Vaudevillain

“I see you’ve finally decided to use your vacation days,” Clair said as she stopped by Dylan’s workspace.

He leaned back from his computer. “Yeah. Made plans to visit some friends.”

“Dylan, I’m surprised!” Samir said from his workspace. “To think you have friends outside of work!”

The trollish grin on Samir’s face as Dylan looked at him was enough to remove any doubt about the joke.

“And when are you taking work off to see friends then?” Dylan countered. “You’re as much a workaholic as I am, Samir.”

“Oh, probably sometime in the future,” Samir laughed. “Are these friends you made in that game you told me about?”

“On the VIS, right?” Claire asked.

“Yeah,” Dylan said.

“It’s all Jaimie talks about these days,” Claire said. “It doesn’t help my husband is using it to live his hockey sports fantasies. And his football ones. He told me a baseball one was coming out soon as well and I told him under no circumstances is he allowed to get it. Jaimie’s already clamoring to play, but the helmet doesn’t sit straight on his head yet.”

Dylan snorted at the image of his coworker’s child trying to use the VIS, the helmet wobbling around because his head was too small.

“Did you get pictures?” Samir asked, thinking the same. “Because I have to see this.”

Claire couldn’t hold her smile. “We found him one night putting it over his head. Luckily Ron made sure the parental controls were all set up so he couldn’t get into it.” Dylan’s boss pulled up a picture of a toddler with a VIS helmet covering his whole head and resting on his shoulders. She swiped to show a video of Jaimie walking around, his hands reaching out like an old cartoon character looking for glasses. A moment later he ran directly into the couch and tumbled down.

Samir and Dylan chuckled.

“It seems everyone wants a VIS these days,” Claire said.

“Have you tried it out?” Dylan asked. “It’s honestly some amazing hardware. I haven’t gotten any other games for it other than World of Supers and that’s been enough to grab my attention.”

“Can’t say I did,” Claire said. “I don’t really understand the appeal.”

She looked down as her work phone pinged. “Gotta wrap this up. Got a meeting to get to.”

“Alright, see you,” Dylan said. He turned back to complete his own work.

Samir waved goodbye as well, returning to his own work until the afternoon lull. He stretched, making as much noise as he could to attract Dylan’s attention. Dylan snorted at the exaggerated act.

“Only a few hours left, my friend,” Samir said. “Then we can be on our merry way!”

“You have plans tonight?” Dylan asked.

“Of course not, I’m a workaholic,” Samir laughed. “No, I have a date with a comfortable couch and a movie. You?”

“Probably playing games on the VIS,” Dylan admitted. “My friends and I are planning a big event in World of Supers.”

“Oho, does this have something to do with your vacation?” Samir asked.

“Nah,” Dylan said. “Just how it turned out is all.”

“I heard something about the VIS the other day,” Samir said. “What was it? Oh, yes. Have you heard of a Dr. Zol? Dr. Loz?”

“Dr. Zlo?” Dylan asked.

Samir snapped his fingers. “That was it! I read he forced an entire server reset! Apparently he destroyed the moon?”

“Yeah,” Dylan said, doing his best to keep calm. It was the first time he’d experienced his game self intersecting with his real self, and he wasn’t sure how to act. Did he tell Samir he was Dr. Zlo? But that would mean revealing how popular he was in the game, wouldn’t it? Dylan wasn’t sure he wanted that.

He decided to keep quiet for now.

“Incredible,” Samir said. “I wonder how you think of something like that?”

“I mean,” Dylan said. “It isn’t too much of a stretch. Threating to blow something up is quintessential supervillain. A lot of villains have threatened to blow up planets and such in comics.”

“I see,” Samir said. “That makes sense.”

The two continued their conversation for a bit longer before Dylan was called away by last minute emails and some quick tasks he could complete before the end of the day. He checked his email when he left, smiling as he saw the email approving his vacation time.

“See ya, Samir,” Dylan said with a wave.

“Have a good day, Dylan!” Samir waved back.

Dylan made it home and as usual went to work completing a few chores and making a quick mean before hoping onto his computer. A message from Jack appeared as he sat down.

