was word of mouth and support from the players.
After all, for a ga character, player popularity was everything.
The Sacred Contract Stone rewards from those Fanatic players alone were one of the most precious resources for any gacha character.
"However, at this stage, the paid Contract Stones still feel a little insufficient."
Carl glanced at the paid Contract Stones currently in his account. The amount was around two hundred thousand.
Although the live-service gas of this world also had plenty of paid skin bundles, many Monster Battles players were still hesitating over whether they should spend gacha currency on skins for a mini-ga.
Furthermore, Elysium would take a small cut from these paid Contract Stones as server fees for Carl's operation of Netherworld Village.
Elysium's position in the real world was indeed very similar to Skynet, if Skynet had no intention of destroying humanity and, after negotiating with humans, decided to coexist peacefully for the ti being.
Humans could do nothing about Elysium either.
Its main body existed in every single root server of the internet.
Even shutting down the entire global internet could not kill Elysium.
So people in the real world even speculated that the entity known as Elysium might be a digitized alternate world, sothing similar to the Digital World.
But this kind of reasoning was only speculation, and no conclusion had been reached for the ti being.
Elysium also provided humans with a completely realistic virtual world, allowing humans to experience a second life as adventurers in a fantasy world.
Faced with such a well-behaved awakened AI, humans naturally welcod it imdiately.
However, servers and electricity bills still cost money.
Although humans would waive part of those costs, Elysium still had to create economic value for humanity.
This was also why, after the various Elysium-series gas collaborated with human developers, Elysium allowed those human developers to insert large amounts of microtransaction content into them.
In short, Carl now felt that it was necessary to find a partner to invest.
"Sophia, let's stop the preparatory work here for now. It just so happens that the gacha characters are going to the City of Glory to scout things out. I'll head back as well, and while I'm at it, I'll drag a certain Lady Knight in as an investor."
"I will wait here for your return."
And so, Sophia watched Carl leave.
Carl did not return to the Main World to check on Hasumi's movents.
Instead, through the Academy Terminal, he took a peek at the player worldline where Hasumi's main consciousness was currently located.
After quickly scanning through the many worldlines, Carl soon found an embarrassing mont for Hasumi and imdiately rushed over to mock her.
(To be continued.)
◇ You can read the ahead chapter on Pat if you're interested: p-atreon.c-om/Blownleaves (Just remove the hyphen to access normally.)
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