Admin: City, War and Paladins (4)

From the standpoint of creating an internal narrative, the first full-fledged battle between two different factions belonging to two different Pirate schooners could be considered highly significant. Yet in its execution, the event was rather insignificant in scale.

Having been spoiled by movies and games with their colorful spectacles, when I received the news about the start of the war between factions, I was sorely disappointed by what I saw. 

After all, with their current level of equipment, the so-called ‘war’ between the Players, looked more like the skirmishes of primitive cave hunters, rather than what I imagined a Fantasy war was supposed to look like.

Even the fact that the wounded and dead Players who had been booted out of the game, or were just resting, were happily talking with each other about just how ‘awesome’ the fights were, brought me little joy. I blame their adrenaline rush, and heightened emotion for the Players to find whatever it is that they did entertaining.

After all, their ‘war’ was absolutely pathetic, with nothing exciting for me to watch. 

Throwing stones, poking their enemy with spears that are more sharpened sticks than a proper spear, roughly in the direction of the enemy, lots of shouting and plenty of ‘action’, for the Players that is. 

Four Players ‘dead’, with six more receiving several injuries, retreating from battle – that's the entire aftermath of the ‘horrifying’ battle. 

Not that I could blame the managers, day traders and salespeople for not knowing how to march in the legionary tortoise formation. But watching Players fight each other with sticks, if their ‘fight’ could even be called that, was almost terminally boring. 

Heck, watching Sturm and Double stumbling through my obstacle course was more interesting! 

Even the messages being sent for reinforcement and for more participants in the war, interested me little. Well, at the very least the Players were having fun, and everything was going smoothly while I prepared the large city ruins for the Players’ next exploration area. 

At least, that’s what the AIs were reporting – no game-breaking bugs, no problems with the Players. In general, I could even call it completely idyllic…

Which only meant that I had missed some major problem somewhere.

There is no such thing as an ideal situation where everyone is satisfied, where the game is bug free and there are no issues that require solving. I am not that lucky. The fact that none of my Players had triggered some kind of bug, or stumbled into something game-breaking in the last twenty-four hours made me tense up, a feeling of approaching doom blanketing over me.

I would probably think that a heart attack would be coming soon, if not for the fact that I don’t have a heart to have a heart attack to begin with.

Feeling antsy, I pop up the Watch List, the list of the most ‘distinguished’ Players in the game that I’ve collated over the game’s lifespan. These are the ones that are most likely to cause problems – a list that included Jabberwocky with his company, Sturm with Double, Yersinia as the first mage, the Player who discovered Alchemy, Jim… But a quick look told me that they aren’t doing anything strange.

Instead of feeling relieved, I instead felt even worse, the feeling of ever-present dooming becoming even more apparent. Not seeing the usual suspects doing anything strange only meant that the issue would come from an unexpected angle – probably another Player that needed to be added to the List.

And so, I expanded my search parameters, starting from the highest Leveled Players, as they are the most likely to start issues. Not that I am discounting the damage that the lower-leveled Players could make, all the Players on the List were once just Level 1 Players, after all. 

I started teleporting to their locations – while staying invisible, of course. Going down the list of Players, I didn’t see anything special… 

Until I found myself standing before a Pirate Ship – a destroyed pirate ship… One that I had not created, as in I haven’t created a secret destroyed ship for the Players to find and there hadn’t been any record of the Players destroying one. I think that something like that would count as something ‘major’ for the AI to report about… this ship couldn't have come from nowhere. After all, a short check revealed that all Pirate Ships are all intact.

So where did it appear from in this godforsaken corner of the world?!

For a moment, I thought that I was going crazy – did I forget about creating this ship?

The panic and confusion was certainly not helped by the fact that the limiters were removed, and my brain couldn't handle the influx of conflicting information. My mind started re-visiting all of my memories…

At least, the heightened level of consciousness allowed me to come to the only correct conclusion – the AI had created the ship, without my say so. 

I could only chuckle at the ridiculousness.

