Novels2Search

Chapter 61: Team building

The world was painful. Fortunately, Jasper had chosen to stay in the world for a day more than the others, giving Celeste and Martin a couple of hours to get cleaned up and ready so there wouldn't be a rush on the bathrooms.

Martin and Celeste had been taking micro-naps throughout their sessions. Still, their brains had been working overtime, so neither of them really said anything. They were sitting in a recliner and lying on a couch, respectively, while staring at a TV that was barely playing any audio.

Jasper joined them later, snuggling up to Celeste on the couch and quickly falling asleep. None of them had the energy to talk about the game or their experience.

The next day was a workday, so Jasper managed to convince Celeste to come into the office after she had finished teaching. Jasper and Martin got to sleep in since only the two of them were in the Nordic branch.

Jasper was painfully aware of the countdown to the conference with the main branch. Three weeks until they had to go, which meant effectively two weeks until he would have to put everything on pause. While waiting for his wife, he worked on a quick little presentation to help him show their process.

When Celeste arrived, Jasper ordered some food for all of them. As they sat down and got a little distance from the events, Jasper decided that it might be a good time to gather some information.

"So, we can just talk through our experience fast and loose, and I am sure that we are going to do that, but HR from the main branch actually sent us a handbook last year, and while it has been gathering dust, there were some good evaluation methods in there. I think that we can use them. So why don't we go around the table and talk about 5 positive things that happened in your session, 5 negative things that happened, and 5 annoying things that happened you could not have prevented." Jasper said, trying to actually fulfill his role as team lead.

Celeste smiled before cupping her hands around her mouth as if she was about to yell something loudly before speaking in her normal tone of voice: "Neeeerd".

Martin laughed, and Jasper rolled his eyes. "Sounds like you get to go first, then".

Celeste cupped her hands again before giving a "Buuuu!" but then got serious. "Fine. There were... events. I am not going to lie. It will be hard to fill in five positive things on my end. For one, I like my powers. The system for divine powers is actually pretty smooth. They are fun to use, and I feel very powerful at this point. I honestly tried to smite one of my students today because he kept talking during my class."

Jasper gave his wife a look and wondered how long it would be before she tried to smite him. He shook his head softly with a wistful smile. He knew better than that. She had probably tried that already.

"You might actually want to look into making the game about having divine powers like this," Celeste said, only for Jasper to shake his head.

"The main branch was pretty clear that they wanted this to be multiplayer. These powers just break that far too easily."

Celeste shrugged and nodded. "Anyway, beyond that, I helped a lot of starving people. I think the empathy level is too high. Things are almost lifelike, which means that I cannot see them as programs, they are real people, and I have a hard time letting things go... That was two things, right? Uhm... We got a new goddess, which is positive. It was kind of a sausage party."

Jasper nodded and then frowned. "Who is the new goddess?"

"Elf woman named Esselaia. I investigated how she could gain powers like that, and I am honestly a bit stumped. As far as I can tell, she gave herself these powers through connections to a tree... A tree that I had somehow turned into crystal mana after beating Orlek. Oh! That is a positive one as well. I beat up Orlek." Celeste said with some cheer.

Martin cleared his throat. "Yeah, sorry. That wasn't you. I uhm... I gave you a Mana Crystal deposit I needed to remove. Since I just threw it into A'kastin, I think the AI decided to put it somewhere where other characters could use it. Sorry about that." He said with the usual grumbling voice.

Celeste shrugged. "It worked out. I was just very confused about what was even going on. The last positive thing... I got two new followers. Spif and Spaf. However, there was something weird about them. Apparently, they counted as one entity named Spof."

Jasper moved over to the computer and did a quick entity search. He groaned a little. "Yeah, I see them here. Apparently, they were spawned with the same entity ID, which should be unique. They are the faction leader of the orks, and their stats are... high... but thanks to them having to share them, they literally have to split the three meagre intelligence that the goblins already have... I will try and fix them."

Celeste laughed at hearing that. "You should fix the bug, but I like them like this. I think it is more of a feature. When they work together, they become actually smart, which is fun."

Jasper nodded and made a task on his virtual taskboard.

"And that was 5 positives from me, I think. Do you guys have any you want to share before I get to the bad?" She looked around, and Martin groaned.

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"Yeah, I guess I can take it. Got a dungeon. Got a pet. Got to pick powers. Talked with people. Met that chosen one of yours." He said, keeping it short as always.

Martin could have gone into details, but he knew how this worked, and there was no need to deep dive into the positives.

Jasper was quick to pick things up. "Sounds good. I got most of the guilds down. I think that the smithing guild might be a challenge, and I didn't really get to it, so that is a problem, but I will look into that later. Maybe since the other guilds have been created, the smithing guild will start naturally. I don't know. Anyway, I also ensured that a future iteration will have a villain that will be used. He will be spawning undeads." He said, looking over at Celeste.

Celeste gave her husband a look and then shrugged. "That is fine. As long as it is clear that they are the bad guy." Jasper nodded at that before he continued.

