Chapter 1495 Did You Reimburse Your Own High-Speed Rail Ticket? (Bonus Chapter for Monthly Tickets!)

February 25th, Monday.

Pei Qian arrived at the office as usual and briefly reviewed the current situation of each department.

Settlement would occur this Thursday, and no departments had any new products to release. The spending spree had essentially been arranged, but whether it would actually result in losses depended on this final push.

So far, the matter of losing money was not yet particularly assured.

Pei Qian first focused on the situation with IOI.

Since the four-person team went to discuss matters with the Daayak Group, Pei Qian hadn't heard from them in a while.

Mainly because of the time difference, and also because Pei Qian felt he couldn't offer much help, he left everything to the four of them to handle, with Meng Chang ultimately making the decisions, as long as a deal could be reached.

He didn't know about internal news, but external news was hard to avoid.

Last Tuesday, Finger Company had a series of negative news stories break, such as merging the Asian servers and holding a pay-to-win event for April Fool's Day, which triggered a sharp drop in Finger Company's stock price.

A week had passed, and this downward trend was almost over.

Then, this weekend, Finger Company stirred up new trouble.

First, they announced the rework plans for some heroes with lower win rates, and second, they made certain adjustments to the ranking rules.

These two things weren't announced at the same time, but two days apart, but without exception, they both triggered negative public opinion!

First of all, the rework plan, which was supposed to be a good thing. After all, as the game evolved, many heroes designed in the past had mechanisms that no longer fit the current game pace. They had no chance to be used, and simple numerical balancing was difficult, so reworking them was reasonable.

But the problem was that Finger Company released new heroes too slowly!

When IOI and GOG were battling fiercely, Finger Company released new heroes very quickly. But later, as IOI declined and spent a lot of time and energy making various skins, the speed of making new heroes had greatly slowed down.

In this case, they actually formulated such a large-scale rework plan.

Players would naturally think: Are you even still going to release new heroes?

Reworking old heroes could bring some freshness, but how could it compare to new heroes?

This gave people the feeling that IOI was aging, losing its ambition, and starting to live off its past glory.

The adjustment of the ranking rules was also criticized.

Finger Company claimed that in order to bring a better game experience to all players, especially new players, the new ranking rules would make some adjustments to the matching mechanism, to more dynamically balance the two sides of the battle and the number of players in different ranks.

Players initially thought this was good news, but soon some internal news leaked out, saying that the new ranking rules meant that most players' win rates would be maintained at around 50%!

Why? Because this would maximize player retention and ensure the player base.

Because most players' win rates were maintained at 50%, plus extra victory points, it could be guaranteed that as long as you played enough, you could definitely rank up. Even some relatively unskilled players could experience the feeling of being carried after losing too much, and the game experience would become better.

For IOI, it currently faced the severe situation of losing low-elo players.

The loss of low-elo players would cause the entire ranking pyramid to collapse from the bottom up, causing all players' ranks to collectively decline, resulting in very serious consequences.

For games like GOG that maintained player growth and had a large player base, this wasn't a big deal, but for IOI, this was obviously directly related to its survival.

The previous talk about merging Asian servers was also out of such considerations, in order to better ensure the depth of the low-elo pool.

But this approach brought a new problem, which was that those who were relatively good at the game, but not strong enough to be professional players, would feel very uncomfortable!

Because the system had to ensure that terrible players could also maintain a carry rate of about 50%, it was necessary to sacrifice the game experience of some excellent players.

After a player won several games in a row, they would inevitably frequently encounter terrible teammates who would forcibly lower their win rate, eventually causing everyone's win rate to be roughly maintained at around 50%. Even if some skilled players had a slightly higher win rate, it wouldn't be too much higher.

Unless some particularly powerful master players or professional players came down to smurf, they could carry nine or eight players under any circumstances, then their win rate could be maintained at 70% to 80%. Generally, just relatively skilled players would find it difficult to break through a 50% win rate, and the most likely outcome would be leaving behind a whole page of SVPs (Save Very Player).

