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“Mantaro” sat back in their computer chair. Before them were three monitors. On the center screen was a fan-made character build calculator for Endless Fantasy Online. On the left was a web browser opened to the game’s Wiki, and on the right was a video playlist going over the history of the game’s meta. They grumbled with frustration, two hours of theorycrafting had led them nowhere so far.
They had settled on making a new meta Dex build but quickly ran into numerous brick walls. Investing all your stat points into Dex gave you speed and evasion, but that was about it. You wouldn’t have the damage to compete with the Str builds, and if they hit you, that was it.
According to the history videos, Dex was popular at the game’s launch. Mainly for noob crushing with great speed. Once the meta settled, it quickly fell out of favor thanks to the aforementioned low damage. Basically, to get that high speed, you’d need to spend so many stat points that you’d have almost nothing left over for any of the other stats. If you didn’t spend all those points, the return on investment wouldn’t nearly be worth it and would be better spent in other stats.
In layman’s terms, 50 (out of the max 100) points in Strength would be worth every point. The same amount in Dexterity would not (besides, you’d need to put 70 points in Dex to get the maximum movement speed). Plus, Str gives you bonus defense, while Dex only gives you a bonus to evasion. The problem with evasion was that it was all up to chance. It could reduce the damage you take to zero, it could also reduce the damage you take by half, but most likely, you’d just take full damage. Defense, on the other hand, reduced the damage you take by a flat amount.
Mantaro groaned again; relying on evade wouldn’t be enough. If they wanted this Dex build to work, they’d have to think of something else. Besides, the real problem with the Dex build was damage. Strength increasing your damage was obvious, but Dex’s relationship with damage was a bit more complex.
Dexterity did increase the damage of ranged weapons, but ranged weapons have also proven to be niche at best. They’re still used, but never in dedicated builds, only in hybrids. Even then, you’d only see one or two ranged weapons users per ten people. They were only there to fill holes in larger groups, and they would only use the weapons half the time.
The real problem with ranged weapons was that, because of the game’s mechanics, they were situational weapons. Most fights were done up close, and the game’s mechanics didn’t lend themselves to kiting or keeping your distance. As a result, ranged attacks were used for only three things: the opening volley in an ambush, supporting someone else in a melee fight, or shooting down a fleeing foe. None of them are guaranteed to happen in a fight, and all three usually implied you were on the winning side of a fight. Hence, if your ambush failed, if you were being ambushed, or if you were the one losing, ranged weapons would be worthless.
There were a couple of melee weapons that scaled off Dexterity. However, they had poor damage even at high investment because they were tied into the game’s critical hit mechanics. Critical hit chance and damage also scaled off Dex. With some additional investment in the Luck stat, you’d have damage competitive with the Strength builds. Alas, critical hits were also up to chance, and that competitive damage assumed you could reliably crit. To reliably critically hit, you’d have to spend so many stat points you’d be left a complete glass cannon. Your damage would be incredible, but you’d certainly go down in one hit.
Mantaro resisted the urge to slam their head into the table. Everything seemed to point to the fact that Dex was a poorly balanced stat, and the only way around it would be to wait for the developers to fix it. However, that would be an admission of defeat, and Mantaro was far too stubborn to call it quits after a couple hours.
They quickly skimmed the Wiki again, flipping through every page related to the Dexterity stat they could find. To their surprise, there were many Dex skills they had never heard of all over the Wiki. However, they quickly realized that all those Dex skills were locked behind a high Dex requirement. Which was sad because a lot of them sounded excellent. Mainly the support skills, which were full of temporary damage reduction and a handful of evasion buffs.
Mantaro reread the skills several times and got to thinking. If one were to string together all of these skills in the proper sequence, you’d basically be untouchable. Sure, each defensive skill was temporary, and there would be plenty of vulnerable moments here and there, but it was like a dance. If you got all the steps right, it’d be a beautiful display of skill. It would be really hard, but it just might be worth it.
As Mantaro thought about it, they’d been narrowminded concerning the Dex builds. They always thought you’d have to pick either a glass cannon critical hit build, a full-speed build, or a ranged build. Since they all rely on Dex anyway, mixing and match two or all of those might be an option. It’d just take some theorycrafting and testing.
This would undoubtedly take a few longs nights to get it just right. But, Mantaro had all the time in the world right now. Besides, who wouldn’t want to be the one to discover the new meta?
