God's Imitator-Chapter 344: High Auction Prices

The game only lasts a total of 3 hours, and 30 minutes have already passed, which is one-sixth of the time.

If he maintained this speed of earning visa time, by the end he wouldn't even be able to earn 50,000 minutes of visa time, which would mean certain death.

Because players would inevitably suffer an instant death penalty, and must gather five cards of different body parts to avoid death.

Cards are automatically obtained for every 10,000 minutes of visa time earned. Even without considering duplicate cards, 50,000 in earnings is the absolute bottom line.

Falling below this bottom line is absolutely unacceptable.

"It's because this room is all positive returns, causing everyone to have a lot of chips, so the visa time distributed has decreased..."

He Xiaojun hastily made a simple calculation.

From the game rules, when players shake the dice cup, they must shake for at least 10 seconds. Adding in betting and other miscellaneous time, at most about 5 rounds of the game can be played per minute.

So within the 30-minute dividend cycle, at most around 150 rounds of the game can be played.

In single-player mode, guessing wrong loses 200, guessing right earns 400, so the expected earnings per round can be viewed as 100 chips. Then the expected earnings for 30 minutes would be roughly 15,000 chips.

The bonus chips awarded in two-player mode are even less, so the expected earnings should be calculated at half.

As for multi-player tables, since the number of people is constantly changing and games aren't continuously in progress, it's not easy to calculate. But generally speaking, the more people there are, the lower the expected earnings.

There are about 10 players in this room, 4 single-player, 4 two-player, and 3 multi-player. Adding the chips given at the start of the game and chips purchased by players, roughly estimating, the total chip amount in the entire room is probably over 120,000.

But the room's dividend amount is only 67,000 minutes of visa time.

This dividend is actually quite substantial, because the default base dividend is 30,000, and the remaining amount should all be unlocked by players repeatedly playing games.

However, the game rules only mentioned that 'game count can unlock dividend amounts' but didn't specify the exact unlocking rules.

If there exists 'an unlock limit per dividend cycle' or 'diminishing marginal returns on unlocked amounts', then rooms with many people might actually become less cost-effective.

He Xiaojun considered carefully for a moment, then made up his mind.

"No, I can't continue staying in this room to farm visa time. There's clearly a problem here.

"In this room, only the single-player mode returns are still decent. Although two-player mode and multi-player mode also appear to be positive-sum games, the speed of earning visa time is clearly insufficient.

"But where can I go now?"

He Xiaojun looked back and discovered that all four single-player modes in 'Compare Sizes' had already been taken by other players.

Since single-player mode has a restriction that players must switch after 30 minutes, and the previous players also need to go to the chip exchange counter for dividends, the queuing players can directly occupy the spots.

To wait for them to leave, it would be another half hour.

There were still empty spots in two-player mode and multi-player mode, but clearly, the returns from these two modes were insufficient, so he had to think of other solutions.

Besides this, there was another point: the room's dividends would eventually be used up.

The game rules stated that each room's dividend defaults to between 30,000 and 150,000.

'Compare Sizes' had already distributed 67,000 minutes of visa time.

That means after one more dividend distribution, the visa time in this room would be mostly depleted.

Although the rules mentioned that the God's Imitator could add their own money, He Xiaojun felt this couldn't be relied upon too much.

So he needed to quickly find solutions in other game rooms.

He Xiaojun thought of another game similar to 'Compare Sizes', which was 'Simple Poker'.

But when he glanced at the situation in 'Simple Poker', he discovered that the single-player modes in this room had also already been occupied by other players.

He Xiaojun looked at some of the more unpopular game rooms, such as 'Chess Endgame' and 'Equipment Forging'.

Unpopular games like these would definitely still have dividends, and the fewer chips there were, the more dividends there would be. But these games didn't seem to have methods for stable returns. What if he lost money?

While hesitating, He Xiaojun saw some players coming to the 'Auction Terminal' in the game lobby.

He thought about it and also returned to his own 'Auction Terminal', wanting to check the current selling prices of various items.

Perhaps he could infer the current situation in the lobby from how players were listing items for sale.

...

After the first dividend distribution, products had appeared on the auction terminal.

He Xiaojun immediately spotted a Death Immunity Card for the arm guard position, listed at a price of 20,000 minutes of visa time.

"What an outrageous price!"

Clearly, the player who listed this item wasn't sincerely trying to sell it, but was just trying their luck to see if they could trick some big sucker.

On the auction terminal, there were corresponding usage rule explanations, one of which was worth noting.

[Players can use existing visa time to purchase items or chips, but can spend at most 20,000 minutes of visa time, and this is not considered game earnings.]

This clause included both the 'Auction Terminal' and the 'Chip Exchange Counter'.

In other words, whether exchanging chips in various game rooms or purchasing items from the auction terminal, players could pay out of pocket at most 20,000 minutes of visa time.

Even if they originally had several hundred thousand minutes, they could only use 20,000 at most.

Of course, players could continue earning dividends in the game, but even if they earned a lot of visa time, they probably wouldn't use 20,000 to buy a Death Immunity Card.

After all, in situations where all players gather five Death Immunity Cards, they would continue to be ranked by their earnings in the game, eliminating the players at the bottom.

Earning 10,000 more or 10,000 less could very well be the difference between life and death.

If He Xiaojun were to estimate the price himself, he would think that around 5,000 to 10,000 minutes of visa time to purchase a Death Immunity Card might be barely acceptable.

Of course, the specifics would still depend on the players' subsequent earnings.

If most players could gather five Death Immunity Cards and still have some left over, then the price of cards would definitely drop significantly. Conversely, if most players couldn't gather five cards, then these things might also be hyped up to astronomical prices.

He Xiaojun certainly wouldn't purchase Death Immunity Cards now. He studied the specific usage of the auction terminal again.

Currently, it appeared there were three different things on the auction terminal: 'Death Immunity Cards', 'chips from various rooms', and 'visa time'.

Among these, chips were rather special because they could serve as both goods and currency.

When listing 'Death Immunity Cards', players could set the price as a certain amount of visa time, or as a certain amount of chips from a specific room.

But clearly, the vast majority of players would set the price as visa time.

Because the value of chips was constantly changing, sometimes they could be exchanged for more visa time, sometimes less.

Using chips as a pricing standard could easily result in major losses.

However, players could also sell chips from a certain room as goods. For example, listing 20,000 chips from a certain room with a selling price of 5,000 minutes of visa time.

This situation could still potentially occur.

Because if players exchanged at the exchange counter in each room according to the default ratio, they could only exchange at 1:1.

If some players holding chips from this room weren't optimistic about the room's future dividends and were eager to offload these chips, while another player wanted to obtain these chips and monopolize the entire room, then the transaction between them might be completed.