The Price of Rushing Work

Xu Meng couldn't figure it out himself, so he took the data and ran to the Programming Department to consult with Peng Linmu.

But Peng Linmu was also completely baffled.

Even more troublesome: before they could figure out the principle behind this bug, Song Zhicheng came over with other bugs, his face full of anxiety.

Xu Meng took the tablet from his hand and checked it with Peng Linmu.

Soon, their brows furrowed as well.

This bug wasn't as obvious as the previous ones, so its impact online wasn't significant yet.

But these bugs were related to the game's combat system, making them no easier to deal with than the previous ones—

The first bug was the damage loss issue with Tong Que's ultimate skill.

Tong Que's ultimate skill had a very flashy appearance, involving transformation, costume changes, and special effects for guns and bullets, making it seem quite complex.

But aside from the animation effects, the actual effect wasn't complicated: it significantly increased the character's defense and health, while also adding a fire enchantment to the bullets, with each bullet dealing additional fire damage on top of the physical damage.

Every eight instances of fire damage inflicted on an enemy would trigger a scorching anomaly, adding a layer of vulnerability to the enemy, stacking up to three layers.

But now, someone had tested this ultimate skill and discovered that Tong Que's fire enchantment had damage loss.

As for how they discovered it...

This guy recorded the entire process of Tong Que shooting during the ultimate skill, then imported the video into editing software to slow it down, checking every bullet fired from the muzzle.

—Every single one! And he discovered that some bullets didn't have the fire effect when they were fired.

Specifically, out of the 120 bullets fired during the 15-second ultimate skill duration, 6 of them didn't have the fire effect.

Slowing down and comparing the damage of those 6 bullets, they were indeed lower than the others.

So he determined that it wasn't just the animation effect that was missing, but the entire fire enchantment. —The second bug was with He Yin's Wind Wall skill.

In the skill description, this wall shaped by wind could block enemy ranged attacks.

Sounds like it "blocks all attacks," right?

But in reality, this Wind Wall could only block physical projectiles—like bullets, stones, slime, scales, explosives, and the like.

But Frost Snow Project had a wide variety of monsters, and some monsters used sonic waves and lasers to attack.

Against these attacks without physical projectiles, the Wind Wall was completely useless.

Characters hiding behind the Wind Wall were still getting beaten up! —As for the last bug—Xiao Ningxi's Candy Bullets were healing biological monsters...

Xu Meng laughed when he saw this.

Because this wasn't actually a bug, but an easter egg.

A character trait intentionally added to enhance Ningxi's memorability.

Song Zhicheng didn't know this, and seeing that the boss could still laugh, he became even more anxious: "Boss! Now is not the time to relax!"

"Yeah, I know." Xu Meng nodded with a smile.

"No, you haven't realized the seriousness of the problem!" Song Zhicheng was a little anxious.

Xu Meng didn't quite understand his anxiety, but he still put away his smile and asked seriously, "What's wrong?"

Song Zhicheng had a very stressed expression: "We're standing at a critical moment, a lot of people are watching us, and if we don't solve these problems quickly, public opinion may soon turn against us."

Xu Meng nodded.

He had anticipated this situation.

The internet traffic had played a huge role in Frost Snow Project achieving such amazing results.

But traffic is a double-edged sword; if used well, it's infinitely powerful, but if used poorly, it can hurt you.

Considering the character scale of Frost Snow Project, the controversy was bound to be significant.

And in this kind of non-legal dispute, the final outcome is often determined not by who is right or wrong, but by which side has the louder voice.

Song Zhicheng was so anxious now, there was probably only one reason—

"Are there a lot of negative news about Frost Snow Project online right now?"

Xu Meng's question struck right at Song Zhicheng's heart, and a torrent of words immediately poured out:

"A lot!"

"Many livestreams of our game have been banned, and it's already trending on social media."

"The bans are all due to the large scale of 'Frost Snow Project', and netizens are calling it a 'Snow Disaster' in the livestreaming world."

"In addition, many radical feminist bloggers on Weiguang and Red Book are stirring up trouble, encouraging people to report us on various platforms and give our game low scores."

"Affected by this, our ratings on many channels have dropped to 3 points, and are still decreasing."

"Also, a small number of users who previously owned male characters are demanding refunds, claiming that we 'changed already sold goods without permission'."

"Furthermore, I've discovered a large number of internet trolls appearing everywhere, spreading things like [poor technology leading to a bunch of bugs in the game], [low moral character and a rogue company], [besides soft porn, the game is boring as hell], [wasting money on paper dolls is better than getting a foot massage in real life]..."

Seeing Song Zhicheng's posture as if he was about to repeat all the trolls' garbage talk, Xu Meng quickly raised his hand to stop him: "Okay, okay."

"I know you're anxious, but let's put the trolls aside for now."

"No matter what we do, they're just getting paid to do their job."

"Let's focus on the players' needs first. The players are our bread and butter, and serving them well is the most important thing."

"What is the players' biggest need right now?"

"Uh... this..." Song Zhicheng suddenly became a little hesitant, as if Xu Meng had asked some incredible question.

"?" A question mark slowly appeared on Xu Meng's head.

Was this question difficult? Song Zhicheng took the tablet, braced himself, operated it, and handed it to Xu Meng.

Seeing his actions, Peng Linmu also curiously leaned over to look at the screen.

On it was a post from Dream Ferry—

[Strongly protest that only Tong Que has a nude model, strongly request that all characters be added!] Post text:

"If doing them all is too troublesome, at least make one for Xiao Ningxi!

Please, this is my life's request!" —"???" More question marks appeared on Xu Meng's head.

"Cough cough cough!" Peng Linmu coughed and awkwardly looked away.

The outrageous thing was that this post actually had over 180,000 likes! The top-ranked player replies were also wishing for nude models of other characters, and the number of likes was not low—generally between 60,000 and 150,000.

Dream Ferry doesn't have any fake popularity, and players can't like repeatedly.

So... these are all the players' true feelings! But...

"Are there so many lolicon in the anime world?"

"Or perverted lolicon."

Song Zhicheng didn't know how to answer the boss's question, so he simply chose to skip it: "It's not just that, this post has a lot of attention on Weiguang and P Station, the popularity is quite high!"

"Nonsense!" Xu Meng was speechless.

Tong Que's situation was special, in order to create a benchmark character.

The Modeling Department and Animation Department, in order to achieve the ultimate, squeezed out time in the tight schedule and did a lot of work that could be called redundant—separate body modeling, separate clothing modeling, Battle Damage modeling, and normal modeling were all done.

Some of this work was not for the current task, but for technical exploration.

After the Intelligent Collaboration Development Tool completely digested this entire process, it did greatly improve the efficiency of modeling and rendering other characters later.

But the technical exploration has been completed, and the Intelligent Collaboration Tool has lit up this tech point, so it is impossible to equip other characters with a set as well.

After all, this can't be sold.

——It's illegal to sell it!

Xu Meng shook his head, "Besides this?"

After speaking, he was worried that Song Zhicheng would come up with something outrageous again, so he specifically added: "Something more normal!"

"Yes, yes, yes." Song Zhicheng reached out and swiped the tablet in Xu Meng's hand.

Then the screen switched to a notepad page with two concise and clear requirements written on it: [Game bug fixes]

And—

[Live Stream Harmonization Function]

Seeking monthly tickets, seeking follow-up reading, seeking recommendations!