Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch C.478: 461 Hunter: The Call of Feces

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Yelang was not the only one feeling lonely.

Many other streamers and countless players fell into the same quandary as him.

They stood dumbfounded next to a pile of animal droppings or a series of hoof prints, questioning their life choices.

Yet Hu, who logged onto the Lake District at the same time as them, had already completed the introductory task early on.

Given the same distance and the same beginner’s gun, Hu’s single shot fatally wounded a white-tailed deer which began to bleed heavily and fell dead after only a few steps.

The outcome was completely different!

There was just one reason for all this —

Hu targeted the deer’s chest, not its head.

Seasoned hunters rarely aim at an animal’s head when hunting, unless they have enough confidence in their own shooting skills and the weapon in their hands.

Firstly, the head is too small and not easy to hit.

Secondly, the skull is harder, and if the bullet caliber is not enough, it’s hard to penetrate the skull and hit the brain, thus failing to deliver a quick, fatal blow.

As for aiming for the eye to pierce the brain of the prey?

Setting aside the accuracy of the sight on the beginner’s pistol, the shot could miss if the deer suddenly turns its head, lowers it, or even sneezes.

The margin for error is just too low.

Before firing, Hu looked at the gun in his hand. Although he didn’t recognize this [Ranger.243], just by looking at its caliber, he felt it wasn’t powerful enough.

He prudently chose the chest of the white-tailed deer as the target.

One shot down, as expected, he struck the left lung, causing a fatal wound and heavy bleeding.

Quick Kill Bonus: 95%!

Trophy Integrity: 100%!

For a beginner, the reward is almost at maximum.

This is what should be achieved by the correct shooting method.

But what seemed like common sense to Hu, was completely counter-intuitive to Yelang and many other ordinary players.

The habits developed in games like “Assassins’ Alliance” and “Speed Chase” made it hard for them to suppress the desire to aim for the head whenever possible.

Although the system had prompted: “Aiming to hit vital organs, hitting the heart and lungs means a quicker kill and less suffering for the animal.”

Everyone still initially interpreted the word “vital” as the head and decisively pulled the trigger.

However, Lincoln’s little mischief ended there.

In fact, once the player finds the second prey — whether chasing the escaper white-tailed deer or following other clues to find another prey— the system will directly use X-ray perspective to prompt the players to the correct vital location when re-aiming.

Eliminating misunderstandings and ensuring players quickly grasp shooting techniques.

Most players indeed figured out the problem via this “compensation mechanism” and began to enjoy hunting.

But Yelang’s journey was a bit tough.

Yelang followed the bellow of an animal and saw a huge moose.

He thought he hit the jackpot by encountering a more valuable target.

But he didn’t consider this: Is the caliber of his pistol powerful enough to take down a large moose?

The obvious answer was: No.

Even with the help of the one-time “X-ray Weak Point Projection”, Yelang’s accurate shot to the moose’s weak point couldn’t pierce through the moose’s thick muscles. Thus, he had to run again, chasing after his prey.

Fortunately, this time his shot caused a moderate wound, and the bleeding was much larger than before.

As long as he followed the blood trail, footprints, and feces, and didn’t get lost, he would catch up!

The only problem was: how long would it take for him, on two legs, to catch up with a four-legged prey that had a height and body length of more than two meters and was running for its life due to its wound?

Yelang didn’t have time to think about this. He just chased on relentlessly, fantasizing in his heart about the good gun he could exchange for this prey’s trophy.

While many players were enjoying the highly realistic hunting experience, there were many others who were not hunting at all.

This was within Lincoln’s expectations: Hunting, as a niche entertainment, isn’t something everyone enjoys.

A lot of players joined the game under the title of “Cloud Dream’s new game”, with the goal never being to experience genuine hunting.

Among these players, some killed an animal, looked at the carcass, and suddenly feeling compassion, were unwilling to go on.

Some fired a shot, didn’t even kill the animal, but looking at the blood on the ground, felt they were somewhat brutal and put down their guns, unwilling to continue the task.

Some people didn’t even fire a shot. They only used the binoculars to take a look and immediately decided: “The deer looks so cute, how could I possibly shoot it?”

These players, who prefer peacefulness and are not so keen on wreaking havoc, began to admire the scenery here.

With the autumn’s Lake District scenery different from the wilderness, the varying colors of trees dotted in the rolling earth and hills were reflected in the shimmering lakes and magnificent clouds.

Playing it as a “Hiking Simulator” or a “Travel Simulator” works just fine.

When the pioneers explore further, they will unlock mountain bikes. Not only will it greatly facilitate this kind of hiking gameplay, it’ll also unlock new off-road racing gameplay. This will greatly enrich the gaming experience for these kinds of players.