"Honestly, I didn't do that much else. I have been fairly busy picking Ur-magic, and I had to go fix things out here." He explained before a ball of paper hit him in the head.

The paper projectile hadn't hurt, but when Jasper noted that it had been thrown by Martin, the team leader clutched his head as if he had been struck with a great force.

Martin didn't buy it. "You used a break-glass account for ingame chatting? You will definitely be the one doing beer runs from now on."

"Sorry, I think I got a concussion all of a sudden," Jasper said, knowing Martin had to fix the account.

They laughed a little before Jasper continued. "Anyway, the handbook said that we should acknowledge that good things have happened and there have been positive elements to our experience." He looked at the two other people. Celeste laughed a little while Martin rolled his eyes.

Jasper continued. "So let us talk about the negative things that happened. I can start us off this time around. Beware that these are things that you had a hand in, and it had a negative outcome. I don't really think I can find five here, either. I had a meeting with an old pupil that I could have handled better, and in general, I have been a bit stand-offish with people this time around. I have met a lot of people that have been programmed to be... less than friendly, and I acknowledge that I might not have handled that for the best." He said and took a deep breath.

Martin waited for Jasper to continue, but when nothing else came, he took over. "Yeah, I haven't had those problems. With a fairly high charisma I think that I have had an easy time getting people to like me and engage with me. As for bad decisions I made, I think that I should have informed you, Celeste, about the mana crystal before I sent it your way, and I think that I could have done... more. I know it sounds weird, but most of my time has been travel, and I was so focused on getting to a place that I didn't really do much."

Jasper and Celeste murmured in agreement, and Celeste quickly picked up. "Yeah, I have been sorta vengeful as well. Whenever people slight me, I tend to inconvenience them in some way. I gave Selma, the leader of Marcusburg, a crown that would make the gods see her as the leader of that land. Something like that just asks for her to be assassinated. Beyond that, I have been spending my Energy performing pointless miracles. At least miracles where I should just use other resources to accomplish the same thing. I have been helping the downtrodden quite a bit, which reminds me, I think that A'kastin is in a state where it is ready for players, so maybe you can note that to the AI or something like that? Make it so it won't change any more of that area?" She explained, and Jasper nodded, making another task for himself on the taskboard.

"Good, now that we have acknowledged the bad, it is worth noting that we did more good than bad," Jasper said, again giving everyone a look.

Celeste nodded a little, and even Martin seemed a bit more upbeat. It helped to lay it out like this, but there was still the last category.

"So, the last thing we gotta do is talk about the annoying things that happened that we couldn't do anything about. Martin, it's your turn to start us off." Jasper said, and Martin nodded.

"Yeah, I have a couple of things here we need to talk about. For one, Jasmine is the new Scribe, and she is kinda hurt about how you left things last time. Not really sure what happened there, but she felt abandoned." The massive man said.

Jasper was a little sad but nodded nonetheless. To his surprise he found it much easier to deal with Erik's demise out here. He didn't dwell on it, simply responding. "Yeah, we left without saying goodbye, and it was after a rather intense traumatic event for her. I should talk to her if I get the chance."

Martin was happy to have gotten that out there. "I feel like I wasted a lot of my time on travelling. The ban on teleportation isn't going to be fun for players. I understand gatekeeping it in the game and maybe keeping it out of the world-building, but we need to have it in the game when that time comes. The same with resurrections. We can't have this place be some kind of hardcore one-life MMO. That will have the players leaving in droves." He explained.

Celeste nodded along. "I haven't been making decisions based on what would be a good game, just what would make sense for my character, so if you need to adjust things, please do that. But I still think those should be banned during world creation." She said, and the pair of developers quickly agreed.

Even so, Jasper followed up. "It is a good point that Martin is bringing up, though. Maybe we should have a location choice when we log into the game. That way, we don't have to spend two days travelling like I just did."

That was another task on the taskboard, and Martin then shrugged.

"Leltho is... interesting. I don't think the zone is complete, but the dungeon is done. I would like to go somewhere else for a time and fix up dungeons there, but that might just be me." He explained.

With that, Celeste was the next person. "Uhm, I met Orlek, which was a bit annoying, and I didn't really feel in control when I had to deal with Esselaia. That was annoying as well. But those choices could come down to my own risk assessment when I made some of my other choices."

Jasper nodded. He could understand that.

"For me, it was mostly the dragons. Apparently, the seven main dragons I created got children, and they have turned evil. I mean, I get how they can turn evil, especially in a 100-year span, but I don't really feel like we had any agency in that." He sighed, and Martin nodded.

"Yeah, I get that... Anyway, let's call this meeting for now. I can't next weekend, so you two will have to take it alone." The bulky man said.

Celeste frowned. "Sorry, we can't do it there either. Jasper's sister is doing this birthday thing, so we will spend the weekend at their house."

Jasper sighed. "I guess we can have the world run for two hundred years then."

The others quickly agreed, and while they talked and had fun for the rest of the evening, they didn't discuss the game any further.