To properly implement the TPDb rating system, a website was needed.

Since there was still space upstairs, Pei Qian planned to hire another batch of people responsible for website operations, right next to Terminus Chinese Network.

The TPDb website would list all of Tenda’s projects, including all developed games, various short videos shot by Fei Huang Studio, each branch of Slackin’ Internet Café, Terminus Chinese Network, Headwind Inn, and more.

The website would have simple categories, including games, film and television, lifestyle, physical establishments, and other fields for easy classification queries.

If Tenda ventured into new industries in the future, the website categories would be updated in real-time.

The website wouldn’t provide excessive introductions to these projects, just a simple page with some basic information about them.

The main part would be ratings and evaluation details.

Evaluations would be divided into four major categories: internal evaluations, media evaluations, consumer evaluations, and netizen evaluations.

The final rating would be calculated based on these four categories, weighted according to a specific formula.

The website would allow open registration, but Tenda’s internal employees’ accounts would have special privileges, allowing them to click on the “Internal Evaluation” tab to access the intranet and view executive ratings, internal employee opinions, and other content.

Ordinary users would only be able to see the specific values of internal evaluations without access to the intranet.

The Media Evaluation tab would integrate evaluations from some major authoritative media and repost some review articles.

Consumer Evaluations and Netizen Evaluations would display separate ratings. Only users who provided consumption records could make consumer evaluations, while netizen evaluations would be unrestricted.

For specific ratings, TPDb would also adopt a relatively complex rating mechanism. Each account’s rating weight would be different, and only internal personnel with higher website privileges could view the specific weights.

Some inappropriate behaviors might affect an account’s rating weight.

For example, if a major influencer accepted a bribe to vindictively give a 1-star rating to a project with an average score above 4, or a 5-star rating to a project with an average score of 2, it might affect their future rating weight.

Of course, this wasn’t intended to stifle differences of opinion, since everyone’s evaluation of good and bad is highly subjective. It didn’t rule out that some people simply didn’t like the perfect-score masterpieces praised by everyone and genuinely wanted to give such works a 1-star rating.

But this kind of retaliatory 1-star rating behavior violates the principles of objective and fair evaluation, so it would also affect the account’s rating weight.

At the same time, if someone frequently switched accounts, such as logging in from the same IP address with multiple accounts, it would also reduce these accounts’ rating weights.

In short, the goal was to eliminate these non-objective ratings as much as possible, allowing each project’s rating to approach its deserved value.

Pei Qian temporarily assigned the preliminary preparation work for the website to Ma Yiqun, since Terminus Chinese Network had basically gotten on track recently, and Ma Yiqun wasn’t as busy as before.

After the preliminary preparation work for TPDb was completed in a while, suitable people would be selected to manage it.

…

…

September 1st.

Slackin’ Internet Café.

Qiao Liang took a sip of coffee that the server had brought from the bar, feeling that this lifestyle was relaxed and comfortable.

His fan group chat was constantly flashing, easily exceeding 99+ messages, making it impossible to keep up.

During this time, Qiao Liang hadn’t been very active in his fan group because he had been struggling with “Turn Back to Shore,” having to play eight hours a day, which was quite stressful.

Moreover, the game content of “Turn Back to Shore” couldn’t be disclosed to the outside world—he had signed a contract and had to keep his mouth shut.

However, Qiao Liang had finally found some tricks recently. His game progress had significantly accelerated, and he didn’t feel as much pressure as he did at the beginning.

After briefly looking at the casual chat in the group and taking a short break, Qiao Liang opened “Turn Back to Shore” again, ready to defeat the Meng Po Boss that had been holding him up for a long time.

After opening the game, an update notification popped up first.

“Oh, another update.”

Qiao Liang was already accustomed to this because he was playing the development version. The “Turn Back to Shore” project team was constantly making frequent changes to the game, so there were new update packages every day.

These updates varied in size—small ones were just a few hundred KB, possibly updating only a configuration table; larger ones could reach several hundred MB, possibly updating a batch of scene resources.

This update wasn’t very large, and with the internet café’s fast network speed, it was completed in just a few minutes.

“I wonder how many of the suggestions I made to Mr. Pei last time have been implemented.”

Qiao Liang even had a strange sense of anticipation.

A week ago, Mr. Pei had come here to ask some questions about the game, and Qiao Liang had also given his detailed opinions:

The initial small village and town were too difficult because players were encountering them for the first time and hadn’t adapted to this game mode yet, so the deterrent effect was obvious, while later scenes would be easier.

The implication was that he hoped the difficulty of the first two scenes could be slightly reduced, while the later ones could remain as they were.

Regarding weapons, Qiao Liang felt that the cleaver was very useful in the early to mid-game—flexible, with fast attack speed and considerable damage—while the broadsword’s vertical slash was particularly effective.

The implication was that other unpopular weapons felt a bit awkward to use, suggesting that their feel should be optimized.

During the previous game updates, Qiao Liang had been expecting the design team to make adjustments in these areas, but his expectations were disappointed.

Perhaps because there were too many balance adjustments, they couldn’t be completed in a short time.

But this time, Qiao Liang finally got what he was waiting for.

After updating the version, he glanced at the update log and found that there were indeed many changes related to balance adjustments!

“Mr. Pei is truly a conscientious designer who listens to player feedback!”

Qiao Liang exclaimed sincerely.

He opened the details page of the balance adjustments to check carefully, wanting to see which unpopular weapon had been strengthened so that he could use this enhanced weapon to defeat the Meng Po Boss.

“Increased the attack power of monsters in scenes like Wangchuan River and Three-Life Stone, added monster types and attack methods.”

“Restored the cleaver’s abnormally high damage at low enhancement levels to normal levels; as compensation, slightly increased its charged attack damage.”

“Fixed the bug where the broadsword’s vertical slash was too fast.”

There were many similar balance adjustments, but they were all nerfs!

The weapons that Qiao Laoshi originally found quite useful had all been nerfed.

Take the cleaver—they directly nerfed its basic damage at lower enhancement levels in the early game. This way, novice players could no longer mindlessly use the cleaver from early to mid-game.

Of course, this weapon was still usable because the charged attack damage had been increased. However, if using charged attacks, the preparation time and initial animation would be longer, eliminating the cleaver’s flexibility advantage. To use it effectively would now require a better technique.

The same applied to the broadsword. After fixing the “bug” of the vertical slash being too fast, players could no longer mindlessly spam vertical slashes to defeat monsters. Using this weapon well would now require better technique.

Of course, only Pei Qian himself knew whether it was a bug or not.

Qiao Liang stared blankly, hardly believing his eyes.

“The weapons I found useful… were all nerfed???”

“How am I supposed to defeat Meng Po today? I might not even be able to get past the earlier monsters!”

Qiao Liang looked at his cleaver and broadsword, which he had enhanced several times, and slumped in his chair.

It was like being sent back to square one overnight!

The good coffee instantly lost its appeal.

Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing?

Qiao Liang felt a deep sense of confusion…