Extraordinary Player - Chapter 21

Chapter 21: Hot Thread in Forum

Qin Guan browsed through the forum a little and found that it was actually just a game forum.

However, the contents were all about the trials.

Su Xiaoyu’s progress was so fast that Qin Guan had formed a survivorship bias [1]. He thought that plenty of people had already cleared Jump!!, but in truth, that was not the case.

There were dozens of pages for Jump!! in the forum, but only four or five for Map of Trials 2.

Since the page of the forum was displayed right in front of Qin Guan’s face, the amount of information contained in it was incredibly great, and there were many threads before his eyes. However, their number was still depressingly small compared to the number of people in the world.

Qin Guan noticed that he could change the language settings using the tabs at the top right corner of the page. Once he changed the language, the contents of the threads changed, but he could still understand them.

Clearly, the people were distributed into different zones on the forum based on the areas in which they stayed and the language they used. However, the users of the forum could move around as they liked to read other threads.

They did not have to be worried about language barriers or not being able to understand the other players, because their mobile AI systems could translate everything at lightspeed. They fulfilled humanity’s wish for communicating without any language barriers despite everyone still speaking different languages.

Once Qin Guan tried to post a thread, he understood why there were so few of them. It was because the forum had placed a very strict restriction on its users.

Those who had not cleared Jump!! in Easy Mode could not post any threads. They also could not go to other language zones and post threads in those areas.

They were strictly forbidden from posting meaningless threads or those for advertisement. Once discovered, they would be banned from using the forum for seven days.

Everyone posted anonymously. Once they entered the forum, they could choose their icon and username.

The rules for posting were truly strict…

Only those who cleared Easy Mode in Jump!! could post and reply to threads, so this got rid of around 80% of the players who could actively participate in the forum. The system could also decide on its own which were spam posts and delete them.

This meant that those who wanted to post on the forum had to first clear Easy Mode, and then make sure that their threads were actually meaningful.

As for what sort of posts were considered meaningful? Who would know? The forum did not say anything about it.

Only those who cleared Medium Mode in Jump!! could access the forum about Map of Trials and post about it, which explained why there were so few posts about it. Only one in a million or so could clear Medium Mode in Jump!!…

‘Hang on, there’s something wrong. Why did the name for Map of Trials 1 turn into Jump!! in the forum?’ Qin Guan suddenly noticed the strange change. ‘Isn’t Jump!! the name I gave the trial? Why did everyone else change how they address it as well?

‘Is it a coincidence?

‘That’s impossible. I didn’t publicize it. There’s no way such a carelessly given name would spread so fast, to the point that even the message board in the forum is called Jump!!…

‘Could it be that the name I changed actually affects the system? So, now, everyone has to call the trial Jump!!? This is too…

‘Wait. This is useless…’

Qin Guan was originally rather excited. He felt as if he could change the world with a simple wave of his hand, but when he thought about it, he found that it was useless, because he could only change the name…

He could not even gain any benefits from it…

What was he supposed to do with this power? Sell naming rights in the future?

Qin Guan looked at his status. He was still anonymous on the forum, and his icon was the default one. His username was a long list of meaningless numbers.

He pondered over it and thought that he should give himself a name, or else he would simply not be recognizable. Ah… it was even difficult to become famous.

He thought about it and gave himself a name with a flick of his wrist: Useless Person.

And he was allowed to use the name, just like that.

There were plenty of icons in the system’s suggestion list. Qin Guan noticed that among them was a picture of a fruit knife, so he chose it straight away.

He first browsed through the existing threads and found out something very important.

There were no threads on the useless person character…

There were plenty of walkthroughs for people who started the game as athletes, students, or office workers. There were also walkthroughs for other characters, but far fewer in comparison to the main three. Still, they were better off than the useless person which had none.

After all, the useless person’s clothes were ugly, and his stats were horrible. Who in their right minds would choose to start the game with a character that looked like he was going to suffer more than the rest?

