Chapter 227 - 92: "Piece-a-Dream

Chapter 227: Chapter 92: "Piece-a-Dream

After a few wisecracks, Shi Zuozhou dropped the clowning act, his expression turning grave.

"Brother Yi, so, now..." Shi Zuozhou’s voice was laced with obvious worry.

"What’s the situation with Professor Mo? The system login logs... have they found any problems these past few days?"

Shi Zuozhou grew restless and urged him,

"Why don’t you... buy a high-speed rail ticket and go back to our hometown to lay low for a while? You’re about to graduate anyway, and you don’t have classes. My main worry is, even though they wouldn’t think to look for you at Old Yu’s place, you can never be too careful."

"It was pouring rain back then, and there were no high-speed trains running, so I just holed up here for a bit. After classes resumed on Monday, I saw the department was busy taking inventory of damaged equipment and restoring research operations. They probably haven’t had time to look at the logs yet. No one has contacted me, so for now, it seems I’m still safe," Yang Yiyi said reassuringly.

"Besides, according to Wen Xiao, this system’s cached logs will be completely wiped at midnight on the first of next month. Today is already the 25th. I just need to get through these last five days, and then there will be no evidence left to find. If they start investigating and find out I’ve left town and gone back home, it’ll just make me look more suspicious."

Hearing there was a clear five-day safety window, Shi Zuozhou finally breathed a sigh of relief.

"Let’s get back to the topic of the connected dream," Yang Yiyi said, looking at Shi Zuozhou.

"What are your thoughts on this?"

Shi Zuozhou’s attention shifted back to the "online Dream Net." He rubbed his face with both hands and mused,

"Hold on, let me get this straight..."

He stood up and paced back and forth a couple of times in the small living room.

"The good news about this Dream Net technology is that it can connect people remotely regardless of distance. This means it already has the foundation for a massively multiplayer online open world..."

Shi Zuozhou frowned, clearly not as excited as he was last night. He rubbed his chin and analyzed the situation.

"But the bad news is pretty fatal."

Shi Zuozhou stopped pacing, turned his head, and looked at Yu Xian and Yang Yiyi.

"The first problem is, you just said that once there’s no ’host’ in the connected dream—meaning all the players have logged out—the entire dream world gets completely cleared and reset, right?"

"Right. Is there a problem with that?" Yu Xian nodded. This was a conclusion he, Wen Xiao, and Yang Yiyi had verified together yesterday afternoon, and none of them had seen any issue with it.

"It’s a huge problem." Shi Zuozhou’s brow furrowed into a knot as he spoke urgently,

"Especially in the early stages, when we don’t have many players. Think about it. Our users are basically all in the same time zone. Everyone’s daily schedule is more or less the same, and there are no international time differences. Nighttime, when people are asleep, will definitely be the peak time for online users. But what about during the day? People have to wake up to go to work, school, and eat, right?"

He pointed out the fatal flaw this mechanism posed for game operations:

"If no one is online during the day, it’s basically like the server just shuts down. Wouldn’t everyone’s hard-earned game progress from the night before be completely gone when they wake up? That’s like being sent back to square one overnight. In gaming terms, we call that a ’corrupted save’ or a ’character wipe.’ If that happens to someone even once, who would ever play a second time?"

Sitting on the sofa, Yu Xian was slightly stunned. He really hadn’t considered this problem at all.

His, Yang Yiyi’s, and Wen Xiao’s thinking had always been limited to deducing the technical implementation and preventing security risks.

It wasn’t until Shi Zuozhou approached it from the perspective of a "gamer" and a "virtual world operator" that he hit the nail on the head, exposing this fatal design blind spot.

Yu Xian watched Shi Zuozhou speak so eloquently in the middle of the living room. ’He really didn’t stay up all night for nothing,’ he thought. ’The guy really knows his stuff.’

"And that’s not all." Shi Zuozhou didn’t stop, immediately pointing out the second problem:

"Another problem is what you mentioned earlier: you can’t ’hot-patch.’ As long as there’s even one person left in the dream who hasn’t logged out, you can’t add new content."

He plopped back down on the sofa and ran a hand through his already messy hair.

"For an online game, that’s a complete disaster. It means that as developers, we can’t even apply a patch to fix bugs without taking the server down. We can’t update DLC expansion packs to add new content, let alone run limited-time holiday events or release version updates."

Shi Zuozhou stared at the water glass on the coffee table, a rare look of disappointment and frustration on his face.

"If a world never changes, the players’ sense of novelty will wear off quickly. How could that ever become a long-running virtual world, let alone a ’second life’..."

It was clear this news was a huge blow to Shi Zuozhou. It’s like taking a test: missing the mark by a mile isn’t so bad, but missing it by a single point is pure torture.

"I don’t know much about games, so this might be a noobish question..." Yang Yiyi said softly, seeing Shi Zuozhou’s dejected expression.

"Is there any type of setting or gameplay that could make people want to stay in this dream for a long time, even without updates?"

Shi Zuozhou’s brow furrowed deeply as he muttered to himself,

"No updates... but still have long-term player retention... How is that possible? That’s like having to design the entire game’s core gameplay loop and driving force to be deep enough and engaging enough, all in the very first version..."