[2]Chapter Twenty-Four: I Can See You’re Out of Aces

July 9, 2010

Silver City, NM

“We have him!”

“On the left!”

“Heal!”

“Got it. No, wait.”

“I said, Heal!”

“He’s down to 10% He’s going to-“

“Where the hell is that heal Leeroy?”

“Ah! Sorry!”

“L’ROY, you ok?”

“Fine. Just tripped on a curb. Heal incoming SH4D0W.”

“Finally! We’re almost there. Selina, you ready for it?”

“It’s TSUKI! Keep it straight, and ready. Get behind me.”

“Now Marc! Er, TRAV.”

“Got it!”

The large Orc fell on its side, bellowing.

“Now! Hit it!”

The team swarmed the downed beast, raining blows on it until its HP dropped to zero. The giant pig-like monster froze, then exploded in a shower of light. The accompanying victory theme played through the speakers of each team member’s phone as their screen flashed.

[VICTORY!]

Leeroy let out a loud sigh of relief and sat down on a concrete wheel stop at the end of an empty parking space. Selina and Ryan were dancing around and celebrating with high-fives at their first successful party raid.

Marc smiled as he watched the group laugh and revel in the defeat. They had been leveling up individually for the last week and were finally able to start taking on some of the party-level battles. He looked down at his phone to see the new messages that had appeared.

[CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE DEFEATED THE AREA RAID BOSS, DESERT ORC. EXPERIENCE GAINED, 342 POINTS. 2,500 REL. THERE ARE DROPPED ITEMS.]

“Hey! Check it out! That’s a pretty nice haul,” Marc called out to his fellow party members.

“Finally! I made it to level 5!” Leeroy shouted.

“It’s about time! The rest of us are already level 6!” Ryan complained. Actually, Marc was already level 7, but he had not said anything and no one appeared to have checked his stats in the party interface yet.

“Marc… TRAV I mean, TRAV was already level 7 before we started the raid.” Selina spoke up.

Well, maybe someone else was checking out the stats after all, Marc noted to himself. His game handle was not Trav of course. He had registered the name “TRAVELER”. An odd thing happened when he tried to register that name. At first, a warning message had appeared.

[APOLOGIES! THE NAME YOU HAVE CHOSEN IS NOT AVAILABLE. PLEASE TRY ANOTHER NAME FOR YOUR CHARACTER.]

This had surprised Marc. He had this feeling that no matter what, the name would be his in this game. Then, just to be sure, he tried it again. This time, the screen flashed a couple of times, but instead of rejecting the name, it obediently accepted it and continued on with the new player registration setup. While getting his preferred name had worked out, getting his teammates to use it was another matter. TRAVELER was deemed too boring and retro-JRPG, whatever that meant, so within the team, Marc had become TRAV.

“You know supports take longer to level up,” Leeroy growled. Ryan kept poking him about his slow leveling, and everyone could tell that the man was getting tired of it.

“Hey, lay off him. Who was the one begging for heals before the boss went down?” Marc countered back to Ryan, who rolled his eyes but dropped the subject.

“What about the loot? Who’s going to check?” Ryan pivoted.

“Whose turn is it this time?” Marc asked.

“Leeroy, I think,” said Selina.

“Okay. One sec.” Leeroy started to poke around on his screen with his thumbs. Soon the loot distribution screen appeared on all of the rest of the screens.

Experience and loot were distributed in a similar fashion to how it was done within The Guild. Experience, in-game money, or Rel, and loot dropped whenever defeating any enemies. When working in a party, however, there were several rules regarding distribution. Experience would vary from person to person, and was related to the skills used and the relative difficulty of the enemy. Currency was always divided evenly by all party members.

As for loot drops, party distribution comprised of a strange randomized system. At the end of every battle, the defeated enemy would always drop exactly one item per member of the opposing force. In a solo fight, the loot dropped could be anything from a consumable item like a potion or crafting materials, to a piece of armor or even a weapon. When in a party, the number of dropped items would increase, but the relative value of the items would also drop proportionate to the number of items. Challenging yourself to fight harder monsters would lead to better results, while relying on larger parties to overwhelm enemies would result in lower-quality rewards.

After a few days of experimenting, the group had found the best setup was to work as a four-member party to handle larger groups, or stronger monsters to get better loot. They would work in pairs or solo to grind up levels. Luckily, parties were easy to form and manage. Simply standing next to another player for more than a few seconds would prompt both players to see if they wanted to create or join a party. If you were separated by more than fifty feet, another warning message would appear, prompting you to move closer to maintain the party. If you did not get back in range within 10 seconds, the party would automatically disband.

