Dark Sand: My Players Are All Actors-Chapter 536 - 274 Rankings_3
"Originally, Li Hao was almost destined to follow the same life path as Qin Huizhi, but Ranger forcibly twisted his fate around.
"The most terrifying thing is that Ranger didn’t even use the Heroic Spirit summoning feature, which would have surely earned him a lot of points.
"As for the prince route, who would have thought it could keep Emperor Taizu’s cheat activated all along?
"Hmm... This is because the prince route has many different possibilities in the first place. Civil officials and military generals can only play freely in the latter half, but the first half still has to strictly follow the script.
"Yet, for the prince line, from the very start, one has to think of ways to wrest control of the Western Army from Tong Daofu and later even change the entire Jingping upheaval. You could say there was no script from beginning to end, everything relied on personal performance. No wonder it’s the most difficult. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮
"But from another perspective, precisely because the prince route continuously changes history, it generates more energy, so in extreme states, it is possible to maintain the cheat of Emperor Taizu.
"However, relying too much on Heroic Spirits leads to a high utilization rate of Heroic Spirits, like Fan Cun reaching 90%... That is to say, apart from leading troops and charging into battle, other matters were all handled by Emperor Taizu’s proxy. This would definitely impact the final score.
"As for the route of a military general I took, it’s somewhat a compromise.
"As long as you train troops and win the great battle at Yan City, you can clear the instance, so it’s harder than a civil officer but easier than a prince. The first half has little content that changes history, so it’s hard to maintain such cheats as Emperor Taizu for a long time, and one could only summon General Deng Yuanjing.
"However, this also reduces my dependence on Heroic Spirits, especially during the latter half of the content, where everything is basically operated based on my ideas, with General Deng only providing some military advice.
"Another major point is that the top three all changed history.
"Whether using the Heroic Spirit summons to cheat or relying solely on one’s strength, in the end, one must first have the idea and effort to change history, and then you can achieve a high score."
Zhao Haiping was very pleased.
He initially thought that forcibly taking on the role of General Han Fuyue in the instance and choosing a different path would be troublesome and thankless, but now it seemed that all his efforts and attempts were seen by the system, which gave an objective and fair evaluation.
That’s an unexpected joy!
Looking at the discussions of other players on the forum, it was mostly praises.
Evidently, the instance "Eight Thousand Miles of Clouds and Moon" was a study by Dark Sand into a completely new game mode, and the players acknowledged it well.
Many players, after watching the videos of the top three winners, suddenly realized. So the game could be played this way?
Many players, when playing as military generals, faced twelve golden tablets and experienced the feelings of General Han Fuyue back then.
Anguish, helplessness, despair.
But perhaps they did not consider the possibility of rebellion, perhaps the summoned Heroic Spirits negated that possibility, or perhaps they gave up after consideration...
In any case, most players, just like General Han Fuyue, returned to the capital and ended their storyline prematurely.
And now they discovered, could they actually declare themselves emperor?
That would be very interesting!
Tonight, when going for the second run, they must try this emperor route!
Also, many players found out, regardless of which role they played, it seemed they couldn’t avoid killing the emperor.
Thinking about it, it’s actually normal, since the Qi Dynasty is such a joke, having so many tragedies because three consecutive emperors were useless.
An era where three consecutive emperors rank amongst the notorious tyrants in history, yet somehow the dynasty still managed to shamble on southward. Who could reason with that?
What if they had a wise and just ruler? What would the Qi Dynasty look like?
So indeed, a day without a foolish emperor is a good day!
Of course, if the instance added another storyline that allowed players to directly play Emperor Gaozong of Qi but didn’t erase General Han Fuyue’s existence, that likely would create a "Ding downward" difficulty level.
They wouldn’t need to do anything, just clinging to General Han Fuyue’s coattails could let them clear the game.
Even putting a dog on the throne would be better than Emperor Gaozong.
But probably because that storyline would be too simple, Dark Sand officially didn’t launch it.
Besides these discussions, another player combined the content of the first stage and analyzed the overall content of the instance "Eight Thousand Miles of Clouds and Moon."
"After experiencing all the content of this instance, I somewhat understand the purpose of the first stage now.
"At the beginning, everyone felt the game content of the first stage was uninteresting.
"Players of infantrymen, assassins, scholars, and rangers seemed to have a lot to do with high freedom in the first stage, but it turned out, in the torrent of the era, that there was actually very little one could do.
"Infantry player players fought to death and just barely survived in the Peace Army’s protection battle; assassin players couldn’t kill Wanyan Sheng and could only kill a group of middle-ranking Jin officers; scholar players hustled all over the city, merely preventing it from falling; ranger players put a lot of effort into organizing their bandits, only managing to save a small village.
"Of course, some players very cleverly found other players in the instance and collaborated to accomplish the feat of assassinating the emperor, which is indeed a groundbreaking playstyle, but from a realistic perspective, this possibility is built on the foundation of absolute mutual trust between two players and their foreknowledge of the future.
"It is unfeasible in reality.
"In summary, giving players the most basic identities in the first stage actually allows us to clearly feel that, in a dreadful historical torrent like the Jingping upheaval, an individual’s power is truly too insignificant.
"Especially for those ordinary people at the very bottom of society, even if they’re prodigiously talented, it’s hard to resist such an overwhelming force.
"And in the second stage, our identities were elevated.
"We became commanders of armies, powerful officials in the court, the emperor’s favorite princes.
"And only then did we truly possess the possibility to change the course of history.
"However, the most ironic point in history also lies here: the lower classes have the heart to save the country but not the means; the upper classes have the resources to save the country but they use these resources to seek peace through compromise.
"For players, it is precisely because of the repression of faltering despite utmost efforts in the first stage that there is the exhilaration of altering fate in the second stage.
"But for those who truly lived in that historical period, this ironic reality is a great tragedy.
’Knowing history can lead to prosperity or decline, the later generations lament it but do not heed its lessons, thus making even more generations lament.’
"Perhaps, this is the complex emotion that the instance ’Eight Thousand Miles of Clouds and Moon’ hopes we can experience!"
