```
7:00 PM.
As players gradually logged off, the official game forum started bustling with activity.
It had been 12 hours since the Alpha 0.3 version had launched, and everyone, from those who had pre-registered but hadn't received access to those backseat drivers who hadn't bothered to pre-register, was waiting for the firsthand scoop on the new update.
After delivering a meal to his little sister Xia Yan, Chu Guang hummed a tune as he returned to his computer, sat down, and opened up the forum to lurk.
The first post he saw was from Trash King.
"Finally confirmed today! The tire factory three kilometers north of the abandoned construction site is a Raider Camp! The numbers are roughly between 50 to 100! I wanted to capture a prisoner, but they turned out to be too many. Fortunately, they were clearly startled by me, too. I knocked out a dog that bit my arm with a slap and escaped while they were reloading."
"Damn, that mutt almost bit off my tail! The Raiders I encountered this time are way fiercer than the last!"
Chu Guang: "..."
What this post described didn't quite match what he'd heard half an hour ago.
Chu Guang remembered this guy saying that he hadn't actively provoked the Raiders. The injuries he suffered were because he had run into a Raider patrol on his way back.
But according to the post, it sounded like he had initiated an attack in an attempt to take a prisoner.
This kid wasn't telling the truth.
Chu Guang thought it over for a moment and shook his head.
Whatever, it's not important.
The first posts that come out are usually not very informative.
The regulars on the forum had been hearing Trash King blow hot air about that Raider Camp for almost three days. And after three days of squatting, he ended up fleeing in a rout.
Everyone expressed their inability to accept this in the thread.
Quit Smoking: "What's with this 50 to 100 range, how many exactly were there? You're even worse than Teletubby as a scout."
Elena: "Unzipped my pants but didn't fart, eh, just messing around. (smug)"
Grandpa Ao: "Trash, you got scared for nothing if there weren't even a hundred of them! Couldn't you have just kited them? Kill one at a time, repeat a few times, and they'd be wiped out, wouldn't they? Pah, what am I even talking about. This damn game doesn't even exist!"
All the good names were taken by dogs: "Move around! Noob!"
Si Si: "Can't even beat the mobs with a special class, that's just embarrassing! Better let me play!"
Pick Up Trash 99 Level: "??? Can you show me how to move? Damn it! Even the mobs know tactical flanking, alternating fire, and they even unleash dogs, can you believe that?!"
Quit Smoking: "I would love to! Give me your account, I'll show you how it's done."
Pick Up Trash 99 Level: "I'm so green!"
The thread had completely veered off course, turning into a verbal brawl led by Brother Lizards, reminiscent of the time when Crow gave away his account and clashed with a crowd of players.
But no matter how he described the situation, he couldn't change the reality in the backseat drivers' minds that he was labeled as a newbie.
Perhaps, only after the photo-taking feature was implemented, could he prove his innocence.
Chu Guang was very aware of the Raiders' combat power.
These people might not have the best gear or the best physical fitness, and their discipline was as bad as goblins from a fantasy world, but their street-fighting talent was nearly maxed out.
After all, from the first year of the Wasteland Era, these people had never ceased battling, with the gene for pillaging already fused into their blood and marrow, passed down through countless generations.
```
After revisiting the elegant Mandarin in the post by Garbage King, Chu Guang closed the thread and continued browsing the forum.
It had been a while since the players had logged off, and a flood of quality content had started to emerge.
To Chu Guang's surprise, this quality content featured many new faces he hadn't seen before.
For example, an ID called "Escaping Mole from the Canyon."
Chu Guang checked his profile and found that he was a newcomer who entered the game in the Alpha0.2 version.
Based on his historical posts, it could be deduced that he found the official Wasteland OL website through a link shared by a friend, after the urban legend that circulated in the single-player game community.
In a nutshell, he was also someone who had free time at night.
"Mole Express: Hardcore Observations on the New Version! Backseat Drivers and Newbies, Please Detour!"
"Hello everyone, I'm your Big-Nosed Mole, and today after I logged in, I found that the game had undergone major changes. The production team finally delivered a small piece of their promised big pie, and I absolutely love the new version! Yay!"
"Let's start with the conclusion: I'm utterly blown away by the new economic system designed this time! Although currently, there are only a few simple supply chains, the details are enough to glimpse the ambition of the production team! They are indeed playing a big game!"
"But I won't blow smoke here; I'll just talk about my findings, which might help you out!"
"Currently, there are 2 recognized low-threshold, high-return ways to make money in the game: one is to burn cement, and the other is hunting. The former offers stable income and can be done solo but requires competition for positions since there aren't many daily openings. The latter provides unstable income, needs equipment, and is nearly impossible to solo, so if you want to take the hunter path, it's best to form a team with players who have Perception-based vehicles!"
