105: Chapter 105 The Battlefield King Defeated on the First Day

Old Chu sat in his chair, feeling as if the very air had gone quiet.

This time, it wasn't even just the game crashing or failing to load; the entire computer had completely frozen and rebooted.

You have to understand, he had just re-downloaded the game, not used the version pre-installed in the internet cafe. Once the computer rebooted, any game re-downloaded like this would have its data wiped, requiring another download.

After a long silence, Old Chu turned his head to look at the Internet Cafe Manager.

The Internet Cafe Manager's expression froze, an awkward look appearing on his face. "Th-this is just a coincidence, it really is just a coincidence."

Before Old Chu could even speak, someone on the other side of the internet cafe suddenly shouted. "I got in!" "I got into alliance of valiant arms!" "It's loading the rookie training!"

Old Chu stood up abruptly, his chair sliding half a meter across the floor. Ignoring the Internet Cafe Manager, he ran straight over. If he couldn't play it himself, he at least wanted to see how others were playing it.

A large crowd had already gathered there. Old Chu pushed into the throng and saw on that person's screen that the loading screen for the alliance of valiant arms rookie training had indeed appeared, and it hadn't frozen at the main menu.

A few seconds later, the rookie training loaded successfully. Old Chu and the others kept their eyes glued to the screen, afraid of missing any information.

The guy took a deep breath. Just as he prepared to move the mouse to take a few steps, the screen stuttered and experienced a Flash, though it was still barely playable.

The crowd fell silent. The guy continued to move forward. He moved again. Then it froze. Two or three seconds later, the image jumped to the next position.

He tried clicking the mouse to fire a shot. Two seconds later, da da da. The sound of gunfire rang out, and the bullets flew onto the target. The crowd was silent.

The guy tried a few more times—reloading, aiming, firing another shot—but every time it was like a slideshow, the frames stuttering for half a second before freezing again.

He endured it for several minutes before suddenly throwing his mouse forward and leaning back in his chair. "Fuck!" "My computer restarted three times! I finally got in, and it's lagging like this piece of trash!" "This is just the rookie training, not even a real match, and firing at a row of targets is lagging this badly!" "What a piece of garbage!"

The few people gathered behind sighed and dispersed one after another. Old Chu also returned to his seat. His computer had already rebooted, but he didn't click on the alliance of valiant arms icon again.

"How is this game so poorly optimized?" Chen Yang leaned back in his chair and turned his head to look at him. "Come play crossfire, it's so satisfying." "It blew me away."

Old Chu leaned back in his chair, not moving. He had been so stubborn earlier; going to play crossfire now would be a bit embarrassing. "Shooting games are all the same, they're pretty much the same." "How could it be as satisfying as you say?"

Chen Yang didn't explain much. He stood up, took off his own headset, and hung it on Old Chu's head. Then, he bent down to operate the mouse and clicked for the next round. As soon as the loading screen ended, Chen Yang's character rushed out of the spawn point, M4A1 in hand, and charged into the fray.

Very quickly, the sounds of "Double Kill," "Monster Kill," and "Head Shot" rang out in Old Chu's ears, one after another. Again and again. Listening to this intense kill feedback and sound effects, Old Chu sat there, his breathing quickening. These sound effects were indeed quite satisfying.

Just after another kill streak, Chen Yang took the headset off Old Chu's head and said, "You try it, the controls aren't complicated." "I'll teach you how to camp." "If you can't get into alliance of valiant arms, just wait for now; try it again after the developers optimize it." "For now, don't waste your internet cafe fees, come play crossfire with me!"

This time, Old Chu didn't hesitate. He clicked on the crossfire icon in his computer's game menu. It wasn't just Old Chu. Basically, all the players in the internet cafe gave up on alliance of valiant arms. Soon, the only screens in the internet cafe were displaying crossfire and league of legends.

Meanwhile, after the two games officially launched their open betas, countless players across Great Xia logged in at the same time. Regardless of whether they initially supported alliance of valiant arms or crossfire, everyone wanted to test these two head-to-head shooting games to see which was more fun.

But quickly, a large number of players discovered that alliance of valiant arms was simply unplayable. Tencent Group's servers hadn't crashed, but the specifications of the vast majority of internet cafes and home computers across the country couldn't handle the game, getting stuck on the loading screen with repeated error messages.

Some people managed to get in with great difficulty, but the rookie training ran like a slideshow, let alone the actual player-versus-player matches. The only ones who could run alliance of valiant arms smoothly were the few players with high-end computer configurations.

Searching for alliance of valiant arms online mostly yielded videos from various streamers. This was because these gaming streamers had top-tier computer configurations due to their high-quality streaming equipment. As for ordinary players, almost everyone experienced lag.

Just one hour into the open beta, a topic surged onto the Weibo trending list: "Can't get into alliance of valiant arms." It was followed by a red "Hot" label.

The comment section was flooded in less than half an hour. "The graphics are indeed good, but what's the use if you can't get in?" "My computer can run CS, it can run league of legends, and it can run crossfire, but it just can't run alliance of valiant arms." "Does Tencent Group think every internet cafe in the country has top-tier specs? Did they consider the feelings of ordinary players? Not everyone is a streamer." "I restarted four times before getting in, and it's lagging like a PowerPoint presentation. How is this playable?"

The internet was filled with cursing for a time. A large number of players swarmed into the official Weibo comment section of alliance of valiant arms. In the morning of the first day of the open beta, it was bombarded with hundreds of thousands of angry comments.

