A Large All-Rounder Hexagon Is Cooler Than a Sharp Specialist
When you play those RPGs where you grow your own character and team up with other users to take down tough enemies, you eventually run into a question worth chewing on.
What type of character are you going to raise?
Someone drawn to a mage’s blistering firepower will max out attack and build a pure glass cannon. Someone who loves a knight’s rock-solid tanking will pour everything into defense. And then there are the people who want to cast spells and swing a sword, who refuse to give up either rabbit and end up chasing both.
In a game with decent freedom, personal taste, judgment, and choice all leave their fingerprints on how a character develops. Still, if you step back and sort the approaches, they fall into two big camps.
One is the specialist. The other is the all-rounder.
A specialist keeps only what the character truly needs and discards the rest, pushing a single strength to the absolute limit. In extreme cases you get a mage who folds to a trash mob’s sneeze yet hits hard enough to melt the final boss. High risk, high return: the upside is spectacular, but so is the downside. Specialists inevitably run into problems they simply cannot solve alone, so they end up leaning on other people or joining some group. A standout talent in one field is valuable enough that others will make room for it.
Opposite that sits the all-rounder—literally good at everything. Players usually call the style that spreads stats evenly across every category a “hexagon.” In theory an all-rounder can solo an entire party’s job: cast magic, swing a sword, loose arrows, heal. Even inside a party, when a gap opens the all-rounder can slide in and fill it, keeping the group’s balance intact.
On paper it looks perfect. It isn’t. If the overall power level is too low, people stop calling you an all-rounder and start calling you a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. The line between “good at everything” and “good at nothing” is razor-thin.
So which is better? The honest answer is: it depends on the situation. If you can cover a specialist’s weaknesses and let the strengths shine, the specialist wins. If you cannot, the all-rounder who adapts to any situation and still delivers is the safer bet. In RPGs the two are differences of temperament, not of absolute superiority.
The same idea travels outside games. Specialists have sharp edges and clear blind spots; all-rounders are evenly competent but rarely spectacular. You see the split in office work and in sports. When the concept moves into personal internet broadcasting, though, the ranking becomes much clearer.
“Olive… actually, this isn’t limited to us. On most streaming platforms the specialist is simply better.”
Visk said it the way you state an obvious fact, then closed her eyes for a moment and continued.
“Being a specialist as a streamer means you pick one clear main content and stick to it. Most creators make that choice. Do you know why?”
“…Because of the algorithm?”
“You already knew?”
Her look said she hadn’t expected me to land on the exact answer. Maybe she assumed I was clueless. Given everything I’d done so far, that wasn’t an unreasonable guess.
Algorithm. The word usually lives in math and computer science, the step-by-step procedure for solving a problem. Computers were born with algorithms, so of course they live there. When the same word attaches to a streaming site, though, it means something slightly different: the AI-driven recommendation system that automatically serves users videos they might like.
Before I died, the global video platform O-Tube had ridden that recommendation engine to world domination. Olive, which is both a streaming site and a video platform, had adopted the same system.
“The algorithm is powerful. Nothing gathers the right people around you quite like it. If the algorithm brings someone to you, it means they already care about that topic. But the direction your channel has taken so far…”
“Is completely unsuited to riding the algorithm.”
She nodded, confirming I’d hit the bull’s-eye. I had never locked onto a single main content; I’d touched every subject under the sun. From an algorithmic standpoint that was terrible. And this wasn’t some random viewer talking—this was a district team leader. Her words carried weight.
“That’s a lot to think about. And I’m sure what you’ve told me isn’t the whole story.”
If I had to judge whether Visk was right or wrong, she was almost certainly right. The algorithm is one of the few tools strong enough to make you visible in the flood of internet noise. Even popular streamers wither without new blood, and nothing feeds that pipeline better.
I nodded, more or less convinced. Visk, who had been talking nonstop, suddenly looked a little guilty.
“…Was that too sudden? Looking back, it probably wasn’t the conversation to have the moment we got in touch. I’m sorry. I can be a bit impatient.”
“No, no, it’s fine. I’ve taken every word to heart. Is there more?”
“Ah, yes. And also…”
I hadn’t shown the slightest irritation, so she seemed to take that as permission. She began listing every problem my channel had, one careful item after another: category chaos, streaming hours, chat environment, even the pitfalls of outdoor broadcasts. Some of it I could have figured out myself; some of it I had never seen coming. Honestly, her advice was so useful I almost felt guilty accepting it.
Internet rumors said the 21st District team leader was cold and purely businesslike. Not even close. She’s this passionate and warm-hearted… I guess rumors really are just rumors.
