Master Swordsman’s Stream - Chapter 154

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 154

A patch.
In its broadest sense, it refers to any modification made to software—from fixing minor bugs or balance tweaks in a game, to large-scale updates.
And patch notes are posted at six in the morning on the day the patch goes live.
Put simply, they’re a guide explaining what’s changed.
Usually, unless a new game mode is released or some major event occurs, these patch notes pass by like water flowing downstream—barely noticed.
Only a handful of people actually check them and pay attention each time.
Team coaches who are sensitive to game changes, mostly.
And the content creators who post the information.
But this patch brought a new faction into the fray.
It started with a post that went up late at night, after the official broadcast ended the day before.

[But what about Kael?]
==
No matter how I look at it, knowing the next pattern feels like a stretch, you know?
Think about it—it takes 2 seconds to stack 3 vital points.
An invincibility skill that’s just 2 seconds lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol
==

Kael’s skill was fundamentally designed with the time needed to successfully strike vital points in focus, so the higher the skill level, the higher the performance output could be.
To reframe the baseline:
Around 20 seconds is decent skill—and when I say decent, that’s actually the floor among people with at least minimal proficiency.
In other words, by overall player standards it’s decent, but among Kael users with any real foundation, it’s the basement.
The average time is 15 to 20 seconds.
10 to 15 seconds is the peak performance Kael can deliver.
At least when facing someone of equal skill.
The absolute best is 8 seconds, but that only happens when a Challenger gets lucky or is facing someone in Bronze.

-Oh yeah, that’s a thing.
-Kael threads come up pretty often, but will it actually make it into the patch?
-But 10 seconds is already squeezing value out of Kael, and 2 seconds is crossing a line lol lol lol lol lol lol lol
-That’s literally 5 times!
-But how the hell did they even manage it lol lol lol lol

Surprisingly, the ones who picked up on this topic and started discussing it weren’t Kael fans.
Kael fans were actually—

[Please, PLEASE keep Kael out of the patch]
==
Please please please please
==

—begging for mercy.
The reason was simple. If the patch included changes to Kael, and if the pattern altered,

-Let’s learn it and get some honey too!
-Don’t patch Kael, leave it alone, just skip it!
-Devs, only Seo Jun can milk it anyway, just don’t touch it
└But if only he can milk it, shouldn’t you touch it even more?
└Honestly, I just want to use Judgment Sword quickly too one day
└Give up that hollow hope, Kael fan

—then they’d never get a taste at all.
Though the general consensus was that it should be changed, various opinions floated up.

[But wait, think about it. Will that 2 seconds keep staying at 2 seconds?]
==
When that streamer played Kael, their opponents were Bronze, unranked.
That’s why they pulled off that overpowered performance.
If they fought someone of similar skill, even knowing the next vital point location, they’d struggle to exploit it. Though obviously it’d still be crazy strong. But is it nerfrequency?
==

-Lol, we don’t have the same skill as Seo Jun though?
└The Demonic Cult is commenting on this? Are you picking up your leader’s personality?
└I’ll apologize on their behalf instead. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
-That’s fair.
└But knowing the pattern means it’s broken, right?
└It does go against fairness though.

[Going against fairness is itself a skill.]
==
Targeting someone for being too skilled and nerfing a whole hero is kind of—
The devs have pride, you know?
==

This sparked debate about whether that was even fair.
And in disputes like this, precedents need to be brought up—

[Haven’t there been cases like this before? Nerfing a hero specifically because one person was too good at it?]

—but this was unprecedented.
Well, technically there might have been.
But at least in their collective memory, the devs had never nerfed a hero because of a single player.

-We don’t even know if they will this time, stop jumping to conclusions
-There have been nerfs because a minority was using something overpowered. But a nerf because of literally one person? Never happened. Curious to see what happens this time.
-What about Wind Sword, the one who supposedly learned from him?
└Tanked hard lol lol lol. Said he wanted tutoring again, and oh right—he ended up on the same team?
└Lol lol lol he’ll definitely ask Seo Jun during the tournament. True Kael fanboy!

