67 KiB
How would you go about writing a better Sword Art Online? What would be some of your biggest ideas for changes?
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Author: u/SnowGN *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4e6auq/how_would_you_go_about_writing_a_better_sword_art/
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Score: 28
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Created: 2016-04-10T16:00:11
Post:
For a couple of weeks I've been writing a story, the beginnings of a book. There aren't any good US novels set in a Death Game MMORPG, and I thought that SAO could have been so much more, so I've been starting to pursue this.
I'm not expecting a completed draft in 2016. Right now I've got maybe 80 pages of material, largely composed of worldbuilding, character ideas, the plot outline, etc. I'm pretty set on sticking with some of SAO's broader ideas - being primarily set in a floating castle in the sky, a dual wielding black swordsman protagonist, a strong female deuteragonist/love interest. Aside from that I've been considering new and broader ideas to make this world far more faithful to real MMOs while having the kinds of advancements you'd expect from a late 21st century (2089 is the year) after the market has had generations of more traditional MMOS come and go.
What are some of your ideas? Ways you'd improve on SAO's plot and setting? I'm particularly interested in ways a videogame would meaningfully progress through a 'gigantic floating castle' world without using SAO's 100 floors to clear, 100 bosses model. Wasn't at all a fan of that aspect.
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+25] Time flies like an arrow (an hour later)
SAO had a lot of potential, and did a lot of things ... well, I hesitate to say "wrong", because the show was very successful, but not the way I wanted them to be done.
Personally I would have placed the focus on guilds and guild politics, since that's a proxy for people and their interactions with each other, but I was a guildmaster in World of Warcraft so naturally my perception of MMOs centers there (this was back when beating Molten Core was considered impressive). From what I can remember, SAO comes close to ditching the guild concept entirely, and the protagonist does pretty much everything by himself as a lone wolf.
If you want a different progression, the progressions that most MMOs have are:
- Level progression
- Attribute progression
- Skill progression
- Item progression
- Player skill progression (how good the player is at the game)
- Story progression (areas locked until questlines are followed)
- Faction progression
I would probably split the castle up into sections that each have their own requirements. To get to floor 81, you need to have killed the boss of floor 76, acquired a rare pendant that can only be made by crafting from rare ingredients, and be able to make it past that iteration of the Hall of Trials.
The bigger problem with the conceit is that if permadeath is enabled, the optimal strategy is really boring; grind grind grind on enemies that there's no risk against. If there's a 1% chance of death when fighting an enemy, then by the time you've fought ~70 battles there's a 50% chance that you're dead. There are definitely ways to combat that from a mechanical standpoint, but I generally think that risk minimization doesn't make for great stories. (And if the game combats risk minimization, I would expect an enormous attrition rate.)
u/BoppreH [+18] (4 hours later)
Personally I would have placed the focus on guilds and guild politics
Check out Log Horizon if you haven't yet. I often describe Log Horizon to friends as "SAO with more focus on guilds and politics". It also avoids risk minimization behavior by having respawns with a few penalties.
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (6 hours later)
I'll have to check that out. It looks like it's available for free on Hulu too.
u/Kishoto [+4] (20 hours later)
There's an extremely wellwritten SAO AU called Fairy Dance of Death that places a lot of focus on politics, altho it's designed differently so it's less "guild politics" and more "race politics". The premise is that Alfheim online is the death game, with 20,000 players, and the race that gets to the top of the world tree first, and two races of the winner's choosing, get to be freed of the game (there are 9 races) Revival magic exists but it's very high level and your remain light only lasts for a minute. Unfortunately tthe story isn't complete yet, nowhere near, but what's there now is epically good. I particularly like how the author approaches racism as that's a big theme since only three races can clear, and also there's other things thathappen that demonstrates how easy it is to stereotype people based on their race
u/SnowGN [+7] (an hour later)
Yeah, I'm also a current GM of a Warcraft guild - we've full cleared all of the current content on the highest difficulty. For this story, guilds are to be the main political entity. The loyalties and beliefs of the faction leaders - the heads of player government - are to have a large impact on which guilds can be on top, etc. Voting for the faction leaders of each race is to function as a true democratic system - so clearly the system would be heavily biased in favor of the guild masters of large, popular, well connected guilds.
