Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

Brimming with curiosity and uncertainty, Chen Sha searched for Ocean Stronghold in the official games store, downloaded it, and registered for an account.

What surprised him was the internal storage the game occupied. The storage space that it used was even larger than Bullet Hole and was many times larger than Counter Strike.

However, Chen Sha didn't probe into it. After all, there were low-quality games in the market that occupied huge storage capacity.

There was a domestically produced game that had undergone such bad game optimization that even the best graphics card in the market cannot resolve its horrible game graphics. That created the legend of 'Titanfall'.

Therefore, the game's large storage capacity and demanding hardware configurations did not mean anything. What's more important was the content of the game.

Shortly after, Chen Sha entered the game.

His initial reaction was that the game seemed… pretty pleasant?

The game graphics were much better than what he had expected!

Chen Sha had originally thought this was a flaky and horrible game. He did not have any expectations for it. The only reason he downloaded the game was to see for himself what the 888-yuan epic weapon looked like.

However, the game left a pretty good first impression on him!

Although there was no opening computer graphics, the login interface and in-game user interface both looked amazing. It was not inferior to Bullet Hole.

Chen Sha found the game's shop first.

The first thing that popped before his eyes was the legendary epic weapon—a Rainbow Red Kilin!

At a glance, it looked similar to AK rifles. However, there were enormous changes made to its exterior details. The entire rifle was sparkling. The gun barrel was coated in dazzling paint which spread towards the rifle body like colorful ripples of the rainbow. It was extremely eye-catching. Below the gun barrel was a unique-looking gold dagger. According to the description in the in-game shop, that was called the 'Kilin Dagger'.

In the intersection between the gun barrel and rifle body, there was a gigantic kilin head. The kilin's mouth was wide open and appeared as though it was engulfing the gun barrel and the dagger. The eyes of the kilin were blood-red, and the kilin's fur had the color and texture of fire and would ripple in the air. As the rifle body moved, red sparks would appear within the kilin's eyes. That made the kilin appear as if it was about to come to life.

Furthermore, there were alterations to components such as the rifle clip, the pistol grip, and the buttstock. While the gun followed the design of AK rifles, the exaggerated sizes of some components and unique alterations to its exterior design left a deeper impression on people.

Chen Sha was dumbfounded.

That was just way too cool, wasn't it?

He was an elite gamer in Counter Strike and had explored the game Bullet Hole when he was testing it out.

Both Counter Strike and Bullet Hole tried their best to replicate firearms in the real world.

For instance, their biggest alteration to the AK guns was to paint them. There would not be a lot of drastic changes to the basic appearance of the guns.

They were afraid of being scolded by military games fanatics.

In comparison, the dramatic changes done in Ocean Stronghold was extremely daring!

Of course, strictly speaking, this Red Kilin could be considered to be overly fancy.

The exaggerated design, the bold alterations, and the elaborate special effects… all of that made Chen Sha a little instinctively uncomfortable when he saw it for the first time.

Chen Sha had been playing FPS games for so many years and was already used to how AK rifles looked. It was normal that he would be unaccustomed when the rifle's appearance suddenly changed from realistic to fantasy-like.

However, it was undeniable that this weapon looked really cool!

The longer one looked at it, the cooler it became!

Chen Sha stared at the special effects on the Red Kilin for a long time. The red fur on the Red Kilin's head seemed to blaze in the air like burning flames and move with every breath. Together with the dazzling paint on the rifle body…

Once accustomed to the fantasy-like designs, it seemed to be surprisingly enchanting, didn't it?

Look at the price.

It was truly 888 yuan each!

Chen Sha could not help but exclaim, "Impressive!"

It was really impressive that the game designer dared to price a weapon at such a high price. He really had the guts!

Normally, prices within games would slowly increase to test the bottom-line price of the players.

For instance, the paywall for the game Qute Three Kingdoms was quite low. That resulted in most players reaching the maximum paywall of the game. Only afterward did Qute Three Kingdoms add new things that players could recharge with money to purchase. Gradually, the maximum amount for the premium system and the number of purchasable items increased with time.

It was extremely rare for a game to price an item at 888 yuan from the get-go, just like what Ocean Stronghold did!

Chen Sha looked through the in-game shop and noticed a problem.

There were no page indicators or columns for purchasable items!

That was because the entire shop only sold this one item!

This was the only purchasable item in the Ocean Stronghold game.

In other words—other than the 888 yuan Red Kilin, Ocean Stronghold did not sell anything else!

Of course, there were other firearms in the game. They could be found in the 'Armory' feature.

The armory would indicate detailed stats of the weapons and ways to obtain them.

There were numerous ways to obtain those weapons. Some could be unlocked after completing the story mode in the game, some after completing certain achievements, and some could be purchased using in-game currency.

The in-game currency could be obtained by completing daily tasks and battles. Although there was a limit to the amount that could be obtained, it was not difficult to obtain it.

To Chen Sha's surprise—other than the Red Kilin, there was not a single weapon in the armory that could be obtained by topping up with money.

Chen Sha scratched the back of his head. He was thoroughly confused by the game's payment options.

Was the Red Kilin really that marketable such that they decided to price it at 888 yuan?

He scrutinized the description of the Red Kilin.

Firearms in the game were classified into four tiers: normal, elite, hero, and epic.

As compared to hero-tier weapons which were a tier below epic-tier weapons, their only difference was that the stats of the epic-tier weapons were slightly higher than that of hero-tier weapons.

Without an in-depth comparison, Chen Sha would not even be able to notice the differences between the stats of the epic-tier Red Kilin and other hero-tier AK rifles.

This applied to weapons of other tiers. For the same weapon, each tier only had slight enhancements in the stats. However, those enhancements were barely noticeable.

Besides that, epic-tier weapons had some special properties.

The XP obtained by the player increased by 200%. (XP, short for experience points, affected player's level. However, increasing one's level did not have much use. When leveling up, you would merely obtain some in-game currency. Other than that, a player's level may also limit certain functions within the game.)

The XP obtained by the players in the same room increased by 50%.

In-game currency obtained by the players in the same room increased by 30%.

When the player died, the weapon dropped would turn into a normal AK rifle. If the player threw away the weapon voluntarily, the weapon dropped would remain as a Red Kilin.

The clip reload speed and weapon switch speed of the Red Kilin was faster. Its clip capacity was also larger.

Other than that, there was nothing more!

The Red Kilin did have some slight advantage, but they were not very apparent. It was far from being evidently superior to the other weapons.

This was an FPS game. A headshot with the Red Kilin would kill instantaneously… so would a normal-tier AK rifle. They were no different!

Although the Red Kilin did have a faster clip reload speed and weapon switch speed, it was only centiseconds faster.

Maybe the Red Kilin's damage would be slightly higher than a normal-tier AK rifle when it came to shooting through walls or shooting at the legs.

Although the Red Kilin did have a slight advantage in terms of its stats as compared to other weapons, Chen Sha felt that the advantage was not worth its price of 888 yuan.

Chen Sha was a little confused as to how to perceive this game…

It might seem as though the developers are abiding by their conscience. However, the action of pricing a weapon at 888 yuan seemed nothing conscientious at all.

However, one could not say that the game was lousy either. Other than the Red Kilin, the game was completely free to play. Moreover, the 888 yuan Red Kilin did not have noticeably superior stats.

Chen Sha felt that the designer of the payment options could be in the hall of fame for the most eccentric human behaviors yet. It was simply… unfathomable!