"Arriving at City Wall Station. Passengers wishing to disembark, please prepare in advance..."
By the time Qian Peng jogged all the way to the nearest subway station, he happened to hear the announcement from the platform.
There were no transit police at the entrance. Several humanoid subspecies of varying appearances simply vaulted over the card-swipe gates and rushed into the train cars.
Seeing that, Qian Peng followed suit, easily hopping over the one-meter-tall gate and enjoying the thrill of getting something for free.
He found an empty seat in the car and sat down. When he glanced at his remaining stamina, he gave a quiet sound of surprise and opened his character card.
Name: Amulet Owl Race: Human Level: 1 Class: Commoner Rank: None HP: 200/200, Stamina: 187/200, Mana: 0/0 Faith: 0 Traits: Hero Template, Well-Rounded, Gifted (Inactive) Attributes: Strength 20, Agility 20, Endurance 20, Intelligence 20, Perception 20, Charisma 20 Skills: None Hero Template: You are a born hero. Your starting attributes follow the Hero Template. Upon leveling up, all attributes +2, free attributes +4. Well-Rounded: You have no fatal weaknesses. Gifted (Inactive): You possess an exceptional talent in a certain area.
Hero Template?
No wonder his Yellow Bar—stamina—was twice as long as he remembered.
Seeing such a wonderful start, Qian Peng was just about to explain it to the stream when he realized the chat had already started breaking it down for him.
"Humans in the old version started with 10 in every attribute. Every level gave +1 to all attributes and 5 free attribute points."
"The new launch version gives an extra 60 attribute points at the start, plus another 5 every time you level up."
"Isn't that insanely good?"
"..."
Seeing that the chat had missed the main point, Qian Peng pondered for a moment before adding,
"Hero Template is a trait only NPCs have. The bonus attributes are nice, but the primary attributes that determine damage still can't pull too far ahead of the original version."
"All the values in this game are based on attributes and then run through all kinds of complicated multipliers. Base attributes are important, but not that important."
"For example, a barbarian who puts everything into Strength would have 64 Strength at level 10 in the old version, while the new version would give him 74. Just a 10-point difference in Strength creates a 15% gap in damage."
"But players can gain attributes from all kinds of sources besides leveling. Once you reach the late game, where attributes can hit five or six digits, 10 points of Strength becomes negligible."
"Of course, having an advantage in all six attributes means more health, a longer stamina bar, and stronger resistance to abnormal conditions. That gives you more room for error, especially under high-pressure circumstances, but the gap won't be ridiculously huge."
As he spoke, the subway stopped at the next station. Out of habit, Qian Peng glanced at the station sign to make sure he had not gone in the wrong direction.
Just as he looked away, he caught sight of a girl from the corner of his eye.
She was only around 1.4 meters tall, with dark brown twin-tails and a cheap-looking blended-fabric sweater. She stood in the corner by the connection between cars with her head lowered, seemingly trying not to draw attention.
Yet her face was even more exquisite than an elf's, making the surrounding passengers unable to stop stealing glances at her.
It was that player named Li Yuan.
Qian Peng closed his eyes, sent the game into the background, and opened his browser. He had no intention of getting involved with her.
Magical Girl was a new class introduced only two years ago. Since it had been added several years after launch to attract new players, it could be chosen at level 1, and every class advancement was called Magical Girl: XX Form.
This class had the highest DPS in the entire game, with a sheer cliff-like lead over the rest. A single beam cannon could knock a huge chunk off a Boss's health bar.
But its weaknesses were just as obvious.
Magical Girls had no resistance to abnormal conditions whatsoever. As long as they were hit by a control skill, they took the full duration of the control. They also had no Hard Control of their own, and were as squishy as mages.
These colorful little girls had traded everything for damage.
This was clearly a high-difficulty class that danced on the edge of a blade, yet because of its cute appearance, its ability to change class at level 1, and its access to general caster equipment, it became a favorite among new players.
