Seeing that asking Carl any further would get her nowhere, Mio still made up her mind not to watch a guide for now and continue searching by herself.
Then Mio began to experience what Carl meant by "no exploration fun."
She had basically already found all the easy-to-find and visible treasure chests on the map.
If she wanted to continue finding new treasure chests, she could only go to dangerous terrain like caves, dungeons, and mountaintops.
None of that was a problem. After all, one of the greatest joys of open-world games was exploring the whole map.
The problem was... after spending over ten minutes painstakingly climbing to the top of a tall mountain and defeating the elite monster guarding it, a silver treasure chest appeared in front of Mio as her reward.
"Nice! I knew there would be a chest here. Let me see what rewards it has!"
Mio opened the silver treasure chest, and the reward that popped out was...
[Free Contract Stones x30]
Logically speaking, Contract Stones were exactly the reward Mio wanted most. If a chest did not give Contract Stones, she would probably curse.
But... there was no longer any initial sense of surprise in her heart.
After that, Mio explored several dangerous caves and dungeons one after another, going through great effort to defeat the elite monsters inside.
Those elite monsters naturally dropped several treasure chests as well.
But after Mio opened those treasure chests full of expectation...
[Free Contract Stones x30]
[Free Contract Stones x20]
[Free Contract Stones x20]
"Do the treasure chests in this game... only give Contract Stone rewards?"
After spending more than four hours exploring several areas in a row, Mio finally could not help asking that question.
Listening to her question, Carl really wanted to answer in his heart.
What else do you want as a reward? They can't exactly stuff limited character exchange tickets into the chests, right? Those are things the game company wants to sell for money!
At this moment, Mio finally understood what Carl meant by a "boring exploration experience."
The boring part was that Oath's exploration experience... had no sense of surprise whatsoever.
No matter what kind of chest you opened, wooden chest, silver chest, puzzle chest, elite monster guarded chest, even if you opened every treasure chest in the world of Oath and obtained every exploration reward in Oath, there was only one thing you could get.
Contract Stones!
In Carl's eyes, this could not be considered a game reward at all.
It was just wages the game company paid you for working inside the game!
That was why Carl said Oath was a game pretending to be a single-player open-world game.
In a normal open-world exploration-driven game, at the very least, during the player's exploration, they could always unlock some brand-new game rewards through playing and effort.
It could be new weapons, equipment, character skills, new characters, or even the weapon and skills of a boss after defeating that boss, and so on.
This kind of surprise was the most basic fun a game should bring to players.
But what about Oath?
Carl could be certain that even if Oath updated to Version 8.0, Version 9.0, continued updating for ten years, a hundred years, all the way until server shutdown, the best reward players could explore and obtain in Oath's open world would always be only one thing.
Contract Stones, the gacha resource!
This was one way a pay-to-win mobile game distorted and destroyed a game's gameplay and fun.
Could Carl think of these things, while Oath's developers could not?
Of course they knew. But they would never do it, and perhaps they simply could not.
Because all of those things were meant to be sold for money!
Under the underlying logic of pay-to-win mobile games, every purpose of this game was to make money.
So in Carl's eyes, Oath was only "a game pretending to be an open-world exploration game."
Finally... after Mio was tortured for almost ten minutes by several boring puzzle mini-games, only to receive ten Free Contract Stones as the final reward, she clearly saw the essence of Oath's so-called open-world gameplay.
"Why did they stuff so many boring puzzle mini-games into this? I don't want to play connect-the-dots, jigsaw puzzles, Rubik's cubes, and mazes anymore!"
After being tortured to the point of nausea by this huge pile of boring puzzle mini-games,
Mio realized that this game had no right to make players spend so much effort exploring it!
It was not worthy!
And so, as expected, Mio entered what Carl called the second stage of mobile game players.
Watch guides. Copy guides.
In the end, Mio still opened that full collection guide blogger's video and began following the guide's instructions to check for everything she had missed across the map.
Over the next two days, Mio began an extremely numb and repetitive form of playing or rather, it could no longer be called playing a game. It was mechanical labor.
Carl watched this player lady repeat the same thing the entire time.
Watch the guide and find treasure chests.
Watch the guide and find treasure chests.
Finally, on Mio's third day playing Oath, she successfully achieved full collection in Oath Version 1.0, aside from the main story.
"I finally got all the rewards. I'm so tired."
Although nothing could be seen from Mio's game character, Carl felt that her real self in the real world must have thick dark circles under her eyes.
Even Mio herself tiredly rubbed her eyes, then let out a sigh after yawning.
"Didn't I take three days off? Why do I feel even more tired than after three days of work?"
Listening to this player lady's sigh, Carl really could not stop himself from loudly complaining in his heart.
Because you were working! These past three days, you were being a workhorse inside Oath!
You provided Oath with daily activity and online data, and Oath's developers gave you free Contract Stones as wages!
And if you fail to control your hands later, you may even have to pay money to work!
Mio slapped her cheeks hard with both hands, forcing herself to recover a little energy.
The most important moment had finally arrived.
During these three days, she had grinded Contract Stones day and night without rest for this day!
Mio raised her hand and opened Oath's contract interface, which was the gacha interface.
In this gorgeous gacha interface, the charming illustration of the launch five-star limited character Hasumi appeared before Mio.
At the same time, Mio's gaze fell on the number of Contract Stones she had painstakingly saved over these three days.
11,340 Contract Stones.
"Over ten thousand Contract Stones. Around seventy pulls... counting the free ten-pull from launch, I've just saved enough for one soft pity of eighty pulls to get Lady Hasumi!"
Although constantly watching guides to find Contract Stones over these three days had felt a little dull and boring,
Mio still felt quite a sense of achievement and reward as she looked at the full stack of over ten thousand Contract Stones she had saved.
Watching her satisfied expression, Carl really wanted to remind this player lady...
Eighty pulls is only a soft pity! What if you go off-rate? Why not save a little more before entering the gacha pool?
However, Mio had never even considered the possibility of going off-rate.
Then, under Carl's gaze, this player lady stepped into the hell known as the gacha pool.
"Come out! Wife Hasumi! I've already prepared your dowry! Come out on the first pull!!"
Along with Mio's somewhat frightening shout, she directly pressed the one-way ticket to hell without the slightest hesitation.
Ten-pull!
(To be continued.)
◇◇◇◇
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◇ I'll be dropping two bonus chapters for every 10 reviews.
◇ One bonus chapter will be released for every 200 Power Stones.
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