I absolutely agree that risk minimization and forcing characters into grinding of easier content is a natural consequence of a permadeath penalty. And to an extent, that's fine. In real life, across military history, each active duty combat soldier has been supported by on average 10 support personal, I read that statistic somewhere. In World of Warcraft, cutting edge raiders are only a small minority of the playerbase. But, still, given the permadeath penalty, powerful incentives with a real life impact are needed to get people to play the game as intended, minimizing grinding by elite players.
To get past this issue, I'm strongly inclining towards a multiple-faction game. Ironic that Alfheim Online could have possibly been a better Death Game than SAO's Aincrad. I'm thinking, say, 7 factions/races that each have combat and crafting strengths and weaknesses. Only the faction/allied factions that defeat the final boss can leave the world. Any players left behind, die, including players of a victorious race but who are no longer in that faction or its allied faction races. So it's literally a race to the top. Petty grinding is taken care of internally by guild farming teams. Between this and the American warrior culture/shaming of cowards (see how people thought of WWII draft-dodgers) I think that could be enough to address your concern.
Strong incentives are to be in place for faction betrayals, scheming, etc. Your idea of considering the entire castle as a magnified Opening of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj-type scenario is very good and can potentially play into this. Let's say that important gateway/attunement items are highly limited in availability, but have multiple sources, and that the easier sources, once claimed, never again are available. So second/third place guilds will have to deal with increasingly more difficult challenges. A weaker guild's way around this is by fielding more players, sabotaging the higher ranked guilds, and scheming/treachery. Players can be incentived/bribed/corrupted to betray their guilds and rob from the guild bank and seek refuge with a new guild or faction. Important Main Quest items need to be stored in the guild bank or the Guild Hall and can be stolen with high enough connections. Soulbound gear does not exist and virtual player inventories are limited, so items can be stolen right off people from their corpses, their houses or their guild hall quarters, etc. I've never played EVE Online, but I've been reading on it and its 'Corporations', trying to find inspiration.
To incentivize players being raiders on a more personal level, I'm inclining towards base pleasures and insurance. Food and sleep are important - you get tastier food, more quality and restful sleep, your own house or guild quarters, more secure ways of securing your items/loot, if you are a raider. Raiders will tend to be significantly wealthier than plebeian grinders or merchants. Sex is also a factor - in this world, the full-dive VR (I call it 'synaptic' VR) industry was jumpstarted by the porn industry after it started becoming accessible outside of medical and military functions, so pretty accurate sexual functions are in the game. Cutting edge raiders are absolutely provided with women by their guilds - which will absolutely horrify and fascinate the real world when they begin learning what is going on in the game.
I'm still uncertain about this idea, I have not put in much critical thought yet - in particular I'm not sure what it would mean for gender relations in the game and in top guilds in particular. But I did think it was ridiculous that sex was a possibility in SAO and only briefly elaborated on. In a rational, mature portrayal of such a setting, prostitution would absolutely be a fairly significant 'profession.'
Large, established guilds also provide a salary and life insurance, to take care of a raider's loved ones in the game if the raider dies. This is augmented by solemn promises to carry on the duty in real life after the game is cleared.
u/JackStargazer [+13] Primordial Apologist (an hour later)
I'm strongly inclining towards a multiple-faction game. Ironic that Alfheim Online could have possibly been a better Death Game than SAO's Aincrad. I'm thinking, say, 7 factions/races that each have combat and crafting strengths and weaknesses. Only the faction/allied factions that defeat the final boss can leave the world. Any players left behind, die. So it's literally a race to the top. Petty grinding is taken care of internally by guild farming teams.
That...
That is going to be a hell of a psychological shitshow.
All the worst parts of tribalism, combined with a fight for your life which you were completely unprepared for, with only one group able to emerge alive at the end?
Betrayal, mass murder, a lot of things start looking like valid tactics in that kind of scenario.
It's even worse, because there is no chance anyone will cooperate cross-lines. If they lose, they will die anyways, so why bother helping them? Only one faction can survive, so why bother making friends or forming connections with someone in another group? Only one of you can survive, or perhaps neither will.
Cooperation was at lest technically possible in Alfheim because the prize was only permaflight. Here the prize is life.
