Chapter 59
World of Arseria’s Arena is divided into 1v1, 3v3, and 6v6.
Of these, 3v3 was an event-style game mode without a ranking system—in LoL terms, something like “Howling Abyss Hell”—so people’s main interest lay in the one-on-one Solo Ranked and six-on-six Arena Ranked modes.
However, unlike ‘Legacy of Legends’ or the now-shut-down ‘Storm of Time and Space 2,’ WoA’s Arena system did not have every player’s character start with identical stats and potential.
The minimum Combat Power required to enter the Arena was 10,000.
In other words, you had to raise a character you had trained in Story Mode to at least 10,000 Combat Power before you could enter the Arena.
Take Silver II, the tier above the median, as an example.
People in this tier generally began the game with characters possessing between 20,000 and 25,000 Combat Power.
Although their detailed stats varied wildly from person to person, WoA’s Combat Power became the most reasonable indicator for estimating one’s expected win rate in a one-on-one situation.
Even two identical warriors could be born with different stats: one with 1,000 Attack Power and another with 1,150. It was like having an extra sword in hand.
Assuming they grew at the same rate, the gap between them widened with every level.
Of course, the developers had put various systems in place to keep players from becoming exhausted by character development alone.
The most prominent was a system that automatically adjusted and raised a character’s Combat Power after frequent win streaks or outstanding performances in ranked games.
There was also a considerate system that adjusted the points gained or lost after a win or loss by a set coefficient, allowing popular classes that people disliked having on their team to be placed at lower ranks, while unpopular but essential classes could be placed at higher ranks.
Even so, there were limits.
Suppose someone had exceptionally good physical skills and game sense and broke through to the top-ten-percent Platinum tier with a character possessing 20,000 Combat Power.
Then every opponent they had to face would be a monster with 40,000 Combat Power.
At that point, the player had no choice but to turn their attention back to Story Mode to create a new character.
After all, they already had enough potential to be placed in Platinum with only 20,000 Combat Power.
Physical skills honed in PvP made it easy to clear Story Mode, which in turn produced a character with higher Combat Power than the previous one.
And when they tested the new character’s abilities in the Arena again,
their stagnant rank points began to rise exponentially once more.
[Streaming starts: 0:00:01 – NoName]
Clearly, WoA was a game that had properly identified the weaknesses of AOS games, humanity’s fundamental attribution error, and our desire for rewards.
People claimed to like fair competition and victories based on it, but that wasn’t actually true.
People liked games that ‘looked fair.’
The reason AOS-style games were bound to become popular was that everyone started with the same resources, at the same time, from the same starting line.
Unlike in an MMORPG, you would never create a character only to find yourself facing a whale wearing a full set of gear and accessories worth a hundred million won in cash purchases.
But what if you invaded the enemy jungle right at the start of the game and, after scoring a ‘Pentakill,’ began the laning phase with 1,600 gold?
The corners of your mouth would rise all the way to the edge of the sky.
That was because the game had already been acknowledged as fair to everyone from the very beginning.
[Broadcast time - 0:02:14]
[Viewers - 147]
The effects of the asymmetrical power levels created by Combat Power did not end there.
It was also an excellent excuse for redirecting the stress of defeat through external attribution.
Baduk, janggi, chess, StarCraft, and so on were perfectly even one-on-one skill games.
If you lost, it was solely a problem with your own skill, which placed enormous stress on especially competitive people.
But since AOS games were team games, in short, it was easy to blame someone else, vent your frustration, and move on to the next game.
But what if you could blame your Combat Power as well?
You could say that a win was due to your skill, while a loss was because your Combat Power was too low.
[Broadcast time – 0:03:58]
[Viewers - 189]
Finally, there was the gradual improvement of one’s rank.
Surprisingly, it was difficult to visually determine the difference in skill between tiers in AOS games.
A game you thought was Bronze could turn out to be a game played by Diamonds, and the reverse could also be true.
But WoA’s system clearly distinguished each tier, and people’s ranks could not rise little by little because of the innate limitation imposed by Combat Power.
In other words, as long as you completed a character stronger than the one before,
a rise in tier was practically guaranteed.
People were more vulnerable to pleasure that came flooding in all at once from time to time than to continuous rewards.
Like gambling.
Clearly, surpassing LoL in market share—a game that had held the number-one spot for decades without ever stepping down—would have been impossible without an exceptionally meticulous system.
Now that I’d analyzed it like this, just how much fun was ‘Resonance’ supposed to be?
From what I’d heard, it was a shooting game where you fought while wrapped in aura, so it probably wouldn’t be my cup of tea.
Besides, it was a lazy Sunday afternoon.
Today, I planned to spend some time getting at least a rough understanding of WoA.
The side quests I had played with Laura might have been fun from a player’s perspective, but they could be different from a viewer’s perspective.
[Broadcast time - 0:06:45]
[Viewers - 412]
[Welcome to the chat! (Chat freezing will be lifted when the operation times out.)]
-1111
-1111111111
-1
-Hey, long time no see
-This guy freezes the chat every time he shows up
-He hasn’t streamed much lately, so all his viewers have left
“Nice to meet you.”
[Would you like to log in to World of Arseria?]
