Once Kat finished laughing she asked, "So, what other games had silly interactions? We've still got plenty of games to talk about other than volleyball,"
Mint nodded, "Right well… I guess I'll cover the other game from today first. Um… I don't know like… everything everything when it comes to silly things in testing because like… I wasn't that interested myself, but the stories get around the dryad community you know? So… just take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. I know the volleyball ones are all true because I asked Thyme about them while the volleyball match was ongoing. Like… an hour ago.
"So they're both really fresh in my mind AND confirmed to have happened. Um… but for the log chopping… well that one was designed from the ground up not to have magic in it. Thyme did apparently do a few test runs with magic, but none of them were too ridiculous apparently. Um… the most interesting one was when Thyme came up with the idea to summon up a giant sawblade to slice through the wood.
"That made it ridiculously easy to finish. Plus, if you just set up a platform near the logs, then made the sawblade you could destroy your competition. A water jet cutter was also attempted… but apparently it actually wasn't that effective. It destroyed too much material in the process. Though, that reminds me. Originally you just needed to cut the logs into two pieces, which was deemed too easy. Then it was four pieces… which was very silly because they didn't need to be even.
"Apparently before that rule was implemented the best strategy was to turn the log on its side and then cut through it three times to separate it into fours. It did take an extra stroke, two instead of three, but because accuracy was basically a non-factor it was really fast,"
Kat slapped a hand over her face. "Dammit, I didn't even consider turning the logs around. I guess when I heard we were 'chopping firewood' I immediately thought of all the times I've seen them split lengthwise. I can't believe everyone overlooked something so simple," grumbled Kat.
Mint shrugged and said, "Thyme does have a habit of doing things like that. Actually, one thing nobody noticed is that the axes and the stumps were enchanted to do some funny things. You see, you were told to be careful not to break them, but that's nearly impossible. But, if you tried to use your axe to destroy someone else's stump? Your own would've split in half,"
Kat let out a long sigh, "I'm soo glad I didn't go after any of the stumps. I thought about it too but I was confident in my strategy and rightly so, I did win the event after all,"
"Ah, but I know Nabras was looking for a chance to do some damage to his competitors. Could you imagine the look on his face after he managed to find an opening, dash in, thinking this is his only chance to not get last… but then it turns out he just split his own log? I would've died laughing," said Burnice through fits of laughter.
Kat and Lily couldn't help laughing at the idea. It was quite amusing to imagine. The look of betrayal on Nabras' face would be something to remember. "Any other funny stories for the wood chopping event?" asked Lily.
ραΠdαsΝοvel.cοm Mint shook her head and said, "Not that I know of. There might be more, in fact, I'm sure there is… but I don't know them I'm afraid. It seemed like the least interesting game to me, so I didn't go looking for much about it. Um… what's next. I guess I can just go in order? The table tennis idea actually came up after volleyball, and it was decided that they could be similar to each other, though obviously without magic for the indoor one.
"So that was built in from the start. Um… it was pretty obvious that the table and the ground needed to be closer together for smaller people but somehow we managed to overlook how much of an issue it might be for people of drastically different heights to play against each other. I'm not sure why it didn't come up in testing.
"My two guesses would be that Thyme stuck to similar body types against each other as a baseline… or Thyme didn't consider how much slower having to move more than a step in either direction would actually be. Thyme obviously had to bring their physique down to approximate Rank 2, but they might've just… not done that properly? For someone like Thyme it can be hard to notice when they start to push past certain self-imposed limits like that.
"Don't get me wrong. Thyme's control is great, especially with mana but if Thyme was testing hundreds of matches and all the shorter versions of Thyme happened to be moving a bit faster then they should? I'm not certain it would register at all. Though… that's about the only thing that really came up for the table tennis. Except for the broken paddles. Lots and lots of broken paddles during testing.
"It's what made Thyme turn them into part of the game. They hold enchantment really poorly for some reason and Thyme didn't want to use really good materials on them to keep them intact… so instead leaning not to break them was part of the game. Which I think made everything more fun. It also meant the whole 'don't break your stumps' trick from the wood chopping was easier to fall into,"
"So, any other funny moments from the table tennis testing?" asked Burnice.
Mint shrugged, "Not particularly. I know a few that were funny at the time but aren't all that amusing in the retelling. Like the sudden destruction of the table, or in one instance, just the table LEGS after Thyme reinforced the tabletop. Um… there was that one time where Thyme hit the ball into the net and the ball got sliced up into little pieces. Picked a new material for the net after that…
"But yeah, there's not much I can think of off the top of my head. Dodgeball has quite a few though! First thing's first, there didn't use to be cannons. The balls also weren't filled with anything or easily popped. Like, they could pop, but it wasn't designed as part of the challenge. It was just supposed to be normal dodgeball really… but that turned out to be way too easy."
Mint paused for a moment to reconsider, "Or not too easy, but too easy for people to catch the balls. Then it became a game, not of dodgeball, but 'can you throw hard enough to push someone out of the ring' which really wasn't the point. When playing that version of the game though, the balls kept popping because of all the force, which gave Thyme the idea for redoing things. Though it didn't get properly implemented until much later on in testing.
"Then there was the issue of putting new balls into play. There were a few really funny iterations of that one. The first idea was just to rain them down from the sky constantly, forcing everyone to constantly dodge and stay on the move… but you didn't really get the chance to throw any balls you catch at someone because there was too other falling balls in the way. So that idea was scrapped.
"The next idea was to have one row of cannons fire out waves of balls every twenty seconds or so. The timing changed around a bit… but you could just camp the cannons really easily. So Thyme turned them up to be really fast… which meant the cannons were the real danger not the other players because you couldn't actually catch the balls. So you just had to dodge the cannon fire and you were good… which, once again, really wasn't the point.
"So Thyme scrapped the cannon idea for a bit and went back to basics. Giving everyone one ball to start off with and made some solid, but transparent, walls around the arena to make sure that you always had five balls in play. It was an ok setup but Thyme didn't like the flow of the game. You were incentivised to try and keep balls at your feet and catch or dodge the ones thrown your way.
"So with that, and Thyme's idea for making the balls easy to pop, they got to work properly implementing that and seeing if it did anything, even trying to see how things played out if the floor instantly popped any balloons that touched it. That iteration was a complete mess. The gunk in the balloons got EVERYWHERE. On the floor, the players, the ceiling somehow, and on the testing courts next to whichever one was running. A true mess. I heard about the cleanup after that one and it was over a day's worth of effort for THYME of all people,"
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