Chapter 1330 Showing the Apartment in the Game

After the camera switched, Ding Xiyao had already arrived at the entrance hall of the apartment.

Before showing the apartment to a customer, the player, acting as an agent, could first inspect the property to have a clear understanding.

At the beginning of the game, there was no time limit for inspecting the apartment, and the game provided hints to help players with limited knowledge in this area understand the advantages and disadvantages of the floor plan.

As the game progressed, the time limit for inspecting the apartment became shorter, and the hints became fewer, which increased the difficulty for the players.

Players could even choose to challenge themselves by skipping this step altogether and going straight to meet the customer at the apartment without any prior preparation, relying entirely on improvisation.

The higher the difficulty, the greater the rewards.

Ding Xiyao used to be a real estate agent, and her professional knowledge in this area was much more extensive than that of the average player. However, the content of this game was still relatively new to her, so she decided to follow the standard procedure first.

If she could quickly adapt to the gameplay, she could try to increase the difficulty.

Following the basic movement method she had already practiced, Ding Xiyao went through each room.

It could only be said that the situation was even worse than she had imagined.

She had seen the floor plans and photos of these apartments on the computer in the store before, but it was only when she arrived on the scene that she realized that photos were often deceptive and completely unreliable.

The photos were clearly taken at noon when the sun was shining brightly, and the whole room was bathed in warm sunlight. With a little lighting adjustment and a good angle, the photos were very misleading.

But now it happened to be a cloudy day, and the light was not so strong, so the overall impression of the room dropped several levels at once.

In addition, many details were naturally exposed.

For example, there were traces of nails and double-sided tape on the walls, probably left by the previous tenant; the stove and cabinets in the kitchen were full of years of accumulated grease; and the window of one of the secondary bedrooms didn't seem to close tightly, so it would definitely leak air, and so on.

These details, which would not be shown in the photos, would be exposed during the on-site viewing.

However, whether the customer could actually see these problems or not varied from person to person.

Ding Xiyao raised her hand and pointed the controller at some areas, and there was a certain probability that a hint icon would appear. At this time, she could consume hint points to get an official hint.

For example, in the kitchen, some tenants who liked to cook and had high requirements for hygiene would have a big problem with this years-old grease, while tenants who didn't use the kitchen at all might not even bother to take a closer look.

But this function was not omnipotent. Like the gameplay of finding clues in many detective games or escape rooms, if the player didn't realize that there might be a problem here and didn't point the controller at the key area, no hints would appear.

Of course, some extreme players could point the controller at all the rooms, if they didn't mind getting tired.

After realizing these problems, the agent could choose to solve them or ignore them in order to better facilitate the transaction.

The way to solve them was to take money out of one's own pocket and spend some of it to hire a cleaning service or repair the furniture, fundamentally improving the problem.

If she chose to ignore them, the tenant might expose the problems on the spot, leading to a failed transaction, or they might not be noticed.

Of course, there were also ways to remedy the situation if the problems were exposed on the spot: she could try to deceive or solve the problem by lowering the rent.

In this regard, the protagonist in the game had much more authority than a real-life agent.

After all, in the setting, the protagonist was not a worker but also served as both the boss and the employee, responsible for their own profits and losses.

Ding Xiyao quickly looked at the apartment inside and out and found several key problems.

This was her old profession after all, and she was completely familiar with it, so she didn't need too many system prompts.

She even had some whimsical ideas.

Ding Xiyao first turned on all the lights in the room and then roughly felt the brightness of the room.

Then, she raised her head and pointed the controller at the light bulb in the living room.

Sure enough, the light bulb became highlighted, and an interface popped up, which meant that the light bulb could be replaced!

After a simple selection, Ding Xiyao chose a relatively cheap but very bright chandelier, and after selecting it, she easily replaced the original one.

In fact, not only the lights, but all the furniture and appliances in the room could be replaced, but the problem was that sofas, TVs, wallpaper, and other things were too expensive, and Ding Xiyao didn't have much money now and couldn't afford to replace them.

This was a little trick that Ding Xiyao had learned when she was a real estate agent: if the room itself had poor lighting, insufficient illumination, or poor ventilation with odors, then she would turn on all the lights and open the windows in advance to air out the room before the customer came to see the apartment.

In this way, the tenants would to some extent ignore the problem of poor lighting and ventilation, and even if they found out, it would be after signing the contract.

By that time, most tenants would just have to make do with it, even if they were a little dissatisfied, because the contract had already been signed and there was nothing they could do.

Ding Xiyao wasn't sure if the game was that intelligent and whether increasing the lighting would increase the probability of a successful transaction, but it was worth a try.

