Chapter 131 Valentine's Day and the New Year

Valentine's Day, also the New Year... It had only been a few days, and everyone's lives were back on track.

Xiao Tan and Xiao Ling returned from Europe before the seventh day of the Lunar New Year.

Feng Bujue asked Xiao Tan why he didn't take his wife on a honeymoon. Xiao Tan replied, "Actually, if you love the right person, every day is Valentine's Day." Then Jue-ge unleashed a combo on Xiao Tan that you wouldn't even see in a fighting game.

Later, Feng Bujue heard from Ruo Yu that there were two reasons for this: first, their families and friends had basically come to the wedding, and everyone had a good time together, so they didn't need to visit relatives during the New Year; second, the probability of supernatural phenomena occurring around the New Year would greatly increase, which meant... Division Nine would be very busy. So, Xiao Tan, the newly joined "intern" of Division Nine, was called back by Chief Gu to "practice and learn" with Bao Qing and Qi Zhi.

After explaining these two objective reasons, Ruo Yu added, "Besides, as long as the couple is in love, every day is a honeymoon. Haven't you heard the saying, 'Actually, if you love the right person, every day is Valentine's Day'?"

Hearing this, Feng Bujue immediately retorted, "Shouldn't you guys know that you're just quoting lyrics when you say such things with such confidence? And that song is clearly called 'Happy Breakup'! And... you're the least qualified to quote that sentence, okay! You're sealed, what love are you discussing with me?"

After he finished speaking, Ruo Yu unleashed a combo on him that you wouldn't even see in a fighting game.

............

In short, the year passed in such a harmonious atmosphere.

During the New Year period, Dream Inc. also closed down as previously announced—from New Year's Eve until the sixth day of the Lunar New Year.

Originally, Feng Bujue didn't think there was anything wrong with the game company taking a vacation for the New Year, but after chatting with Ruo Yu, combined with the statement that "the probability of various supernatural phenomena occurring around the New Year will greatly increase"... this vacation seemed even more reasonable.

In any case, at midnight on the seventh day of the Lunar New Year, Thriller Paradise, Crazy Thinking, and Dream Inc.'s online store reopened on time without missing a second.

At the same time, the announcement that had been released at the end of last month and had been hanging on the homepage of the official website: [The preliminary selection rules for Thriller Paradise's "Peak Hegemony s3" will be announced after the New Year] was finally replaced.

The content that replaced it was precisely the competition instructions related to Peak Hegemony s3.

The "mixed long-term competition system of individuals and teams" that had been pondered by major studios for nearly a month finally surfaced.

As with the previous two times, this competition system once again surprised people.

First, to participate in s3, teams must be formed, with the number of team members limited to seven, with no substitutes.

Second, s3 actually "had no preliminaries," or rather, its "preliminary selection process" had already begun at a time when everyone was completely unaware...

Nearly a year after the game's launch, Dream Inc. announced a shocking setting: in fact, from the earliest internal testing version, Thriller Paradise had always had a built-in "hidden score" mechanism. This mechanism would give each character a certain score based on their "performance" in the script, and this score... this score that the player themselves didn't even know was actually one of the important bases for the system to generate the script process, that is to say... it was directly related to the difficulty of the script that the player was matched to.

The "hidden score" was not the same concept as the game's early "player combat power ranking" or the later "player comprehensive strength ranking"; for example, "a level one player killing a reinforced zombie with bare hands" and "a level fifty player using all their strength to fight a small boss alone" These two things, aside from factors such as level, equipment, and skills, are about the same in terms of difficulty experience from the perspective of the parties involved; although the two players are far apart in terms of "combat power" or "comprehensive strength," the hidden score evaluation obtained by this behavior will not be much different.

In addition, the "hidden score" calculates the "average score" rather than the total score, which does not mean that you can brush more points by clearing more scripts; according to Dream Inc.'s attitude, this score is the most accurate score for the system to judge the player's "comprehensive ability," because it is a scoring mechanism that has nothing to do with equipment or skills, and purely looks at the player's "performance."

Of course, players who occupy a high position on the strength leaderboard generally do not have low hidden scores; even if a large part of professional players' "hard power" can be supported by the studio, if their own ability is not good, they will naturally not get so many resources.

So... now let's go back to the "no preliminaries" thing, it's easier to explain.

Different from the previous two competitions, which set both a "threshold" and held "preliminaries," this time's s3, as long as you cross the "threshold," it's the quarter-finals.

And this threshold is—[The total hidden score of all seven members of the team exceeds 500]. Teams that meet this condition can directly enter the elimination stage.

