God's Imitator

Obviously, this was the so-called ’scam shop’.

The three answering players didn’t need to know the correct answer at all, because as long as everyone’s answers were consistent, even answering incorrectly would result in positive earnings.

The earnings of the 3 players added up to exactly 6000, enough to force the question setter to ’continue their turn’ through voting.

Although the game rules stated that players were strictly prohibited from agreeing in advance to answer fixed options in any way, with violations resulting in warnings or even immediate death penalties, the answering players still had many ways to achieve this.

For example, by using the second phase rules to provide suggestions to each other.

Community 1’s players had most likely reached an agreement in advance, with one player sending suggestions to the other players, and then the other players choosing according to the suggestions.

This way they could ensure their answers were completely consistent.

No matter who set the questions, they would be forced to ’continue their turn’.

Not only that, with good luck, there was also a one-third probability of possibly choosing the correct answer.

In that case, each answering player could additionally gain 4000 minutes of visa time.When all three answering players had selected their answers, settlement would proceed early.

This way, they could continuously extract visa time from the question setter.

So Zheng Jie recalled what specific characteristics the five Community 1 players had.

These five people were three men and two women, and the ones who entered the ’4-person room’ first were two female players, leaving three male players outside.

That meant at this time, the three answering players must be 2 women and 1 man.

Zheng Jie quickly produced the second question.

[Are you a male player?]

[A. Yes]

[B. No]

[C. I am an attack helicopter]

...

At the same time, in another cubicle in the ’4-person room’.

Gao Jialiang was leisurely sitting in his chair, preparing to continue answering questions in a simple, mindless way.

So far, their plan was going smoothly.

They had successfully matched code words and put that Community 17 player named Zheng Jie in the question setter position.

From now until the game ended, the question setter would always be him.

It was clear that Zheng Jie had racked his brains to produce a professional question, but Gao Jialiang hadn’t considered it at all. After receiving the suggestion, he chose option A.

Sure enough, it was positive earnings.

Seeing the second question, Gao Jialiang first froze for a moment, then smiled indifferently, ”Heh, wasting your effort.

”No matter what question you ask, we’ll choose the same option, and it’ll always be positive earnings.”

For Gao Jialiang, this question should be answered [A. Yes], which was the correct and not-against-conscience option.

But the problem was that the other two Community 1 players who entered the ’4-person room’ were female players.

So Gao Jialiang didn’t select his answer immediately, but waited a while.

Sure enough, he saw that on the interface on the right side of the console, the two boxes displayed the option: B.

This meant the two female players sent suggestions, both telling him to change to option B.

Obviously, one player triggering a penalty was far better than two players triggering penalties.

As for suggestions from uninvolved players, of course they had no reference value.

Gao Jialiang directly chose option B and submitted his answer.

[All answering players have submitted their answers. Settlement will proceed directly.]

[The correct answer to this question is: Male players choose ’A. Yes’, female players choose ’B. No’.]

[The net earnings of the three players in this room are: 5000 minutes of visa time.]

[The question setter will pay out 5000 minutes of visa time.]

[The question setter will be changed.]

And Gao Jialiang’s earnings were even more disastrous, reaching -15000.

Gao Jialiang was stunned, ”Wait, why are the total earnings only 5000?

”My earnings are -15000. These earnings are correct: wrong option -4000, majority -10,000, against conscience -17000, full unanimity +16000.

”But the two of them should have very high earnings, right?

”Correct option +4000, majority -10,000, against conscience +17000, full unanimity +16000. It should be 27000 earnings, shouldn’t it?”

...

At the same time, in another cubicle.

Seeing her final earnings were 10,000 and not 27000, Qian Li’s expression also looked somewhat dazed.

She instantly understood that she had made a very serious mistake.

The value for the against conscience penalty was indeed 8500 in the first phase and indeed 17000 in the second phase.

But the problem was that not being against conscience had no reward!

”Wait, why is it like this?”

Qian Li of course couldn’t accept this situation, because losing this part of the reward would prevent them from continuing to force the question setter to ’continue their turn’, essentially completely overturning their previous strategy.

But Qian Li didn’t think this was her oversight. She would only think the game’s design was unreasonable.

Because players could only use the 5 questions from the first phase to determine the specific values.

And among these 5 questions, only the 4th question would trigger the against conscience penalty.

The first three questions were professional questions. No matter how you chose, they wouldn’t be against conscience. For the 5th question, Qian Li cooperated with other players and tested the extra reward for full unanimity, but the third light was gray, indicating it also didn’t involve the against conscience option.

So any player who consciously tested the against conscience penalty rule would deliberately answer a wrong option on the fourth question, then observe changes in the data.

Qian Li did exactly that.

And although Gao Jialiang didn’t have particularly clear awareness, in trying to hit the minority option he coincidentally chose an against conscience option and likewise had visa time deducted.

Rewards were affected by three factors. Both ’right or wrong’ and ’majority or minority’ factors would earn or deduct visa time according to the same values.

So after Qian Li tested the specific value of visa time deducted for the against conscience option, she subconsciously assumed that the not-against-conscience option would earn the same value of visa time.

She didn’t have an extra opportunity to answer a ’not-against-conscience answer’ again to further confirm this result.

As for the other 3 Community 1 players, some of them definitely answered with not-against-conscience options on the 4th question.

But they weren’t smart enough. They couldn’t realize at all what these lights specifically meant, couldn’t deduce specific reward and punishment values through the numbers, and had no awareness of testing the against conscience option.

Naturally, they also couldn’t think of ’not-against-conscience answers don’t give extra visa time rewards’.

That is to say: Players intentionally testing would be more inclined to test penalties rather than rewards, because the former was more certain and had less interference. Players unintentionally testing couldn’t distinguish the specific values clearly.

This caused all five Community 1 players to be completely wiped out regarding ’rewards and punishments for against conscience answers’.

And this in turn caused Qian Li to seriously misjudge the situation in the ’4-person room’.

If ’not-against-conscience options had rewards’, then answerers in the 4-person room could just keep answering the same option to force the question setter to keep ’continuing their turn’ and drain them dry.

Because as long as there were more players not against conscience than players against conscience, it would always be positive earnings.

But ’not-against-conscience options having no rewards’ would lead to the current situation: the visa time earned by answering players didn’t reach 5500 minutes, so the question setter would be changed by default.