scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/3wsfh9.md

[D] “The Games We Play” — what would your character do if they weren’t restricted by shoehorning their actions into a pre-decided plot?

• Author: u/OutOfNiceUsernames fear of last pages*

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3wsfh9/d_the_games_we_play_what_would_your_character_do/

• Score: 15

• Created: 2015-12-14T14:39:43

Post:

Discussion for those who’ve either finished reading The Games We Play (The Gamer crossover) or are just familiar with the story and don’t care about spoilers.

---

While the story has some great elements, good world-building and characters; it is also several different kinds of disappointing:

• the experience curve is too easy, while Jaune’s power gaining curve is too steep (especially in the latest arc) — he’s essentially able to double his powers every ten levels, which usually can be done in several days;
• even though he’s supposed to be very intelligent and wise, he keeps making way too many stupid mistakes and decisions and retains a tunnelled vision focused on the same approaches and attack types of limited effectiveness;
• many ideas that were introduced in the earlier chapters (looking for more spellbooks, deciphering Babel, exploring the Quest Arrow / Quest Objective, travelling to moon, etc) get abandoned and never researched or mentioned again.

So this thread is for those who were coming up with their own original solutions while reading the story: what would’ve you done to increase your chances against such an overwhelming enemy as the Grimm (and their master)? Assume that both your levels and your powers rise much slower — the story felt like a rate×10,000 MMORPG server.

---

Generally, use top comments for listing your ideas and child comments for discussing those of others.

Comments:

u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+8] fear of last pages (27 seconds later)

Things to do:

• 1. keep looking for more skill books — on Semblances, Natural Sciences and Humanities, etc;
• 2. keep deciphering the Bable language, history and capabilities of Grimm and Babel technology;
• 3. NOT spend any skill points until the Attribute is over 150 or 200 through natural training — this would eventually yield some additions 750 to 1000 skill points at least;
• 4. deplete the Dust mines that are outside of human territory;
• 4.2) optionally use these huge reserves to spam-kill higher level Grimm and gain some quick level-ups.
• 5. choose a person as my familiar (an orphan, maybe, for higher likelihood of loyalty) instead of a dog because in their default condition they would be more intelligent and agile. Fall back to a gorilla if it doesn’t work.
• 6. develop riot control tools against civilian panic — it is mentioned on multiple occasions that evacuating a town or village is often not an option because if Hunters do start an evacuation procedure, the implications of this would cause a panic among civilians and worsen the severity of the Grimm attack. So I’d look for skills that can quickly render a large group of civilians unconcious. If there were no such skills, I’d try researching a chemical alternative (spread through air, water, etc). This can be used on the capital cities as well.
• 6.2) additionally instruct civilians themselves on why panicking is bad and how to better control their emotions;
• 6.3) additionally use frightened civilians, who will agree to help, to lure and concentrate large groups of Grimm into smaller areas for easier killing.
• 7. start profiling regular citizens and awakening auras — the fanfic handwaves the lack of enthusiasm about awakening larger groups of Hunters by saying that they would be a risk to the rest of population. But this problem should be solvable by periodically reading the minds of all the subordinate Hunters and neutralising those that either have too dangerous Semblances or are planning a “terrotist” attack. Defending them against Riders would be difficult, but not impossible or unreliable.
• 8. investigate how are the artefacts that the Grimm drop able to function. They don’t seem to be based on dust usage, and their effects seem to not weaken with time;
• 9. occasionally use the weapon memory-reading skill on Ozpin’s mug;
• 10. level up Luck to at least 100;

Skills to find or develop:

• 1. for surviving in space;
• 2. for transporting large amounts of mass — high-level Grimm could be instakilled by first launching them into space and them jettisoned them into a sun;
• 3. long range transportation and movement (teleportation and portals) — get to other planets without FTL time dilation shenanigans, use these planets as experimentation grounds to reduce damage done to Earth;
• 4. large area transportation and movement — if Grimm can’t defend against aura-based attacks because they lack aura, it should be possible to disintegrate them by opening large-area portals inside their body. This would work even on enemies like Hydras: simply locating the cores inside their body and teleporting them all into a prepared destructive environment would instakill them.