I can't see a way for that kind of scenario to not end up being very, very dark.
Can you switch factions? If so, the clear and first response by any rational person is to pick one faction and have literally everyone join it. Leave the other 6 empty, so that when someone wins, everyone escapes - but if that's possible, the whole drama is removed.
u/SnowGN [+6] (2 hours later)
Multiple factions can survive - but only the ones 'allied' with the faction of the player that is raid leading the final boss encounter.
A situation never emerges of all of the factions allying, or all players joining a specific faction, because they aren't rational/trusting enough to do it. One of the factions 'zerg rushes' another in the game's first few hours, causing a lot of bitterness. Racism absolutely becomes a thing, quickly, in the game. Furthermore, I earlier mentioned how there are strong incentive in place for betrayal, since you can steal from other players and switch factions. Players may choose to switch factions purely to isolate or remove themselves from a dangerous enough environment, since they can be stolen from/attacked by members of the same faction. Jails in this game are barely functional, there is no equivalent to a secure federal prison and no higher law enforcement from real life authorites...so the scheming is going to be multi-layered.
Yes, the setting is intended to be pretty darn dark. Not out of intention, but purely because the scenario, carried out to its logical conclusions, demands no less.
u/None [+7] (2 hours later)
[deleted]
u/SnowGN [+3] (2 hours later)
Maybe I should just put in a hard cap on the number of allied factions.
u/Nevereatcars [+8] The Greatest Is Behind (5 hours later)
I think that would be too arbitrary of a solution to work well. The setting isn't a reasonable one at that point if you're actively building it to prevent reasonable actions from succeeding.
u/SnowGN [+2] (6 hours later)
Fair enough.
u/xamueljones [+1] My arch-enemy is entropy (7 hours later)
Hey, this could be a great plot twist if it turns out that players come up with this solution of defecting to the most successful faction near to the end. I know that it wouldn't be too obvious to the reader if I read about this in a book. It'd be an amazing Chekhov's Gun when the ability to switch factions are only mentioned in the beginning, but is only used right before the boss fight.
u/JackStargazer [+2] Primordial Apologist (8 hours later)
I know that it wouldn't be too obvious to the reader if I read about this in a book.
This was obvious to me halfway through reading the description here. I think it would be pretty obvious even in book form once the rules were established.
u/xamueljones [+1] My arch-enemy is entropy (8 hours later)
Maybe, but if no one takes advantage of it or every defection is only in terms of single players, then will readers think of the scaling the idea to everybody? I mean, people here are smarter than the average reader so we'd notice, but I don't really think other people would think of this exploit if they aren't naturally trying to munchkin rules in a story.
u/whywhisperwhy [+1] (18 days later)
Obviously the point of this thread was to help brainstorm and come up with great story ideas so I'm not saying this is poor advice for the author, but we're also giving them advice because this is a chance to shape it into a story our community would want to read! Why would you sabotage us like that?
Only half-kidding.
u/boomfarmer [+4] Trying to be helpful (6 hours later)
If you put a hard cap on the number of factions, then it's the game makers putting a hard cap on the number of allied factions. Your player characters will call bullshit, and will complain and gripe. Make sure to have them do so.
u/None [+2] (11 hours later)
What if you just put a hard cap on the number of players that escape - Faction alignment compared to the leader of the final raid has a major impact, player strength has a minor impact? And no-one knows exactly how many escape - it could be everyone, it could be anyone who isn't an enemy of the winning faction, it could be literally only the members of the raid group that takes down the final boss, it could be only the guy that gets in the finishing blow. Hell, it could be no one. But there's a ray of hope, if slim.
u/boomfarmer [+3] Trying to be helpful (6 hours later)
but only the ones 'allied' with the faction of the player that is raid leading the final boss encounter.
How do you determine the "raid leader"? Is it the game's interface?
Furthermore, I earlier mentioned how there are strong incentive in place for betrayal, since you can steal from other players and switch factions.
Can factions turn away people who want to join them? Do faction leaders know when someone leaves their faction? What happens if a faction leader leaves his faction with the entire treasury, but is spurned from all other factions?
Jails in this game are barely functional
So you get player-constructed jails.
carried out to its logical conclusions, demands no less.