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Mantaro swept through the battlefield the second the match started. So quickly, in fact, that his own party members thought he failed to load into the game. The map they were playing on was a classic 4v4 battleground that launched with the game. It was medium-sized and based on a small farm. A huge barn dominated the center of the map, while two farmhouses on opposite sides served as the starting point for the teams. The rest was animal pens and cornfields, perfect for ambushes.
The goal of this map was simple, take out the enemy team. Each player got three respawns, so once you died four times, you were out. The last team standing wins, and if it goes to time, the team with the most total respawns left wins. If that was tied, they’d go to sudden death, but Mantaro was confident it wouldn’t come to that.
Mantaro zoomed about the map before hiding in the cornfield. He took one peak out and saw the enemy party. Three Str characters in heavy armor and weaponry, plus one guy at the back who looked like an Int character in light armor. The common logic in most competitive games is to always take out the support first, but Mantaro had other ideas. Instead, they’d test the waters, see how this party reacts.
Mantaro pulled out a crossbow from their inventory, specially crafted for the new Dex build. They took aim and fired at the closest Str character. The bolt hit true and did moderate damage, and the other party immediately went on the defensive.
“Ambush already?” The guy who was hit exclaimed in chat while the support character healed him. “Wait, that’s it just one bolt?” They quickly realized no follow-up attack was coming.
“lol, what an idiot,” another of the Str guys stated in chat. Their character had bright orange hair, which stood out quite a bit. “Probably some Dextard fishing for crits. I saw where the bolt came from. I’ll deal with him.” The orange-haired character pulled out a giant battle-axe from their inventory and charged the cornfield Mantaro was hiding in.
‘Hook, line and sinker,’ Mantaro thought in glee. They moved just enough that their relative position was obvious, drawing their foe in.
“Got ya,” orange-hair announced as he swung his axe through the cornfield. Alas, none of his blows hit Mantaro, who was much further back than they initially guessed.
“Over here,” Mantaro fired another bolt, which hit true, before swiftly retreating again.
“****** Dextard!” Orange-hair charged further into the cornfield, axe raised for another attack.
“Idiot, you’re overextending,” one of his teammates pointed out, but orange-hair failed to listen.
“Can’t get away now,” orange-hair finally caught up to Mantaro and brought his axe down on the Dex character’s head.
“No, actually you don’t,” Mantaro triggered their evasion skill. For the next six-second, their evasion was 100%. Not realizing this, Orange-hair activated his strength-boosting skill to secure the kill but wasted it as every hit failed to connect. “For my next trick,” Mantaro used a dodge-roll skill to get behind orange-hair before switching to a pair of daggers and slashing from behind. Two slashes were made, one of which was a critical hit, orange-hair went down to about half health.
“Idiot’s getting himself ganked,” one of orange-hair’s party members pointed out as the group moved to aid their ally.
“That’s my cue to leave,” Mantaro triggered one last skill, a Dex ability that boosted their running speed for a quick escape.
“You’re not getting away,” orange-hair tried to follow, but the difference in movement speed was night and day. Mantaro was more than twice as fast now, and orange-hair only succeeded in keeping the distance between himself and the rest of his party very wide.
As the rest of orange-hair’s party rushed into the cornfield, Mantaro’s party emerged from the barn, having seen everything since the critical hit. RuckDaKing led the charge, popping his offensive skills to take out the support as quickly as possible. The Int character went down quickly, and the fight turned from 3v3 to 3v2.
“****,” orange-hair turned to see his party getting shredded. He spun on his heel and charged after them, but he never made it. Putting his back to Mantaro was his last mistake. The Dex character used one last skill to double his crit chance and damage and attacked orange-hair with a flurry of daggers blows. Orange-hair took three hits before he managed to turn around. On the fourth hit, he went down.
The rest of the match went about the same. Orange-hair spent the rest of the game trying to focus Mantaro. Alas, that single-minded focus led to him regularly overextending and getting caught out and killed. He was the first to use up all of his respawns and was out of the game before long. Once it was down to a 4v3, it became just shy of a slaughter in Mantaro’s team’s favor.