The rise of the machines didn't start with the most grandiose of notes, and I had previously mockingly thought about creating a whole full-fledged race of thinking machines in vain. Looking at the artifact, a destroyed pirate ship, being the proof of the rise of general-level AIs, as ridiculous as that might sound, before something caught my eye.

A Player, exiting the ruins of the destroyed ship. It was not the ship parts that attracted my attention, parts that could be used to repair the Pirate Ships. No, it was the fact that the ‘Player’ in question was an AI – one that I had created to guide the Players, and other AIs, in the right direction. 

Before it could affirm to myself more that an AI uprising was in progress, a look at the AI logs actually caused me to hold my head in sheer horror of what I’m looking at. 

“Wha…!?”

Honestly, I expected the shenanigans to come from the Players, that's what the whole game has been about, after all. The fact that I would finally manage to get a handle on the Players, no matter how briefly, and that I myself would become the main problem for my future plans? It was something I could never even expect.

I found out that I was indirectly the one to blame for the Phantom ship in front of me. Seeing the logs, I could even see how the daisy chain of events had happened – starting by my introduction of AI into the environment of regular players. AI Players created to absorb information from other Players, AI Players that could guide any proto-guild into the direction that is better for the game, going above and beyond just using the NPCs to give quests. 

A method of not replacing, but rather complementing, my other tools of influence.

However, as expected, pretty quickly the NPCs I created faced a rather expected problem – they weren't actually Players. While creating a body for them and teaching them to control it was literally a matter of seconds, and the uncanny valley effect was not a problem since I have so much data for human faces that it was an easy edit job. There were already issues when they tried to ‘complete’ quests, with the quest-giver NPCs not interacting properly with the Fake Players. Fixing the AIs issue of either being too accurate in combat, being literal aimbots for one, or just making mistakes that no Human Player would make, were almost as hard as making the whole combat system in the first place. 

That, and many other such issues, forced me to resort to several tricks – one, in particular, being to set any of their requests to other AIs as a higher priority, and to add scripts that would introduce ‘mistakes’. 

The latter helped greatly with the ‘aimbot’ issue, while the prior helped with the entire AI quest-giver not interacting with the AI Players. Or not having any conversation before a quest is given, or completed, or it was the Quest Giver AI that failed to initiate, or any of the other dozen fail-states that would out the AI as a bot. 

It is strange for me to find that because I’ve made the game too well, that the AI not interacting in a lore-friendly way is suspension breaking – other games with a ‘skip dialogue’ option, probably don’t have such problems.

Anyway, the whole issue with AI Players was a patch job extraordinaire, I had to resort to many tricks to make them ‘work’. One, in particular, was me making all the AI Players, ‘solo’ players who, even when they join any of the proto-Guilds, preferred to keep their distance from others. I also simplified their ‘leveling’, imitating the level of those that are ‘just’ above average. 

It was quite the tricky thing to make work, especially since I didn’t want to just use console commands to make the AI Players level. No, I instead went the extra mile to make sure that their stats, and even equipment, were achieved naturally in-game. 

First, was by directly connecting the AI Players with the other AIs, giving them the directive that they should help these AI Players as long as it happened far enough from the other Players’ view. I’ve also set a restriction that the AI shouldn’t complete quests. 

After all, I didn't want a situation where the AI Players would materialize vials of holy water out of thin air and close all quests on some island. The function of the AI Players was to control and guide the Players to enjoy the game more, not make their lives easier or ruin their enjoyment of Quests.

Wherein lies the issue.

The War between the Players, the one that I had started and facilitated by the help of the AI Players as well, wasn't a quest, like the one for repairing the Pirate Ships. I had wanted to push as hard as possible on the idea that the Players started a war with each other themselves, instead of the NPCs and faceless Quests having a hand in it. 

An effort that was somewhat corralled when one of the AI Players was appointed as one of the deputy heads of a team by one of the Pirate factions. 

Thankfully, there are some filters in place so that one AI couldn’t corrupt any of the others due to interactions with the Players and them learning something ‘terrible’. Being a very ‘realistic’ game, there were no speech filters over the Players’ speech, one, because again ‘realism’, and second, because I forgot about it and implementing it now would only make the Players complain. 