You're an always-defect player, I see.
u/JackStargazer [+5] Primordial Apologist (8 hours later)
Thing is, if ever there was an always-cooperate scenario this is it. Big external threat (Guy Who Made Death Game), ability to cooperate via alliances, no real benefit to defect other than short term resource gain at the expense of long term odds of survival.
u/SnowGN [+1] (14 hours later)
Yes.
Yes, and yes. And yes faction leaders can leave too, and that's an angle I'd like to use, but it's safe to say a faction leader would have the connections to have a new home set up in advance.
Player constructed jails - maybe. I'd have to think about that one.
The very premise of a Death Game is ridiculous....this would never happen in real life. So, for suspension of belief to actually work, the world would have to be very very internally logically consistent, despite a ridiculous base premise. So yeah I just want this to logically work, which is why I posted on this subreddit. I've already gotten a lot of ideas - this community is excellent.
u/boomfarmer [+3] Trying to be helpful (a day later)
So, for suspension of belief to actually work, the world would have to be very very internally logically consistent, despite a ridiculous base premise.
What are people suspending their disbelief in?
- Disbelief that Death Games exist?
- Disbelief in strong VR?
- Disbelief in VR MMO existence?
- Disbelief in unbalanced VR MMO mechanics?
- Disbelief in strange Death Game-specific mechanics applied to the VR MMO?
- Disbelief in character reactions to the the Death-Game-specific mechanics of the VR MMO?
- Disbelief in character reactions to the the general mechanics of the VR MMO?
I mean, does TF2 make sense? Does Call of Duty? Does Age of Empires? Does Neko Atsume?
Games don't have to make sense for players to want to play the game.
Sometimes people play games because they specifically don't make sense.
The only suspensions of disbelief that I suspect matter are your reader's disbelief in the world's setting and the player responses and player sociology. Death Games don't make sense.
u/JackStargazer [+2] Primordial Apologist (8 hours later)
Jails in this game are barely functional, there is no equivalent to a secure federal prison and no higher law enforcement from real life authorites...so the scheming is going to be multi-layered.
That's not really multi-layered. That's one layer: The only effective method to enforce rules is death. You only have two kinds of 'crimes', ones which are minor enough to be dealt with via slap on the wrist, and capital crimes.
Unless there is some mechanic induced other way to show displeasure, such as a way to shun or remove people involuntarily from a faction, this is going to go the way of post-apocalyptic wasteland politics very quickly.
This actually reminds me of Log Horizon, where the players were collapsing into anarchy because it was impossible to enforce rules, until one group stood up and through manipulation of the game systems forced a set of basic laws to be accepted as they had the power to control access to player housing or bank locations.
Also depends on how private property rights are enforced. Are things in your inventory inviolable? Do they drop when you are killed or knocked unconscious? Can you be stolen from? If there is some leeway here, there may be an option for some other punishment form.
u/Kishoto [+1] (20 hours later)
Lmao. In that sao AU I mentioned, a similar thinghappens. A race blitzes another one to establish control . One of the characters literally calls it a zerg rush XD
u/boomfarmer [+6] Trying to be helpful (5 hours later)
I absolutely agree that risk minimization and forcing characters into grinding of easier content is a natural consequence of a permadeath penalty. And to an extent, that's fine. In real life, across military history, each active duty combat soldier has been supported by on average 10 support personal, I read that statistic somewhere. In World of Warcraft, cutting edge raiders are only a small minority of the playerbase. But, still, given the permadeath penalty, powerful incentives with a real life impact are needed to get people to play the game as intended, minimizing grinding by elite players.
Have you read My Trans-Dimensional, Overpowered Protagonist, Harem Comedy is Wrong, as Expected? It's a cross of Oregairu and Danmachi, two things that I am 100% not at all familiar with.
Here are some ideas that derive from that story:
- Player characters may not be aware initially that this is a Death Game, only that their friends never logged back in. The exit menu controls don't work. Creeping horror.
- New player appears, confirms Death Game state.
Cutting edge raiders are absolutely provided with women by their guilds - which will absolutely horrify and fascinate the real world when they begin learning what is going on in the game.
- Who said that the cutting-edge raiders are interested in women?