What is the general concept of this "500 points"? According to the big data released by Dream Inc. this time, excluding players below level 10 whose scores are still unstable, the average hidden score of Thriller Paradise players is 62 points; anyone whose hidden score is higher than this score can be regarded as having a level above the average.

Looking at it this way, even if there are seven players who just reach the average level, the total score of the team is already 434. Of course, such strength is not enough to qualify for the competition...

To participate in the s3 competition, the average hidden score of the seven members of a team must reach at least 71.43. Since the score does not count decimal points, it is basically the standard of 72 points per person.

Compared with s1 and s2, this time's "threshold" has been lowered in a sense; if there is someone in a team with a particularly high score, such as a hidden score of over 100, then the requirements for others will become correspondingly looser, which makes it possible for some people with insufficient hidden scores of 72 to participate.

After talking about the threshold, let's talk about the competition system.

The s3 competition system is very simple, taking the form of an elimination tournament. In each round, all participating teams will be paired up for a duel. The losing team will be directly eliminated, and the winning team will advance until the last team remains, which is naturally the champion.

The matching method is "completely random," that is to say... even if the probability is very low, it is not impossible for a duel like "Order vs. Gods" to occur in the first round.

Also, if the total number of teams is odd in any round, then after the random matching is completed, the odd team will receive a bye and automatically advance.

Such regulations... undoubtedly increase a lot of randomness. A very likely situation is that the professional strong teams under the studio will encounter each other in the first round and one side will be eliminated, while some teams composed of casual players will rely on defeating opponents who are worse than themselves, or byes... to go further than the strong teams.

The major game studios are definitely quite critical of this; but relatively speaking, the majority of players are happy to see it.

There is a type of game in this world that specializes in profiting by squeezing the money of 1% of the hardcore players. The gameplay of this type of game is secondary, and the experience that players gain is entirely determined by the amount of money invested. In addition to those players who invest a lot of money, the remaining 99% of casual players are one of the functions provided by the game company to the hardcore players; for games like this, the operators don't need to consider the experience or opinions of casual players too much, anyway, after making a quick buck, they close the server, change the shell after a while, and launch another game with a different name but the same content, and make another round of money.

But... Thriller Paradise is not such a game.

After the s1 and s2 competitions, Dream Inc. discovered a problem—in the competition, the "sense of participation" of ordinary players was too low.

According to the previous competition system, the vast majority of non-professional players were brushed off in the preliminary stage. Except for extreme special cases like "Hell's Frontline," other casual players... whether individual or team, even if they entered the quarter-finals, they would be eliminated in the first round. It can be said that from the quarter-finals onwards, the competition completely became a duel between various studios and individual professional players.

Although this is also a normal phenomenon, and players also like to watch this kind of high-level competition, Dream Inc. still feels... that it needs to be changed.

Therefore, this new competition system, while ensuring that the level of participating players is "above average," gives a lot of room for performance to the 99% of casual players; the point that "the strongest team will win" has not changed, what is different is... this time, all kinds of teams, those casual players and oddball players who were difficult to advance in the previous competition system, have the opportunity to appear.

Finally, let's talk about the specific form of the competition.

"Peak Hegemony," as the name suggests, from s1 onwards, the theme of the competition has been combat, and this time is no exception.

s3 will adopt a duel mode similar to s1's "Butterfly Battle," and a competition system like the tennis team competition.

That is: three singles matches, two doubles matches, best of five games.

The first match is the 1v1 "vanguard battle."

The second match is the 2v2 "mid-guard battle."

The third match returns to 1v1, called the "deputy general battle."

At this point, if one team has already won three games, then the competition is over, and the last two games do not need to be played.

If the winner has not yet been determined, then the next is the fourth game, the 2v2 "vice-general battle."

If the first four games are tied at two to two, there is still one last game—the "general battle."

Counting it this way... it takes exactly seven people to play all five games.

In addition, although the order of the above five battles is fixed, the positions of the team members can be changed in each match. For example, the person who serves as the vanguard in this match can be the general in the next match, or can play doubles, there is no restriction; but... the lineup arrangement for each match must be submitted within ten minutes before the start of the match, and once the list is confirmed, it cannot be changed.

Seeing this, many people must have thought of... everyone has heard the story of "Tian Ji's Horse Race," if you can guess the other party's lineup arrangement before the match, then it is not impossible to win the strong with the weak. As with s2, the match list for each round will be announced the day before the match or even earlier. This period of time is for both teams to conduct information warfare and lineup games.

The above is pretty much the first wave of news about Peak Hegemony s3 released by Dream Inc.

Feng Bujue went to check the relevant rules as soon as possible this time, but after reading them, a problem immediately appeared before him—Hell's Frontline now has a total of only six people, where should he go to find that seventh member?