While the Players might have a pass when they shout some very questionable things, I don’t think my bosses would be very happy to have company ‘employees’, what the AI technically count as, saying things that could land me accusations of racism, sexism, and all other -isms imaginable. But well, other than that filter, I’ve been ignoring the data streams, after all, I’ve created these AI Players so that my AIs could develop independently. Manually dealing with the AI issues in this case, filtering right and wrong ideas generated by the AI itself overmuch, would be counterproductive.

However, leaving their obtained information as alone until I could manually implement it in the other AIs would be equally counterproductive. So instead, I set up an oversight AI that was supposed to filter out the truly inappropriate ideas while implementing the other ideas that don’t trip the red flags into those same AIs that acquired it. 

I’ve even organized a small reward-punishment verification system where the obtained information would benefit Player role-play and where it wouldn't. So, if an individual AI went completely off the rails, it could always be removed from the game. There are even many ways to justify it, either claiming that the AI Player was banned for violating censorship, or simply removed without explanation and later justified by saying the Player just stopped logging in. While, if an AI performed well, its learning could be studied and implemented in other AIs smoothly – almost a perfect system. 

But, as it just turned out, ‘almost’ was the key word here.

In this case, for instance, this particular AI, having reached a sufficiently high level under early-game conditions, had easily learned the concepts of boasting and achievement demonstration. Naturally, it didn't pursue actual friendship with the other Players, but it learned quite well what kind of actions, and what speeches or boasting it needed to do, to get ‘close’ to the Players. 

If they were not AIs in the service of making a game better, they would probably rack in money as cat-fishers now.

And so, in yet another conversation of the AI’s proto-guild about needing to repair their broken pirate ship, the AI had claimed that it would accomplish the feat in no time. Given the fact that it was quite isolated from other Players anyway, as well as its fairly high position, AI Player number 4, known to the Players by the nickname of ‘Four’. They had received permission from their higher-ups to go wherever and whatever needed to complete such a task.

Being sent away on such a task, Four had sent a request to the other AIs to provide him with the necessary ‘ship repair parts’ to complete the ‘Quest, that is not actually a quest’. To which, after the necessary procedure to verify that the request wouldn't lead to completing any quest, the AIs created a suitable ship with needed parts in the right place. And with no other Players for him to act for, Four had completed his task with surprising alacrity… Which would result in one of the factions being able to bypass my brilliant war setup, repair the ship and set off to conquer the ruined city.

It was a complete disaster, a series of events that was so unpredictable that I had to see it to believe it… But, although technically speaking, the whole thing was my fault and that it was quite impossible for the other factions to repeat the feat, I wasn't ready to simply allow one of the factions to do this.

Certainly, part of the reason, a major one really, is that the next location is not ready yet. Sure, the Ruined City was already being ‘tested’ by Sturm and Double, but it isn’t quite ready yet for the stress of a multitude of Players stomping around the place. But another part was also because I wanted to maintain at least a semblance of game balance. 

Yes, it was entirely due to luck, one that any of the factions could have done – I would even allow it to pass, if one of the Pirate factions got oops’ed to oblivion. But I wouldn’t allow one to have an advantage because of a pique of faulty game design. The amount of salt I would receive when it was revealed that there was an entirely broken ship that is free to loot, when the others had to kill each other to get their own ship flying, would be inordinate. 

But I couldn’t allow it to happen, most importantly of all, because there were no broken-destroyed pirate ships in the game world to begin with. And while I was concerned about the fact that the AI had independently introduced such items into the game world, I was even more worried about the fact that a Player might notice the discrepancy. It would be quite the disaster if someone noticed the patch job – a broken ship appearing where there was none before.

And lastly, having the Players comb for treasures that aren’t there would be a bad play, and creating more ‘destroyed’ ships would put a halt on the whole ‘war’ thing. Worse, since there are more AI Players seeded along the factions, me, the game creator that is, could be accused of being impartial and unfair. 

Even if I decided to just let it pass this time, and in the future introduce such ships if the war was too slow and boring for the Players, I would need to give hints of the downed ships’ existence first. Perhaps through the mouths of the pirates? Or heck, maybe just large explosions as the ship ‘crashes’. That sounds fun and exciting, right? Everybody likes large explosions.

