Videogame Dev 101
If Kayaba had chosen the wrong game genre
By Goa1aso
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'What is the capital of Argentina?'
Kirito stared blankly at the System prompt for a while unbelievingly, rubbing his eyes as if to make sure he was 'really seeing this shit', as Klein had so eloquently put it.
"Let me get this straight. Kayaba put trivia into the game after beta?"
"Seems like it..."
Klein had just killed a boar after Kirito showed him how to use Sword Skills, but upon killing the boar, the System had prompted Klein to answer a trivia question in order to collect his loot.
"But why? This is such a bad idea, what was Kayaba on when he thought this was a good idea?"
"I dunno but this is seriously annoying. If I don't get this right, then I don't get loot…"
Selecting 'Buenos Aires' from the four options he was presented (Why would Mexico City even be in Argentina, Klein wondered), he proceeded to check the experience and gold he acquired from the kill.
Kirito shook his head in annoyance. "Well, I guess if all the trivia questions are this easy then we'll be fine, but it's still a hassle," he said with a heavy sigh.
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Walking dejectedly back to the little cottage, Little Nepenthes Flower in hand, Kirito really couldn't get over Coper's death. Why would he try to Monster PK him? It's just a quest item, and he'd offered to help get them both one!
The trivia question to receive the flower wasn't too bad ('How many hydrogens are in an atom of water?'), thankfully, so Kirito was at least grateful for that.
Turning the flower in to the woman to complete his quest, he received another quiz. Staring at the blinking cursor indicating manual input in disbelief, he sank to his knees in despair.
'Rest in peace, Anneal Blade, you will never be wielded by anyone in the game.'
'What is the exact number of islands that make up the country known as the Philippines? Please input below.'
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(The Rat's services were requested more than ever, calling upon her encyclopedic memory to answer mundane questions.)
(Argo was painted as a cheater due to the fact)
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The number was 7641 if you were curious.
'Oho, this sadistic bastard.'
Kirito glared at the red-cowled apparition floating above the players that were forcibly assembled in the Beginner's Square. According to his beta-experience, this game was nigh-unclearable with this TRON-esque added rule. Like seriously, who would ever be able to complete a platformer in no deaths with an artificial time limit (aka your body emaciating in real-life)? Even deathless speed-runners of old games like Mario had countless hours of experience from playing the game regularly…
Around him, everyone else's faces paled, coming to the same realization that he'd just had.
No-one was going to make it out of this game.
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Kirito was getting tired of this. Jumping from pillar to pillar or floating islands to islands was getting extremely repetitive and, not to mention, dangerous. The last couple jumps on the current 54th floor had players running and jumping continuously. If you stopped between, you'd lose all of your momentum and be stuck with nowhere to go.
Such jumps were a large cause of the decline in the clearing force. The more cautious players had made it to the middle but stopped before jumping again, falling to their untimely deaths.
As a result of these widely-spaced platforms, no-one could feasibly build their character for tanking the various monsters that spawned on the larger islands. Tanks without agility and heavy gear would never be able to make it past the platforming parts of the game…
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If they thought that the 50th floor boss was bad, the 75th was even worse. It came in the form of a giant centipede made of bones, its feet pre-programmed to land on the tiny platforms littered across the chasm of a boss area.
The fight went pretty much as anyone had expected, with half of the raid party dying to 'falling in midair' and another fourth of the party getting skewered where they stood by the scythe-like legs of the boss.
A few more adventurous (and arguably smarter) individuals opted to jump on top of the boss, hacking at it from above in relative safety. If you could call safety as narrowly dodging random bone spikes being fired from the below them. At least they wouldn't die to the rampaging legs.
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(The end statistics of the game had 90% of players dying from suicide. Missing a jump was technically the player's fault)
(Doctors noticed that SAO players had the tendency to jump wherever they wanted to go, with high precision might they add, in real life)
Kirito stifled a yawn, as he waited for his party that Asuna forced him into to finish taking their turns.
'You see, this is why I prefer to play solo…'
When everyone finally finished choosing their action and Sword Skill, they fired off their actions one by one at the monster who conveniently stood still for them to do whatever they needed to.
The light-armored random that Asuna had recruited chugged a potion, recovering a bit of the sliver that he called health. Then, the other random put up his shield in preparation for an attack that would come after the other two player's actions. Asuna used her trademark skill, Linear, dashing forward at the monster, attacking, and then returning back to her former position. That is, third in the line of four players standing next to each other.
Kirito groaned silently to himself, running forward to execute a Square sword skill before walking back to his 'position' slowly.
Upon his return, the monster ran straight past the guy with a shield and attacked the guy who had drank a potion, turning him into a thousand polygons.
"You idiot! You forgot to use your taunt ability before shielding! Remember your ordering! It cost this guy his life!"
Kirito tuned out the sound of Asuna berating the other player. 'I hate this game so much.'
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(The game took twice as long to complete due to all of the attack animations and other annoying, time consuming nuances of turn-based combat)
(Kirito couldn't even look at games like Final Fantasy without wanting to throw up in horror for years after the incident)
A/N: I guess I'll call this a series of one-shots so that I can add whatever ideas I come up with later. Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed writing it!