63 A Drunk Pro Appears! (1/2)
Yuel and Howard discussed the various issues plaguing the entrance exam. Namely, the issues of the first two tests: the one-kilometer run and the quiz.
Every time, Yuel brought up and issue and Howard defended against it. It's like they became a duo of prosecutor and defense attorney.
”Objection,” Howard said. ”Regarding the race, despite what we say on stage we actually accept everybody who makes it to the finish line. It doesn't matter whether they run, walk or even crawl. As long they reach the goal, it's fine.”
”I see,” Yuel nodded while jotting down notes. ”So, when you said that those who do poorly will fail, it was all part of testing their resolve.”
”A nice trick, right? Haha.”
Yuel had mixed feeling about it. Yes, it was much better than failing people for poor fitness. But, was it forgiving enough? If Yuel hadn't met Lars and hadn't started jogging, how would he have reacted to these rules? As motivated as he was to play Classmancers, he might have given up midway along the race.
It's impossible to know for sure now, but there's a chance he would have failed and that worried him. Testing resolve was good and all, but it shouldn't come with the risk of filtering out talented players. Yuel shared his concerns.
”That's not a bad line of thinking,” Howard said. ”Except, we can't discover these 'talented players' before we start the exam, right? If we could, we wouldn't need an exam in the first place.”
”That's true...” Yet again, a clash between theory and practice. Yuel knew what had to be improved but didn't have a practical solution. The goal of the exam was to discover the highest caliber players, which meant the exam should ensure the talented players don't fail. But, there's one big problem: the examiners didn't have any magical way to discover said talents ahead of time, so there's no way to ensure the exam will suit them.
”I wonder,” Yuel said. ”Wasn't there any way for me or Lars to prove ourselves before we got to the first test? Anything that stood out about us?”
”Among the hundred candidates? Not really. Though, I believe you were the only ones in Platinum at the time.”
”Ah, that's it!” Yuel jumped. ”We can use ranks! Say, we can let anybody who is Gold or higher skip the first test. And, maybe even the second test.”
”Not a bad idea,” Howard nodded. ”We can ask them to confirm their ranks by telling us their IDs, so there won't be any cheating. It'll be a little pain to go over all these accounts and write them down, but I'm sure you can handle it.”
”No problem. Okay, so that's it,” Yuel jotted down the idea in his notebook and drew a big circle around it. ”Players ranked Gold or higher skip the first test and maybe the second test too.”
”I'd even consider lowering the requirement a little. You picked Gold because it's one below Platinum, right? So, it catches those who played as much as you and a little less.”
”Pretty much. It's also the division Gregory and Taison had at the time.”
”Just so you know, that's rare on these exams. You not gonna have more than a handful of kids who reached these ranks, or even reached Ranked at all.”
”So, maybe anybody who hit Lv. 50 in their accounts?”
”That's an option. I'll leave the specifics to you. There's still plenty of time to decide till the exam.”
”That's true,” Yuel wrote down ”[Consider lowering the requirement from Gold. Maybe being Lv. 50 is enough.”]
With this, two of Yuel's biggest gripes about the exam were partially resolved. No matter how terribly unfit a candidate was or how bad they were at quizzes, they'll easily make it through if they played Classmancers enough and reached Ranked.
The next issue was the way the quiz was handled. The examinees weren't given any time to prepare and it could easily fail anybody who was terrible at taking exams. For example, Lars and Taison. Letting examinees skip this stage based on account level was a good start, but it's not enough. Not giving them any tools to prepare for the quiz was outright unfair.
”We can hand out example sheets,” Howard suggested. ”I actually thought of this idea last year, but it slipped my mind until it was too late.”
”Examples are great, I agree,” Yuel nodded. ”But, the format of the quiz is also an issue. It's too arbitrary,” he referred to the big pool of possible multi-choice questions on the USB device Howard handed him. To compose a quiz, all they had to do was to pick some random questions for each role. It's a simple and efficient approach for creating a quiz, making the examiner's life easy.
