There technically are several races to world first, such as the first to clear a certain dungeon in a certain difficulty, or, when the latest expansion was released, the first to get to the new max level. However, to the eyes of so many MAA players, and certainly the countries whose governments even subsidize guilds for that purpose, the words race to world first conjure an image of one and only one thing: being the first guild to clear the newest raid in fatal mode.
On Saturday, Karine gets ready for a video interview with Breathalyzer News, the premier news site for the MAA community, three short days before the start of the race to world first. After formalities are exchanged...
"This week, there has been reports of bugs causing a variety of effects, some of which only affected certain players, but the Perseria dungeons have seen the brunt of these bugs thus far. Do you feel like the manufacturer has lost control over debugging?" the podcaster asks her.
"Personally, I'd say that part of it might have been the consequences of their choices in AI algorithms. So sometimes it might feel like the game world is evolving in reaction to the players' actions, well beyond what players traditionally think of" Karine opines about what she feels is responsible for stuff such as trash disappearing from the Perseria dungeons. "So sure, these AI algorithms need some work, but that's all I'm willing to say for now"
"At this point, there are some players who are about to leave the game, in part over this whack-a-mole of debugging, or who have done so already. How do you feel about your future as a MAA player?" the podcaster follows up with another question about the impact of these so-called bugs.
"I want to at least see this tier's race to world first through. Even if the Death Fiscalists don't win, at least I want to show that unsubsidized guilds can hold their own against the subsidized guilds!" Karine goes through a crescendo of voice tone. "After that, nothing is less certain about my future as a MAA player"
"How do you feel about the race to world first for this tier?"
"Even though I believe that player skill and team coordination trumps choice of spec, given that every spec has a baseline of utility, I believe there is a potential for us to cause a surprise and maybe lay claim to either of the top two spots"
"Speaking of the top two spots, which one of the so-called subsidized guilds would be more realistic for the Death Fiscalists to win over?"
"I'd probably say Donghua Networks because the past few years have hit the Chinese talent pool harder than the Danish one, and, at every tier, they feel like they are on the verge of being cut off by the authorities in Beijing if they perform poorly. Especially in a context of mounting Chinese government debt, since the Danish government tends to maintain funding while an RWF is underway"
The Danish government will subsidize national teams for virtually any game provided the game has a big enough player base, at least within Denmark, Karine can't help but think of how her big rival as a streamer has an advantage because the Death Fiscalists don't have any form of government support the way Kronborg (the Danish national team) or Donghua Networks (the Chinese one) have.
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Once the interview with Breathalyzer News ends, Karine resumes playing with Francis, while crafting cosmetics with recipes from bonus bosses in hopes of funding (in an in-game sense) the consumables they need for the RWF.
"What about we auction off one slot for a run through the Sun Disk?" Francis suggests to the other guildies.
"If only the game allowed us to borrow money..." Ram sighs.
"That was scrapped during the testing stage of the xpac, because they found no way to implement a workable insolvency system that wouldn't penalize people who don't play regularly" Karine comments about the loans system that was originally supposed to be in the game for the 2.0 expansion, but also why it couldn't be in the game. "The next best thing would be to find suppliers who can take at least net ten payment terms, or, better still, net thirty"
"Pray that we can earn enough money from the sale of cosmetics then" Ram seems to think that no one in the game would be willing to sell potions, runes or food on even net 10 terms, much less net 30.
"The reason why I suggested the Sun Disk is because of the value people put on the mount from the end boss in fatal mode" Francis suggests to them.
I guess, people really want to travel around the world in a solar car, or install a solar power plant in their backyard. Might be easier now, Karine muses before she can answer, realizing that fatal Perseria dungeons drop the same gear as brutal-mode Operation Heathrow bosses, which is better than what fatal Sun Disk drops. Perhaps Belphegor rides a solar car because then he wouldn't need to refuel it so long as it's sunny; he is the prince of sloth, after all, and he lets others do his bidding.
"I guess, we are going to be fighting Belphegor once more, while one of our DPS will be busy crafting runes and potions, and cooking food" Karine sighs, while Francis uses the in-game trade channel to auction off the slot for the Sun Disk run.
And it seems like many of the bidders played for guilds who might have been able to make some progress in fatal mode Sun Disk, but the highest bidders have no actual experience of fatal progression raiding.
