Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

In order to set up the TPDb ratings, a website was required.

As there was still space upstairs, Pei Qian decided to hire a group of people to manage the website's operations. They would be situated next to Zhongdian Chinese Network.

TPDb's website would list out all of Tengda's projects, including all the games it had developed before, all the short videos that Fei Huang Workspace had shot, each and every Fish-Catching Internet Cafe branch, Zhongdian Chinese Network, Upwind Courier stations, etc.

The site would be categorized simply into games, films, lifestyle, experiences, etc. for easy filtering and searching.

If Tengda were to venture into new industries in the future, the number of categories on this site would be refreshed as well.

There wouldn't be too much of an introduction to each of these projects. Every one of them would only have a simple profile page with some basic information.

The focus of the website would be on ratings as well as relevant details regarding it. The ratings were divided into internal, media, consumer, and netizens ratings. The final ratings would be based on these four big groups with different weights apportioned to each.

The website was on the open register. However, Tengda employees' accounts had special access rights that allowed them to enter the 'internal ratings' intranet page and to see the ratings that had been given by other employees.

Ordinary users would only be able to see the overall stats of the ratings Tengda employees have given; they could not enter the intranet.

The media ratings would take into account some established media companies' ratings as well as some of their posted reviews.

Consumers and netizens would have their separate rating pages. Only those who could give their registered account record with Tengda would be able to access the consumer rating page; ordinary netizens couldn't.

As for the specific ratings, TPDb would also adopt a more complicated rating system. Every account would have a different weight attached to it; the specific weight would only be viewable to Tengda employees with higher levels of clearance.

Some inappropriate behavior would have a negative impact on accounts' weights.

For example, if some Big V had been given money to give a 1/5 rating on a project that had an average of 4/5 rating, or if someone gave 5/5 for a project that had an average 2/5 rating, this would definitely impact this account's future rating weight.

Of course, this wasn't trying to get rid of any form of dissent; after all, ratings should be an individual and very subjective thing. It could also be possible that some people didn't like others giving 5/5 and praising a so-called masterpiece; hence, they really wanted to give a 1/5 rating instead.

However, such revenge-like behavior was already contravening the objective and fair principle behind ratings; this would have a negative impact on this account's future ratings.

At the same time, if someone continuously used bogey accounts—accessing accounts all from the same IP address; these accounts' weights would be reduced as well.

All in all, Pei Qian wanted to eliminate as much of the subjective ratings as possible, allowing each project's ratings to be as close to its intrinsic value as possible.

Pei Qian gave Ma Yiqun and company the task of setting up the preliminary website for the moment. As Zhongdian Chinese Network had already been set up, Ma Yiqun and company were no longer as busy as before.

After the preparations for TPDb had been completed, he would then find someone suitable to manage it.

…

…

September 1st…

Fish-Catching Internet Cafe…

Qiao Liang sipped his coffee that a waiter had brought from the bar counter; he felt that his life was so relaxed and at ease.

His fans were continuously bombarding him with messages; he couldn't read all of them in time.

For the past weeks, Qiao Liang hadn't been paying much attention to his fan groups. He had been having a life-and-death battle with Repent and be Saved. Qiao Liang had to play eight hours of the game daily, and the pressure was on.

Furthermore, Repent and be Saved's gameplay couldn't be divulged; he had signed a contract and he had to keep mum.

However, Qiao Liang had recently gotten a knack of the game; and he was progressing speedily. He wasn't as pressured as before.

After briefly looking through his fans' comments and taking a break, Qiao Liang once again logged into Repent and be Saved. He was prepared to kill the Mengpo boss that he had been stuck at for a long time.

After entering the game, a new notification popped up.

"Oh, another update."

Qiao Liang was already used to this. As he was playing the developer edition of the game, Repent and be Saved's project team was continuously making changes to the game; and there would be new updates daily.

There were both major and minor updates. Minor updates were just a few hundred kilobytes and might be regarding the addition of a new configuration table; major updates could actually be up to a few hundred megabytes and would be updating an entire new setting.

The update this round wasn't that huge. As the internet cafe's internet speed was very fast, it was completed in a few minutes.

"I wonder how much alteration has been made based on my conversation with Boss Pei the last time."

Qiao Liang actually had a little hope for this.

A week earlier, Boss Pei had come over to ask him about the game. Qiao Liang had given his opinion in detail;

The difficulty level of the starting village and town was too high. As players were entering the game for the first time and hadn't gotten used to this gameplay, they could potentially be easily dissuaded from the game. However, as one progressed in the game, it actually got easier.

What Qiao Liang hinted at was reducing the difficulty level of the game at the start while maintaining the status quo subsequently.

With regard to weapons, Qiao Liang had felt that the chopper was a very useful and agile weapon in the early to mid-stages of the game. The chopper's attack speed was fast, and its damage was high as well. Also, the crescent blade's vertical hacking was very useful.

Qiao Liang wanted to say that other less popular weapons were a little cumbersome and perhaps they could be improved on.

When the game had undergone updates the previous few times, Qiao Liang had kept his hopes up that the design team would make some changes based on these comments; however, he had been disappointed time and again.

Perhaps these changes in the balance of the game required more time and couldn't be done swiftly.

Finally, the moment Qiao Liang had been waiting for had come.

After the update was completed, Qiao Liang took a look at the update log and realized that many changes had been made to the balance of the game!

"Boss Pei is indeed a designer who is good at listening to gamers' opinions!"

Qiao Liang sighed emotively.

He opened the balance changes details page and took a good look at it. He wanted to see which unpopular weapons had been strengthened so that he could use these modified weapons to face the Mengpo boss.

"The monsters in Three-Life Stone, River of Forgetfulness, etc. have had their attack powers elevated; the type of monsters and attacking styles as well…

"Reducing the overtly high damage that the chopper has when it leveled up; to compensate for this, a slight increase in its charged-attack damage…

"Rectifying the Crescent Blade's Vertical Hacking Speed Bug…"

Such balancing changes abounded; however, most of them were weakening balances!

The weapons that Teacher Qiao had felt rather good to use have essentially all been nerfed.

The chopper's basic attack damage increase when it leveled up was <anno data-annotation-id="6b6580ff-daa8-4eca-931b-75a80185a5b8">nerfed</anno>. This way, players would no longer be able to mindlessly use the chopper all the way from early to mid-stage.

Of course, this weapon was still good to use as the charged attack damage had been increased. However, this attack required a longer charging lag time; and the chopper's nimbleness would be blunted. Using it would now require more technique.

The same thing happened with the crescent blade. After removing the bug that made its vertical hacking strike so quickly, Qiao Liang couldn't mindlessly use this attack continuously on monsters. He needed more skill for this now.

Naturally, as for whether this had been a bug or not, only Pei Qian himself knew.

Qiao Liang was in a daze. He couldn't believe his eyes.

"All the weapons that I felt were good to use… have been nerfed? How am I supposed to kill Mengpo today? I might not even be able to defeat some puny monsters!"

Qiao Liang looked at his leveled-up chopper and crescent blade as he sat in his chair.

It felt like he was all back at square one!

His coffee no longer smelled fragrant.

Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing?

Qiao Liang felt a deep sense of confusion and despondence.

<annotations style="display: none;"><ol class="tinymce-annotation-container"><li data-annotation-id="6b6580ff-daa8-4eca-931b-75a80185a5b8">'Nerf' is a game slang for 'becoming too weak'.</li></ol></annotations>",