Chen Ba was unaware of the situation Guo Mo encountered.

At this moment, he was discussing with Lu, Liu Jinfu, and Li Qizhen about the process and results of players’ first team dungeon exploration.

"The first dungeon has a slightly high difficulty; it has mechanisms and values, but overall, the gameplay experience is fairly good, and players rated it highly."

Lu changed his tone suddenly: "However... the dungeon’s rewards don’t match its difficulty level, which is a common complaint among players."

The first team dungeon in "Cultivation Fantasy" requires players to advance to the mid-Qi Cultivation Stage to explore.

Additionally, the difficulty in pioneering this dungeon is slightly high; while the mechanism is understandable, the key issue is that players who have just broken through lack the damage needed to defeat the Boss.

The first batch of pioneer players exerted great effort, using various elixirs, talismans, and arrays, fighting tirelessly from 2 PM until 6 PM, barely managing to clear the dungeon for the first time.

Players regret this.

They paid a huge amount of energy and effort, not just for the "first clear" reputation but for the dungeon rewards.

Yet, the first-clear rewards were all rubbish that even a dog would shake its head at...

The effort and rewards are completely disproportionate!

This is the most intense feedback issue from players on the first day of the second test of "Cultivation Fantasy." The Tianba Community has been uproarious around this topic.

No MMORPG game has ever been so stingy with first-clear rewards in a dungeon, completely betraying players’ efforts and expectations.

Chen Ba’s official response to this issue was: the game drop is normal; you don’t have merit!

The item drop rates and rare dungeon outputs in "Cultivation Fantasy" are all tied to merit; the higher the merit, the more output.

Of course!

There’s a limit; theoretically, achieving 10 points of merit maximizes the dungeon output. When merit is below 10 points, the output decreases stepwise, with a minimum of 20%!

That is to say, when a player clears a dungeon, regardless of merit, even if it’s negative, the minimum output is 20%.

Only by continuously accumulating merit can the dungeon output be raised to normal or even "extraordinary" levels.

Different dungeons have different merit requirements.

The first dungeon, the simplest, requires only 10 merit points to unlock all outputs.

The second dungeon requires 100 points...

The later, harder the dungeons, the more merit required for high output, possibly reaching ten thousand or even a hundred thousand points.

This is part of the game’s mechanism.

But Chen Ba’s explanation didn’t win the players’ approval; instead, they complained why, since merit was designed so well, obtaining it wasn’t easier?

The first dungeon requires only 10 merit points to unlock all rewards, but achieving those 10 merit points is nearly impossible for players in the early mid-Qi Cultivation Stage.

As for breaking through to the late Qi Cultivation Stage or the Qi Cultivation consummate boundary, merit likely meets the standard...

Come on! Buddy is at this stage, and you still want me to grind the mid-Qi Cultivation dungeon? Shouldn’t I go after the late Qi Cultivation or consummate Qi Cultivation dungeon?

"This issue certainly exists."

Chen Ba frowned and said: "It’s hard to obtain merit in the early stages, but you can’t change the rules arbitrarily, otherwise it would lead to merit overflow in the later game stages."

Strictly controlling merit output ensures this tertiary currency remains precious and rare even in later stages of the game.

If restrictions aren’t imposed from the start, then, by the later stages, wouldn’t everyone be someone with "full merit"?

This is the main reason Chen Ba, as the game producer, couldn’t respond to players’ calls.

Players want merit, but their current strength is too low; in the early Qi Cultivation and mid-Qi Cultivation stages, how could they possibly obtain merit?

"How about we lower the merit requirement for these Qi Cultivation Stage dungeons?"

Liu Jinfu proposed: "For example, the mid-Qi Cultivation Stage dungeon requires only one point of merit to unlock all outputs."

This way, players would likely not complain about the imbalance between effort and reward, or that the dungeon outputs are too scarce.

"Sure, let’s change it like that."

Chen Ba thought this idea was feasible; after all, merit must have strictly controlled outputs, and based on this premise, the merit threshold for Qi Cultivation Stage dungeons can be lowered.

This way, new players in the Qi Cultivation Stage won’t have to worry too much about dungeon outputs being too scant.

As for normal recovery in the Foundation Establishment Stage, that’s fine.

Once players reach the Foundation Establishment Stage, they will have more combat strategies available, and there will be broader ways to obtain merit. It’s just a matter of spending more time, but it won’t be too difficult.

The first dungeon requiring 10 merit points is indeed a bit high!

At this stage, players don’t just lack 10 merit points, many don’t even know how to obtain merit, and their merit is still zero by the mid-Qi Cultivation Stage.

"Anything else?"

"That’s all!"

Lu shook his head and said: "The second test performance is all normal; apart from the unreasonable output, no other issues have been identified yet."

"That’s good, that’s good!"

Upon learning that the second test was smooth without incidents or surprises, Chen Ba breathed a sigh of relief.

This is good news!

When the second test was officially open to players, Chen Ba worried even in his sleep: might "Cultivation Fantasy" become a joke?

No need to worry now.

Since the second test is this stable, it’s time to consider the public test date and choose an auspicious day for "Cultivation Fantasy" to officially launch.

Thinking about this, he somehow feels slightly unaccustomed.

Shouldn’t it be?

When a new game opens for testing, how could it be this quiet? Normally, there should be frequent issues, right?

Could it be...

Just as Chen Ba was considering whether he was overthinking it and if "Cultivation Fantasy" might really be Tianba Studio’s most perfect game, Yang Dong walked in.