From the game company's point of view, this seemed to be a win-win choice.

For some relatively unskilled players, they wouldn't be discouraged by losing continuously. As long as the number of ranked games went up, they would always see their rank slowly increase. And for those players who were relatively able to carry, although a 50% win rate was very unpleasant, at least they carried, they were the SVP, and they were just arranged by terrible teammates. It wasn't worth rage quitting because of this.

Originally, this rule was intended to be updated secretly. Players shouldn't be able to detect it in a short period of time, so it could effectively pull in a wave of retention.

But unexpectedly, this rule was leaked somehow!

This was a disaster.

Although from Finger Company's point of view, this new ranking mechanism could indeed improve the game experience of new players and avoid further loss of the low-elo pool, for those more powerful players, this was difficult to accept.

Why are you matching me with terrible teammates to forcibly lower my win rate to 50%?

Ranked games should be based on skill, but I get the same rank increase as those carried noobs, what was the point of my hard work to hone my skills and seriously try to win the game?

I put in so much effort to practice my skills, and in the end, I practiced for nothing?

The ideal was very full, but it directly violated the consensus of most game players, so it was severely criticized!

The series of negative events caused Finger Company's stock price to fall again, giving people the feeling that it was about to collapse.

Pei Qian was also alarmed.

What was going on? Misfortunes never come singly?

What was wrong with Finger Company's executives? Had they given up on themselves? How did they start collectively losing their minds?

Where was Finger Company's CEO? Could he manage this?

But... on the bright side, maybe the plan to acquire Finger Company would be smoother?

Pei Qian also couldn't figure out whether it was the collective brains of Finger Company's executives that had problems, or because "when fortune departs, heroes are no longer free," but he was becoming less and less able to understand what was happening with Finger Company.

Just as he was thinking about it, there was a knock on the office door.

Looking up, it was Lü Mingliang.

"President Pei, I'm here to admit my mistake. When I debated with Nie Yunsheng of Sheng Yun Group on Saturday, I subconsciously said some things that weren't very appropriate because I was emotional, and I also attracted a lot of hatred. I'm willing to take all responsibility."

Lü Mingliang going to Modu to meet with Nie Yunsheng was indeed arranged by him, but the words he said on the scene had a lot of improvisation.

Some of it was indeed planned, to expose the hypocrisy of Sheng Yun Group, but some of it was impromptu, said on the spur of the moment.

Now, the live recording at that time had caused a heated reaction online. As a result, Lü Mingliang could be said to have become famous in one battle, greatly increasing the reputation of Upwind Logistics, and the express delivery business had skyrocketed.

But it had to be said that Lü Mingliang's words were not consulted and confirmed with Pei Qian before he said them. Lü Mingliang himself was not very clear about whether President Pei would support his statements, and whether these statements would affect the future development of Upwind Logistics and even the entire Tengda Group.

So, Lü Mingliang still waited until Monday to report to President Pei.

Pei Qian was silent for a moment, and said, "Did you give yourself overtime pay for Saturday? Did you reimburse your own high-speed rail ticket?"

Lü Mingliang was stunned for a moment: "Uh... I did."

Pei Qian immediately smiled: "That's good! As for the others, that's just a small matter. I watched the recording of you arguing with Nie Yunsheng, you spoke very well, there's no problem."

"The most important thing is announcing to everyone that Upwind Logistics will not raise prices for ten years and will provide large-scale subsidies. It's exactly what I wanted! You said it so well!"

"As for attracting hatred... those companies deserve to be scolded, you scolded them well! I hope they can unite to deal with Tengda, to create some difficulty for me!"

"Also, you did a very good job of recruiting that courier on the spot. Combined with the recent special recruitment exam, it gave me a brand new idea."

"I'm going to give you a certain number of quotas to directly poach people!"

"I'll give you some separate quotas to poach employees who used to work at Sheng Yun Group. Since we've already torn face, we might as well tear it more thoroughly!"

"If this poaching can have good results, then we can popularize this rule and let other departments follow suit!"