“Are you three registered as a group?” A Panda Sailor who was drinking on some bamboo juice asked the trio.
“Yeah. I’m Zi Dan, the Bullet Cheetah Cultivator. This is-” Zi Dan was about to introduce the rest of his team, but before he had a chance Xia Mao and Jing Yu merely pulled their Pandamonium Apps up to show their tickets.
“Well, go right in! We will be departing soon!” The Panda Sailor told them as he ignored Zi Dan’s introduction since there was already enough ‘proof’ that they bought the tickets and registered as a group.
“OIII, didn’t we agree that we were going for a more inclusive kind of experience?” Zi Dan complained with his eyes squinted at them with a tinge of despise.
“Showing the ticket is plenty inclusive enough already.” Xia Mao retorted as he stepped onto the boat and saw there were many Pandarens all in their groups and waiting for the ship to depart. With the new revamp of the Shop Instance, they all felt that Jin was going for a more authentic and realistic experience of his dungeons.
The waiting time for the ships to depart and arrive on the port was also made quite realistic, and everything was moving like clockwork. Depending on the number of Pandarens in the vicinity wanting to try the dungeon instance, the ships also differed in size.
All three of them had seen how the crowd was when they first came in after dawn. Given the early hours, it wasn’t a considerable amount, but Jing Yu figured it had to have been at least a few dozen. Thus when the ship came, there was nothing much to notice about except for the flashiness of the vessels.
However, when they were waiting for their turn, more and more Pandarens had joined them by the bay, enforced by the Panda Sailors and Panda Ticketmasters to keep them in line. (Obviously, a snake line queue was created with the aid of System’s queue control.) And when the next ship was seen from the horizon, they did not expect a colossal ship, akin to the size of Titanic docking right next to them.
The blasting of the ship’s horns, the seagulls following at the side of the giant vessel and the rushing of the sea waves had physically excited the cultivators. However, the most exceptional part of the ship was the exquisite decoration and the large paintings on the boat’s side, which wowed almost every cultivator on the docks.
The docking was fast and swift for a ship that size, and the Panda Sailors who were ushering them in began to allow them to board on. Soon, everyone who had the Nian dungeon instance ticket was able to board while the others who had bought a different set of dungeon tickets had been directed to the avenues of the Great Panda Transport.
“Alright, last call! Last boarding call! The ship will depart in exactly one minute! Anyone not on board will have to wait for the next one!” the Panda Sailor shouted while an announcement was also broadcast through push notifications. Whether they could make it on time or wait for the next ship arrival would be entirely up to the customer’s choice.
While it was tempting to let the Pandarens have access to the teleporting system once again, Jin felt that he should slowly phase it out and allow them to get used of the inconvenience.
He was not sure how much it would affect the customers as not everyone had the time in the world to do things, and accessibility would definitely be appreciated. However, he felt that there was a need to cut out certain things so that they could understand the beauty of the shop instance he created. (Of course, the System did help with the environment and pavement settings but it was still quite a bit of effort putting them together.)
Thus, he created a compromise which evidently disadvantaged those who decided to not follow the new set of ‘instance behaviour’. He allowed those who were not queuing to have an instant teleport to the dungeon instance of their choice once the timer for the ships was up. However, they would not receive the major incentive for those who did the ‘proper’ way and waited for their turn.
After all, on the ship, the dungeon groups were not only given a feast spread worthy of praise, they were also allowed to hire Panda Mercenaries of their choice by speaking with the crew to hire. Jin had collected enough data to know how unbalanced the groups in terms of team fights could be.
Most if not everyone in the modern world wanted to go for the most offensive, most stylish way of fighting. This was because the current working model was to use the cultivation as a way to improve their quality of life, and cultivation became a hobby rather than a way of life.
Jin wanted to change that and thus created this Panda Mercenary Board where Panda NPCs could be hired for their expertise. The System had collected the necessary data from the Savants and thousands of fights to create a varied set of basic NPCs worthy to be used for dungeon instances.
As a nice bonus, this would not only block transmission of spiritual power from monsters to Pandarens but also allow the System to gather even more data on how the teams worked with NPCs.
Of course, this could not have been done without the creation of squadmates, the feature that Jin had exclusively allowed the Pandawans to test out. This was basically the third iteration of it where Jin tried to innovate and tweak it so it would be balanced. For the upcoming newer dungeon instances, the dungeon supplier had decided to place more emphasis on the ‘holy trinity’ party, where it was essential to have a balance of a healer, tank and attackers. That way, Jin would be able to create more fun dungeons and ultimately pave the road for the Virtual Reality Network.
With the exception of the new Spiralling Sewers Instance, the Pandamonium App would recommend for cultivators to hire at least a healer, and a tank for their group (unless their group had those bases covered) and each dungeon group could not exceed more than six people and needed a minimum of four for fights. Naturally, the difficulty of the dungeon would be scaled up as well with the increased number of Pandarens participating in the fight, so it would actually be harder for a bigger group to win.
While this was strictly enforced in the Nian Limited Dungeon Instance, Jin had decided to be more lenient for older dungeon instances and the cultivators, for now, were allowed to choose between ‘old-school’ and ‘new mode’. The rewards for the latter would be more enticing, even if the difficulty was also adjusted.
The Three Elder Pandarens had no idea how the new dungeon instance format would be like since there were no large cinema screens to watch on the fly while waiting for their turn. And with the need to have a dedicated healer and tank also gave them the chills that Jin’s dungeon instances might have gone up another notch.
“But let’s not think ahead of ourselves and choose a good mercenary before the rest are taken.” Xia Mao suggested as they were reading the new set of instructions in their cabins as the ship prepared to depart.
