Hackposting (5.-6.5.)

(This is a combination of posts on Tumblr, here and here, for archival and conversation purposes)

TBH I think I’ve fallen into the trap of taking the game systems in Last Recode too literally, because Roots pretty directly implies that Haseo’s batshit level before he gets data drained is the result of the PK killing spree he goes on after getting Form 3’d by AI Harald. To me it looks like having cleared Forest of Pain at such a low level, and having access to high level skills and mechanics most people need to grind up to access, gives Haseo an edge over the majority of players, even those he has a significant level gap to, and once he hits level 100 he’s truly in an elite that only people like madmen who grind the arena like Sirius and Taihaku, or else people who camp the level cap due to extensive playtime like Phyllo and Shino, or people who simply cheat like Ovan.

And that does a little bit bear out as far as game!Haseo goes, because the game outright encourages you to keep aiming for battles to be 2-3 levels above your own for optimal level growth, and I’ve found that even 6-7 is perfectly doable as long as you never ever ever get hit. Haseo’s version of Adept Rogue emphasises speed with two of its weapons, and the upgrade seems to have unlocked a lot of his skils outright, and what with how aggro he is, he’s just out-damaging everyone in an instant even at a low level.

This dovetails with the idea that outside of basic attacks and a few skills, most skills and abilities in The World are rewards from beating certain enemies, quests or areas with special conditions. But since that would be tedious for the narrative, the game unrolls some of those systems into just the level-up system, and leaves the rest as implication.

--

I am gonna outright claim that since the dungeon/field generation in The World works a bit like a large languge model, it’s actually pretty easy to get it to blurb out dungeons and fields that have some impossible features like warp pads that are unreachable or geometry you have to noclip through, enemies with ??? level and treasure boxes that give out items with impossibly high levels or max out inventory slots.

Furthermore, this is actually a (semi-)deliberate choice from the developers. (The qualifier of semi-deliberate is that I don't think the devs are capable of forcing the system to reject certain word combinations, since they consistently cannot stop people from entering Lost Grounds once they emerge.) The keyword input is minimally sanitised, and the full keyword list is deliberately obscured to create a dynamic where the players can use knowledge about “good areas” as a resource of trade with other players. The use of “amount of players in this area” indicators per area is also there to further this dynamic, since well-traveled areas could either have good loot or be PK hunting grounds (or both) and low-traveled areas might either have garbage loot or be supremely difficult (or both).

The side-effect of being able to create areas with extremely hostile parameters also lets players at the level cap keep experiencing challenging battles, because The World itself parameterizes everything, and the monsters and loot aren’t limited the way the PCs are.

I also don’t think the “you can’t equip this thing until you’re the same level with it” limitation is a diegetic one. High level weapons, armour, items and skills are a part of the information economy of The World – the knowledge where to find such things and what rate they respawn at and the impossible-to-document size of The World is what keeps it interesting past the developer-curated Main Scenario Quest.