In short, when the real world develops later, the overall combat effectiveness of arthropods is very low, and they gradually slip from the top of the food chain to the bottom.
This can be seen from the era of giant insects that once appeared but disappeared after a short period of time. We can see the fighting power of arthropods, especially hexapods.
Why did the Age of Giant Insects appear in the Carboniferous? Adequate oxygen content is certainly one of the prerequisites, but it is not the decisive factor.
After all, the earth's oxygen concentration peaked during the period from the end of the Carboniferous to the beginning of the Permian, and the era of giant insects had ended with the collapse of the Carboniferous rainforest.
In fact, after the rise of jawed fish, the hegemony of arthropods in the ocean was quickly swept away. You must know that the most common arthropods in the Ordovician ocean were arthropods similar to sea scorpions.
It has long been difficult for vertebrates to land on land, so arthropods can take advantage of this gap to dominate the rain forests on land. This is the birth of the era of giant insects.
After vertebrates finally solved the difficulty of landing, the era of giant insects ended with it. From then on, they obediently returned to the lower level of the ecological niche, maintaining an increasingly smaller size.
After listening to what Professor Cao Yuanlan said, an employee complained that arthropods looked like garbage.
As a result, after Cao Yuanlan heard this sentence, he solemnly told him and all the listeners present that every species in nature that can survive to this day has its own advantages that cannot be ignored.
Cao Yuanlan also listed a lot of characteristics of non-human creatures, but Zhong Shanze felt that he could actually use this analogy to describe:
Humans have spent tens of millions of years developing their brains, not just for you, the younger generation, to fight tigers with your bare hands and then scold us after being delivered to your door, saying that our ancestors are really rubbish for evolving such physical fitness.
The same applies to arthropods. Although they are no longer suitable to compete for the top of the food chain, the quality of a species cannot be defined simply by its combat effectiveness.
For example, species such as ants and termites have evolved so-called eusociality, and even agriculture and animal husbandry, that is, growing fungi and grazing aphids.
Generally speaking, what Cao Yuanlan said makes sense, but the problem is that it does not provide much help to game development.
After all, "Epic of Life" is a multiplayer online game. How do players define each other's strengths and weaknesses? The simplest and most convincing way is naturally to fight.
If your species killed me, then your species is undisputedly stronger, and everyone has no objection to receiving rewards such as "evolution points".
However, if we do not rely on the indicator of combat effectiveness and adopt a special and unique route, then this relatively subjective judgment will be more controversial.
And it should be noted that this is a game, so the expansion of species in the world will not simply follow the laws of history. Players' personal subjective attitudes account for a large proportion.
Can your species gain evolution points without relying on direct combat power? Then I am not allowed to join forces with those who are on the path of evolution and block you in the resurrection spring until you retreat?
Of course, this is a relatively extreme situation, but with the chaotic and neutral fourth natural disaster attribute of the player, it is possible that he will not do this when the game is actually launched, so relatively speaking, it is purely based on combat effectiveness, which is the least difficult to design.
Now back to Cao Yuanlan's lecture, he generally followed the process of paleontological development, from the Precambrian era to the Cretaceous period, and only briefly touched on the Cenozoic Era after the birth of human beings.
In addition to advancing according to time, there is also a main axis in the course of this lecture, which is the five mass extinctions of species that have occurred in history.
Species extinctions have occurred more than 20 times in history. Most of the time they were called minor extinctions, and only five times were called major extinctions.
Of course, even the so-called extinction of small species is only compared with the mass extinction, but it is still a very terrifying catastrophe on a global scale.
The knowledge point of mass extinction of species is also a blank blind spot for Zhong Shanze. In the past, he only knew about the "Cretaceous mass extinction" that led to the extinction of dinosaurs.
After listening to Cao Yuanlan's lecture, Zhong Shanze realized that the "Cretaceous mass extinction" could only be regarded as the younger brother in terms of power, which was slightly stronger than the "Triassic mass extinction" of "the shame of mass extinction".
Among the five mass extinctions that have occurred in the history of the earth, in terms of length, the long "Devonian mass extinction", in terms of power and intensity, the "Permian mass extinction", which destroyed the world, which one is stronger than " The Cretaceous Extinction.”
Especially the third mass extinction, the "Permian Extinction", Zhong Shanze was dumbfounded by the power of the erupting Siberian volcano, the hundreds of thousands of years of eternal night, and the terrifying average temperature.
If he hadn't followed the path of a fierce ghost and had no physical body, it would have been difficult for him to survive in that environment if he was thrown into the Earth where the "Permian mass extinction" occurred during his heyday.
I decided to look up more information on the "Permian Mass Extinction" after returning this time, and then arrange it for the invitees in their tasks.
At this time, Suo Jian, who was in the invitation world opened by Zhong Shanze, drinking tea and chatting with Ling Mengyu and others, suddenly shivered for no reason, as if something terrible had happened somewhere he didn't know. .
In short, the development team benefited a lot from the lecture given by Cao Yuanlan at the Ghost Hunting Company, and the original design draft was significantly modified as a result.
This was the first time since Zhong Shanze came to this world that his own plan was basically overturned, and only the spirit of the original plan was retained.
Zhong Shanze was not angry about this, but just reminded himself that in the future, he would still have to hire relevant professional consultants for areas he was unfamiliar with.
Compared with the version of the plan submitted by Zhong Shanze, the newly designed plan by Hunter Ghost is more scientifically close to the historical development of paleontology.
Of course, as the staff answered on the forum, "Epic of Life" is only a game after all, and it cannot be exactly the same as in history. You always have to make a choice between gameplay and authenticity.
"Epic of Life" was developed in May 2105. Professor Cao Yuanlan and his team were quickly invited to serve as the game's consultants on paleontological knowledge, and they quickly adjusted the development direction from the beginning.
After more than a year of development and testing, it finally unveiled its mystery to all players interested in it during the summer vacation in July 2106.
