6: Chapter 6: Forum: What Should Version 2.0 Delete?
6: Chapter 6: Forum: What Should Version 2.0 Delete?
[STARFALL EPOCH GENERAL FORUM > VERSION DISCUSSION] [POLL] What do you most want the devs to delete in Version 2.0?
OP — CoalDustIsWhite: The Starfire Expedition launches in three days, and the trailer showed Grayharbor getting blown all the way to hell.
I’m opening the champagne early.
Vote for the game’s greatest blight.
Option 1: Grayharbor’s forty-seven-step beginner tutorial.
Option 2: Mia, who confiscates your contraband and makes you thank her for it.
Option 3: Whitetower’s daily quests, where the real enemy is walking.
Option 4: Redspire Arena matchmaking, where death comes before a full team.
1F: Why are Mia and the forty-seven steps separate options?
They’re the same thing.
2F: Voting tutorial.
Mia’s pretty enough.
Keep her as an idle desktop mascot.
3F: Can we stop turning every female NPC into a pet?
Some of you see a face and lose the rest of your vision.
4F: What else am I supposed to admire, the part where she teaches me not to eat cracked starcore?
5F: Veteran here.
It used to be twenty-three steps.
Then some genius overloaded a starcore shard and blew up half the dock.
The devs have been adding steps ever since.
6F: So why didn’t they ban the genius?
Why punish every new player?
7F: Because NPCs don’t complain and players uninstall.
8F: She complains.
After OneSlashSkip lost that shard yesterday, Mia’s face practically said, ‘Your report has been logged and will never be reviewed.’ 9F: Link?
10F: LMAO, the tutorial followed her through the wall.
What kind of easter egg did the devs hide back there?
11F: Stream turned to static.
Probably clipped into an abandoned scene.
12F: Was that Mia’s first time leaving the tutorial desk?
Three years playing and I’ve never seen her move thirty feet.
13F: Hidden awakening plot.
Version 2.0 promised smarter NPCs, right?
14F: She wakes up and immediately hunts tutorial skippers.
Makes perfect sense.
15F: Serious question: what happens when a fixed-location NPC walks away?
16F: Usually teleports back in ten seconds.
Somebody once lured a Whitetower merchant into the sewer.
Turned a corner and the guy vanished.
17F: Then Mia following the streamer was a system error.
18F: Errors can start quests.
Stop reporting everything.
19F: How else do we get compensation?
20F: OneSlashSkip bought that starcore from White Crown, didn’t she?
They’ve been collecting rare-NPC triggers lately.
21F: White Crown auctions NPC corpses.
A trigger item is tame for them.
22F: NPC corpses respawn.
Why shouldn’t people sell them?
23F: Some don’t.
The female medic from Redspire Arena died last year and never came back.
24F: Scripted death.
Means the devs had no more use for her.
25F: Every time you people say ‘no more use,’ you sound like you’re clearing warehouse stock.
26F: What are we supposed to do with digital assets, build a shrine?
27F: Off topic.
Keep voting forty-seven steps.
28F: I voted Whitetower dailies.
At least you only do Mia’s tutorial once in your life.
29F: Alt-account players object.
I’ve done it seventeen times in this life.
30F: She remembers every question you got wrong on every run.
Creepy, honestly.
31F: That’s database memory.
32F: What do you think brain memory stores, sunshine?
33F: Ah, NPC personhood war number 180.
34F: Don’t compare the two.
She doesn’t even have an affinity meter.
Nothing you do changes your relationship with her.
35F: No number means no relationship?
I can’t see an affinity bar over real people either.
36F: Real people can refuse you.
They get angry.
They leave.
Mia stands there and says welcome.
37F: She left last night.
38F: Which is why it’s a bug.
39F: What if she doesn’t come back next time?
40F: Then I’ll bring champagne to the beginner zone.
41F: Big talk.
Once she’s gone, you’ll all get nostalgic.
42F: Someone will archive her voice pack.
You can loop all forty-seven steps whenever you miss her.
43F: What’s the difference between a recording and her?
44F: None.
She was a recording to begin with.
45F: This thread is getting weird.
…
67F: Am I the only one who’ll miss Grayharbor?
It’s poor, but there are tons of NPCs, and the harbor sunset is beautiful.
68F: It’s a game map.
They’re not bulldozing your house.
69F: Replying to 67F: take screenshots.
Old areas make way for new content.
That’s normal.
70F: The devs already have starbeasts destroying it in the story.
They’ll leave ruins.
Nostalgia tourists can still take pictures.
71F: I only care whether Mia dies.
The white-haired woman in the trailer was her, right?
72F: Blue-gray, not white.
Classic move: sacrifice an old NPC so new players have a revenge motive.
