Chapter 448 - 277: So What Is the Price? (2)

"Uh..."

Chen Ba hesitated after hearing this and said, "Is this what they call a Minotaur?"

"Cough cough, you’re really twisted."

Yang Dong coughed and couldn’t help explaining, "But it’s exactly for the reason you said. People are really into possessing other players’ characters."

Even if it costs several hundred bucks, or leaves them with a severely injured character, it’s all worth it.

"So... should we replace this driver or not?"

Lu, listening on the side, felt speechless. Weren’t we discussing solutions? How did Ba and Dong end up talking about Minotaurs?

Replace the driver or not?

Chen Ba hesitated on this matter.

If it were a few minutes ago, he would definitely support replacing the driver, given that the Iron Fool System’s driver had already caused such a stir.

But now he felt that this driver wasn’t absolutely necessary to replace...

"What about maintaining the status quo?"

Chen Ba pondered, "The impact of this driver bug doesn’t seem that huge, there are pros and cons."

"But it’s unfair!"

"The opposing player is possessed and has two lives, while I only have one. Isn’t that unfair to other players?"

"No, no!"

Yang Dong mused, "You only see that after the opponent triggers the driver bug and gets possessed by another player, they have two lives, but you forget that the possessed cannot see the game situation."

Being possessed, having two lives!

But after being possessed, the player controlling the character, the one initiating the possession, actually can’t see the game screen and has to play blindly.

It’s hard to say whether this is good or bad...

Two lives sound very unfair.

But if your opponent is blind and deaf, that’s another story. After all, ’Star Emperor 2’ as a fighting game depends a lot on skill.

If you can’t see, what else can you do besides defensive counterattacks?

And this can actually be avoided.

To avoid such unfair competitive conditions, just adjust the matching strategy so that players using Galaxy Peripherals are matched with players using the same equipment, and keyboard and mouse players are matched with keyboard and mouse players.

"That actually works..."

Lu thought about it. If they match separately, so Galaxy Peripherals players can only match with Galaxy Peripherals players, the so-called unfair competitive conditions would be eliminated.

In other words, everyone starts with two lives; everyone can "summon the gods"!

Then the nature of the game changes.

The original ’Star Emperor 2’ and its predecessor ’Star Emperor’ were primarily about straightforward one-on-one duels.

But this driver bug inexplicably turned the solo duels of ’Star Emperor 2’ into 2v2 matches.

In the first round, everyone summons the gods, and it’s all about whether the gods each person summons are reliable.

Only after the summoned gods leave does the actual showdown between the two players begin.

Anyway, everyone has two lives and will be possessed by others, so the situation of two lives against one doesn’t exist anymore.

"Hey! Wait a minute..."

As if realizing something, Chen Ba pensively said, "If you summon a god, the injuries received will return to the player being possessed, is that correct?"

"Exactly!"

Yang Dong and Lu nodded in unison.

Possessing other players and controlling their characters leads to divine punishment. The punishment is that all the injuries received during possession will be inflicted on oneself.

Otherwise, where would the two lives come from?

"Then if player A possesses player B and wins the match for them, raising their rank, does player A get rewards?"

Chen Ba furrowed his brows and said, "Moreover, can this mechanism be applied to official competitions?"

Take the GAL League as an example.

A team often has multiple professional players, but not all can participate in a single match.

But with this special mechanism, it seems possible to change the form of the competition, allowing multiple players from one team to successively possess the same character and then engage in a round-robin match against another team.

In this way, there is a possibility of one player taking on five, defeating an entire team...

"Multiple possessions?"

Lu was surprised and asked, "Is that even possible?"

"Of course, it is!"

When reproducing the bug, Chen Ba discovered that the possession bug caused by the driver theoretically has no limit on the number of players...

Of course, theory is just theory.

In actual situations, achieving this is quite difficult because triggering the bug requires crashing the opponent’s game first.

But in professional matches, it would be possible to call relevant data directly and forcibly create a character "possessed by five players simultaneously".

The family must be together!

Fathers and sons on the battlefield, brothers fighting tigers together, at that moment, XXX is not fighting alone. He has the will of four teammates with him!

Whoa, that’s exciting...

"It needs some tweaking so that players can see the game screen during possession."

Yang Dong explained, "Otherwise, blindly playing while summoning would probably not make the matches exciting or appealing."

"That works!"

"Not only should the screen be visible, but I think there can be some tweaks to feedback during hits."

Inspired, Chen Ba said, "For example, if I land a solid punch in your chest, everyone else possessing you would feel the punch too."

Who said one slap can’t make a sound?

Just kidding!

This guy can slap four or five people at once; isn’t that awesome?

"Uh..."

Yang Dong stayed silent, but Lu on the side already envisioned a humorous scene.

The Intel Team vs. NVIDIA Team, the much-hyped "Double-Intel Derby" is about to begin!

OK!

From the NVIDIA team, player Zhang San executes a Thunderbolt Fist aimed directly at Intel team’s player Li Si.

Oh my god! The punch hits perfectly, and player Li Si suffers a "catastrophic blow," losing the ability to act...

As the camera pans, all five players from the Intel team simultaneously clutch their... areas, experiencing the feedback of the blow almost in unison, not a single one missing out.

It’s a pity the Galaxy Set doesn’t include sensitive parts.

However, Lu thinks if they really implement Ba’s suggestion, it might result in a comically outrageous scene where one devastating strike injures five players.

"But speaking of which..."

Yang Dong scratched his head and said, "If I remember correctly, this possession thing seems to heavily rely on hardware performance?"

"Right!"

Without Yang Dong mentioning it, Chen Ba immediately recalled.

This possession bug caused by the driver also has a hidden side effect: it’s very resource-intensive on computer performance.

CPU and GPU usage would be maxed out, especially the CPU. It’s almost impossible to "summon gods" without high specs.

This is true for single possession; if multiple people possess one character simultaneously, it would undoubtedly be an epic disaster for both the possessor and the possessed players.

The computers might even start smoking.

"Really?"

"Isn’t ’Star Emperor 2’ optimized better than this? Especially considering modern PC hardware performance is so overpowered, it’s unlikely to fail, right?" Lu expressed some doubt.

"What’s the relationship between game optimization and computers being overtaxed?"

Chen Ba retorted, "What do you think possession is? Is it simply controlling another player’s character?"

It’s not that simple!

The possession caused by this driver bug seems like two players controlling one character, and that’s how it appears.

But in reality...

The two players’ characters aren’t actually the same. In the original 1v1 match, an invisible XYZ-axis overlapping character is added to the game.

In other words, this isn’t possession—it’s more like, at that moment, the character controlled by player A is "replaced" by the character controlled by player B.

Therefore, when five people possess one character, it seems like a 1v1 duel on the game screen, with no third character in the match.

But in reality, there are six characters within the game, and the real-time calculations for the game screen are processed for six players, so normal household computers can’t handle it.