God's imitator

Chapter 293 Strategy
From the very beginning, Tsai Chih-yuan considered that "minority answers" might be an additional reward factor.

Because the number of players is a key variable in similar games.

The question is whether the 'majority' or the 'minority' will receive the extra reward.

It seems like there's a 50/50 chance, but from the designer's perspective, it's highly likely that the minority will receive the reward.

If the rule is "the majority of answers are rewarded", it will inevitably lead to herd mentality and clustering among players. Combined with the rule of "five people choosing the same answer receive an extra reward", the competition between players may be greatly reduced.

Because players with different options will only gather together, not avoid each other.

The game's playability and strategic depth will be severely compromised.

At the same time, the gains of the question setter and the player are negatively correlated; the more the player earns, the more the question setter loses.

The setting of "minority groups receiving extra rewards" is more in line with the logic of gameplay design.

Of course, these are just preliminary inferences, and whether they are valid still needs to be verified through specific questions.

The reason Cai Zhiyuan chose C for the first question was because he had guessed Kong Yuxin's strategy and was quite certain that it was the correct answer.

If you want to be a definite minority, it's best to choose option A for this question.

However, Tsai Chih-yuan still chose C because he was unsure whether he could choose the correct answer for the second question and wanted to conduct a comparative test.

For the second question, Cai Zhiyuan chose B because it was the majority option among players unrelated to the community.

This choice involves an element of gambling, but it is also based on sound reasoning.

Cai Zhiyuan's assessment is that the less obvious the differences between the options in a question, the higher the accuracy rate of answers from unrelated players in the community may be.

Because of those seemingly ambiguous questions, community players are likely to answer based on their first impressions rather than specifically asking professionals within the community.

Because answering correctly or incorrectly has absolutely no bearing on their interests.

However, the second question involves linguistics, which most players are unfamiliar with. So, if you just guess based on your first impression, the three options should have roughly equal weight.

However, many players will ask such questions out of curiosity to a very small number of players who have professional knowledge.

In this way, the suggestions of the few players who know the correct answer are more likely to be widely adopted, resulting in a slight difference in the percentage of the three options.

Meanwhile, Gao Jialiang, the "player representative," suggested option C, while Cai Zhiyuan could avoid this by choosing option B, thus becoming a minority and gaining extra benefits.

After answering these two questions, Cai Zhiyuan roughly determined that the combination of the "minority answer" and the "correct answer" would earn him a reward of 7000 minutes of visa time.

Furthermore, the different total rewards for the first and second questions can also provide a rough indication of other players' choices.

The total reward for the first question is -7000. Kong Yuxin and Cai Zhiyuan should have the same option, so they both get +7000. Then the other three people might each get -7000.

第二道题目总收益-11000，除蔡志远之外的四人收益就是-18000，有可能是3个-7000和一个3000，又或者是2个-7000和2个-2000。

Of course, there are many other possibilities for these two questions, but listing every possible scenario would be too complicated, so Cai Zhiyuan can only consider the option with the highest probability.

In any case, no other player should have earned 7000 in the second question, otherwise such a high loss wouldn't have occurred.

By the third question, more and more players had realized that the "minority answer" would be rewarded.

For example, in the second question, there is a high probability that a player will gain 3000 points, and he will definitely realize this.

The third question happens to be another question with a fairly clear answer.

All five people knew the correct answer was B, but only two of them actually chose option B.

However, the difference between the other three players is that, apart from Cai Zhiyuan, the other two players cannot clearly determine how many players will deliberately choose the minority option.

The presence or absence of the phrases "only you will intentionally choose the minority" and "at least 2 to 3 players will intentionally choose the minority" will directly influence a player's judgment regarding the minority option.

Between options A and C, the unrelated players' choices were: option A 11%, option C 14%. Therefore, the other two players both chose option A, which had a lower percentage, resulting in a tie.

Of course, Cai Zhiyuan's ability to obtain such high returns had a large element of luck.

However, because he had access to information, he was still able to maintain positive returns even when he was unlucky.

But it's not certain that they can earn that much.

Although Yang Hui revealed this rule, putting all players back on the starting line, the benefits from the first three questions were enough to give Cai Zhiyuan a significant advantage.

……

In addition, Cai Zhiyuan also roughly determined that these five questions were not a trap, and Gao Jialiang probably really didn't know the answer to the second question.

This is actually a small trap deliberately set by the copycat who designed the game.

These three questions all appear to be professional in nature, and Kong Yuxin and Yang Hui's answers do indeed give the impression that the questions were "tailor-made for them."

However, upon closer examination, it becomes clear that the three questions are significantly different in difficulty.

The first question was of medium difficulty, the third question was very easy, and the second question was very difficult.

The first and third questions are actually more about common sense. Even players who are not professionals in the field can give a general answer, which can mislead people.

This makes it seem as if the "player representative" in the second question is deliberately pretending not to know, thereby further undermining mutual trust among the players.

However, considering the logic of game design, the assumption that "five questions are like a carrot hole" is difficult to hold true.

Because this game has 25 players and 5 rooms, designing a "carrot hole" problem would mean that copycats would have to come up with 25 professional questions and forcibly customize everything from player selection to room allocation.

However, this game has specific selection rules when choosing players, and the copycats who designed the game cannot predict which players will enter the game.

Moreover, he had absolutely no need to do this, as it wouldn't bring him any additional benefits.

Just like running a casino, the house only needs to set roughly fair rules and take a cut; there's no need to create personalized betting games for each gambler.

This is, after all, a game of allocation involving multiple participants, not a game of judgment.

Therefore, considering this point, the next two questions are likely to change.

There is even a possibility that completely different answer logic may emerge.

……

All players are prepared to try to choose the minority answer as much as possible.

Of course, everyone knows that only by exploiting information asymmetry can the probability of selecting the minority answer be steadily increased before this rule is revealed.

Once the answer is revealed, players' thoughts will gradually become a complex web of ideas, and at that point, whether or not they can choose the minority answer will depend entirely on luck.

Even so, we have no choice but to grit our teeth and keep playing.

However, the fourth question that appeared on the big screen surprised all the players and rendered their previously devised strategies invalid.

Because it's no longer a professional question.

Is your gender the majority among the players in this game?

A. Yes

【B. No】

C. I don't know

(End of this chapter)