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Thus began the reign of Mantaro’s new Dex build. The forums would both sing the praises of and curse the existence of the new fleet of Dexterity characters till the game’s death. As for Mantaro, they were simply happy that there was a little more variety in Endless Fantasy’s ranked PvP ladder. Strength builds finally fell out of favor, but hybrid builds and other pure stat builds rose in droves. It was perhaps the golden age of experimentation in the Endless Fantasy’s metagame, and it all started because one person got sick of seeing Strength builds.
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A Primer on Endless Fantasy Online:
Endless Fantasy is a fantasy/sci-fi MMORPG with both PvE (Players vs. Environment) and PvP (Player vs. Player) content. Players begin as a blank slate character with balanced stats, which they can build however they chose to fill a variety of roles. Unlike most MMORPGs, Endless Fantasy does not have a class system. Instead, a player’s role and abilities are determined by how they increase their stats.
Players start at level 1 with 10 stat points to spend in any of the seven stats, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Endurance, Wisdom, Charisma, and Luck. Each stat starts at a minimum of 5 and raises to a maximum of 100. On the road to the maximum level of 70, players will acquire a total of 100 stat points to spend, including their initial 10.
Each stat is straightforward in its purpose, having both a primary and secondary benefit. Strength primarily raises physical damage and slightly increases defense. Dexterity increases speed and but also influences critical hit chance and damage. Intelligence improves magic spells but also increases the mana pool (resource for casting spells). Endurance raises both defense and maximum health. Wisdom determines one’s base mana pool but also influences magical defense. Charisma is unique because it is an out-of-combat stat that affects a fair share of minigames and features. Finally, Luck influences critical hit chance and damage, as well as influencing all chance-based interactions.
While the game’s world is massive and ripe for exploration, its PvP features have grown significantly in popularity in recent years. The competitive game modes range from 1v1 duels to 4v4 or 6v6 group skirmishes and massive 20v20 battles. Among them, 4v4 and 6v6 skirmishes are the most popular, as they are the easiest to form groups for.
While the game’s free-range build system does promise infinite build variety, like most games, a competitive metagame was formed around the most successful builds. The best builds are paired together into the most efficient team compositions (ex. 4 person teams consisting of 2 damage dealers, 1 tank, and 1 healer/support), forming the backbone of the game’s ranked matches.
The game’s ranked matches are divided into several tiered competitive “ladders,” starting with Practice league for new players and ending at Mythic league for the best players in the world (The rest in order: Practice, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Mythic). Newly infamous player Mantaro and his friends were initially Silver league, the den of most average to above-average players. However, riding off the success of the new Dex build, all of them reached Gold league in a couple days.
Despite having first released in 20XX, the game is still going strong and sees the occasional surge in popularity and growth. It seems that this Endless Fantasy may live up to its name after all.
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This is a story purely born of personal preference. I've always wanted to write a video gamey/MMO/competitive gaming style story, mainly because I'm not fully satisfied with all the ones I've seen on the market. I've read plenty that are good stories, but are not quite true to life in the video game aspects. Then there's the vast majority where I'm certain the writer doesn't actually play video games, or at least modern video games.
Hence we have this story that strays closer to what I wanted. To be fair, the outsider/secret expert/underdog who discovers that an underappreciated ability/skill/weapon/etc. is actually amazing is not an original concept. In both stories about video games and stories in general. However, my goal was to walk through the character's mentality and how they connect the dots. They know its bad, but the key is determining why and how to work around it. Or the pieces to make something work were always there, they just needed to complete the puzzle.
This sort of thing is not uncommon in real life games. Heck, it happens in trading card games all the time, especially those with eternal or legacy formats. For example, many years ago Magic the Gathering's Modern format had a new deck rise to success called "Death's Shadow" based around the titular card. All the cards in the deck had existed for years, it just took the right person to figure out how to break it.
Same is true of other card games like Pokemon and Yugioh, they have communities dedicated to older formats (basically recreating the experience of playing the games when they were fairly new). Until those communities formed, the top decks of those formats were considered to be overwhelmingly the best with only so much competition (Haymaker in Pokemon and Goat Control in Yugioh). However, as people have gone back to those formats and played in them more, new decks have emerged that are equal or superior to the old ones. If you're at all curious, there's dozens of videos and articles on these sorts of things, just look up Yugioh's Goat format, or the history of Competitive Magic the Gatheirng, etc.
That went longer than I expected...Ramble over...
Until next time, Read, Comment and Enjoy
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