After all, this kind of highly free business simulation game was all about unconventional moves and freedom, wasn't it?

Specifically for this apartment, since the original lights were relatively dim, even if they were turned on, they didn't improve the situation much, so Ding Xiyao paid out of her own pocket to replace the living room lights, trying to maximize the brightness.

There wasn't a good solution to the kitchen problem. She couldn't afford to hire a cleaning service, but there was also a "do it yourself" option in the game.

She moved the controller around in the greasy areas, which was equivalent to wiping them herself. Although some old and stubborn stains were difficult to remove completely, they looked much better than at the beginning.

Of course, not all problems could be solved by doing it yourself. Some problems could only be improved by spending a lot of money.

In this way, Ding Xiyao simply handled all the areas in the room that could be handled within the limits of her budget, and she tried her best to understand the defects of the room.

Then, she could invite the tenants to view the apartment.

Although she was already an experienced veteran, Ding Xiyao was still a little nervous while waiting for the tenants to arrive.

After all, it was her first time showing an apartment in a game.

Not long after, the doorbell rang. The first to arrive was the white-collar guy who had been working for several years and had a relatively high income.

Ding Xiyao had arranged the order in which these three groups of people arrived on her own. The reason why she let this guy come first was mainly because Ding Xiyao felt that she had the best chance of negotiating the highest price with him.

The other two groups were a couple who had just graduated not long ago and two girls who had just been working for more than a year, and their financial conditions would not be very good.

Moreover, the young couple paid more attention to cooking, and the kitchen hygiene problem in this apartment was not very good.

Taking everything into account, the white-collar guy who had been working for several years had the best financial conditions and didn't have high requirements for the kitchen, so he was the most likely to make a high-priced deal.

Of course, it was precisely because this guy had been working for several years that his ability to find fault might not be weak, so he was not easy to deceive. This would depend on Ding Xiyao's skills.

Using the VR controller to open the door, Ding Xiyao couldn't help but be stunned.

This guy… was so realistic!

Because this was the first time Ding Xiyao had seen a person in this game.

Although Doubt VR glasses, like all VR glasses, were limited by technical reasons and were currently difficult to achieve the level of clarity that could be mistaken for reality, and even had a slight screen-door effect, the clarity of the scenes and characters still varied significantly in different games.

"Real Estate Agent Simulator" had clearly made the clarity of the character models as extreme as possible within the limits of the technical level.

After entering the viewing mode, the player would default to following the tenant who came to view the apartment and answering his questions.

The tenant, who was the NPC in the game, had a certain pattern of movement and had a relatively fixed route when visiting different rooms.

However, which room to see first, which room to see later, what to focus on in the room, what kind of questions to ask, and how to respond to the player's answers… all depended on the character's settings, showing a very strong randomness.

In this process, the player certainly didn't need to actually speak but used the controller to select options on the screen to introduce and answer questions.

First, she briefly introduced the basic information about the apartment, and then the customer would ask questions about some details.

The gameplay in this stage was a bit similar to a text adventure game.

The player's selectable dialogue options depended on the previous observations in the room, the preparations made in advance, and the player's level, experience, and other comprehensive factors.

At the same time, many subsequent dialogues could only be triggered after the corresponding options in the previous dialogues had been selected.

What surprised Ding Xiyao very much was that the NPC's every move was quite realistic, his actions were natural, and his speech was also very smooth and colloquial.

The NPC's voice in the dialogue with the player was clearly pre-recorded because automatically synthesized voices would inevitably have a stiff splicing feeling, which could be heard immediately.

But the NPC in the game didn't give people this feeling.

Ding Xiyao was a little curious. Did this game dub all the NPCs' voices and use motion capture? Wouldn't that be too extravagant?

Would there be repetitions in the future? For example, would the questions be almost the same over and over again?

While she was considering this, she heard the white-collar guy ask, "This room, it looks like the lighting is pretty good, right?"

It wasn't a direct question, it sounded more like a casual inquiry.

Three options appeared in front of Ding Xiyao, representing three different attitudes.

The first was a positive attitude, praising it blindly; the second was a neutral attitude, saying something vague but not denying it; and the third was to tell the truth.

Ding Xiyao couldn't help but hesitate.

Obviously, the first attitude was more conducive to facilitating the transaction, but the guy would definitely find out the problem after moving in.

If she chose the third attitude, her conscience would be at peace, but she would likely lose this customer, and in order to salvage the situation, she would probably have to lower the rent.

Ding Xiyao was a little hesitant, but seeing that the dialogue progress bar was almost at the end, she had no choice but to choose the second attitude.