Things to try:

• 1. creating a new skill book by paying a Hunter to write a book about how their Semlance works — many of the books that the Game System recognised as skill books were written by people with awakened auras (Adamant Skin, Strong Arm, White Tiger, Area Buffs, Healing, etc), so it is very likely that if a living Hunter were to write down about their Semblance, it would work as a skill book too;
• 2. putting a person into an inventory slot — I am guessing that if Jaune tried buying a flower and storing it in his inventory, it would work despite the flower having a soul. So I’d try storing a person in the similar manner. If it worked, I’d have an option to store all of the humanity in my inventory and stop worrying about Grimms using them as hostages. This would obviously work only if my character was developed enough to either safely kill or to run away from any Grimm or Grimm General.
• 2.2) Storing people in inventory could also be used to quickly start a human colony on another planet (and see if Malkuth is able to spawn Grimm there).
• 3. carpet bombing areas that are inhabited only by Grimm using meteors: you’d only have to ensure that there are no monster types that benefit from attacks on them (e.g. Hydras).

u/None [+6] (an hour later)

Wow, you kind of killed your own thread here.

I noticed that he really really should have used as many skill books as possible instead of bothering with physical training too. But I guess Jaune touring Remnant's libraries wouldn't have been very interesting and the writer would have controlled what he was going to find anyway.

u/sicutumbo [+5] (2 hours later)

A few notes in no particular order:

While spending ages to level up his various attributes naturally would be a good way to gain the most total stats, after a certain point it becomes inefficient compared to leveling up skills. In the early chapters Jaun would work out and study to gain levels in his various stats, and this makes sense because he gained levels relatively quickly. But the amount of time needed to achieve the next level increases exponentially, while the time it takes to level up abilities remains relatively constant of even decreases with the passives he receives from leveling intelligence or wisdom. This can partially be circumvented by doing passive strength/endurance/agility training by always carrying heavy weights/hitting yourself/being agile and then spending points solely in wisdom or intelligence, the method shown in story isn't really that inefficient.

Luck is a very hot topic on the spacebattles thread. Part of the controversy is that it is a poorly defined stat. While I do agree that he should have gotten it to level 50 just to see what it does, it makes sense that he doesn't prioritize the stat. All of Jaun's other abilities can be increased more quickly by doing increasingly more challenging tasks, like weight training for strength or studying for intelligence, there isn't really anything comparable for luck. In addition, luck seems to need to be leveled up by gambling with humans, something that he can't increase the speed of through abilities. Also, in order to level up luck Jaun needs to risk something that he actually values, and he gets so much money from Grimm that he doesn't value money at all. In fact, there are very few physical things that he does value, so gambling would be difficult. Needless to say, gambling with his friends would be a bad idea in the world they live in.

Using frightened civilians as a lure actually isn't a good idea. The higher level Grimm can spawn hordes of lesser Grimm on demand, and there is certainly a way for the higher leveled ones to reproduce as well considering that the Grimm don't seem to be dying out. Also, the Hunters really aren't that much more powerful than the Grimm that actually matter. It was mentioned that it normally takes a team of Hunters to safely kill a Goliath, and they normally travel in packs. Luring large amounts of Grimm towards one location certainly could reduce local Grimm concentrations, but it is a very real possibility that the Grimm could break in and slaughter civilians en masse. Also, more Hunters would almost certainly die compared to their normal methods of killing Grimm.

Other than this and a few minor nitpicks too minor to mention, I largely agree with this post. Jaun doesn't spend nearly enough time trying to acquire new skills compared to powering up existing ones, when new skills are almost universally more useful in fights compared to more powerful skills. New angles of attack are just so much better for his skill set when other people can do the brunt force approach well. Having a contingency for if he can't kill the leader of the Grimm is a great idea, and he completely fails to do so. With his intelligence, developing methods of dealing with the Grimm in various ways that don't require his personal attention should be a priority, but again he just fails to do so. While literarily I can understand that power testing can be boring, it is dumb that Jaun does not understand or strive to understand many of the things around him.

u/None [+5] (2 hours later)

Having a contingency for if he can't kill the leader of the Grimm is a great idea, and he completely fails to do so.

He spend a week and used, like a dozen of new skills last time. Of course, people start saying that the author artificially pulled them, and that the battle is overloaded.