No skill, no willingness to listen to commands, and a habit of getting teammates killed... New players often got controlled by random mobs, then blasted a teammate away with one shot. Afterward, they would even fight mages over equipment.
In less than two years, the class's reputation had been completely ruined.
There were certainly plenty of highly skilled Magical Girl players, and they dominated the speed-clear rankings for nearly every dungeon.
But Magical Girls were, after all, a "lowly" DPS class. Unlike the "noble" healers and tanks, most players could not be bothered to distinguish between good and bad ones and simply wrote them all off.
Shaking off his memories of Magical Girls, Qian Peng opened a video site, clicked his profile picture, and found the collection titled "Despair Expedition OL Guide Collection" among the thousands of guides he had uploaded for different games.
He opened "Iron Wall City Complete Collection Guide" and watched with great interest.
But the viewers in the stream immediately got unhappy, flooding the chat with complaints.
"This subway ride is way too torturous. How is this any different from my morning commute?"
"Sacrificing gameplay for realism... Sigh, I don't even know what to say."
"Looking up guides you made yourself? That's a move?"
"Switch the game screen back!"
"Summoning a god, but the god is yourself from seven years ago."
"So where exactly is the streamer going? Are you still going to save my Ice Cream?"
"Yeah, what are you planning to do, streamer? At least explain it to us."
As the questioning messages piled up, Qian Peng could only try to brush them off.
"Iron Wall City is a map that was only added in the second major update. The area outside the city is full of level 30 to 60 monsters. I'm a divine magic player who hasn't even learned any divine spells yet. Who am I supposed to tickle if I leave the city?"
He did not want other players lurking in the stream to learn his next plan, but there were simply more and more people entering the broadcast.
Hundreds of thousands of new viewers who had rushed over after hearing the news came into the stream only to find him watching videos, so naturally they urged and complained.
"All right, all right, all right. I'll show you what the subway is like."
Unable to stand the nagging any longer, Qian Peng simply switched back to the game and stood up. As he showed the audience around the subway cars, he chatted with the stream.
"Where players spawned in the original version, the nearby residents had all turned into zombies. Those were level 1 to 10 mobs."
"What's outside the city in Broken Sword Valley? High-level monsters, high resistance, high attributes—hellish mobs across the board. How am I supposed to fight them?"
"What do you mean I only know how to play easy-mode classes? My highest arena ranking was 328. I was a king of solo queue in my younger days, all right?"
"Brother, I don't even know how to learn skills or change class yet. Let me figure things out first, okay?"
"..."
There were only six cars on the old subway, yet Qian Peng walked through them three times. At every station, he got off and explained things for a while.
Finally, the subway reached Emerald Park Station, where he needed to go. Qian Peng let out a sigh of relief and stepped out of the car, only to find that Li Yuan had gotten off as well.
He immediately became wary.
Li Yuan might look like a little girl, but her attributes should have been the same as his—20 across the board, thanks to the Hero Template.
A normal male commoner NPC would probably have attributes somewhere between 8 and 15.
In other words, the two of them crushed ordinary people in every respect. In ancient times, they would have been fierce warriors capable of leading the charge and taking a city.
Qian Peng slowed down and let Li Yuan walk ahead of him, worried that she was after his ashes.
However, just as he focused all his attention on guarding against the girl, Li Yuan, who had been as cold as an iceberg all the way there, suddenly scrunched up her little face and burst into loud tears.
"Big sister, I'm sorry, I... I lost my ticket." She cried heartbrokenly, like a child who had done something wrong.
Qian Peng froze for a moment. First, he recalled this "little girl's" social media account. She should have been that merchant woman called "Buying Expedition Equipment, Buying Expedition Items."
Only then did he notice that a police officer holding a riot shield stood in front of every exit gate.
In MMORPGs, damage-dealing classes made up the overwhelming majority of players, so they were everywhere when forming dungeon parties and jokingly called themselves lowly classes. Healers and tanks, on the other hand, were scarce and never lacked teammates for dungeons, so they were teasingly called noble classes.
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