This Is Not a Bug but a Game Feature-Chapter 88: Too Many Trailers

"The NPCs won’t just run off, right?"

After finishing reading the strategy guide full of "bittersweet tears, absurd words," Chen Ba asked somewhat worriedly.

This loss is quite severe!

If all NPCs are like this, how can players feel secure in recruiting and training them? What if history repeats itself and a well-trained NPC just bails?

"Don’t worry, this is entirely his own doing."

Yang Dong shook his head and said, "NPCs generated by the program do indeed have a goodwill system with each other. He himself mentioned that if you want to build a harem, you have to constantly monitor the NPC goodwill changes."

The first wife clearly doesn’t like the second wife; insisting on living together is just asking for trouble when the backyard catches fire!

Is this really how you play the game?

"His situation is indeed rare!"

Lu couldn’t hold back and laughed, "Though there’s a disappointment value in the hidden system, under normal circumstances, NPCs with goodwill levels reaching Follow or True Love will generally not leave the player."

They had already considered this.

If players invest so much effort and resources in training NPCs, and one day they decide to run off because they’re unhappy, wouldn’t the player’s resources and effort go down the drain?

So, under normal circumstances, NPCs won’t run away.

Even if the goodwill of NPCs drops, there’s still a period and measures for recovery, so they won’t just leave, especially not taking their gear with them.

As for the situation mentioned in the strategy guide, that’s considered abnormal.

Starting a harem but the two wives have a poor relationship, leading to the backyard catching fire and ending in ruin was very much self-inflicted.

"NPCs also have different relationships; if you choose a particular NPC, you can’t recruit their enemies into the team, or the goodwill will plummet."

"How can heroes identify the relationships between NPCs?"

"It’s pretty simple!"

Chen Ba said with slight guilt, "While building goodwill routinely, NPCs will basically tell the player who and what they like or hate."

This is something the system came up with.

To be honest, he couldn’t understand what kind of magic the system used that made program-generated NPCs so intelligent.

It’s amazing that they come with identity backgrounds and behavior logic. The fact they have exclusive dialogue lines and unique preferences is just astonishing!

In "Divine Grace Continent," the most impressive element is definitely the variety of NPCs in the game.

It’s not hard to notice that although these NPCs seem robotic and repetitive in conversation, interacting with them on a daily basis feels like dealing with half-real people at least.

They each have their own lives.

NPCs don’t get along perfectly well; they can have conflicts, disputes, and even fights.

For example.

When a player is wandering around the royal city, they might meet Rudy, known for not "playing fair," who doesn’t get on well with other NPCs. If a player enlists him into the Hero Squad, they shouldn’t expect to recruit other commoner NPCs from the royal city.

The reason is simple.

The other NPCs lack goodwill towards Rudy, some even intensely dislike him, so they are unwilling to associate with him.

It’s not just the same-type NPCs; even cross-racial NPC teammates have difficulty coexisting.

Take beastmen and elves, for example.

If the Hero Squad has a beastman, then recruiting normal elf NPCs is impossible. This is because, as per game settings, the Beastman Empire has invaded the Elf Kingdom for years, fostering a significant grudge between the two races.

Of course!

These restrictions only apply to ordinary NPCs, they don’t exist for those special NPCs appearing in the main storyline who have names.

For example, the Elf Queen and Elf Princess can technically coexist with the Beastman Empress in the same party.

The condition is you have to win them over.

...

Though the Venerable Cowherd’s strategy guide ends in hilarious fashion, its other content remains practical.

This has provided many players in a period of confusion with a clear direction.

Different NPC compositions, varied profession combinations... under the research of tens of thousands of players, various gameplay styles quickly emerged.

Among them is the Shield Counter Style.

Three Shields, one Support, and one Healer, leaving no space for a core DPS—relying entirely on the "counterattack" mechanism provided by frontline Shield Allies for damage output.

This style is quite innovative, but it must be said, a pure tank team won’t go far; it’s likely only playable in the early stages.

The Fire Gambit Style is quite popular.

The so-called Fire Gambit Style refers to investing all resources in a single Fire Mage to leverage the high area damage of Flame Magic in the early game, wiping out small mobs with a skill combo.

The reason this roster is popular mainly lies in the fact that Fire Element Mages have a big advantage in the early game, dealing massive area damage. The sight of full-screen damage numbers against regular mobs makes it incredibly satisfying!

Some people do train archers, but players soon realized that training NPCs to transition to Archers is heavily reliant on gear; without suitable equipment, the output from Archers is questionable at best...

"Actually, these are all fine."

Chen Ba has no objection to the styles or unique gameplay discovered by the players.

No matter the style, they are ultimately playing the game seriously. He truly appreciates and respects those who are earnest about gaming.

But for those who aren’t playing seriously and instead have a peculiar taste for Minotaurs, focusing solely on wooing NPCs away from others, he just cannot understand it.

What kind of preferences are those?

With so many unmarried young ladies in the game, some of the married NPCs are quite old and their graphical models aren’t appealing.

Yet, a portion of players still have tastes more unusual than the average person.

They ignore the young, available NPCs, preferring to eye NPC’s wives— the Duchess and Queen are the worst hit zones.

"Still not thorough enough."

Chen Ba sighed and said, "There are too many trailers; these NPCs also lack complete logic. When the heroes come to woo them, how can they giggle along?"

Too careless!

Even though the system-generated NPCs still stick to the behavior expected of game roles logically.

The thought of a hero flirting with a queen while having idle chitchat with the King paints a bizarre picture.

NPCs don’t have a sense of being cheated on.

To be clear, when developing the game, they never considered there would be so many trailers, leading to an absurd scenario of a player wooing four married women consecutively.

When seeing the "Five-Person Squad" screenshot in the player group chat, Chen Ba was internally crushed.

So splendidly ridiculous! 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

It’s so outrageous even for him as the game developer, it made his scalp tingle—utterly unexpected someone could be this ridiculous.

What’s this if not a trailer?

Even the trailers were never this abstract; though the game allows it, your tastes seem way too extreme!

Initially thinking this Hero Squad was already quite ridiculous, a more absurd event transpired.

A player chose a regular NPC family from the royal city and successfully wooed every family member—the NPC couple and their children, a total of four.

Upon releasing the screenshot, the 2000-member player chat group fell into dead silence, so much so that even the most seasoned veterans stopped breathing.

Then...

The player was kicked out of the group chat by the group leader, GameBugs.

Cannot tolerate such disturbance!