Jaun doesn't spend nearly enough time trying to acquire new skills compared to powering up existing ones

That's because powering up existing ones is guaranteed to give better ones (both through prestiging and Tiferet), while searching for random skills gives, on average, skills worse than current powerset

u/sicutumbo [+4] (3 hours later)

On average, yeah a brand new skill will be weaker than a prestiged or upgraded existing one. But he largely doesn't need more powerful skills, he needs new angles and options of attack and defense. The ability synthesis definitely nullifies my argument to some extent, but gaining new skills through skill books or through power testing (like how he made magic missile) should be more of a priority than leveling, say, dust weaving. (Crafting should have been leveled more when it was still relevant, but it's largely inconsequential now.) Acceleration, IIRC, was made through attempted time manipulation, and it is almost certainly his most valuable skill. So attempting to do stuff like that, manipulating time, space, gravity, electricity, anything else, could potentially give fantastic results while there is relatively little cost to simple testing. He has workarounds for controlling some of the things I mentioned, but not nearly on the level of his acceleration ability.

u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+5] fear of last pages (4 hours later)

[..] developing methods of dealing with the Grimm in various ways that don't require his personal attention should be a priority

That’s a very good point that I have missed.

on inefficiency of raising stats naturally

On several occasions, Jaune’d wasted stat points even when his stats where below 100 (e.g. during the stupid White Whale quest). Besides, at least some of the stats could more or less easily be upgraded to over 100 (if not 150), I think:

• STR by weight-carrying — if he switched to heavier metals/elements, and/or managed to incorporate gravitational magic into the exercise, his armour being too bulky would stop being a problem — he’d only have to additionally support the ground under himself with psychokinesis and maybe shield people around him from radiation;
• INT by expanding his knowledge in one scientific field after another — if he did it right, I think he’d be able to bring his INT even above 150, because the complexity the universe has to offer is endless (I could actually emphasize more with Makluth in this regard than with Jaune), at least from our perspective. I get that even if Jaune himself is portrayed as super-intelligent, the author still has his limits. But at least something could’ve been done about that instead of doing nothing at all;
• LUK — Jaune didn’t even properly test what are the minimal requirements for his Game Mechanics to register an action as luck-grinding. The only thing he ever did was outright going to the casino and starting the gambling. For all we know, his luck would’ve slowly increased even if all he did was toss a coin and wager his word on the outcome. And when you consider how much time he had spent either on meaningless things or on stupid missions, (not) prioritising luck because of time limitations stops being that much of a problem.
• VIT, DEX, WIS — again, almost no research to find out the definition in the Game Mechanics, so there could be easy options for these as well.

[..] The higher level Grimm can spawn hordes of lesser Grimm on demand

1. So far only the Goliath and Leviathan have demonstrated this ability, and they either have their specific spawning locations or are rather rare overall. 2) It could be used to test whether they can spawn lesser Grimm endlessly or if they have their own limitations. 3) They could be used as generators of weaker Grimm to create a more controlled environment for a Hunter training program (it might not work due to their intelligence, or it might if they were somehow made unaware about their surroundings).

[..] it is a very real possibility that the Grimm could break in and slaughter civilians en masse. Also, more Hunters would almost certainly die compared to their normal methods of killing Grimm.

1. No need for more Hunters, I had on mind Jaune going against them on his own — for exp grinding or clearing an area from Grimm. 2) If only a few civilians were taken to build the trap, it would’ve been easier to rescue them in case of an emergency. When Jaune was going to visit the White Fang base, it was shown that even a single person’s reactions can control the (movements of) Grimm. 3) Even if something did go wrong, if would still provide some data on why it happened, how to prevent it in the future, and the capabilities of Grimm.

Also, the Hunters really aren't that much more powerful than the Grimm that actually matter.

Still would be better to have a hunter population than a civilian one when dust runs out.

u/sicutumbo [+2] (5 hours later)

He could definitely have raised his stats higher than what he did through normal means. I'm just saying that for stats that he has to dedicate time to (ie cant multitask it) at a certain point it becomes much more efficient to rank up abilities/make new ones than to spend time trying to rank up stats. It took him a long time while training with his mom to get his intelligence and strength up even a modest amount, and the time it takes to increase stats after that would take even longer. Training strength or other physical stats while putting points into int and wis would be a good way to get the most benefit from the diminishing returns of training while also getting the combat capabilities Jaun gets in the story. After about 100 or 130 though, it would take too much time for not enough gain compared to other things he could do.