"Burning cement doesn't require much skill, so let's focus on the hunter gameplay here!"
"A 30-kilogram mutated hyena, can be sold directly to the granary for 5 silver coins, and with some time spent on butchering, you can get 12 kilograms of raw meat, which instantly values at 40 silver coins. Isn't that amazing?"
"Of course, I'm talking about value here! Value! Emphasize that point."
"The granary at the Outpost doesn't accept raw meat; they only take unprocessed prey and directly preservable dried meat. And like in other games, NPCs' shops have sell-buy price differentials. For instance, dried meat, buying a kilogram costs you 5 silver coins, but selling it back gets you only 1 silver coin per kilogram, a five-fold price difference. Talk about reasonable!"
"If you hunt and make dried meat to sell to NPCs, at least you can earn more. But if you buy raw meat from NPC shops to smoke yourself, you could even end up losing money!"
"But actually, it's not so bad. I've seen worse in other games, so this is nothing. Especially in online games, where something that cost you 1000 game currency can only be sold for 1 game currency, that's basic. The brilliance of the game designer here is that they use the differential between buying and selling commodities at NPC shops to encourage player-to-player trade, rather than purchasing stock from NPCs."
"Here's a little tip: hunting teams could collaborate with one or two players to butcher their prey and turn it into dried meat and fur."
"A portion of the dried meat can be sold to players at prices lower than the granary's. You divide a kilogram into ten portions and sell them for 1~9 silver coins, depending on you and the buyer's wallet. Even if it doesn't all sell, you can offload it to the granary before dark and make a profit."
"After this operation, though it takes a bit more time, the theoretical income from a single mutated hyena can at least double. Isn't that wonderful?"
"Extending this further, based on my research, running a commercial team is also a gameplay method, but it seems too difficult and unprofitable for the time being. An NPC shop charges 5 silver coins per kilogram of smoked meat, which when transported to Brown Farm can be exchanged for 5 kilograms of grain (in theory). But that same grain only values at 5 silver coins when transported back to the Outpost! And that's just the selling price at the NPC shop! The buying price is even lower! Whether you sell to NPCs or to players, it's a big loss."
"Considering that the current expansion is named 'Winter is Coming,' it seems the production team isn't testing the focus on the trade system. I'm very much looking forward to the next version, where the production team might develop the trade system as a key feature."
"An economic system that has only domestic sales and no exports is incomplete. Wouldn't it be more interesting to balance production and import/export relationships through tariffs and price control? Please consider this, production team! If the server CPU can handle it!"
After reading the post, Chu Guang gave it a like but didn't comment.
The idea was good, but it wasn't very meaningful at this stage.
Keyboard economists often fall into the idealist's fallacy, and grand narratives do not help solve current problems.
From the perspective of planners and players, these suggestions to enhance game playability are indeed nice.
But from the perspective of the Manager at Shelter No. 404, it was a different story.
To Chu Guang, everything in the shelter, including the players' bodies, belonged to him. So why should he let them use his stuff to trade with his neighbors?
Unless they could do it better than himself.
But that was obviously impossible.
Even Chu Guang himself often faced exclusion and suspicion from some of the scavengers on Bet Street because of his accent, and due to his lack of understanding of the market and rules, his previous life's sales experience was utterly useless.
This is the Wasteland.
A dystopian conglomerate composed of human scum and villains.
Compared to the rule-abiding bankers or economists, the degenerates who deal in ships and the swindlers peddling bad financial derivatives fare much better.
Letting players trade with these local tycoons wouldn't guarantee they could put even 1% of their eloquence to use, and even if they could, so what?
Might as well bring a few more guns along.
Chu Guang suddenly understood the Old Leech—oh no, the old mayor of Bet Street.
The guy was indeed no good, his eating manners were atrocious, and his exploitation was solely for pleasure, without any long-term planning for the future of Bet Street.
But if you let scavengers trade directly with the merchants, those poor souls would only be squeezed even harder.
This isn't just about ignorance.
Only the naively optimistic would believe that merchants from Giant Stone City would be any kinder than the rural local tycoons.
It's like comparing bats and leeches to see which one is a better sucker.
"Encouraging players to trade with the indigenous forces is meaningless. Every bulk export trade must be under regulation. For example; establishing a permanent commercial team, planning routes and trade varieties, setting listed commodity prices, players providing armed escorts for the transport, NPCs handling transactions, with a payout of fifty-fifty or thirty-seventy...This could also cater to the less hardcore players, simplifying trading procedures."
"However, tariffs are indeed a good idea, that's worth noting! In the future, based on real needs, we may consider allowing external NPCs to directly participate in the players' markets... provided that they barter, or use the money of the shelter."
And all under supervision.
"Free Trade?"
"Heh."