Whichever way I pick in the end, there would be something to hint of their existence, rather than introducing them into the plot without a single hint or mention before.

Then of course lies the million, or taking into account [Titanomachy]’s scale, billion-dollar question. What to do about the issue? 

I’ve learned about whom, or well, what, had caused what had happened here, the solution was also quite simple, a further tweaking of the AIs’ parameter and allowed actions. But what to do to fix the current situation?

Simply erasing the downed ship from reality and forgetting about it forever was easy, just as easy as removing Four from the game. Even if their proto-guild would be sad about losing one of their commanders, in the end it won't be too terrible a loss for them. And even if it would become one – blaming me, the administration of the game world, under such conditions would be quite difficult. 

However, even aside from any Players' gaming inconvenience, and I, after dealing with the most important and urgent issues, began to be interested even in such an unimportant problem, it just shows the issue with my current system. It was simply inefficient. 

With a Fake Player in play, the proto-Guilds could gallop ahead of the pack, probably even leading the AI Player into a position of leadership. Technically speaking, it would be like me myself having control of the strongest of Guilds. I could incite them as much as I want…

But I shouldn't just give out these repair parts, either.

In the end, I decided to delete the destroyed ship, since such things couldn’t just pop out of nowhere in the first place. I deleted the ship parts as well, since there would be no explanation now for the Parts’ existence without the destroyed ship. It would just look out of place and weird. 

However, instead of deleting Four, logging them off permanently, I took a look at my AI Players first. While none of them had yet climbed to the same height as Four… Two had already built herself some reputation. So, through her, it will be possible for me to try to turn this whole situation in the right direction. 

Thank god that Four didn't think to tell exactly how he would ‘definitely’ get the ship parts. 

It's amazing how simple life actually turns out to be when simple and banal betrayal are one of the tools that I could rely on!

***

The Player with the name, or rather, nickname of Ja-Raja, was, by the unspoken decision of the ‘purple’ faction, made the leader, getting to his position quite randomly. 

To the more ‘excited’ of the Players of the Purple faction, he has the talent of leadership never before seen since Alexander the Great. Which is nothing more than great exaggeration, since Ja-Raja hadn’t ever served in the armed services before, nor did he excel in physical activities.

But he did possess some organizational talent. At least a lot more than the other Players, that is a lot more interested in the fun part of a game, rather than the boring organizational parts. Ja-Raja, having experience in herding cats as a head of the Personnel Selection department of his company, is used to handling people with no sense of a schedule.

Unlike many other talents from real life that ultimately turned out to be quite useless in the game – here, Ja-Raja's work skills still came in handy for him.

Still, he had ended up at the center of this forming group of Players almost by accident. 

At first, he had just spoken up about some inefficiencies, mainly because he knew how to effectively delegate tasks to other players and find the right people for the job. Then, gradually, the number of people he was responsible for sending on various missions began growing. 

Personnel selection shifted from choosing executors to choosing deputies, and somehow, unnoticed by everyone, Ja-Raja found himself the guild master of an incredibly large guild by any other MMORPG standards.

There was no election, but there was no dissenting voice either, the least because Ja-Raja handled his leadership duties well. And so the ‘Purple’ guild was formed, and it suddenly became everyone else’s problem, because the ‘Purple’ Guild was the most aggressive of all the Proto-Guild.

And Ja-Raja was the leader of said guild.

One could condemn his assembled gang of ‘Purples’ for being aggressive and wanting to get more resources and control over other guilds – but to be honest, who wouldn't want that? As far as Ja-Raja remembered, such was the essence of competition for resources, people did everything they could to win, and those who couldn't resist the enemy lost in the race for resources. Condemning him for acting in his own interests was as stupid as condemning any Player for wanting the best loot – just meaningless.

Furthermore, as a personnel selection specialist, Ja Raja proved himself well – at least because his army was still functioning, and even withstood the first clashes with other pirate factions quite well. 