There's no real reason to use civilians as a lure to normal Grimm if Jaun is the one killing everything. He can just slaughter every moderately powerful Grimm and have normal Hunters deal with the scraps. He might learn something from using a lure, but it really isn't probable that he'll get anything useful.

u/CrystalShadow [+2] (a day later)

[deleted]
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^0.9328

What is this?

u/linkhyrule5 [+2] (6 hours later)

• 1. Valid.
• 2. Somewhat valid, but this is a major decades-long project until he meets Keter and reaches Arcana, at which point it's moot - it's played down in text but by that point Jaune actually understands how a lot of his skills work by then, you can see bits of that in the way he decomposes Et in Arcadia Ego and explains bits of Tiferet
• 3. Somewhat valid. However, note that the nature of Jaune's high-stress life is that he doesn't always have a choice about spending his stat points - even if he's giving up major chunks of long-term power, it's better than dying.
• 4. For most of the fic, this was somewhat suicidal due to the existence of partially powerful Grimm; after he moves to Sanctum, however, this is valid.
• 5. Familiar is synthesized into Tiryagyoni, which is animal-specific. Also, on the scales that Jaune works at, the difference between a dog and a gorilla isn't really meaningful - I'd be surprised if it represented more than five or ten points of intelligence.
• 6. If this was doable, it'd be done already. As a setting conceit it's rather unpleasant, so for Doylist reasons I'd expect there to be reasons why this would fail - with the nature of the soul in this universe, perhaps people can still be panicking even while their brains are nonfunctional? Civilians already know that panicking is bad, they just don't have perfect emotional control. Using panicking civilians as bait is already a thing Hunters do - see the battle with Crom Cruach.
• 7. This turns Jaune into another Archangel. Ethics aside, it's also totally pointless because in an actual battle against the Grimm, the Grimm win, do-not-pass-go - this has been made exceedingly clear across the book. For that matter, the original /Keter/, with thousands of years more to grow and prepare, still lost to the army of Grimm. Beating the Grimm is very much a matter of learning to beat Malkuth himself.
• 8. See 2. Science takes time, lots of it. By the time he has that time, he has access to information from Babel anyway.
• 9. Jaune has yet to get in physical contact with Ozpin since gaining several important suites of perception abilities. This is particularly critical because it means he cannot vet Ozpin for being Death.
• 10. Mostly agreed. 50 should be enough, the skills will tell him what the game's definition of Luck is and what Luck does.
• 1. Gamer's Body does this already. Space will apply a damage-over-time affect and Jaune has HP regen out of his ears.
• 2. Killing large Grimm is pointless, there's too many of them. See above.
• 3. Valid, but he has Raven (and later Flux). Still worth checking out later - right now he doesn't have time.
• 4. Somewhat valid, but the more powerful Grimm, as appropriate for Qlippothic creatures, do end up with defenses against Aura powers, I believe. Raven does hit Malkuth with a portal cut at one point, though.
• 1. Good idea. Unfortunately, writing a book takes time and the Grimm are everywhere. Well, I suppose Jaune could just take over their Grimm duties, but this is still a long-term plan and Jaune has only recently gained any breathing room. (Start to finish, TGWP is probably less than a year long.)
• 2. Rather than "have a soul," since this is a world where even rocks have souls, the limit is likely to be one of soul-density and magnitude, if so. Also, Jaune is not going to be capable of killing arbitrary Grimm for a while, because the higher-level ones spawn Malkuth when they die.
• 3. He does this once he can.

u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+3] fear of last pages (8 hours later)

Arguments against 1.2, 1.3, 1.8, 2.3, 3.1

1. To me, at least, the time constraint factor seems too forced by the author and too artificial. It wouldn’t be such an issue if Jaune avoided poking his nose in one beehive after another. He, as Malkuth’s arch-nemesis, was what catalysed the situation and triggered Malkuth into action on several different occasions. If he was to quietly train and study for several years (you know, which is what people his age are supposed to be doing to avoid stupid mistakes later on the battlefield), he’d be much more prepared both as a fighter and as a general (he’d be better informed about Grimm, Malkuth, the nature of Malkuth’s traps, Babel, etc). I guess Mother of Learning spoilt me to a degree, but Jaune’s haphazard actions and choices seemed idiotic, not awesome or interesting. 2) Doing science takes time. Familiarising yourself with results of others for someone with broken INT levels — not as much.

1.4

Yes, I meant after the point where he gets the psychokinesis skill. Levelling up then through crystals should’ve been very helpful to him.

1.5. Tiryagyoni is animal-specific; on the scales that Jaune works at, the difference between a dog and a gorilla isn't really meaningful - I'd be surprised if it represented more than five or ten points of intelligence.