"When I need you guys to fight, I'll naturally tell you who to trade with freely."
Aside from the "Canyon Escaping Mole's" strategy posts, there were also tutorials on building houses by Earth Dog, and discussions among Metallurgy Dogs about how to use limited materials to efficiently make steel.
Some people chatted until they threw links to Station N, Island A, switched places to continue the discussion, and unexpectedly brought a decent new traffic flow to the website.
Regarding the urban legend of "complete immersive virtual reality games," there are signs of continual expansion. Although the vast majority took it as a bluff, a small few took it seriously, clicking on the reservation button with a half-joking mindset.
The number of reservations was steadily increasing.
What surprised Chu Guang was that Long Days Ahead, who usually had the highest popularity and "understood him best," hadn't shared any game insights on the forum this time.
The sun must have risen from the west today.
As Chu Guang was browsing the forum, the Bull and Horse Club group chat was boiling with excitement.
Although Brother Guang hadn't shown up these days, the topics in the group were mostly about Wasteland OL.
At least they were in the morning.
Old White: "Fang Chang, have you seen that post on the official forum? The one written by the Big-Nosed Mole."
Wild Wind: "His name is Canyon Escaping Mole."
Old White: "Not important!"
Fang Chang: "Saw it, the method proposed in that post is interesting, but it's not very meaningful."
Old White: "Ah? I think it's quite good! Selling a hunted animal directly to an NPC earns you five silver coins, find someone to butcher and air-dry it all in one go, and it's worth at least twice as much."
Fang Chang: "Heh, theory is just theory, but he overlooked the existence of contribution points."
Night Ten: "What do you mean?"
Fang Chang: "You can understand a citizen's identity as having a deep-city household registration, and contribution points as residency scores."
Wild Wind: "Awesome, that analogy's pretty snazzy..."
Fang Chang: "Same idea. Among all the players right now, aside from a few of us who upgraded to a citizen, only Mosquito, the woodworker, and Teng Teng, the tailor, might barely scrape together 2000 points. In other words, besides these six people, everyone else needs to grind for contribution points, upgrade to citizen, then think about making money."
You can only buy land after becoming a citizen.
Even an idiot would realize that the earlier you get in, the better the plots you can buy.
Fang Chang: "Once you've understood this, analyze everything else. Out of these six people, who do you think is suitable to be a butcher? Any of you have butchering experience?"
Old White: "Er, that's indeed a problem."
Night Ten: "I mean, is butchering that hard?"
Wild Wind: "...Anyone who has ever bought groceries at the supermarket wouldn't ask such a question."
Fang Chang: "Night Ten is still in school, it's normal for him to have little life experience. Take the strategy post mentioned, it's not really viable for now. We need to find another vendor, a butcher, split the revenue six ways, we might not necessarily earn more."
"Actually, I crunched the numbers a while ago, just didn't mention it. When Tomato and Egg rises to a citizen, we might try talking to him about cooperation, though I don't hold out much hope."
Night Ten: "Why?"
Fang Chang: "Are you daft? Why would he cooperate with us? Save up money, buy a piece of land, open a restaurant, and by the way, take on a butchering business—doesn't that sound great?"
Old White: "Damn! Now that you mention it, if you had butchering and cooking skills, you'd make a killing in this game!"
Fang Chang: "Only say that it is so for now, wait a bit and it might not be."
Fang Chang: "Our top priority is to level up and then improve proficiency. Life skills gameplay in any open-world game is relatively easy to monetize at the start, but in the mid to late game, the first echelon will always be the real power players!"
Wild Wind: "Alas, you really got this gaming thing figured out... I can never wrap my head around why you don't become a professional gamer."
Fang Chang: "Had no chance before, now, heh, I feel the opportunity has come."
Pick-up Trash 99 Level: "Boss! Take my knees!"
WC has a Real Mosquito: "Take me with you!"
Fang Chang: "Sure, haha! We're all in one group, we might as well call our guild Bull and Horse Club!"
Old White: "Ahem, maybe we should change the name?"
Night Ten: "Change it to what? This name sounds great. (Funny)"
Fang Chang: "Whether we change the name or not doesn't matter. But I'm telling you, Mosquito, you're probably close to having enough points, but Trash Jr., you've been hunting these past few days, so you're probably a bit short. Your first priority now is to upgrade to citizen, get that done and then save money! Later we pool together and build right in front of the respawn point. The first floor for street-facing shops, second and third floors divided into one large suite per person, wouldn't that be wonderful?"
Old White: "That's going to be our guild base! (Excited)"
WC has a Real Mosquito: "Brother's steady!"
Pick-up Trash 99 Level: "6666!"
Quit Smoking: "Damn! I really wanna play so badly!!! T.T"
-
(Thanks to "Big Green Peanut Bar" for the bounty! ~~~~)