At 12:00 PM that day, the official alliance of valiant arms Weibo account posted an emergency announcement. "To all players." "We have noticed widespread reports of game compatibility issues, with some hardware configurations unable to run the game smoothly." "In order to provide a better gaming experience for all players, alliance of valiant arms will temporarily suspend services to undergo re-optimization and adaptation." "The specific reopening time will be announced later; claimed first-day rewards will be retained until the servers reopen." "We ask for your understanding."

After this announcement was released, the comment section didn't quiet down; instead, it exploded again. "Suspending service to redo it, haha, that means this whole month was a waste of waiting." "What did you optimize before the open beta?" "I'm already playing crossfire, it's great, I'm not waiting for you guys anymore."

From the moment alliance of valiant arms announced the temporary suspension, the number of players logging into crossfire continued to grow. Many players who were originally on the fence all flooded toward crossfire. After all, alliance of valiant arms was unplayable, and crossfire was their only choice.

At 12:00 AM that night, the official crossfire Weibo account released its battle report for the first day of the open beta. "crossfire first day of open beta, number of logged-in players: 3.3 million!"

Once this first-day data was released, it instantly shocked countless players. Even though crossfire only held its open beta in Great Xia, the topic of 3.3 million players on the first day sparked discussions among many players overseas. This was simply because this record had surpassed the 3 million from the previous dota 2 open beta and the 3.2 million from heroes of the storm, becoming the best first-day open beta performance for any online game globally.

You have to understand that a 10-to-1 ratio between pre-registered players and first-day logged-in players is already quite exaggerated. Back then, dota 2 and heroes of the storm had 50 million global pre-registrations, yet only had 3 million players on the first day. Meanwhile, crossfire had 25 million pre-registrations and achieved a first-day result of 3.3 million; this figure is quite exaggerated.

Although many of these players came for the league of legends skins, the retention rate of these players in crossfire was incredibly high. After all, before this, no shooting game could provide such satisfying shooting and kill feedback. crossfire discarded many competitive design elements, such as the weapon purchasing and economic systems from CS; everything was aimed at simplification and towards being satisfying.

For a time, the trending topic on Weibo quickly changed from "Can't get into alliance of valiant arms" to "crossfire 3.3 million on the first day." The tone of the comment sections was completely different. "To be honest, crossfire is really too satisfying. I really didn't expect that a game with such simple graphics could make getting kills feel so comfortable." "How does this game make the kill feedback feel so satisfying?"

Originally, many players felt that this should be another battle between similar games, much like the previous three-way struggle of MOBA games, and that at least alliance of valiant arms and crossfire would be fighting each other for a long time. But no one expected that this time, let alone the first day of the open beta, even within the first hour of the open beta, crossfire would crush alliance of valiant arms. After all, alliance of valiant arms was simply unplayable! And how can a game you can't even get into compare to crossfire?

On the second day of the two games' open betas, at the Tencent Group headquarters, the meeting room door was closed, but constant arguing could be heard coming from inside. Pony Ma slammed the files in his hand onto the table. He was so angry that the veins on the back of his hands were bulging one by one.

"You didn't notice this configuration issue at all before?" He looked up at Vice President Chen Yongnian. "Did you or did you not run tests before the open beta? Don't you know what the average configuration of internet cafes across the country is?" "If they can't even get into the game, how do you expect players across the country to play?"

Vice President Chen Yongnian stood there, his lips moving slightly, his forehead covered in sweat. "In South Korea, most computer configurations can run this game smoothly." "We verified this point before." He paused. "So I thought there wouldn't be any problems domestically; after all, no matter how bad internet cafe configurations are, they shouldn't be that bad."

He swallowed hard. "But I really didn't expect that the configurations of most internet cafes in the country are indeed very low, the level of adoption is far from sufficient, and it is a huge gap compared to the internet cafe configurations in South Korea." "Furthermore." "The hardware threshold requirements for this game are indeed very high, and our optimization wasn't done very well, which led to the current situation." "This point is a mistake in our work."

However, Vice President Chen Yongnian immediately continued, "But the potential of this game is still very great. The only problem is the high configuration. Those high-end players and streamers who managed to get into the game have rated it very highly." "We just need to optimize the underlying logic and lower the game's configuration requirements."

Pony Ma took a deep breath, suppressing his anger. "How long will it take?" Vice President Chen Yongnian answered immediately. "Our team is still estimating the average configuration of internet cafes nationwide, but reducing the threshold requirements for alliance of valiant arms from the root will still require a lot of work." He opened the report in his hand. "Conservatively estimated, it will take at least a month."

Pony Ma was silent for a long time. "A month." "After a month, crossfire will have already occupied the entire market."

Vice President Chen Yongnian hurriedly replied, "I believe alliance of valiant arms can win back the market!" "And during this month, before the official optimized version is launched, we can set up a special internal test server exclusively for streamers on Douyu and Huya." "Let these streamers start streaming the game to maintain its popularity." "I will have them fully promote the Tank Mode, as well as the graphical advantages of alliance of valiant arms; these are things that crossfire doesn't have, and they are very attractive." He looked up at Pony Ma. "By then, I believe we can still attract back quite a few players." "Based on the quality of the game itself, alliance of valiant arms will definitely be able to snatch back the users from crossfire!"

Pony Ma was silent for a good while. Finally, he nodded. "This is the only way."

That night, the official alliance of valiant arms Weibo account released a new announcement. "One month from now, alliance of valiant arms will return, and all first-day rewards will be doubled! The brand new optimized version will be compatible with low-configuration models." Although the cursing online was still there, there had been some changes under this announcement; many players were still willing to give alliance of valiant arms a chance. After all, this time Tencent Group was giving too much!

Meanwhile, just one hour after alliance of valiant arms released its announcement, the official crossfire Weibo account also released a new announcement, previewing the next update. "One month later." "crossfire will launch the Zombie Mode." "Stay tuned!"