"Here are the payment terms: you pay ten percent of the total amount at each boss' death other than Belphegor, and then you pay half of the amount when Belphegor dies. In exchange for this, you will be given all cosmetics and recipes, as well as the solar car and the solar power plant" Francis explains the rules of engagement to the highest bidder.
Speaking of solar power plant, the Sun Disk is actually a concentrated solar power plant. And it's called as such because of the circular array of mirrors reflecting sunlight on the concentrator. They arrive in a vast stretch of desert plains, where they can see the tower from kilometers away.
A few moments later, the party of ten fights the monsters guarding the Sun Disk's outer perimeter on Karine's stream. Sandstorms, and blinding sunlight seem to disorient the player who won the auction, and gets lost in the desert. And the character falls prey to the searing heat.
When the player new to the Sun Disk in fatal mode finally makes his way back to the rest of the party, he seems to have eaten a lot of the searing heat and get a heat stroke.
"The heat stroke is cleansable. We need to cleanse regularly while fighting this boss" Francis explains to the buyer. "Hide under a solar panel if you get a heat stroke, otherwise, in fatal mode, cleansing it won't work"
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Karine then explains other mechanics that come into play for DPS on this boss, and there are four phases to watch out for. However, some of her faithful viewers just fall asleep at this point, while others are awaiting the moment where the buyer causes a wipe. Or at least die.
"Please open Breathalyzer!" a viewer pleads in the stream's chat.
Oh boy: when people ask me to open Breathalyzer on air, they want to see parsing, especially when I have a substitute player. Yet I never obsessed over my own DPS numbers, or DTPS; for a tank, being able to do mechanics properly is much more important, Karine reluctantly opens Breathalyzer, which is the parsing add-on for MAA. The audience for MAA raid streamers places a significant weight on their gameplay skill. For DPS, their output will hold more weight on air than for tanks. Thank God for that because I already have a lot on my plate mechanically.
It appears this substitute DPS player, their customer, is by far the worst of the six, both in mechanical execution and in output, but still dealt more DPS than either Karine or Ram. And it took a few deaths for the customer to get the hang of the extra mechanics of both brutal and fatal modes.
"If the customer is the first to die, don't rez him until burn on the following pulls!" Karine instructs her guildies for future bosses.
Then, after the first boss dies, the customer gets new gear, and clears trash among the array of mirrors along with the rest of the team. And, of course, Karine starts explaining the DPS mechanics for the second boss, Aiatar, the data-stealing dragon.
"To deal with the data theft mechanic, unlike in lower difficulties, here you need to go grab only the green bubbles; the red bubbles will kill you instantly if you grab one" Karine explains to the customer.
"What happens if the boss eats a red bubble?" the customer asks back.
"The red bubble will make the boss take damage over time. At the same time, eating too many red bubbles will cause him to sneeze and cough more in the next phase"
And, for phase 3 of this boss, the boss sneezing will create purple puddles on the ground, while coughing will force a tank swap. Which is precisely where the customer causes a wipe.
But when they make their way back to the boss, they notice that other people loot the equipment left behind by the dead demonic security guards. Equipment the game deems to be unusable by the players, but is somehow of interest for those who rummage through the corpses of the power plant security.
"I never saw any attempts by NPCs to loot the trash in past raids. Is it something that happens in fatal raids?" the customer asks, surprised to see scavengers in a raid instance.
"Not normally. Please stand by while I double-check the latest patch notes" Karine warns her viewers before the next pull.
No trace of NPC scavengers showing up on trash mob deaths in any raids. This game's manufacturer definitely started losing control over the game's world, Karine starts thinking, while she pores over patch notes for any indication of changes in NPC behavior that isn't a bug fix. I guess I can tolerate it, since what the game deems usable is so random.
After they kill the data-stealing dragon, teams can go inside the electromechanical systems housed within the tower. And kill the next 3 bosses in any order, but all 3 must be killed since each of the next 3 bosses hold a fragment of a key to a room leading to Belphegor's inner sanctum.
At any rate, the party must take the power plant offline by disconnecting the batteries, sabotaging the turbines and transformers. As they go along, every wipe they incur seems to come from the buyer because of his lack of knowledge of fatal-specific mechanics.
Three hours after they first pulled the second boss, Belphegor finally dies and the buyer drives a brand new solar car. The buyer hands over the payment for not only the solar car, but also the solar power plant and other decos that drop from trash or bosses, such as power generators.