I think that the quality of the base material should affect the end product, so if a dog managed to get that smart, an ape should’ve benefited from the same ascension at an order of magnitude more. But even if they’d ended up the same in terms of raw power\intelligence, a bipedal creature with a prehensile hand would’ve had much more options to choose from in all sorts of situations.

1.6. If this was doable, it'd be done already. As a setting conceit it's rather unpleasant, so for Doylist reasons I'd expect there to be reasons why this would fail

I don’t think that a very good argument. Hunter headquarters could keep around people with semblances that can shut people down before they realise what’s happening. The teams could drug the water supplies at the evening and time it to take effect around 2-3A.M.; go from house to house during the night, etc.

1.7

It’s not meant for defeating the Grimm (which could kill humans even before the story began, if they wanted to) but for surviving without dust. And I don’t see any ethical problems (unless you meant the mind-reading part, which is a non-issue, given Jaune’s approaching omniscience) with empowering people to defend themselves (to a certain degree) while simultaneously ensuring that nobody would abuse that gifted power.

1.9

He had first used the weapon-reading when Ozpin was literally in the same room with him. Afterwords, he had met with the man at least once, maybe more.

2.2.

You seem to be prioritizing the defeat of Grimm above everything else. Easily killing larger Grimm would not solve the biggest issue, but would help Jaune in levelling up and improving his stat multipliers. Given the genre of the story, I’d expect the protag to be interested in these things. Buy why should he when he has the cheatlist lying on his desktop?

3.3 He does this once he can.

Do you mean he literally bombs them with meteorites, or the nuclear attack skill he uses at JF? What I meant was that he’d be able to use the carpet bombing before he became so powerful. Like with 2.2, it would help him in quickly levelling up.

u/None [+3] (15 hours later)

Regarding Gou:

Gou is powerful enough that weapons are practically nothing to him.

His function in the team is to soak up damage with his absurd durabiliy, size, and regeneration, and stomp on Grimm with absurd physical stats.

Weapons wouldn't help him with that. His skin is probably orders of magnitude stronger than any sword, his teeth and claws are probably the sharpest/hardest thing short of Jaune's Kavacha skill or Gilgamesh's bone sword.

So Gou doesn't need weapons or armor.

And having hands to manipulate stuff is a non-issue-- he has Psychokineses if he needs something and Jaune isn't there to help.

Regarding mass awakening:

At the scale Jaune is working on, civilians having Aura or not doesn't make a real difference. You have to be a high-tier badass to not get smeared by the huge amounts of Grimm that populate the Dark continent-- someone on the level of Jaune's sisters a minimum.

And those sisters had: powerful semblances, probably were genetically near optimum for being hunters considering their long linage of illustrious Hunters, and tons of training.

Jaune and humanity exis at Malkuth's discretion. That is made abundantly clear. Awakening everyone won't change that. If everyone was suddenly at his Sister's level-- that might come close, but even then Malkuth has a continent of Grimm that are serious threats to even that tier Hunter (the Hydras, Nemeans Humbaba's, etc.)

Regarding: moving off planet

I think you have a point here, though remember that there's nothing (so far in story) preventing the higher-level Grimm from following. They can survive with no food and in most environments and some of them can obviously fly with little regard for physics, so moving of planet would have to mean moving very far so none could follow.

Unless Jaune gets strong enough to wipe out the Riders, the Knights, and somehow cull the Grimm population enough to ensure humanity can survive, then he still needs to deal with trapped Malkuth.

u/None [+1] (2 hours later)

IIRC the time passes in the inventory. The clock experiment was like one of the first things he tried.

As for the rest... Are we considering non-Metatron Jaune or Jaune as he is?

u/alexanderwales [+4] Time flies like an arrow (2 hours later)

Time passes, but objects still have some kind of stasis:

"But let's be careful about this. Because of your 'Inventory' you have what amounts to a pocket dimension that you can store and retrieve things from effortlessly. Did you test if the things you stored inside it could be detected by others?"

