Chapter 98: Customized Exclusive Version, Debuff Customization System Launched

On the third day after Lin Ye took over as the lifetime honorary planner, all members of the official planning department lined up at the entrance of the Test Server to welcome him. It wasn't that they wanted to line up, but the CEO had personally given the order. The newly appointed chief planner, surnamed Chen, wore thick-framed glasses and held a thick stack of version planning documents. Standing at the very front of the line, his expression looked exactly like an elementary school student called up to the blackboard by a teacher.

"Brother Ye, these are all the planning documents for the next three versions: the Abyss Council expansion pack, the cross-server battlefield expansion, and the Star Core Alliance prequel story." Lead Planner Chen's hands were trembling as he handed over the documents. "The CEO said that all plans must be reviewed by you first. We only proceed if you say it's okay; if you say no, we scrap it and start over."

Lin Ye took the documents without flipping through them and placed them directly on the nearby console. "That gray door in the Test Server—which of you knows what's sealed inside?"

Lead Planner Chen's face turned pale instantly. Behind him, several veteran planners looked at each other. One older planner whispered, "That really can't be touched," before a colleague pulled his sleeve. Lead Planner Chen wiped non-existent sweat from his forehead, his voice weak: "That door seals the data remnants of the Creator God Prototype; it's the core code at the very bottom of the game. Let alone us, even the previous chief planner didn't dare touch it while in office. Once opened, the entire game's basic architecture could be affected."

Lin Ye didn't press further about the door. He simply picked up the version planning documents on the console and began flipping through them—from the BOSS stat models for the Abyss Council expansion to the map design drafts for the cross-server battlefield, and then the questline framework for the Star Core Alliance prequel. After finishing, he put the documents back on the console. "Cut all the BOSS stats for the Abyss Council expansion in half. The map design for the cross-server battlefield doesn't need changes, but shorten the distance between respawn points to thirty percent of the original. Shelve the Star Core Alliance prequel for now; free up those development resources to make something else."

Lead Planner Chen whipped out a small notebook and scribbled furiously, his pen almost smoking. "Is cutting the BOSS stats to lower the dungeon entry barrier? And shortening the respawn distance to speed up the pace of the cross-server battlefield?" Halfway through, he suddenly realized something. "You said to shelve the Star Core Alliance story... then what will the freed-up development resources be used for?"

Lin Ye leaned against the console, arms crossed over his chest. "Build a Debuff Customization System. Not the kind open only to me, but a universal system for all players across all servers. Players can customize their own exclusive, personalized debuff effects by completing daily quests, participating in cross-server activities, or paying a certain amount of Abyss Crystals. Debuffs can only be used to counter malicious behavior and cannot be used to actively attack ordinary players. If someone steals your mobs, you can slap a 'Kill-Stealer Auto-Bleed' debuff on them. If someone scams you of materials, you can apply a 'Trade Fraudster Auto-Pay Gold' debuff. Effects can stack, and the duration is determined by the number of Abyss Crystals invested, but the damage cap must be constrained by system rules."

Lead Planner Chen's pen stopped. The planning team behind him fell into a collective silence. One planner in the corner quietly crunched the numbers—if every player could customize exclusive debuffs, it meant a brand-new permission system had to be written into the game's underlying framework. The computational load would grow exponentially, server capacity would need to expand several-fold, and the workload for numerical balancing would be astronomical. Another female planner quickly opened the Test Server's numerical simulator and tapped in several preliminary parameters. The curves on the simulator jumped for a moment before an estimated result popped up. She stared at the numbers on the screen for a while, took a soft breath, and said something in a low voice that galvanized the entire planning department: "If this system goes online, daily active users are conservatively estimated to triple. With players having the ability to maintain fairness and order themselves, the volume of disputes and complaints at customer service will drop by at least half, and operating costs will shrink significantly. Numerical balancing can just be left to the system's auto-calibration module; the burden of manual intervention will actually be lighter than it is now."

Lead Planner Chen stared at the estimated result, silent for a good while. Then he closed his notebook, his voice much steadier than before: "What's the development cycle? How long will it take to build this system from scratch?"

Lin Ye picked up the Abyss Badge from the console, the energy mark on it glowing slightly warm. "A normal game development process would certainly take a long time. But now you have my Talent energy as the lifetime honorary planner, the source veins of the Lord of the Abyss, and those twelve version BOSSes in the Test Server who signed labor contracts with me. Use them to accelerate development."