- Are the reward characters provided to player characters actual players? Are they NPCs? Could they be NPCs, but are actually PCs because of weird player economies boot-strapped atop the in-game economy along the lines of the casino workers in the Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect? (In a post-scarcity friendly-AI-maintained virtual reality, the only money allowed to be used at one person's casino is money based off of the paid labor of known humans.)
which will absolutely horrify and fascinate the real world when they begin learning what is going on in the game.
I'm going to take a moment and kinkshame the entire Internet.
in this world, the full-dive VR (I call it 'synaptic' VR) industry was jumpstarted by the porn industry after it started becoming accessible outside of medical and military functions, so pretty accurate sexual functions are in the game.
There's the capacity for realistic sexual functions. Does that mean that the game-builders included the capacity for realistic sexual functions? What if players are all walking around with libidos out to here but no way of fulfilling them because of the carnal censor code? What if a player figures out how to hack the game engine to allow sex in a certain area? What if there are sex-available areas included in the game from the beginning, but they're controlled by NPCs or by guilds? What if a brothel is maliciously burnt down, leaving whole continents without sex?
Medical and military functions means that this game has the capacity (but not necessarily the code) for realistic hitboxing and damage counting. Is medicine magical or mundane?
In a rational, mature portrayal of such a setting, prostitution would absolutely be a fairly significant 'profession.'
This is only true if the game mechanics and game interface allow for prostitution.
Only the faction/allied factions that defeat the final boss can leave the world.
How is this enforced? Who knows? How do they know?
Raiders will tend to be significantly wealthier than plebeian grinders or merchants.
Is this true? Remember DnD-style murderhobos. They've killed the dragon and acquired its hoard - but how do they transport the horde to the bank? Or do they build a bank around the horde, and become castellans instead of murderhobos? (There's a long blog post about this that I'm not able to find the link to.)
Voting for the faction leaders of each race is to function as a true democratic system - so clearly the system would be heavily biased in favor of the guild masters of large, popular, well connected guilds.
That's assuming that guilds are composed entirely of player characters, and that the game doesn't have built-in methods of determining faction leaders. It could just be that the faction leader's interface is automatically presented to the highest-combat-point-having player in the faction, which becomes interesting if the combat leader is absolutely useless at management. You'd get guild-level bureaucracies to handle the decisionmaking, but they'd have to convince the combat leader to press the appropriate buttons. And what if the faction leader isn't reporting the faction's accounts correctly to the bureaucracy? An upstart young fighter could beat a rat in the farm and learn new things about the faction's books that put the former leader in a bad light.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (13 hours later)
That's assuming that guilds are composed entirely of player characters, and that the game doesn't have built-in methods of determining faction leaders. It could just be that the faction leader's interface is automatically presented to the highest-combat-point-having player in the faction, which becomes interesting if the combat leader is absolutely useless at management.
Isn't the quote you replied this to coming from the author himself? If he says that in his world faction leaders are democratically elected then it will probably be so until he decides that it isn't a good idea for the story anymore.
u/boomfarmer [+1] Trying to be helpful (a day later)
I'm challenging OP's assumptions of how the game might work.
u/SnowGN [+1] (a day later)
Hey. I finished reading the story you mentioned. It was pretty darn good, but I didn't see any ideas I could use. If the story mentions the ideas you mentioned - which are pretty good and worth thinking on - I didn't see them.
Medicine's going to be a combination of magical and mundane. Battlefield spells will repair the physical integrity of tissues, no more.
Carnal functions will be available in brothels and private residences.
Players know from the brief explanation that the Kayaba Akihiko equivalent gives at the Day 1 announcement. Players never know with certainty that it's a death game, but after weeks, months, of no contact with the outside, no knowledge of what lies beyond, being continuously logged in, assumptions crystallize into near certainties.
u/eternal-potato [+4] he who vegetates (2 hours later)
Considering many disadvantages women have compared to men in combat in reality are largely negated by this being a game (unless they are explicitly encoded in game mechanics, (like strength penalty) in which case the game would be condemned by sjw before the trap could be enacted) we can expect them to be frontline raiders too. I would like to see guilds throw (male(?)) prostitutes at them. Bound to be entertaining.