[The stream has been running for 0:07:13. Would you like to continue?]
[May the World Tree’s blessing be with you.]
-WoA?
-You said you weren’t going to play games?
-Are you really playing? How long has it been?
-Let’s change the tags and bring in some new viewers
[‘SaveTheGradStudent’ donated 1,000 won!]
-Whoa, NoName, it’s been so long!! Are you playing WoA today?
“Yes, I decided to start today.”
I didn’t forget to change the tags, either.
It was the first time ‘World of Arseria’ had appeared in the stream title, which had always contained nothing but ‘Just Chatting.’
The viewers’ reactions were intense.
-He completely ditched LoL, lmaooooㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Wait, you’re not playing LoL anymore? I even set an alarm because I wanted to watch Arseria
-Can someone who played nothing but LoL his whole life even adapt to a fantasy setting?
-We’ve got a newbie, a newbie
-I’m already drooling at the thought of giving him advice
-What class are you going to play?
-A thief? An assassin?
-The classics are hero or mage.
“I’m only planning to get a taste of it today. And I’ve already cleared the prologue.”
I would have to enter the game to find out whether switching to solo mode midway was possible.
It might be all right, since I hadn’t started the main story yet.
[‘SaveTheGradStudent’ donated 10,000 won!]
-NoName, thanks to you, the Arena meta is completely messed up right now. There are paladins everywhere, seriously
“What? What do you mean?”
Neither the viewers nor I could understand what he was talking about.
Several question marks filled the chat window.
-Ah, I used to be a WoA player, and I wrote a Paladin guide before
-I turned the Dimensional Descent method that NoName demonstrated on stream before into a scroll
-As long as you have that one thing, anybody and their dog can raise their spell circle by one and use magic
-So every class’s Combat Power has been massively inflated, and even healer classes have become viable
-The Arena is a complete madhouse. Sometimes it’s six tanks against six healers
-I thought they’d obviously block it, but they haven’t even issued an emergency patch, so I guess it’s fine
I followed the link the viewer sent afterward.
[World of Arseria New Meta: ‘I’m the Only Paladin’ (Serious/Long)]
Just as he said, there was an unfinished scroll with a Dimensional Descent formula similar in form to the one I had once cast on stream, attached as an auxiliary transmutation array.
It had already been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.
-Wait, this existed?
-What were you doing while hundreds of thousands of people were downloading it?ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-No wonder. I’m Silver in WoA, but whenever I played Arena, everyone’s Combat Power was insanely high
-Seriously, I thought new story content had been unlocked too
-Nobody who properly plays WoA is left. It’s nothing but LoL addicts nowㅋㅋㅋ
Curious, I went to a match-history search site and linked it to the viewer’s nickname.
[Search: SaveTheGradStudent]
[SaveTheGradStudent Challenger / Arena Rank 70 / Top 0.00074%]
“You’re pretty good. I’ll be counting on you for lots of help when I play.”
Having someone this capable in my chat was like getting a teaching assistant for free.
From now on, whenever I came across something I didn’t understand while playing, I should keep asking that person.
-Challenger???
-He immediately went to search the match history. That’s terrifying
-Twitch needs to get rid of this guy fast;; If you give advice, he immediately searches your match history, so the chat isn’t fun anymore
-That’s because you’re Bronze/Silver/Gold ^^
-Do Bronze/Silver/Gold players even type in chat?
“By the way, can you use scrolls in the game, too?”
Wasn’t that a little too overpowered?
-You can only bring one in the first place, and it has a cooldown too
-Even so, it raises you by a whole spell circle. You should use it even if you have to memorize and cast the other spells
-Kids who suck at studying have been spamming Blink all this time, and now they’re being forced to study magicㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Seriously, this is what a proper game looks like
The scroll slot had been fixed at one from the start.
Well, who had the time to draw an entire magic circle during a battle?
The game had to be treated as a game.
The creator’s original intention had been to let players take magic needed for future battles at each save point and introduce variables, but users who had already learned the usefulness of the ‘Flash’ spell in LoL had covered the whole thing in the first-circle ‘Blink’ spell.
People had even started calling it the ‘Blink’ slot instead of the scroll slot.
In fact, Blink boasted tremendous efficiency in the game for a first-circle spell, so even when people could carry up to three laurels, they often left the slot unchanged.
[Duo disbanded: ‘HeroAurora’]
[Warning: If you enter the main story, you will not be able to form a party again. Do you still want to disband the party?]
[The party has been disbanded.]
[This main character can now be used in ranked matches.]
Did the viewers want Story Mode or the Arena?
There was only one way to find out. I couldn’t foresee everything, either.
[‘SaveTheGradStudent’ donated 10,000 won!]
-NoName, this is your first match, so how did you set the difficulty?
“Can you set the difficulty separately?”
I had never seen that message before.
Because I had forcibly closed the game earlier, I woke up at the checkpoint lodging.
When I opened the slightly creaky old door and stepped outside, everyone from the ‘Abyss’ turned to look at me.
[Nightmare: Magic 10/Exploration 10/Infamy 10 · Solo]
[A bonus has been awarded]
[Prologue: Child of the Oracle END]
[Part 1: Operation to Invade Remnant Academy]