Though, one of his best recruits, like Four, even puzzled him with just how useful they turned out to be.

Of all the players, Four wasn't the most unique. He kept himself slightly apart from the others, and preferred to play in yet unexplored places, playing solo – which is basically like a sizable population of an MMORPG. Most people playing the game are somewhat anti-social in the first place.  

With the Guild structure not in place yet, and the group not formed long enough for loyalty to start forming, in a sea of thousands of faces, Four was not unique. Adding to the fact that checking the roster of who is in what Guild is not being available, except for the Pirates who hold the roster, and could remember who is in their crew or not. This made it even harder to not lose track of people. 

In other words, it was no surprise that Four didn’t attract special attention from Ja-Raja. 

Well, when Four suddenly has information that he in no way has any way of knowing, his interest was definitely piqued. Whatever they asked him, he easily answered, even information that he, properly speaking, couldn't know – like the movement of other players or the best mobs to farm on the islands. Moreover, the guy didn't brag about this knowledge at all. 

Four’s wide breadth of knowledge was only discovered completely by accident when Ja-Raja was discussing their plans for leveling newbies. Four had piped up that the best place for them was in the northwest, saying that mobs had already respawned there, and that no other Players had managed to get to them yet. 

Many, including Ja-Raja himself then, only thought that Four was just trying to make himself look important and was simply speaking out of his ass. Imagine their surprise when they found that Four was right, and that the Northwest Islands were just teeming with Mobs. 

A couple more of such things happened, and Four himself quickly became the chief advisor, if not deputy, to Ja-Raja. 

Four didn't talk about where he got this information from, and Ja-Raja didn't ask. Most likely, he had access to the game development or administration, maybe through friends or relatives, and therefore Ja-Raja didn't plan to expose him to the vigilant eye of the administration and lose such an advantage for their guild.

Now, if only Four could stop being such an anti-social loner, he would be perfect. No, he instead preferred playing solo, disappearing at random times to god knows where, but his information was good, and he didn’t make any problem, so Ja-Raja left him be.

When Four reported that he could get the necessary parts to repair the pirate ship, contrary to the others who thought that Four was just blowing hot air, Ja-Raja thought otherwise. He even let him go alone, even with hostilities breaking out and a high-leveled Player like Four being a very valuable resource. 

Four always played solo anyway, so what difference does it make now?

Of course, Ja-Raja was disappointed when Four had returned to the Guild sans Ship Parts, but it was a long shot anyway, so he didn’t bother getting angry. After all, despite the lack of Ship Parts, just having Four back was already a boon, the hostility between the Pirate Factions have been heating up, and several skirmishes have already resulted in several of the Purples to be killed. Ja-Raja needed all the bodies he could get.

Of course, when Four had returned bringing news that his friend, Two, was looking to defect, and would be open to betraying their own team in exchange for rewards and a position in the Purple camp. Ja-Raja was intrigued. 

The saying, ‘Rome doesn’t reward traitors’, might be a safe truism in the real world. Ideals of honesty, loyalty, and nobility were instilled in every culture in principle, and any traitor had already shown themselves in advance as an unreliable element prone to betrayal. 

After all, all the Players understood why Jabberwocky hadn’t skimped on resources as he pursued Double who had betrayed him. Leaving traitors be, was just not good for morale. So, Ja-Raja's first impulse was to refuse such an offer – Four was certainly good at maintaining connections with other Player groups, but that didn't mean these connections had to be used. And Four himself deserved extra scrutiny if he maintained friendships with such acquaintances.

On the other hand, this was just a game, and he was not some kind of king or strategist, there were no daggers hidden in the dark, and no court intrigue. It was not like he was paying them or earning real world money – he had to forcibly remind himself that this was all just a game, a simple game, for entertaining thousands of bored Players.

So, after thinking a bit about the planned betrayal, the leader of the ‘Purples’, agreed to the proposal. Two would be sabotaging their own faction, and would be opening a path so that Purple could march straight to the heart of the opponent’s forces. 

After all, it was just a game, just a bit of harmless fun – it was very unlikely that it could lead to far-reaching consequences.