"Of course," I answered promptly. "I passed through metal detectors and it didn't react to my sword. When I stole stuff from the library and left with them, there was no reaction then, either. I can't say its undetectable because there was only so much I could feasibly test and I'm sure there's some power or another that could detect it, but nothing I've tried has been able to do it. And before you ask, there doesn't seem to be a weight limit in terms of how much I can carry, though I've only been able to store things I could lift, with a few other restrictions. If getting inside without anyone knowing about our equipment is an issue, I can handle it. And, for what it's worth, the food I've stored inside it hasn't gone bad yet, though the watch I put inside to test the passage of time has functioned normally. And no, I have no idea how that works."

u/elevul [+1] Cyoria Observer (3 days later)

Now that I think about it, at his current levels of power "anything I can lift" is probably the size of a continent...

u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+5] fear of last pages (3 hours later)

The clock was almost the only thing he tried with his Inventory. The only other two things I remember were food not spoiling and him being able to store anything that he could physically lift (e.g.: he can carry several tonns of weight by now, if I’m not mistaken. Does that mean he can store a car?).

Are we considering non-Metatron Jaune or Jaune as he is?

In context of this discussion, please disregard the latest ~60 chapters or so (fights at Jericho Falls) — they felt like author was activating one cheat code after another. I’m not sure about Keter as MrExposition, because even if at the point of his first appearance he wasn’t making Jaune OPed, his appearance was still kinda out of nowhere and was still laying the ground for the future OP mods.

u/Nepene [+1] (a day later)

Most of your suggestions are extremely time heavy suggestions that don't take into account the imminent threat of the four horsemen and Malkuth. He doesn't need to improve society.

Luck isn't a very useful skill. Most of his stronger opponents are super durable and agile. Slight shifts in probability aren't going to help him much.

Space is big. Transporting a Grimm to it is a long and tricky journey.

I agree he should have searched for more movement related skill books.

The Grimm portals are likely quite advanced, and a slow to develop skill likely won't do much for him.

The semblance skill book thing may or may not work.

Space is really really big, traveling to other planets would take a long time.

Carpet bombing areas is bad due to conquest.

u/Rebuta [+2] (17 hours later)

I've got like 100,000 gold pieces. I think I'll stop risking my life every day. I might be evil but I've got like 16 int so I know when to relax and live off the interest.

u/narfanator [+2] (4 days later)

I'm about half-way through, and while there's a great deal on the mid and top-level tiers (libraries, vagapunk), two things hugely stand out to me:

• Not leveling Psychometry ASAP as madly as possible. In /every/ fictional universe with An Interesting Past, the most valuable things are history books you can read, hands down. And this is definitely one of those cases.

• The mere existence of Pandora Shells means the universe is actually Grim Dark, not Anime Grim Dark, and their civilizational procedures, setups and responses to the entire world no longer make sense. Proper procedure is evac ASAP and nuke it from orbit, twice. You do not try to save anyone except maybe through amputation. You do not try to contain. You do not try to anything but bug out and nuke because holy fuck, someone read Worm.

Edit:

The other sets of things amount to... not so much a poorly defined, but, a poorly... Yeah, I guess it's poorly defined, when it could be so damn interesting.

You could almost re-arrange it so that you have the following, much more balanced powers, that are still OP as fuck, if well applied:

• Gamer's Mind: Just like the player of the game, effects upon your avatar have no effect on you
• Grind: All practice is effective, and you get to know how effective

Even with those two... Damn. And then you add the rest of the core abilities:

• Gamer's Mind, Addendum: This includes mental fatigue. "Sleep" is instant, just like pausing the game...
• Gamer's Mind, Addendum 2: You don't get bored
• Gamer's Skills: "Use it or lose it" does not apply
• Gamer's Body: Periodic character reset
• Skillbooks: Instant Learning
• Skillbooks, Addendum: You don't even need to understand
• Skillbooks, Addendum 2: You don't even need to be able to read the language
• Observe: Secret Info!
• Observer, Addendum: Absolute Power Level
• Status Screen: You know what is going on to yourself, quantitatively.
• Points: You can improve core capabilities by doing something else.

Like, what? Even just a subset of those is ridiculous, but all of them?

"Hey, Dad. I'm OP as fuck, and can get better at something other than what I'm practicing. Let's go have you weaken as high a level thing as I can finish off, and then I'll point up Wis/Int and solve the goddamn world."

u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+1] fear of last pages (4 days later)

Now this is the type of response I had in mind when creating the thread.

I'm about half-way through

Even just a subset of those is ridiculous, but all of them?

Hahaha, please come back and update your review when\if you reach the ass pulls during the JF fight.

Good reasoning on prioritising evacuation. When there’s an unknown quantity of both chemical and biological WMDs ready to go off, you’ve pretty much already lost and can only try salvaging the situation. And I agree that lack of data corruption with time, in regards to both memories and skills, should be considered a superpower all of its own.