It was a good thing. Someone who actually cared about the people under her and poured effort into making their streams better. At this rate we probably wouldn’t have any face-reddening trouble… at least not unless I made a spectacular mistake first. Small mercies.
Visk kept cataloguing issues and I kept answering. My calm replies must have frustrated her, because she pressed her fingers hard against her brow and asked something blunt.
“Are you planning to keep streaming like this even after becoming a Plus Streamer?”
“Like this” clearly meant the same scattershot, no-single-theme mess I’d been doing. She wanted to persuade the newly official Plus Streamer to stop sabotaging new viewer inflow and take the easier, surer path.
After a conversation this detailed and kind, the only answer that felt right was this one.
“Of course.”
“…Haa.”
She closed her eyes and let out a tiny sigh. How much feeling had she crushed just to keep that breath so small? The weight in it was heavy.
I could roughly guess what she was thinking: How do I talk sense into this tomboy? But I hadn’t chosen my channel’s direction without a plan. Whether she had noticed or not, my channel already had a clear destination.
“I have a reason.”
“A reason…?”
“Yes. I understand everything you’ve been worried about. You’re thinking you can’t tell what purpose my channel is actually chasing, right?”
“Th… that’s right.”
“There is a purpose. Crystal clear.”
At a glance my channel looked like pure chaos. One day music, the next dancing, then movies or anime, fashion, games, radio, the occasional cooking stream. Categories so scattered you couldn’t force them into one box if you tried. No algorithm could ever form around that.
But if you looked carefully at every single video, one enormous core theme tied them all together.
“I don’t know if you’ve realized, but every piece of content on my channel is built from Ooparts I salvaged in the virtual world. You know that, right?”
“I… do.”
“My purpose—and my channel’s purpose—is simple. I take every last Oopart I’ve found, dump them all onto the internet without holding anything back, revive the countless cultures that were forgotten, and…”
I stood up from my seat and looked straight at Visk, who was wearing a slightly dazed expression.
“Make the twenty-second century a fun world again!”
World with Ooparts. Releasing every scrap of data I’d recovered into the world with zero restrictions. That was the direction I had chosen for the channel.
Music, dance, food, film, books… every single thing I’d ever streamed was connected through Ooparts pulled out of the Data Trash Heap. And when you considered the influence those Ooparts still held in this world, you could see they carried enough power that I didn’t need to chain myself to the algorithm.
Of course, the real reason I started streaming was to bring Nia’s broadcasts back to life…
That was the original motive and the final goal. But if we were talking about the channel’s theme and purpose, the active revival of pre-war Ooparts was the through-line.
“That… no, to run a channel like that you’d need several times—no, dozens of times—more Ooparts than you’ve shown so far…”
“That’s not really a problem. I can usually find at least one usable piece of content material a day… and I’ve still got about ten saves left.”
“T-ten Ooparts?!”
Visk’s mouth fell open in pure shock. Was it really that surprising?
…Come to think of it, Ooparts dropped pretty regularly while I wandered the trash heap or took down Virtual Beasts, so my sense of their value had started to dull. High-value ones supposedly sold at auction for the price of a whole house.
…Yeah, saying I have ten of them is probably shocking. I’d better be careful not to let that slip on stream.
I mentally added a new entry to the “words never to mention on air” list. By the time I finished, Visk had recovered enough to speak in a faintly hollow tone.
“…Nia.”
“Yes?”
“…I think we should watch the situation a little longer before we talk about this again. Algorithm or no algorithm, your average viewership and growth rate are already unprecedented…”
“Ah, okay…”
“Let’s keep an eye on things, and if clear trouble actually appears, we can revisit it then…”
Uh, well. I wasn’t sure exactly what had shifted, but if that was how the conversation ended, I was happy. I wanted to keep going in the direction I’d already chosen.
Sensing the talk had more or less wrapped up, she gave me a soft eye-smile and offered congratulations.
“Congratulations on one hundred thousand subscribers. I hope we continue to have a good relationship.”
“Huh? Oh—yes!”
With that slightly abrupt closing line, the call with Visk ended. Roughly thirty minutes. A useful half-hour that had shown me a few things I needed to fix going forward.
Still… why had she chosen that exact moment to say those words? I turned, puzzled—and finally noticed the enormous banner hanging on the wall the camera was pointed at, proudly celebrating one hundred thousand subscribers.
“Ah. So that was visible the whole time.”
…There was nothing to be embarrassed about; it was just a fact. Somehow, though, I still felt a little shy.