"There’s a situation I think should be brought to your attention..."

"Ah?"

The moment Chen Ba heard this within five seconds of entering his fantasy time, his expression instantly froze.

Yang Dong didn’t pay him any attention and explained on their own: "A player posted on the forum saying that a streamer, while playing ’Cultivation Fantasy,’ managed to idle for 10 points of merit..."

Idling for merit points?

Upon hearing this, Chen Ba was startled.

What’s going on, how could idling earn merit points? Isn’t this some joke or doctored image? How could something so outrageous happen?

"It’s real, go take a look and you’ll see."

As Yang Dong spoke, they shared Guo Mo’s livestream link to Chen Ba.

Chen Ba clicked to take a look; right now, Guo Mo was streaming and had already advanced to the middle stage of Qi Cultivation, joining a new dungeon exploration team.

Because of the dungeon output issue, Chen Ba had already explained to the players, so the entire exploration team knew that they were now attempting the dungeon purely to familiarize themselves with the mechanics.

As for the dungeon output?

What are you thinking? You don’t even have 10 merit points, so what’s the use of that 20% guaranteed output?

"I have merit points!"

Faced with the team leader’s doubt, Guo Mo proudly said, "Just a mere 10 merit points, surely no one fails to meet that requirement, right?"

Everyone: "..."

The entire team chat channel was instantly flooded with ellipses and question marks following Guo Mo’s words.

Worried that others wouldn’t believe him, Guo Mo sent them the livestream room number, asking them to watch his stream, while he conveniently opened his personal panel.

Chen Ba took a closer look.

Well, well! It really was 10 merit points, without any embellishments or errors—it was a solid 10 merit points.

What’s happening?

Chen Ba was completely confused as to how Guo Mo had acquired those merit points.

When other players were complaining about how difficult it was to earn merit points, struggling to accumulate even one point, how could someone have 10 merit points?

Feeling there was definitely more to this, Chen Ba, using Guo Mo’s game ID, checked this player’s game records in the backend.

Backend records showed that at 16:37 in ’Cultivation Fantasy,’ the Heavenly Dao rewarded Guo Mo with 10 merit points.

That was the source of the merit points.

But like Guo Mo, Chen Ba didn’t understand why the Heavenly Dao would give him such a generous reward all in one go.

The Heavenly Dao is an independent monitoring program.

This program has a rigid and fair merit evaluation system, making discretionary decisions based on players’ in-game behaviors and performances, awarding or deducting merit points as appropriate.

Chen Ba called up the program logs related to "Heavenly Dao" and found that it had awarded merit points to Guo Mo because of his "game behavior."

"Game behavior?"

"That’s quite vague! Can’t you find out what specific behavior it was?"

"Can’t find it!"

Chen Ba shook his head, indicating that this data couldn’t be retrieved because the "Heavenly Dao" has discretionary power, allowing it to freely judge based on circumstances.

In other words, when Heavenly Dao awarded merit points to a player, it only recorded the reason, such as Guo Mo receiving rewards due to "game behavior."

But the specific events of this game behavior wouldn’t be recorded, as there are simply too many details to log so comprehensively.

There are millions of players, and if every action of each player was recorded in such detail, the computing power of Heavenly Dao in ’Cultivation Fantasy’ would be exaggerated! And how much information would those servers need to store?

So it’s nonexistent in the records.

Information that wouldn’t originally be logged is naturally untraceable. However, if no anomalies can be found on Heavenly Dao’s side, we can investigate the player!

By investigating Guo Mo’s character information, it became apparent that when Heavenly Dao issued the reward, the character was in an idle state, having not moved, interacted, or taken any actions.

Now that’s a problem!

It really was idling that resulted in those merit points? This phenomenon, defying common sense, caught Chen Ba’s attention.

He suspected it to be a bug...

In-game, the Heavenly Dao, possibly affected by an unknown bug, made an incorrect judgment, rewarding merit points to Guo Mo while in an idle "non-active" state.

This was the most logical explanation!

After reaching this preliminary conclusion, Chen Ba immediately began an investigation, aiming to backtrack from the issue to uncover the latent bug in the game.

But when he attempted to reproduce the bug, he found that no matter how he tested, the Heavenly Dao was in a normal operating state, with no misjudgment or erroneous rewards.

No joke!

Chen Ba even invoked Guo Mo’s character data, replicating the exact idle state Guo Mo was in—everything was exactly the same.

But then the issue arose...

Under the same conditions, with even identical character data, he didn’t trigger the bug to earn merit points, yet Guo Mo did.

"Why is that?"

Chen Ba was baffled, as was Lu, and Yang Dong was equally dumbfounded.

They had gone through the bug reproduction process numerous times. Though some bug trigger conditions might be stringent, needing a bit of luck during reproduction.

But no matter how much luck was needed, as long as all prerequisite conditions were met, the bug should eventually be reproducible; a bug that can’t be reproduced doesn’t exist.

An irreproducible bug?

Come off it!

If such a bug truly existed, wouldn’t it be sentient? Would you rather believe that a piece of code has become sentient, or that this bug simply doesn’t exist?

"I think we’re on the wrong track!"

Chen Ba didn’t buy into the idea of sentient code. The inability to reproduce likely indicated that the issue wasn’t there.

But this bug definitely exists.

After all, the evidence was right there; they just got the direction wrong and needed to rethink and identify the real cause of the bug.

Should we talk to the person involved?