73F: Finally useful.
She stood behind one desk for seven years.
Dying once to move the plot seems like a fair trade.
74F: The way you say that makes it sound like she agreed.
75F: ???
Data agrees to things now?
76F: A female NPC dying to protect the player is normal.
Stop turning everything into a moral crisis.
77F: So normal every game does it.
Could the writers try having one new idea?
78F: The forty-seven steps have fans now?
79F: I’m not a fan.
Sacrificial-woman plots are lazy.
80F: Who’s holding her in the trailer?
The custom face is blurred.
81F: It’s an immersion shot.
They can’t show a face.
82F: Meaning every player gets to imagine she died for them.
Maximum emotional value.
83F: And after she dies?
What drops?
84F: Rumor says Greylight Ashes.
Stat buff during launch week.
85F: Amazing.
The NPC’s cremains are an opening-week freebie.
86F: Don’t make it ugly.
It’s a memorial quest item.
87F: If Helian died and dropped ashes, would you call him an item too?
88F: Helian’s the protagonist.
How is that the same?
89F: So when the protagonist dies, it’s tragedy.
When an extra dies, it’s loot.
90F: Games have always decided who matters more.
91F: The question is who gets to decide.
92F: The devs.
If you hate it, quit.
93F: And there it is, the traditional conversation-killer.
94F: I just want to know whether Mia’s death cutscene is skippable.
95F: Probably not.
The promo says ‘mandatory full-immersion story event.’ 96F: Can’t skip her tutorial while she’s alive.
Can’t skip her movie when she’s dead.
Consistent characterization.
97F: I’m dead.
98F: 67F said the sunset was good.
I just went there.
Gray fog.
Fraud.
99F — EveningTide: You have to stand on Crane Three ten minutes before the evening bell.
Clear weather only.
100F: You know that off the top of your head?
Grayharbor native?
101F — EveningTide: Made my first account there.
I got lost once.
Mia walked me back.
102F: That’s literally her job.
You’ve remembered it for seven years?
103F — EveningTide: She did her job well.
That can be true while everybody hates her.
104F: The rational fan has arrived.
105F — EveningTide: I’m not a fan.
I even turned off the tutorial voice.
106F: Then what are you arguing about?
107F — EveningTide: I don’t know.
Maybe it bothers me that we can mute her and she can’t mute us.
108F: Okay, that shut me up.
109F: Why?
Keep voting.
110F: Whitetower dailies are catching up!
111F: Alt-account crowd, charge!
We cannot let one NPC lose to a quest log.
112F: When you vote for her, is it because you hate her or because you want her to win?
113F: Most hated is still first place.
Respect.
114F: The devs should print her a certificate.
115F: Prize: entry into the deletion queue twelve hours early.
116F: That’s dark.
117F: This thread title isn’t going to turn into an actual death vote, is it?
118F: Stop pretending a patch is murder.
119F: The trailer spent money filming her death.
They clearly want you to pretend it’s real for a minute.
120F: Real enough to make you feel something for a minute.
Then maintenance ends and everyone goes back to farming.
121F: Has anyone confirmed she’ll respawn?
That grocer from the old event still hasn’t come back.
122F: His shop function got merged.
You can still buy supplies.
Why do you care which model sells them?
123F: Right.
If you can still shop, nobody died.
124F: Here we go again, judging players for playing.
Clicking delete in a game doesn’t make anyone a killer in real life.
125F: Nobody called you a killer.
We’re asking why the devs had to turn her death into a reward.
126F: Because rewards retain players and death sells plot.
Is the ugly answer hard to understand?
…
154F: Results are in.
Mia wins by a landslide.
Congratulations to the Forty-Seven-Step Lady, the character the whole server most wants deleted.
155F: Her votes and the tutorial votes should be combined.
Let her sweep the top two.
156F: OneSlashSkip just posted.
She’s challenging the back end again tonight and taking us to see Mia’s death easter egg.
157F: Watching.
158F: Same.
159F: Support says wall-clipping is a serious exploit.
Account bans possible.
160F: Now I want to watch more.
161F: EveningTide, still here?
If you really care, take a few more screenshots.
Three days from now there’ll be nothing left to see.
162F — EveningTide: Here.
I’ll log in tonight.
163F: Going to put flowers on Mia’s grave?
164F — EveningTide: Going to finish the quest I left unfinished.
165F: You still have unfinished steps after forty-seven?
That’s dedication.
The thread refreshed.
[SYSTEM: User EveningTide bookmarked this thread.] Three days later, the poll would become an archived version record alongside Grayharbor.
At that moment, no one in the thread knew it.
Mia could not see it either.
She was standing at the Seventh Dock, opening her ledger for one more Descender descending through the light.
“Please state your name.”