Lead Planner Chen made a decision immediately: "Give me one month. No, three weeks! I'll pour in all development resources and push this system live within three weeks!"

In reality, it only took a bit over two weeks. This was because a rare ore called Abyss Source, dug up by the Lord of the Abyss from the depths of the abyss, could be used directly as the energy foundation for the system's underlying architecture, cutting the construction time for the permission system by nearly half.

On the day the new system went live, the officials set up a massive holographic demonstration stage in Dawn City's plaza. Lead Planner Chen personally went on stage to demonstrate. He opened the debuff customization panel, selected the 'Kill-Stealer Auto-Bleed' template, and invested ten Abyss Crystals to activate it. Then he had a planning colleague pose as a kill-stealer. The moment the colleague touched the demonstration mob, a dark purple debuff icon immediately popped up over his head, and his health bar began to drop at a rate of three percent per second, scaring the colleague into stopping immediately. The cheers from the surrounding solo players were deafening. The world channel was flooded with players' creative debuff templates—someone developed a 'Heartless Merchant Auto-Price Hike Invalid' template, someone else created a 'Slacker in Party Auto-Dance for Ten Minutes' template, and another researched a 'Scammer Private Message Auto-Block and Global Announcement' template.

In Seoul City Plaza on the Korean Server, Kim Hyun-tae of the Goryeo War God Temple opened his customization panel and applied a permanent passive debuff to himself—'While the Guild Leader is in office, if the ratio of guild material distribution to solo players falls below thirty percent, the leader will continuously lose health all day.' He posted a screenshot of this debuff on the Korean Server forums, and solo players lined up to give him flowers in the thread. In Edo City Plaza on the Japanese Server, Yamada Ichiro of the Sakura Shrine led all guild members to activate the same template under the neon billboards, where the slogans of Vile Power-leveling were particularly eye-catching in the night.

At the same time, the Unscrupulous Business Center's official website simultaneously launched the 'Global Protection Fee Online System.' From then on, leaders of overseas guilds no longer had to travel across servers to Dawn City to sign paper agreements; they could complete the payment of protection fees and activation of privileges online. The signing process was shortened from half a day to just three minutes. Fatty Wang's logistics team saw their workload plummet, and Su Qinghan no longer had to get up in the middle of the night to handle overseas orders.

As the night deepened, Lead Planner Chen stood before the demonstration stage for a long time until the solo players gradually dispersed. He clutched a data report in his hand. The curves on the real-time monitoring panel had soared since the system went live; within half an hour, the complaint rate for cross-server conflicts had fallen off a cliff. Over ten thousand legal debuff templates had been spontaneously created by players, and reports of malicious kill-stealing in dungeons had dropped by more than seventy percent. Looking at the numbers on the panel, he suddenly remembered the last thing the previous chief planner had said to him when handing over the work before being taken away—'Don't touch Lin Ye's bottom line, don't mess with ordinary players, and you can handle the rest as you see fit.' He hadn't fully understood then, but he did now.

In the technical department office, Ghost stared at the background data stream of the Global Protection Fee Online System on the holographic screen, his brow suddenly twitching. He noticed a very inconspicuous anomaly—within an IP address segment of a remote small town in the US Server, an account was repeatedly trying to crack the encryption layer of the online signing system. The attack method was sophisticated, changing proxy nodes with every attempt, but the core logic of the attack remained unchanged. Ghost intercepted a segment of the attack code, zoomed in to identify it carefully for a moment, and saw that familiar error-calling habit at the lowest level of the attack commands—it was identical to Liu Jingming's unfinished report. He immediately packaged the attack code, attached the tracking logs, and sent it to Lin Ye's private inbox with a very brief note: 'One of the recipients of the leaked report is attempting a reverse analysis.'

After reading the tracking logs sent by Ghost, Lin Ye closed his inbox and slowly took a sip of tea. The data stream of the Global Protection Fee Online System was still pulsing steadily on the holographic screen, each node's light representing a guild on some server completing its signing. Meanwhile, in a corner of that remote small town in the US Server, a cluster of people trying to swim against the current were cautiously poking at the firewall ports. Lin Ye didn't plan to strike just yet—the online system's own defense mechanisms were enough to keep those attacks at bay, but he needed to know exactly how much of Liu Jingming's unfinished analytical data that recipient held. He put down his teacup and replied to Ghost: 'Keep an eye on them. Don't alert the enemy.'