"Now we should have enough money to buy everything else we need for the RWF" Francis receives the final half of the money from the buyer. "Time to hit the broker!"
Upon leaving the solar power plant, Francis uses the teleportation hand mirror to get to the nearest brokerage, which is the name used by the game for the player market.
Meanwhile, Karine and Ram both go to the repair shop instead to repair their gear. And yet Karine, for some reason, has her character's voice ringing in her head: Stay away from Perseria when you next play MAA. Which makes her not go to a repair shop in Perseria, instead choosing to go to another city, and one with a brokerage so that she can keep an eye on the cosmetics she put for sale.
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Only, this time around, after she ends her stream, it isn't Monseigneur who appears as an astral projection in front of her, but her alcohol witch character.
"Why is it that you went around selling a Sun Disk run?" Clavet, her alcohol witch alt, sounds a little fake, as if she wanted to sound like her grandmother.
"What's going on here?" Karine yells at her alcohol witch's astral projection, her face turning red. "My conscience did this to me in the past two nights, using hallucinations trying to make me guilty about how I choose to spend my time in-game! I want to ensure my team has all the supplies necessary to go into Operation Heathrow and kill Belzebuth! It's our one shot at global glory that extends beyond one's spec or region!"
"You were busy having Monseigneur dally around in the Sun Disk, in an attempt to steal a solar car from Belphegor, and how would said solar car be of any use against Belzebuth?" Clavet keeps yelling at her player, ignoring the bit about hallucinations. "Admit it, players control some of us, in our world"
"Neither Monseigneur nor you are real people; they are digital entities who might look somewhat like real people, but, for some of them, with powers that don't exist in our world!" Karine retorts.
"In other news, it seems like the population of Perseria is unhappy about the lockdown imposed on them, and not simply because they feel like they are unable to get any business done while this lockdown is happening! Perserians can't even leave their homes without risking getting killed by the guards, unless they sell food!" Clavet tells her about the dire predicament of the Perserians. "And the city is taking such drastic measures because of the actions of people like those who run what these otherworldly entities call dungeons!"
I knew players' actions carried consequences in the game's world, but the bulk of these consequences were felt in the mid-to-long term, under the form of what content gets released and balancing of specs or content, not revolts that are brewing in-game and are ultimately sparked by players' actions, without the devs acting on these! Karine's mind still tries to process this turn of in-game events.
"Your world is on the verge of revolt all right, in ways the manufacturer didn't realize until now!"
"And you had the audacity to dismiss the issues of our world as the consequences of... I forgot; I had it on my tongue!" Clavet's memory seems to fail her. Or maybe she falls prey to false memories.
"The consequences of the manufacturer's choice of AI algorithms for the game!"
I don't think the time is right to tell Karine about my role among the Perserian rebels. Right now, she makes me feel like she won't believe any of it, much less what made me want to get involved, Clavet keeps to herself, before her astral projection disappears, under the eyes of a Karine who still curses her tendency to hallucinate of late.
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Meanwhile, Clavet hosts some Perserian rebels with some affinity for alcohol magic at Karine's player house, which looks very much like these McMansions a few of her higher-income clients as a LIT (and maybe even failed entrepreneurs) used to own.
"A technique I believe would be useful for us would be to use alcohol clouds to create fake sandstorms" Clavet explains to her fellow alcohol wizards.
"If I may, why don't we leave this to earth wizards?" a rebel alcohol wizard asks her.
"Yeah, what's special about alcohol clouds that we can't get from using earth magic?" a rebel alcohol witch asks as well.
"With alcohol clouds, we can both intoxicate and reduce their visibility. So we need to cast an alcohol cloud with two characteristics: it has to fall in the same range of colors as real sandstorms, and also we must impart the cloud particles some speed to make a more convincing fake sandstorm" Clavet explains to the rebel alcohol wizards the objectives of the magical drill.
Earth wizards can't intoxicate with their sandstorm spells, Clavet keeps thinking while she casts her own alcohol cloud around the house to test her own idea. The two rebel alcohol wizards follow suit a bit later, and the neighborhood is covered in beige alcohol clouds, tasting like beer, moving at the speed of a sandstorm.
But because the neighborhood's residents live inside their homes, they don't seem to be bothered by the fake sandstorm much.