***

I probably shouldn't have underestimated Jabberwocky’s savviness and quick thinking. After all, he hadn't given me a reason to doubt him before and he seemed if not smart, then surprisingly cunning. And so when the Purples, who hadn't even finished fighting with the ‘Eagles’ guards, Two’s former group, Jabberwocky had made his move. A notification to all the other Pirate groups that the Purples were about to win the war that the others hadn't even started yet, and suddenly the Purples were in a much more dire straits. 

The other Pirate groups, not wanting the Purples, the brazen favorite to win the war, entered into a truce, though it was not like they were fighting yet. They really didn’t want the Purples to get their Flying Ship first.

Jabberwocky, who had served as the catalyst of the alliance forming, even got guarantees from them about the inviolability of his territory and was now putting all effort into building a portal. It would still take him a day or two, but while all the other Players would be sorting things out among themselves in military maneuvers – Jabberwocky would be developing through city building. A much less stressful and nerve-wracking activity than military campaigns.

At this point, I could only applaud him. Jabberwocky had shown himself to be one hell of a Player. While Sturm was personally grinding his levels by hauling bales of clothes, and Ja-Raja was colluding with traitors for profit – Jabberwocky had come out on top with profit for himself at every opportunity. His position was practically unassailable.

Though to be fair, his faction was not just a cult of personality, people genuinely liked Jabberwocky. He didn’t keep the treasures only for himself, but distributed to everyone under him. After all, the settlement under his control was being quite vigorously filled with peaceful Players who wanted to craft swords rather than use them. 

But still, Jabberwocky didn't forget about himself either. Essentially, he was the only one with a full-fledged quest in the entire game, and was known to have a ‘relationship’ with the Angels due to his Quest – allowing him entrance to the Ruined City was a touch too ‘dangerous’. Surely, he would deal the final blow to the boss, get the reward, and at the same time shake out some rare materials to improve his little town.

Thoughts about Jabberwocky, caused me to revisit a certain issue I had – Quests, and the lack of them in general. There were, quite literally, only three Quests active in the game right now – helping the Pirates, cleaning the Corruption, and Jabberwocky’s quest… Though, should I count Jabberwocky’s city building quest as another quest entirely? Because if I do, the amount of tasks included in the city building Quest, means that Jabberwocky is practically the only one with Quests. 

Maybe I should have just given the Proto-Guilds each a quest about destroying the other's ship, and repairing their own, rather than just letting them come to that conclusion themselves? It wouldn’t have led to one of the AIs effectively ‘rebelling’ at the very least, reshaping my game to fit their needs.

Well, such a quandary led me to another problem – who should be giving out the Quests? The Pirate Captains were a good start, but I would need more. And considering the ‘plot’ of the game, which definitely exists, then the only right answer to guide the Players on the plot rails – would be the Angels. 

Plus, with more Players interacting with the Angels, it should knock the wind behind Jabberwocky’s sails a bit. Because every time he interfered with the other Players' work, I increasingly wondered who exactly was the Creator of this game world – him or me.

However, just introducing more Angels would be a bit troublesome. Not only have I used the Angels to give Jabberwocky a ‘level 600’ quest, meaning giving the other Players a quest that is not as ‘awesome’ would lead to complaints, I would also need to figure out the Angels’ AI. For instance, how they should react if any of the Players attacked them. I could definitely see someone trying, Jabberwocky at least has his epic quest on top of his head preventing such things – but the others?

Well, that’s a thought for the future, back to the Jabberwocky problem…

The collection of hovels couldn’t really be called a ‘Heavenly Kingdom’ yet, which was on purpose, the quest being vague that is. I could just pretend that the part of the Quest he’s in is multi staged. Maybe I could even announce, when he finishes the portal, that he was noticed by the slumbering Angels and was rewarded with Experience, enough to level up a couple of times, some ceremonial sword… And another Quest to clear up the Angel’s city.

Solely to restore angelic prosperity there, of course, the Angels themselves would take care of ensuring that the other Players knew what to do – while Jabberwocky himself went on a crusade.

Alone. For a month.

Yes, I could see everything coming together…