Aside from the logistical benefits of having different specialties, there were many benefits to working in a party. The biggest was the ability to surround the enemies. The nature of this new type of “augmented reality” video game was that the virtual enemies appeared to exist in the real world by using the camera on the phone. When looking at the phone screen, you would see a live image of the space in front of you, with a digital image of the monster superimposed onto the screen. No matter how you moved your phone, the virtual monster would maintain its location and orientation. This allowed you to increase or decrease your range by stepping forward or backward. It also allowed groups to flank and even surround monsters by spreading out in a formation.

Another benefit, or complication depending on how you viewed it, was “claiming” hunts. This had not been a problem as their small group was the only group of betas in the area. In some of the larger cities, there were forum threads of conflicts between different parties trying to monopolize good hunting areas. These were few and minor, however, as stealing kills was not possible. Once a player attacked an enemy or a monster ambushed a player, the battle was claimed, and no one else could interfere until the battle ended unless they were in the same party.

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The other big topic on the forums was loot distribution. There was a growing discontent of mostly FORCE and SHIELD players who did not like that all loot was split equally between all party members, even the drops. A hierarchy was forming between DPS players and the supporters, who typically stayed in the back of formations and mostly provided healing, buffs, and debuffs. The fact that less experience was offered for these actions, compared to attacking and defending, seemed to reinforce to some that their contribution was less. Marc of course knew this to be ridiculous.

When any party member accepted the loot drop, a randomizer started that would offer one player a choice to select one item from the loot pool. Once their choice was entered, another party member was given their choice from the remaining items until each player had made their selection. Only then were the drops distributed. There was some buzz on the forum by players who swore that people who started the distribution were given a higher preference in the order, but Marc had not seen any evidence of it. Still, it had become common practice for party members to take turns when opening up dropped loot.

[BOOTS OF HASTE: +2 AGI]

[FIRE SPEAR: +1 FIRE ELEMENTAL DMG]

[ORCISH BATTLE HELM: +1 STR]

[THICK BELT: INVENTORY +1]

“Nice! The level of booty for an area boss is on a different level!” Ryan crowed.

Then Marc saw the prompt appear.

[LOOT ROULETTE. SELECT YOUR REWARD.]

“Looks like I’m first up.” Marc smiled. “Anyone gonna cry if I take the spear?”

“No way. A fire spear? That’s made for you,” Selina said.

Marc selected the spear by scrolling the list on his phone and pressing the SELECT button.

“Nice! I’m next.” Selina exclaimed excitedly. “Hope those boots don’t clash with my skin.”

“Oh!” Leeroy looked up from his phone. Ryan was glaring at him.

“Don’t even think of taking the helm,” Ryan warned. “You’re just a healer. You can’t even use it.”

“I could auction it off. It’s an area boss-limited drop. I bet they go for a lot.” Leeroy explained thoughtfully.

Marc watched his friend’s face drain of color. Then it started to flush as anger was building. He really had the worst luck.

Leeroy hit the screen on his phone and then rolled his eyes.

“Relax man, I took the belt. You know I need the extra inventory space. Chill out.”

Everyone laughed as Ryan looked down at his phone and sheepishly accepted the rare boss drop.

The last week had been fun, Marc had to admit. As strange as it was to see his past life in the other world transformed into a video game, the nostalgia and familiarity felt good. It was also nice to roam the city with a party again. Meeting up and swapping stories and tips extracted from the online beta user forum, then relaxing together as they ate dinner after a session of grinding. Marc had not felt so comfortable since he had returned to this world. He also enjoyed getting to know his new companions.

Selina, or TSUKI, was the easiest to deal with. A hardcore gamer, she was the team expert on all the tips and techniques that were shared on the message board. She chose an Elven SHIELD with the air affinity as her character. True to her word, she focused her build on DURABILITY and AGILITY, creating a flying SHIELD character. She chose skills that helped her to avoid damage when she didn’t have to take it head-on, but also let her absorb and redirect damage and aggression away from the other party members. She was also the most physically coordinated member, which was helpful as they would often bump into each other while trying to maneuver around the virtual enemy on the small phone screen while trying to avoid tripping over each other or objects lying around.

Leeroy, or L’ROY, was the shy and sometimes moody Dwarven healer. Every character was randomly assigned one element affinity at setup and his was water. He had put nearly every point he had into his INTELLIGENCE, allowing him to max his magical aptitude, at the cost of his battle prowess and survivability, creating an unbalanced, but powerful support character. Marc had his doubts when he realized how weak the dwarf would be in battle, but after he had leveled a few times, everyone could see how strong his healing capabilities were, and how useful they would be as they advanced. It was thanks to L’ROY that they were a viable team with just four party members, while the more popular team builds focused on six-person teams. L’ROY was their force multiplier and the key to higher loot quality.