Let's go have you weaken as high a level thing as I can finish off, and then I'll point up Wis/Int and solve the goddamn world.

In games this is usually prevented by restricting gained exp by percentage of damage done (it was also somewhat demonstrated when Jaune was levelling up Adam). However, it might work if Jaune managed to find a high-level Hunter who can restrict monsters without killing them (e.g. if Jaune brought the Large Nevermore to the ground without causing them to lose 1\3 of HP from losing wings and hitting ground, Adam may have received much more exp per kill). If he asked Ozpin for help, he would even get an additional chance of learning how Ozpin’s skills work.

And then you add the rest of the core abilities:

There’s also the power copying — Jaune could essentially learn any person’s Semblance, being restricted only by the few stats defined by his game mechanics (e.g. WIS, INT). So, for instance, if the clairvoyant girl had stats lower than him, there’s nothing revealed through the story that says that Jaune would be unable to learn that flavour of clairvoyance himself.

u/sicutumbo [+3] (an hour later)

Another two things that annoyed me a lot in TGWP: the spelling/grammar. It is seriously atrocious. Nearly every chapter had multiple mistakes that were very obvious and often times changed the meaning of the sentence. The story legitimately had the worst grammar and spelling of any story I've read that's longer than about 1000 words.

Similar to the 'mention these things a few times then never again' in the main post: the various alliances Jaun makes seem completely pointless. No meaningful spoilers, but he spends multiple chapters working out alliances with students like Pyrrha and the children of the Families. While individually many of them are quite powerful and skilled compared to their peers, at this point Jaun can destroy mountains easily in addition to gaining skill and power much quicker than anyone else. I outright skipped chapters because he would brood about all this diplomacy he was doing, get some minor ally that has some minor skill he didn't have, and then is never mentioned again. If he spent the time to level up the various people with useful powers, or worked on some way to make them meaningfully powerful compared to anything he fights, sure, it would make sense. But that never happens, so a large part of the story is spent making alliances with people that he utterly dwarfs in terms of power.

u/alexanderwales [+8] Time flies like an arrow (2 hours later)

Those are both a natural result of it being written fast. If you prioritize speed, quality is naturally going to suffer, and it's likely to suffer in a few specific ways:

• Spelling and grammar errors are going to crop up because you don't spend time on editing.
• Things are going to get brought up once and then never again because plans change in the middle of writing (or there was never a plan to begin with).
• To a lesser extent, you'll get outright continuity errors.
• There will be lots of text that's extraneous and would be better off removed.

Ryuugi has pushed hard in the direction of speed, for reasons that I could speculate on, but the result has been that there are some glaring flaws which could be fixed with editing. Unfortunately, editing is more boring and less rewarding than writing, which is why it doesn't happen too much with web fiction (and especially not with things posted serially to a forum like spacebattles).

u/None [+8] (2 hours later)

Ryuugi has pushed hard in the direction of speed, for reasons that I could speculate on

Let me quote him:

Several people have asked why I insist on putting out snippets every night, even when I don't have a lot of time--and the answer is that it's really more for me than anything.

I went into TGWP with the intention of writing it from start to finish, without wandering off to something else like I had in the past, and I asked Wildbow for advice. He recommended to keep to a schedule like he does, which seemed like a good idea...but I've let schedules slip in the past. An update every Tuesday and Thursday became...well, my ff.net version of TGWP. I knew I'd need to keep it tight and stick to it, because stopping or letting my schedule slip would make it easy to take breaks and skip over things and then TGWP is just another of my nine thousand and one stories.

u/Escapement [+7] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (4 hours later)

The other big "Daily Updated Spacebattles Thread", Mr. Zoat's With This Ring, has managed to consistently incorporate his readers' spelling/grammar fixes (at least on those occasions where the differences from orthography are accidental rather than intentional - Zoat favours unusual written forms for certain onomatopoeias and a written form for pauses between full stops and ellipses as '..'). With This Ring has probably spoiled me - while Zoat also makes multiple errors per post from speed of writing, at the point the story-only thread is probably down to less than one unintentional error per page of Story Only thread because he fixes every unintentional error that readers point out to him.

It also feels to me that WTR has more of a planned structure ahead of it, with the author having a plan and a destination in mind for his fic, which has resulted in less extraneous stuff and plot holes, comparatively.

u/eaglejarl [+5] (15 hours later)

Zoat favours unusual written forms for certain onomatopoeias and a written form for pauses between full stops and ellipses as '..').