However, it's not exactly friendly toward the examinees. What they received was a bunch of arbitrary questions in a random order. As a result, the examinee had no way to find questions relating to topics they were most confident in. And, that's assuming such questions even made it into the exam in the first place during its random generation.
Long story short, it was a terrible exam for those who weren't good with quizzes. Some students knew to leave the tough questions for last and focus on what they knew best, but not everybody had that wisdom. Especially, not a certain goof who nearly blew the exam by mulling over questions outside his field of expertise.
Lars wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but he knew Classmancers. No matter how bad he was with quizzes, he shouldn't have been in the ”barely passed” group. If the quiz did a better job guiding him to the topics he knew, he would have scored much higher.
”Maybe add categories?” Howard suggested.
”Yes, that's what I was thinking too,” Yuel nodded. ”First, split between 'general' and 'role-specific' questions. Then, further divide them into subcategories and make sure each of them has about the same amount of questions. Say, like this.”
”Looking good. You sure know how to handle these things. It's like you're a teacher.”
”I helped some classmates before, so I saw what kind of weaknesses they had and where the exams stumped them.”
”The genius student, huh.”
”You really like using that word, don't you?”
”Just because you always react to it.” Howard snickered.
They discussed the questions and categories some more. To give each category equal weight, it's necessary to put the same number of questions in each of them. However, that led to an overall increase in the number of questions.
”Isn't that bad?” Howard asked. ”They won't have enough time to answer everything.”
”They don't have to. We're going to pick the top scorers anyway, right? So, it doesn't matter what their actual scores are. What matters is how they fared relatively to each other.”
”That's true,” Howard nodded. ”Say, you ever considered becoming a teacher?”
”No way. Imagine dealing with brats like Lars in class.”
”Haha, I feel you.”
By the time they wrapped up the discussion, it was already evening. Yuel stayed here far longer than he expected, but it was fruitful. They couldn't have possibly resolved this many issues if they did this over a phone call.
”I'm hooooooome!” A voice echoed from the entrance. Was that...!?
A young woman wobbled into the living room, taking needlessly big strides and nearly tripping over her own foot. Her face was tinted red and she had a weird expression, something between laughing and crying. It was quite the scene.
She looked... drunk. Completely hammered. Was this Howard's sister? A pro player?
”Oh no,” Howard facepalmed and shook his head.
”Wardy, Wardy~” The woman somehow made her way to Howard without crashing. ”Listen, listen. These freaking Falcons! We almost *hic* them! We were thiiiiis close. But noooo, of course they had to *hic* some shit on us at the last moment! They organized kinda well in the late game and I made one bad rotation. One! Just one! But that helped them win and everybody *hic* it's my fault! Can you believe this!?” She shook Howard's shoulders nonstop.
”Alright, alright.” Howard patted her head as she sobbed. It's hard to tell who was the older sibling here. ”Just how much did you drink?”
”I ain't didn't *hic* anything! I'm tooootally sober!”
”Yeah of course,” Howard nodded and led her to the sofa. ”Here, sit down.”
”Thanks, Wardy~ You're so *hic*. You're the only one nice to me. Waaaa!” She started wailing all of a sudden. What was even going on...
”It's alright,” Howard patted her back. ”It's just one match. You'll get your revenge.”
”But, it's the Falcons! We always beat them! We really needed these points! I hate them! I soooooo hate them! We hafta *hic* this damn season so they call me to A-League already! I don't wanna be stuck in B-League forever! Waaaaaaa!”
”No biggie. I'm sure you'll earn enough points in the next matches-”
”No! It's over!” The woman crashed on the coach and flailed her arms like a protesting baby. ”We even lost to the Falcons! We're fucked! I don't wanna! Don't wanna! That's it! I'm quitting this *hic*!”
”It'll be okay,” Ellen crawled toward the woman and gave her a pat on the head. ”You'll get them next game. The season isn't over yet.”