Ryan, in typical fashion, built his human Sh4d0w character in the most inefficient way imaginable. A mix of Assassin and Ranger, his ranged support character had an earth affinity and a mix of long-distance attack and stealth skills that did not have a strong synergy. That said, on more than one occasion, his ability to shift between long-range damage dealer and extreme close range had given the team more flexibility when dealing with different types of enemies. Luckily he had completed his rehabilitation for his leg injuries, and while he remained somewhat uncoordinated when moving around, he had no problem keeping up with the team in battle formations.

Marc had been able to fashion a custom-made glove that incorporated a phone case, allowing Ryan to hold his phone in his weaker injured hand and play easily for extended periods of time. In fact it worked so well that the others had expressed interest in him making more. If only he could convince Ryan to eat better and join him in doing some exercise, Marc was sure he could also help improve Ryan’s stamina, but simply getting him to go outside and play the game seemed to be helping improve both the physical and psychological damage done by the accident, even if only by a small amount.

Marc checked his character’s screen. He was again washed over by a wave of nostalgia as he looked at the game map, his available commands, and his character status screen. Marc built his virtual game counterpart to complement the needs of a party. This mirrored how he often would adjust his focus when joining different parties for Guild commissions. He never let on the full scope of his abilities to strangers, so he would only reveal a subset of abilities, usually chosen to compliment the other party members.

He did that again for his game character, Marc had chosen a FORCE character to fill the team’s need for a forward damage dealer. Luckily he received a Fire elemental affinity, rounding out the team four-element coverage. Finally, on a whim, he had built his avatar as a Juujin. The game had randomly selected his tribe, a reptilian humanoid, known as a Shan,

Marc had only met one Shan during his travels. An ancient member of the reclusive tribe that was rumored to have been largely wiped out during the Cataclysm on Sett, the Shan scholar had purported to have been alive at the time of the disaster, which would have made him truly ancient. That said, Marc recalled with a smirk, the old man was a known liar.

His own characters appearance was rather understated, looking more like a well built Chinese Shaolin monk, with the exception of strange reptilian eyes. Marc favored pole-arm weapons in the game, and the majority of his skills were direct damage boosts.

Having completed their first boss raid, the team decided to call it a day and piled into Marc’s and Leeroy’s cars to drive back to Marc’s cabin. The cabin had become their unofficial headquarters as it was a safe place to park their vehicles, and Marc always had food on hand and was willing to cook. Torren was also popular and was treated like the team’s mascot, although he added no value whatsoever. The only downside was his lack of broadband internet. After discussing it with Cyrus, he had found out that he could get a line pulled up for internet from Pinos Altos along the same cables that were used to bring up the phone line, so the cost wouldn’t be that bad. The only downside was that it would take a couple of months to get the crews out this way to take care of it.

The rest of the party was fine with that and they just moved down the street to the Lobo when they needed to use wifi or get some chicken wings or snacks.

They played together every day since the beta started, sometimes on their own, but more often in groups. Ryan and Selina lived close by, but their jobs lacked the freedom of Marc’s freelance lifestyle. Still, they would message each other when free to meet up to hunt.

Leeroy was camping out on the sofa occasionally to save himself the long drive back to Las Cruces. He still had his job there, but the drive was pretty rough every day, so he graciously accepted Marc’s offer of a crash couch whenever he needed one.

One thing had they all agreed on after days of testing out the game. It was destined to become a hit. The interface was easy to use and was enjoyable to play both by yourself and as a group, though in different ways. The leveling was addictive, with interesting skill power-ups and loot drops, and even Marc was impressed that battles retained a realistic similarity to the high-stakes missions he had participated in the other world.

The forums also showed an increasingly passionate fan reaction as the beta continued. Beta’s, as they now referred to themselves, were already staking out claims of territories and organizing into parties, teams, and even clans.

Marc was starting to remember how he used to enjoy playing video games, now that Pl@y3r was scratching that itch of homesickness he had been feeling ever since returning. He even forgot about his main reason for getting involved with KamiGames and its reclusive CEO for short periods of time, but things would inevitably remind him of the hints at a larger game with greater stakes.

The morning after they had beaten the Desert Orc, Marc received an early morning phone call from Trey Cutter. They had finally found out what had mutilated the flock of sheep. They knew because it had happened again. This time, however, they had cornered the culprit. The problem was, that they were not equipped to deal with it. While Trey described the situation, Marc was already out the door and heading to his “secret” hideout. He was going to need some of the special equipment that he stored there. Marc was grateful for the cell phone now, as he was able to keep getting listening as he ran.

The perpetrator of the massacre was still in the fields, seemingly uninterested in escaping this time. From the description, Marc finally understood what could have done that much damage in such a short amount of time. In the middle of Cutter’s grazing field was a fully grown Dire Wolf.