In this way, on the first night of the closed beta test of “Hunter: Call of the Wilderness”, the players had turned into two completely different groups of people.

One group enjoyed hiking and sightseeing.

Their greatest pleasure was finding one observation tower after another, getting to a high point, and enjoying the scenery of the Lake District.

Another group of people follow the trail of blood, the scent of animal feces, footprints, seeking any trace of their prey.

Regarding their prey, factors such as size, condition, and selling price…etc all are the source of their joy or their frustrations.

Every time they purchase a new firearm, it brings them great expectations. It excites them to chase more prey.

Because their belongings equal money, bullets, better guns, and even a vast variety of fishing rods and expensive mountain bikes!

Based on Lincoln’s custom, he naturally didn’t think of selling the hunting guns and mountain bikes separately in various DLCs, instead, he bundled them all together.

Want a good gun? Need a means of transport?

Go hunt and earn money!

That night, both sides enjoyed themselves immensely.

Of course, both sides had their troubles too—

The sightseeing group was troubled because they had no money to buy a car, and they couldn’t even find a pay-to-win method if they wanted.

The hunting party was struggling too. Their struggles weren’t related to the game mechanics, but they had one thing to complain about—

The smell of animal feces was too strong!

To give players the most authentic hunting experience, Lincoln had put a lot of effort into this.

He had even specially visited several small and somewhat old-fashioned zoos.

Therefore…

Smell too strong?

That’s exactly what it is supposed to be!

He marked out five different levels of freshness of fecal aroma: [Not Long Ago], [Very Fresh], [Fresh], [Short Time Ago], and [A Long Time Ago]!

Lincoln takes his games very seriously!

Especially the details, they are never taken lightly.

He would never use the same smell, simply distinguishing by appearance and system prompts, to tell the players the fecal duration.

That would be too unprofessional!

When Lincoln returned from the mini-zoos, he was more determined than ever, there shouldn’t be any perfunctory work.

Players must feel the pain Lincoln incurred when gathering materials.

Different shapes of animal feces, different smells, changes of smell over time, have been made into a comprehensive chart of “fecal aroma”.

When Lincoln was making this part of the content, Mavis was holding her nose, hiding far away, refusing to come any closer.

But the results were encouraging, even to the point—

If a player’s nose and memory are sensitive enough, they don’t need system prompts. They can feel how long the feces have been there by the smell and estimate the approximate distance to the prey.

Of course, if a player has hunted for a long time, they can also estimate by the shape of the feces.

By looking at the feces, they can even distinguish what animal it belongs to.

But that would be hard with just the smell.

Although omnivorous and carnivorous animal feces smell different, to humans, the difference is not obvious and is hard to tell unless you have a special talent.

However, panda feces is an exception.

Not only do panda droppings not stink, they even have a fresh bamboo scent.

But this is part of the easter egg.

Only after discovering panda droppings, can they follow the traces to find pandas. If they don’t discover panda feces, pandas will not appear on the map.

I don’t know when people will find this easter egg.

Of course, pandas can’t be hunted, Lincoln simply put them in for fun.

One thing is clear: this is the first day of the game’s beta testing, and whether it is determining the type of prey through the shape of the feces, or estimating how long it has been there and hence the distance to the prey, players couldn’t master these skills so quickly.

As a result, on their way to chase the prey, players unavoidably have to get close to the feces to trigger system prompts.

This inevitably leads to the players smelling the scent of animal feces over and over again.

Every time the streamers got close to the feces, there is a lot of “Hahaha!” and “Does it smell good?” in the comments.

The live stream was a great success.

So much so that by nightfall, the name of the game among the players had become “Hunter: The Call of Feces”.

The next morning,

The Call of Feces

even made it onto the 24-hour trending topics list.

On the pilipilli trending list, a video featuring a montage of various streamers’ twisted faces upon encountering the smell of feces quickly shot up to the top.

Underneath this video, there were three clips, featuring the popular streamers in their “live streams smelling feces” moments.

The situation was virtually impossible to control.

Countless netizens were simultaneously tweeting: “This is disgusting!” “I can smell it through the screen!” “I am eating! Have some sense of decency!”

But they couldn’t help but replay the video over and over, enjoying the twisted faces of the streamers on the screen, and laughing until their whole body convulsed.

On the first day, in the feedback reports Cloud Dream received from players, the word “feces” appeared eight out of ten times…

Without a doubt, “Hunter: Call of the Wild” succeeded in becoming hot topic once again!

But the way it trended, the smell was a bit too strong…