Bonus for 400 PS, next one at 600 PS 🫠
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After that player logged off, Carl searched for related information on the real world's internet using his game ID.
In the end, he really did find a post about him on Oath's forum.
"Holy shit! Four days after launch, God Kyo is on top again! And he's using 0+1 Hasumi!"
Carl directly clicked into the post to check the players' discussion.
"Kyo-sensei? Which guild is he helping with the rankings this time?"
"None of them. His Oath ID is literally ThisGameDoesNotTakeOrdersDoNotDisturb. He probably just wanted to rush for rank one after launch."
"As expected, for this kind of technical ranking, Kyo-sensei reaching first place is as easy as breathing! Sasuga, Kyo-sensei!"
Following the first few replies, Carl searched for more information about this Kyo-sensei on the real-world internet.
Kyo-sensei's real name in the real world was Viktor Kyostyliev.
Because all full-dive games in this world were the classic kind of online game where guilds fought each other and open-world PVP never stopped.
Naturally, there were countless rankings and PVP events. And after everyone had paid enough to max out their equipment, game skill became the key factor in deciding victory.
Kyo was a top-tier hired fighter who moved between major gaming guilds and accepted jobs. Or rather... a top-tier assassin?
However, what Carl was very curious about was that a single-player open-world game like Oath did have gameplay content related to a PVP arena.
But the guild war chaos from those classic online games was not supported by the underlying logic of Oath at all.
Carl browsed through the later posts, and sure enough, some posters gave their own opinions.
"Helping guilds fight for rankings? Oath is one person, one open world. The resources each person can obtain are the same. The whole resource competition logic from ordinary online games, where major guilds suppress each other, can't be played here at all, right?"
"But the Extreme Abyss rankings in Oath are a pretty good place for publicity, right? I've already seen quite a few players with big guild titles on the rankings. Quite a few major guild titles from older games have moved in."
"I really don't get what those people are thinking. I make guilds to play together with friends who share the same interests, but these people seriously act like they're in the underworld, forming cliques and attacking outsiders. It's so embarrassing."
"These people just have standard online game thinking. Didn't we already say Oath is completely different from previous online games?"
The ordinary players of this world also seemed full of complaints about that classic online game operating logic.
"You guys really had it rough." Carl did not disturb their fun either.
On Oath's forum, everyone's current evaluation of Oath was overwhelmingly positive.
Aside from a few players like Mio, who had gotten off-rate pulls and made posts on the forum cursing the game.
Most players believed Oath was the most fun and most conscientious game under the heavens.
In Carl's eyes, this was also very normal. Different players had different preferences, and respecting other people's preferences was the most basic quality a person should have.
Although Carl had ten thousand complaints and things he wanted to criticize about this kind of pay-to-win mobile game.
Carl would never suddenly rush into the middle of Oath players happily discussing Oath-related game content and put on a know-it-all face to say,
"I think Oath is a trash game. You people actually think this game is fun? That's hilarious!"
This kind of person was purely asking to get beaten.
What Carl needed to do was simply wait until these players grew tired of Oath.
Or until they simply realized all the scummy parts of Oath as a pay-to-win mobile game, and were deeply hurt by this game like Mio had been.
Then Carl would provide them with some new choices and heal their shattered gamer hearts.
Right now, Carl's target was the player known as Kyo-sensei.
Kyo was worthy of being the current number one on the Extreme Abyss rankings and the strongest player in Oath.
It was not only the many players in the real world who were watching Kyo's movements.
A whole pile of banner characters in the world of Oath were also all watching for Kyo to come online, so they could go hard on raising his favorability.
Of course, Carl had no place in line. He could only watch from far away as those five-star characters waited eagerly at the place where Kyo had logged off, waiting for him to come online again.
Unfortunately, after Kyo logged off today, he never came back online.
Carl had also expected this. After all, once a mobile game player entered the content drought, they basically only came online for a while whenever daily missions refreshed.
Just like that, time passed until four in the morning the next day.
During this period, Carl kept playing Oath Cards with Mio. Unfortunately, Mio's gameplay video was completely unwatched.
The only players who came to find Carl to play cards during this time were three friends from the same gaming group brought over by Mio.
And Kyo, the strongest Oath player everyone had been waiting for, finally came online at four in the morning, right when the game's daily missions refreshed on time!
As a player who treated gaming as his career, Kyo had basically spent thousands of hours playing every full-dive online game currently on the market.
It was precisely because of such a long gaming career that Kyo started to grow tired of one type of game.
That was combat and PVP with other players. To be more precise, when Kyo looked back on his gaming career...
Ever since he began trying video games, it seemed like he had always been playing this type of game. Or rather, the market had only given him this type of game to play.
That was exactly why Kyo had looked forward to Oath, this single-player open-world game, so much.
He was looking forward to this game, whose underlying logic was completely different from ordinary online games, bringing him a completely different and surprising experience.
But after three days of intense play, Kyo's conclusion was... same old thing with a new coat of paint.
Oath's game content only looked good on the surface. It was even emptier than the online games Kyo had played before.
As for why Kyo thought so?
This morning, he logged into Oath right on time.
The moment he logged in, the monthly card prompt he had spent $4.20 on popped up. After clicking it, he received ninety Contract Stones.
After that, Kyo opened the Student Handbook of Elysium Academy.
This thing was the player's daily mission guide function.
Kyo clicked the "teleport to Sacred Relic dungeon" option in the handbook, and he was directly sent to the entrance of the Sacred Relic farming dungeon.
Sacred Relics were equivalent to equipment for banner characters, and they were also one of the biggest traps the game planners used to block players from fully finishing their banner characters.
Because just farming a Sacred Relic was not enough. It also had to be enhanced.
The enhancement of all kinds of substats was completely random. Most players might farm for a month and still fail to get a perfectly suitable Sacred Relic.
The Sacred Relics Kyo had farmed for his knight princess Hasumi were only barely acceptable.
The Sacred Relic dungeon was very simple. Kyo barely moved and simply repeated a bunch of attack commands to clear it once.
After consecutively farming the Sacred Relic dungeon four times, spending about ten minutes, and using up his daily 240 stamina.
Kyo's daily missions were all completed.
Oath's daily missions were the Free Contract Stone rewards that refreshed every day after players had already farmed all the rewards in the game.
They were also the key to the game planners maintaining daily active users.
Oath's daily missions were also very simple. Spend 180 stamina, and one could receive a reward of 60 Contract Stones.
Then... after doing all of this, Kyo could log off, because there was no content left to play in the game.
When Kyo browsed Oath's forum earlier, he had seen someone praise Oath's endgame gameplay as very lightweight, saying it was very suitable for busy working players like them.
Every day, they only needed to log in on their phone, casually tap around to claim rewards, then log off and wait for the next version. Perfect rating!
But Kyo really wanted to ask... what about hardcore players like him?
Although every game's content would eventually be exhausted one day, wasn't the amount of content in Oath Version 1.0 a bit too little?
The main story only lasted four to six hours. After that, it was endless repetitive chest hunting and Sacred Relic farming. What was fun about that?
(To be continued.)