His 'double-period' typography sign is a new punctuation mark he's invented. According to him it represents a conversational pause that is not as long as that expressed by an ellipsis.

And yeah, despite knowing that it still looks weird to me.

It also feels to me that WTR has more of a planned structure ahead of it, with the author having a plan and a destination in mind for his fic, which has resulted in less extraneous stuff and plot holes, comparatively.

He's working fairly closely off the canon episodes from Young Justice, which gives him his story arcs pre-made.

Personally, the part that bothers me is the whole Renegade thing. For those who don't read it: WTR is a self-insert fanfic of the Young Justice version of the DC superhero universe. It follows the hero, Paul, as he makes friends and saves the world. Paul is considered the "Paragon" plotline; there's also a "Renegade" plotline, in which Paul decided to grab for personal power instead of being a team player. He's become a giant gray ogre with all the toys who has turned himself into Grayven, the son of Darkseid. Like, literally turned himself into -- he got hold of a Father Box (alien hypercomputer) and had it give him the soul of Grayven, New God of Conquest.

The current Renegade arc is being handled better than usual, but normally I can't stand his smugness, contempt for those around him, and the fact that he repeatedly breaks his vows, disobeys orders, kills people...yet never suffers any consequences.

u/sicutumbo [+4] (5 hours later)

I really enjoy WTR. The power creep really isn't very bad, and he also tries to bring other people up with him, the spelling and grammar are really consistent aside from the very occasional typo (the 'wow spelled as whaw' is still funny though), everything is fairly well thought out far ahead of time, and generally there is just very little to complain about. I disagree about the 'one typo per page', but do agree with the spirit of what you said. Extremely few errors overall, and he will correct any you point out.

u/None [+5] (2 hours later)

Since the author commits himself to releasing 1.5k words per day without having prepared chapters while working 12 hours a day, this is understandable. If you want clean story, wait when it's done and released on FFN with the typos corrected.

I think that the guy who does the EPUB corrects some typos found by readers.

u/sicutumbo [+2] (2 hours later)

He would be better served by updating more slowly and writing better. While having quantity is a very good way to gain readers, writing decently is a good way to keep them.

u/linkhyrule5 [+7] (6 hours later)

Unfortunately, Ryuugi's title is not for show - he has probably a solid dozen dead fics that he's never finished. It's far more important to him that he have a /finished/ fic, even if it's mediocre, than to have a really good fic that died before the climax.

u/pedanterrific [+4] (11 hours later)

More like three or four dozen. Ryuugi is notorious across multiple forums for writing the first chapter of a really interesting premise, occasionally coming back to it a year later with chapter two, then dropping it forever. Consistently. About once a month.

u/None [+2] (15 hours later)

He's also notorious for fics that are very creative and very high quality. It sucks he ditches stories-- I'm just glad he writes so prolifically in the first place.

u/AugSphere [+5] Dark Lord of Corruption (5 hours later)

Can't get passed all those mistakes, eh? That was the one that drove me up the walls.

u/sicutumbo [+2] (5 hours later)

There were multiple times that I saw that 'can' and 'can't' were switched, along with similar words. Really annoying.

u/eaglejarl [+2] (16 hours later)

I enjoyed the beginning very much but got bored once Jaune's power curve went too high and nothing could threaten him.

One thing about the story that became really clear was the power of synergy. Most of Jaune's effectiveness is not that he has a "Massive Technique of Doomiest Doom", it's that he has a bunch of moderately powerful elements to his build that work together really well. It's a good reminder that balance can be very non-obvious.

u/None [+1] (16 hours later)

There are things that can threaten him. Knights like Ziz, for example.

u/eaglejarl [+3] (a day later)

If you get to the point where only (demi)gods can theaten your protagonist, your story is borked.

u/None [+2] (2 days later)

If your protagonist is a human, sure.

And yeah, Jaune not being a human (or at least Jaune's soul being not regular human soul) was foreshadowed as early as him getting the Semblance randomly without awakening aura.

^(Also, I remember reading about a certain human called Jake...)

u/eaglejarl [+3] (2 days later)

Also, I remember reading about a certain human called Jake...

Yes, but I ended the book when I got to that point. eyeroll

u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+1] Roll the Dice on Fate (a day later)

Yeah and they show up how often in an antagonistic capacity?

u/Rhamni [+1] Aspiring author (2 hours later)

I should get back into this.

---