[What about Eric though? That looks pretty broken too]

-Don’t touch Eric… If they nerf Eric I’m literally quitting the game (Eric 1,000 games certified screenshot)
└Ouch. Master? Lol lol lol lol lol lol
└Probably the only person in that tier who’s piled up Eric stat data, since nobody else plays it lol lol lol lol

And so throughout the night, the league’s community was ablaze with discussion of this topic and news about Rios.
The next morning at six o’clock,
the hour when only the truly dedicated are awake—
posts started flooding in again, one after another.

[Kael made it into the patch lol lol lol lol got nerfed after all. Though probably won’t affect other players.]
[No official word on pattern changes. Just a skill cooldown. Blessing of Radiance cooldown is now 7 seconds.]
[What’s the dev team thinking?]
[As long as Eric survived that’s all that matters ㅠㅠ]
[The pattern might’ve been changed secretly]
[But seriously there’s so much controversy lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol honestly it’s hilarious just watching]

-This guy is truly unrivaled
-Just a GOAT!
-Apologize already, you fans lol lol lol lol lol
└Sorry for causing trouble again, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry

* * *

[Senior]
[Senior]
[Did you see this? (link)]
[People seem pretty negative about it]
[So you didn’t change the pattern, right?]

At six in the morning, as dawn breaks into day,
most office workers who aren’t particularly diligent would still be sleeping before their usual nine o’clock start.
And woken by messages at that ungodly hour was the league’s Balance Team Lead.
Balance patches are usually conducted by headquarters based on tournament standards, but Korea’s solo rank also serves as a benchmark, and besides, inter-branch team leads have meetings every time, making the distinction practically meaningless.
It was obvious, then, that the Korean team lead had been deeply involved in this Kael balance patch.

[Senior, what’s this ambiguous 7 seconds about?]
[People are saying the devs shouldn’t be doing this?]
[And people are wondering what happened with the pattern too! Shouldn’t you say something about it?]

The notifications kept coming.
The team lead muttered a string of curses, dragged himself awake, waited for his vision to clear, then read the messages.
“Damn it all……”
A junior from another department, someone he was close to.

[You wanna die?]
[I’m sorry! So have a great day today too!]

Actually, he’d been diligent enough to ask them to check the community’s reaction overnight and alert him if things looked bad. Just not like this—not this much fuss.
“Hm.”
He slowly reviewed the community comments.
The most important thing for people working on patches was data.
Second was public opinion.
And since public opinion itself was collective gameplay experience as data, it had lower priority—though it wasn’t entirely worthless.
“Yeah, it’s playing out like I thought. This should be fine.”
Everyone seemed to accept the necessity of the nerf itself.
He hadn’t touched any other players’ performance.
But two unresolved points remained.
What did 7 seconds mean, and
Did he change the pattern? And if not, why didn’t he?
“The 7 seconds thing…”
It was a reasonable number that came out of the meeting. Up to 8 seconds, other players could still approach that skill level—under that logic, it was a restraint to keep the pattern-aware user from having too broken an edge.
7 seconds gave Kael higher peak performance than its original design, but they agreed that level was acceptable.
“As for the pattern…”
Actually, the day Seo Jun first played Kael, that emergency meeting had brought up pattern adjustments first.
The idea was to tweak the existing formula slightly so that veteran users didn’t lose their feel for it.
Many team leads had agreed that it was both the most rational approach and the best way to minimize damage to existing users while preventing unknown players from gaining overpowered performance.
It was certainly logical and wholly feasible.
Adjusting the formula would be a bit tedious, sure, but couldn’t they manage that much?
Besides, there was precedent for changing it.
The problem was.
‘What happened with that precedent.’
Seven years ago.
A Kael player’s data looked off, so the team lead at the time had sent someone to investigate.
Back then, Kael had vital point patterns, additional damage, and bonus effects, but hitting vital points quickly wasn’t the main focus.

[Kael’s a sustain dealer, so why is this burst so high!]
[I’ll look into it!]

