Chapter 505 - 319: Dragon, Dungeon, Dragon and Dungeon

Chapter 505: Chapter 319: Dragon, Dungeon, Dragon and Dungeon

Dean firmly rejected Ben’s excited attempt to kiss him on the cheek.

’Looks like Dean isn’t the touchy-feely type.’

But Ben wasn’t disappointed. Right now, he needed to use every second he had to adjust his tabletop game.

’Dice.’

’Such a great tool for adding randomness. How had he never thought of it before?’

Dice were actually a very common tool in Feilin. Low-level Prophets, not yet capable of the mental equivalent of big data processing, often used all sorts of strange little props as aids.

Things like dice, cards, and astrolabes were really just a matter of luck and guesswork.

However, thanks to these flaky, second-rate Prophets, Feilin had an abundance of dice varieties. They came with all sorts of face counts, so he wouldn’t need to design any from scratch.

"Goodbye! Time is tight, so I have to go revise the design. Thanks again! As soon as I’m done, I’ll contact you to try it out. I’ll put you in the acknowledgments!"

Ben blurted this out and then dashed off, leaving Dean and Craig staring at each other in bewilderment.

Dean asked, "Didn’t Ben say he was going to find us for another playtest after he made his changes?"

Craig said slowly, "He did, but I don’t think he got our contact information. How’s he going to find us...?"

Meanwhile, Ben was rushing to a toy store in Deepwater City.

Due to the city’s population, there weren’t enough tabletop game enthusiasts to support a dedicated game store.

Tabletop game-related items were sold in toy stores, which also offered toy repair services—after all, toys weren’t cheap. They also had card appraisal services; yes, once cards became collectible, appraisal services were born. And they even offered custom work on game components, letting people paint their own miniatures.

So, for Ben, the toy store could basically serve as his workshop.

He arrived at the store and immediately got to work on the adjustments.

In truth, there weren’t many components to adjust. The main thing was adding various dice. The player’s little Mechanical Armor miniatures could wait; for now, they could just use pen and paper to track stats.

What truly needed adjusting were the countless stats.

All the original fixed values had to be changed to random numbers determined by dice rolls.

At first, Ben planned to make everything completely random, but after some thought, he rejected the idea.

’It would be too luck-dependent.’

After a bit more consideration, he changed the formula to a base value plus a random number from a dice roll. That way, there would be a minimum value, which would make for a better player experience.

As for the dice themselves, there were two dimensions to play with: the number of dice rolled and the number of faces on each die.

This would allow him to design stats that were more of a gamble, as well as more stable ones, catering to different class preferences.

Once the formula was set, all that remained was the arduous task of overhauling the numbers.

Ben wasn’t particularly skilled in this area, so he could only rely on his experience and limited mathematical knowledge to put together a first draft.

If this system proved viable, he would then contact the specialized data-balancing team within the Zog Group to refine this part of the game.

The revision process took him three full days to complete a first draft.

Over those three days, he averaged less than four hours of sleep a night. He was amazed he could even stay conscious.

’Maybe this is the power of passion,’ he thought.

Before he collapsed from exhaustion, Ben decided to immediately start testing whether the revised gameplay was viable.

At the same time, he’d use the playtest to further refine the stats.

No matter how skilled a designer was at math, no one could get the numbers perfect on the first try.

There were just too many variables. Players could always figure out some game-breaking exploit that would make a designer’s vision go dark.

How a designer responded to such an event revealed the difference in their abilities.

Nerfing the player’s discovery into oblivion and forbidding them from playing in ways the developers hadn’t anticipated was the safe option, but it would frustrate the players.

A more elegant—though much more difficult—solution was to balance the game by introducing more playstyles and counters, allowing the new strategy to remain viable but not unbeatable.

But regardless of the approach, any adjustments had to be made after receiving feedback from a decent number of players.

Ben was about to do something bold.

He was going to bypass the Zog Group’s standard procedures and find a group of people to playtest it himself.

The Zog Group’s process was just too slow, an unavoidable consequence of the organization’s growth.

For a new design to be born, it had to be submitted, pass an internal review, and then undergo internal testing. The feedback from that testing would determine the scale of the closed beta. Finally, based on the feedback from the closed beta, a decision would be made on whether to proceed to an open beta.

And there was no telling how many rounds of testing there would be.

Generally, reaching the open beta stage meant the game was basically ready for official release.

Of course, there were exceptions. Some shoddily made copycat games trying to ride the coattails of *Path of Conquest* wouldn’t even survive the open beta, getting flamed so hard for being terrible that their servers were shut down.

In any case, with this whole process, it would take several months to reach the closed beta stage where actual players could get their hands on it.

Ben didn’t want to wait.

He was confident his design was good enough to go straight to the players.

He figured he could just show the playtest feedback directly to his boss. Zog would definitely give the project special attention, maybe even put it on a fast track.

No sooner said than done, Ben set off to find players himself.

Grabbing the few prototype sets he had, Ben prepared to find a tavern in the city to use as a playtesting venue.

Why a tavern?

Ben’s reasoning was that taverns were always short on entertainment. There was throwing darts, playing cards, and that was about it. His tabletop game should find a ready market there.

Besides, a tavern perfectly fit the adventurous atmosphere he was going for.

A party, fresh from a thrilling adventure, arrives at a shabby but cozy little tavern. They order a cask of ale, drinking and reminiscing about the exciting tales from their journey.