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  *Click*

  *Cli-Click*

  Fsh!

  Armed with an assortment of notepads, tablets and fshing cameras, rows of journalists sat attentively in their seats, arranged in a curve to face a semicircur podium in a small auditorium. Atop the podium stood a group of well-dressed individuals, headed by a main speaker who clutched a small le while addressing the audieh professionalism. Pio her jacket pel was a rge badge which read ‘Jessica - PR Team Lead’.

  “Now I’ll get to the issue you’ve all been waiting for. Yesterday afternoon, Virtek issued a server-wide shutdown order, which persisted for nearly an hour. The cause of this shutdown histicated cyber-attack of unknown in.”

  Soft gasps and a series of low murmurs were heard, as an atmosphere of subdued shock filled the room.

  “We believe that a number of cyber-criminals attempted a digital intrusion on our systems, with the goal of obtaining private user data. Fortunately, Virtek boasts some of the stro cybersecurity teology in the modern world, so we were able to easily repel the attempt. While our personnel made the decision to shut down the game servers as a precaution, this was ter deemed unnecessary. In other words, Virtek has the situatioirely in hand.”

  The speaker took a moment to allow the words to sink in before tinuing, “Unfortunately, as we are still dug our iigation, I am uo take questions today regarding the i. Please hat we will provide further information in ter unications.”

  Waiting a moment, the speaker was surprised when no interjes or pints were made by the reporters. She decided to quickly move on to the opic before her good luck ran out.

  “The other main topic for today’s press ference s the premature lockout experienced by many of our users duriration.”

  Immediately, hands shot up from various journalists.

  “I io answer questions shortly, but I will give an expnation first: Firstly, we at Virtek sincerely apologise to any and all users who were affected by the registration lockout. This was an inexcusable error on our part, arive to do much better than that.”

  “The lockout error was fixed shortly after the game’s unch, though we have determihat over 700,000 ats were created prior to that time. To rectify this issue, we will be free at name ge tokens and avatar ge tokens to all of those ats, which will remain valid for one week, as well as a small EXP boost. Once agai Virtek sincerely apologise for this blunder.” The speaker looked up. “I will take a few questions now.”

  Immediately, one hand shot up much faster thahers. The speaker poio them. “Yes.”

  “Hi, how much will the experience boost be and for how long?”

  “The EXP boost will be applied to the affected ats ter today and will st for one week. Its extent will be 10%.” Not waiting for a response, she poio another journalist.

  “Hello. Will Virtek be openira name slots for those who became uo choose their preferred username due to the lockout? Currently there are only 10 ats allowed for eaique name.”

  “Unfortunately, that is impossible at this stage due to database straints. We will make an annou if the situation ges. For now, we reend that users add a numbered tag to the end of their preferred username instead.”

  The speaker started to feel pressure as the questions became more difficult. Thankfully, most hands had gone down after the previous question. “Yes, over there.”

  “Hi, Aisha here from GameWatch. We ducted a pyer survey yesterday and found that less than 2% of the pyerbase have obtaihe ‘Archer’ css as their specialisation. This is aremely low proportion when pared to the other csses; especially the ‘Mage’ css, which stitutes nearly half of all pyers. Does Virtek pn to take as to either increase iive for choosing the css, or lower the bar for entry?”

  “T-that...” the speaker was flustered for a moment. Uedly, someone had asked a pletely ued question; one which she had not been briefed on. “I will have to defer to my colleague for the answer on that particur issue, since I believe this falls uhe domain of ame bance division.”

  Stepping back from the le, she looked to one of her co-workers for assistance.

  A rotund, middle-aged man at the back of the podium froze for a moment, before relutly stepping forward with a slightly pale plexion.

  The cameras turo focus on him. He wore an unbuttoned bck suit with a white shirt and purple tie, as well as a badge which read ‘Derrick – Baeam Lead’. Trading pces with the previous speaker, bright lights reflected off his partially bald head as he approached the le.

  “Good m.” The man fot to smile as he addressed the crowd. “My name is Derrick from the bance division. My team has been assighe task of maintaining bance among the pyable csses in World of Heroes, to ensure a smooth and fair pyer experience.”

  “...Unfortunately, this is not a bahat be guaranteed immediately after unch, as pyer choices are often uable, and our foremost priority is to ensure pyer freedom.”

  The reporter who asked the question waited for the man to tinue, but uedly, he did not, so she quickly asked a follow-up question. “Yes, but many pyers who wish to choose the archer css are uo due to the high requirements! In another survey we did, we found that over 90% of pyers who attempted the archer css test had failed. versely, 85% of healer css attempts ended with success. Does Virtek not see this as an unfair imban difficulty?”

  The man made an awkward expression as he scrambled to respond. “W-well, yes, we are certainly aware that many csses may be more difficult to use and employ a higher skill ceiling. In terms of the statistics you stated, we assure you that Virtek will duct its own iigation and make ges to the css tests if necessary.”

  Before the reporter could speak again, the man quickly followed up on his words, “Unfortunately, that is all we guara this time. As for further questions, I will hand the spotlight back to our PR team leader.” The man quickly turned around and moved back to the rear of the podium, f the previous speaker to return to the microphoh hurried steps.

  “Were there any other questions?” she asked cautiously.

  More hands rose than had before the previous question. Frowning internally, the speaker secretly likehe gallery to a bunch of piranhas who caught the st of blood.

  “I should crify; I meant questions not reted to the baween the csses. As my colleague stated before, we o duct our own iigation before we announy ges.”

  The number of hands lowered signifitly, and the speaker went on to swiftly ahe remaining questions, which covered a variety of topics.