Qin Guan browsed through the forum for a while and noticed that the threads were basically all about walkthroughs and sharing experiences. These threads were not deleted by the system, so it clearly believed that they were meaningful and could be kept around.

There was a very hot thread on the first page: How should athlete characters clear Jump!! Medium Mode. The replies already took up a few pages. The thread included a few detailed sketches, analysis of the jumps, and quite a lot of verbal descriptions. It had a lot of meaningful content.

Many people had thus replied to the thread. [Pro, you’re awesome!], [I’ll praise and worship you forever, pro!], [This is too helpful, thank you so much.], and so on.

The assessment for posting threads was very strict, but the assessment for replying to threads was much more lax. Replies such as ‘you’re awesome’ were perhaps determined as meaningful replies to the threads, and hence were allowed to remain.

Qin Guan flipped through the thread, and his eyes went wide. ‘What the heck? Is Medium Mode this easy?’

The walkthroughs were written in considerable detail, drawing the layout of the platforms for Jump!! in Medium Mode. The moment Qin Guan saw them, he immediately felt that the challenge was so easy that his insides filled with extreme anger…

In fact, he felt that no high-level skill was required to jump through these platforms. If he were in their place, he could leap across all one hundred platforms in one breath.

And as he browsed through the forum, he noticed that most people were still stuck in Jump!!. They did not even have the right to enter the second trial.

‘So everyone is such a noob? That’s slightly against my expectations…’

Qin Guan had mixed feelings once he read the discussions in the forum. He noticed that he had truly overestimated everyone.

Right then, to most people, the walkthroughs for Jump!! in Medium Mode were very helpful. They were practically martial arts skill books and could help them take many shortcuts.

As for the benefits for those who posted the walkthroughs on the forum? As of then, there was no mention of it.

Qin Guan originally wanted to post a thread, but as he pondered over it, he did not know what thread he could post…

Everyone wanted to see the walkthrough for Medium Mode the most, but Qin Guan had never even played Medium Mode before…

Besides, what was there to write about such an easy difficulty? They could just clear it by jumping!

Was he supposed to post a thread on how to clear Developer’s Difficulty Level?

Heh, he would only do that if he had a few screws loose in his head.

He did have plenty of things to say if he decided to post a thread on that topic, but what benefits would he gain from it? Besides, others would simply not understand what he wrote.

Qin Guan browsed through all the threads, and he found that none could help him.

He had already cleared Developer’s Difficulty Level, so when he looked at the walkthroughs for Medium Mode, he felt like he was only looking at a bunch of nonsense.

He then switched to the tab for Map of Trials 2 and looked at the strategies in there.

He stopped five minutes later.

The others could choose rapiers, broadswords, longswords, and axes in their second trial, and the trial for Medium Mode was not even a hoop, but a semi-hoop. This meant that they would not have fruits flying at them from behind. They only needed to focus on the 180 degrees are in front of them.

It was even easier for Novice and Easy Mode. One of them was one-eighth quarters of a fan, and the other a quarter of a fan.

The distance was also different. The radius for the semi-hoop in Medium Mode was just 3.2 feet, it was half the length of Qin Guan’s hoop in Developer’s Difficulty Level mode.

If he were to play the game at this level of difficulty, he could clear it in one go! There would be no need for him to look at any strategy guide!

Qin Guan shook his head and exited the forum. ‘What’s the point of reading these strategy guides? It’s the same as going back to revise two digit basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division when you’re about to take a test on Further Mathematics…’

However, Qin Guan also knew that while the forum was useless to him, it was very useful to the others.

After all, until then, there had been no platform for Transcended Gamers to communicate. They might have the internet, but there was too much false information there. No one trusted what the others said.

If someone boasted that he had already cleared Despair Mode, it was difficult to tell whether what they said was true or false when they did not even know how Despair Mode looked.

However, with the official forum provided by the system, everything became much easier. Those who had not even cleared Easy Mode could only lurk in the forum and not post, which effectively got rid of a large number of liars.

Translator’s Note:

[1] Survivorship bias: a logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not.