But even so, hitting vital points quickly enough could pull off high enough performance to stand out.

[Crazy… Is he reading the pattern?]
[Must be a leak!]
[Really though?]
[If they find who leaked it externally, I won’t let them off easy!]

They immediately touched the formula.
But it didn’t work.

[He’s reading it again! Again!]
[Damn it. Then we exclude Kim from the next adjustment.]

They started hunting for the leak by excluding team members one by one.

[He’s started reading it again!]
[At this point, isn’t he a bug user?]
[No. We have to find that leaker.]

Sometimes they’d make minor adjustments.

[The game starts, he slashes at an enemy a few times, then smiles and starts predicting the pattern again! He’s definitely laughing at us!]
[Is he really a bug user?]

Other times they’d overhaul it completely.

[This time he didn’t start predicting until after one full round! And his accuracy is 100%!]
[Are you having fun?]
[But actually, could predicting even be possible if you just knew the formula?]
[I don’t know.]
[Team Lead?]
[There’s gotta be something! We’ll settle this with that bastard!]

After changing it several more times,

[Dammit, who is it!]
[But this time you made the changes alone, sir.]
[…Was it me?]

The team lead at the time had finally panicked and rolled back to the original values.
Fortunately, it hadn’t given anyone game-breaking power.
And since only that one user would notice the changes anyway, they’d proceeded with a silent patch.
Still, the team lead had written an apology letter, and that player had disappeared.
So that player’s existence had been forgotten, and Kael had received a rework.
‘But they’re back now, huh?’
He couldn’t see individual player data, but he was certain.
Hell.
The reason he hadn’t touched the pattern was simple.
‘Because changing it would be pointless anyway.’
He devoutly hoped no other heroes would require this kind of awkward attention going forward.

* * *

“You doing okay?”
Lee Dong-su came down from the ring after finishing his morning workout and sat next to Seo Jun, pulling off his gloves.
“What about?”
“Kael, you know? What if they changed the pattern formula with a silent patch? Isn’t that going too far? I mean, the devs basically targeted you! Why are you being so calm about it!”
“Is it? So what.”
“What do you mean, ‘so what’? I mean, okay, maybe the skill cooldown nerf is acceptable for balance, but if they touched the pattern—you should just sue them, honestly. That’s literally your identity—skilled players being able to do it faster. They can’t nerf it just because you’re too good at it!”
Seo Jun started to wave a hand dismissively at Lee Dong-su, who was angry on his behalf, but then something occurred to him and he asked instead,
“Hey. Do they have a high turnover rate at that company?”
“Probably not, right? Surface owns it as the largest shareholder, so it’s basically a subsidiary, plus the benefits and treatment are good……. But why the question about turnover?”
“Then they didn’t touch it.”
Ever since meeting Wind Sword, Seo Jun had been certain.
That someone who knew him was still there.
He’d just played the game honestly, so even if they knew who he was, it wouldn’t matter much, but he had had a unique experience with the developers before.
The nerf itself was justified.
He hadn’t been caught off guard by it either, so he understood.
And besides, what would changing the pattern even accomplish?
‘Back then, every time I logged in, the pattern would change—it was like solving a puzzle.’
He hoped that excellent developer, who’d even given him that little mini-game, hadn’t quit.
“But you’re not even mad! You could’ve locked down one banned card for sure!”
“I’m not mad. Anyway, what’ve you been up to lately?”
As Seo Jun changed the subject, Lee Dong-su’s face brightened.
“Huh? Hehehehe. Finally, you’re asking that?”
What was he on about?
Seo Jun looked at Lee Dong-su like he was some kind of strange creature.
“So you need my help after all, right? I’ve been doing really well with my grades thanks to you, and if there’s free time whenever you want… yes. I’ll specially coach you. This Lee Dong-su of Freefall! Given what we are to each other……”
“No. That’s not it. You’ve just looked pretty bored lately, so I was asking.”
“……….”
“You bragged about finishing a 40,000-piece puzzle a couple days ago. I was wondering when you even practiced.”
“……….”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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