  ...

  ...

  BANG.

  “Damn!” Derrick smashed a desk with anger as he returo his office. Hearing the loud sound, his co-workers swivelled around in their chairs to face him.

  Despite it being m, the office was dimly lit with no windows. It acious room, remi of the trol room from a doomsday movie, with split rows of desks fag a set of three rge wall-mounted ss on one end. Derrick’s desk stood on a slightly elevated se of fl by the entrance, separated from the rest of the employees by a bck steel handrail. Derrick pressed his hands onto the railing, leaning into it as he looked down over his subordinates.

  “Why the hell did none of you tell me only 2% of pyers were archers?!” Derrick’s voice bellowed across the room. “Did none of you even think to check?”

  “Sir, we received numerous emails from the support team regarding the issue; we assumed you had seen them.” One junior employee spoke up.

  “And you only tell me this now?! Useless!” Derrick raged as he tore off his suit and threw it roughly at his desk. “You were all watg the press ference, right? What are your solutions? We o take amediately!”

  “Team leader, I already sent you an email with proposed solutions st night” An employee with ginger hair spoke up, his expression unimpressed. “Would you like me to give a brief outline now?”

  “Good. Go ahead, Clyde.” Derriodded. “But the ime something urgent like this arises, I expect that you call me immediately.”

  “Right.” Clyde responded simply. “Firstly, there are many people g that the archer css is too weak. As a respoo this, and arguably as a form of damage trol, I suggest that we post a endation on Virtek’s socials for the current speedrun world record holder of the starter dungeon, who just so happens to be an archer pyer.”

  “Speedrun record... it’s held by an archer?” Derrick scratched his . “Good, very good! Haha! Send a link of it to the PR team immediately!”

  “Sure thing.”

  “What about the archer css test? Why is everyone failing it?”

  “Unfortunately, the failure rate is just as bad as that reporter stated, and it’s our fault too.”

  “Our fault? What do you mean?”

  “The archery test being experienced by the pyers is the same as the one previously trialled in our closed beta.” Clyde made a regretful face. “The beta found that the archery test was too difficult for average people, so the development team reduced the distances by 20%, with the minimum target distao pass being reduced from 25 metres to 20, and the furthest target reduced from 100 metres to 80. Most crucially, the number of attempts permitted to hit each target was increased from 1 to 3.”

  “Oh.” Derrick raised an eyebrow. “So... why did we use the old version for unch?”

  “The development team fot to ge it over.”

  “...What?”

  “They fot to switch to the new model before unch.”

  “...”

  “They sent an email st night, inf us that they had made the mistake, but decided not to switch it over and fix it immediately, because then the pyers would find out that we bluhey want it to look like a bang patstead.”

  “Ugh.” Derrick facepalmed. “What a bunch of f*g idiots.”

  “Regardless, now it falls to us to decide how to pensate existing archers when we switch it over.”

  “pensate? Why would we o pehem?” Derrick didn’t follow.

  “The existing archers were required to plete a harder test to obtain their csses, which isn’t really fair and might have restricted their css bracket,” Clyde expined. “The four main css brackets are [Novice Archer], [Archer], [Expert Archer] and [Master Archer], which give boosts of 25%, 50%, 75% or 100% extra bow damage, respectively. As things stand, only a few dozen people have reached the 2nd bracket, [Archer], and there are no expert or master pyers yet. There is one pyer who-”

  “Alright, I get it, I get it,” Derriterrupted. “Then how should we pehem?”

  Clyde frow being cut off, but tinued heless, “I propose we give them a 40% bonus to their css effetil their css bracket promotion. So then, a [Novice Archer] with a 25% damage bonus would have that pertage increased to 35%, and the [Archer] bonus would be increased from 50% to 70%. There is one issue with-”

  “Great! That’s a perfect idea.” Derrick cpped. “But that alone won’t bring the proportion of archers up by much will it?”

  Clyde felt annoyed. “No, it likely still won’t exceed even 10% of pyers, which is half of the css average.”

  “Then, I have a solution for that. You said that even the best scorers on the archery test are only getting a 50% boost, right? Why don’t we just double those boosts entirely? That way we increase iive to choose the archer css, as well as snuff out those assholes pining archers are too weak!”

  “No, wait, that’s too much. The css boosts were carefully sidered by the developmeo not give too much-”

  “You mean the developmehat just screwed up?” Derrick chortled. “They get stuffed; our job is to bahe csses, so that’s just what we’ll do.”

  “But Derrick, that’s a really big ge to make. Plus, I’m pretty sure the scope of our work here is to bahe power between the csses, not the number of pyers. We should at least sult the directors before implementing something like that.”

  “It’s nearly the weekend already; over a million more people will create ats before then. We don’t have time to waste with unnecessary-”

  “We ’t rush something like this!” Clyde protested. “There could be huge ramific-”

  “Don’t interrupt me!” Derrick yelled with irritation. “I’m your superior and I have been givehority to make the final calls when it es to game bance. Do you have a problem with that?”

  Clyde shot Derrick a reproving gnce before replying, “...Alright, your call.”

  “Good. Does anyone else have any objes or input?”

  Derrick looked over the rest of the staff, who had remained quiet throughout the discussion. None of them made any attempt to speak up.

  “Alright then. Implement the ges we discussed; I want the patch to be out by evening. I’m leaving to grab a coffee now, but I’ll e back to che your progress ter.”

  The employees watched as Derrick exited through the doorway.

  ‘...Oh well, it’s not me who’ll catch the fk for it.’ Clyde shrugged a back to work.