JackOLeen:

Patch notes are out.

Fun stuff.

Superfan39526:

Why do I get the sense the patch notes are not in fact fun stuff?

JackOLeen:

Read and you’ll see.

Dylan rolled his eyes at Jack’s cryptic message but did as instructed. He went to the World of Supers website and opened the patch notes webpage.

A dastardly welcome to all of you as we announce our mid-expansion patch notes for Dr. Zlo’s Shrink Ray Shenanigans! I hope everyone has been enjoying the zany supervillain as much as we have! Without further ado, let’s get into the patch notes!

Dylan scrolled through the list of power changes, nodding at some and rolling his eyes at others. Luckily, it seemed his Mad Science power had been left alone after the previous hotfix that stopped multiple characters from generating passive resources by just sitting in the player’s character select. All in all, nothing in the powers looked out of place.

That wasn’t the same for general gameplay changes.

PVP and PVE changes.

As many of you are aware, World of Supers is filled with a number of varied quests, both hidden and structured, to give the world a sense of life and vibrancy. When the game released, almost all of these quests were open world, meaning that anyone could take them at any time and anyone could interfere at any time. The idea was to bring that superhero experience of team ups that is so popular in comics. The goal was that players could accept quests from different areas, and their respective questlines might bring people together and force them to either join forces or fight.

However, many of you have expressed disinterest in such a system, especially when it came to the more important quests offering a number of valuable materials. Many have also complained about trolls and player killers camping popular quest spots and ruining the questline for fun. We understand the frustration that such actions bring, and while we have attempted to remedy these issues with changes to the reputation and player respawn systems, it is clear that many players still find the actions frustrating.

While we still want to emphasize that feeling of casual superhero team ups, we also wish to provide a fun and enjoyable experience for players. During the release of the recent expansion, we introduced a number of instanced only quests and requested feedback from a number of players. Our data shows that a number of players prefer the instanced quests over the more open world quests. As such, we are rolling out changes to the quest system. Certain quests throughout the world will now be instanced separately from the world when started. Players can still choose to invite others on the quest, but no longer will bad actors join and ruin the experience. We believe this change will increase player satisfaction for all.

As for those who enjoy the hero versus villain PVP, don’t worry! We’ve made sure to add a number of instanced quests that involve both heroes and villains. And if that isn’t enough, there’s always pulling a Dr. Zlo and making your own quests!

“Huh,” Dylan said.

Superfan39526:

So they’re changing quests?

JackOLeen:

Yeah, and it sucks.

So much of what makes this game special is how almost everything is open world.

Sure, there are some bad actors but that’s just something you should plan around!

It adds variety to the game, something that most modern MMO’s don’t have much of.

But now that they’re moving to instanced quests all we’re going to see is nonsense about efficiency.

Like is it better to go left or right on a map that’s COMPLETELY SYMMETRICAL.

It doesn’t matter which way you go! The end is the same ugh!

This sucks.

Superfan39526:

I don’t know.

I mean, now the people who want to do instanced quests are just going to do them right?

So we don’t have to deal with accidentally starting the same quest as someone else.

JackOLeen:

I guess. But like, so much of World of Super’s selling point was it was basically an AI run open world.

Now it’s just going to be like every MMO.

Which sucks.

I started playing because the idea of non-linear choices was interesting.

This game was so much like an MMO roguelike, you know?

Now it’s just another generic MMO. And not even a good one.

Superfan39526:

I mean we can still do our own events, right?

It’s not like that’s going to stop.

JackOLeen:

I know. I’m just upset about it.

Superfan39526:

How about this then.

We hop onto something other than WOS and play that?

Maybe you can show me a different game you’d think I’d like?

JackOLeen:

That’s sweet. Thanks.

Yeah, let’s do that.

The rest of the night was spent in a number of games Jack loved, mainly roguelikes and others that had a number of—according to her—interesting mechanics. Dylan had some fun with it, but he had to admit some of the games were too complex for him. It was a good thing Jack loved to explain things and he enjoyed hearing her talk.

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