u/boomfarmer [+5] Trying to be helpful (6 hours later)
Guilds throw male prostitutes at female raiders, and female prostitutes at male raiders, but it turns out that for interesting sociological reasons (afk shunning of LGBTQ folk, maybe) the top-class raiders happen to be the people who are most-shunned in real life and therefore play the most games. So now you have a faction of LGBTQ folk, and straight factions, and what if a straight or ace player gets tired of having their only reward be sex? Maybe they try to join the LGBTQ faction. Are they turned away? Are they accepted? Do we get warring factions of Social Justice Warriors and Status Quo Warriors? Do they ally? What happens if an SQW faction allies with an SJW faction?
u/None [+2] (2 hours later)
That's been done, actually. I can't remember the name of the fic, but it was done... I'll get back to you when it comes to me. But basically, exactly what you described. A fanfic of SAO where the deathgame was Alfheim.
u/BoppreH [+4] (4 hours later)
Is it Fairy Dance of Death perhaps?
u/SnowGN [+2] (4 hours later)
Yes.
u/SnowGN [+2] (2 hours later)
Yeah I've read it. I'm borrowing some ideas from that story.
u/TennisMaster2 [-2] (5 hours later)
Isn't that plagiarism? I'd get permission, if you don't have it already.
This is a legitimate question. The concept of borrowing ideas without permission and attribution arouses a moral sense of wrongness in me.
u/Mizu25 [+1] (a day later)
Isn't that plagiarism?
Hmm, I'm unsure. Certainly, if you use ideas others have thought up without their permission it can be a problem, but then we run into various ideas many people use and copy with their own spin on it and the question of whether that counts as stealing.
Still a good idea to ask though, yeah.
u/whywhisperwhy [+1] (18 days later)
I was under the impression you couldn't plagiarize a fan fiction?
u/TennisMaster2 [+2] (19 days later)
FDoD is mostly original in its plot, ideas, and especially magic system. Legally speaking, I think original content is the author's IP even in fan fiction, else works like Fifty Shades of Grey would be tainted and thus ineligible for publication as original works. That said, I can't find any information on that specific issue having been before addressed by a legal body.
Ethically speaking, plagiarism is disingenuous and robs creators of recognition for their contribution to world media.
u/whywhisperwhy [+1] (20 days later)
But being fan fiction it would always be ineligible from a publishing standpoint is how I meant it. I suppose technically if someone started a Patreon or similar way of making money and plagiarized fan fiction, it probably would be possible to go after them legally.
That having been said, my guess / hope is that the OP of this thread just meant there are concepts from FDoD they were going to build off of; hopefully they'll credit FDoD's author but from what they posted here today I don't think they'll write a similar story.
u/TennisMaster2 [+1] (21 days later)
Yeah, it's more about attributing credit to ideas' originators; we agree on that. From a publishing standpoint it's not quite moot, as FDoD could be made into an original work with but a few tweaks. Treating creative fan fictions as a wild west of ideas free for the taking isn't conducive to incentivizing original FF, in my opinion. Whether FF is worth incentivizing at all is a separate issue.
To clarify my position, I think it good policy to treat authors as owners of their original content. Inspiration for themes, like, "VRMMORPG death game with a focus on politics", I ethically think should be credited, but are not the IP of an author. If they were, cyberpunk would have never become a genre.
u/Gaboncio [+2] (10 hours later)
Taking this chance to recommend Fairy Dance of Death which is exactly SAO set in Alfheim Online. It's great writing, but kind of slow. Highly recommended, anyway
u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (13 hours later)
Voting for the faction leaders of each race is to function as a true democratic system
I'm thinking, say, 7 factions/races that each have combat and crafting strengths and weaknesses.
There's something you should keep in mind here though, and that is faction imbalance. Just look at WoW, where pretty much no server has a Horde/Alliance balance and even if you take all servers in to consideration there's still more of one than the other. This becomes even more extreme if you look at the numbers of players for each race, which are often chosen for aesthetic reasons. Then there's also the thing that if the races/factions give different benefits there's bound to be some power imbalances, simply because such things are never perfect.
Also, if race matters for which faction you belong to in the end of the game, how does betraying/faction changing work? And if faction allegiance is mostly a thing you can freely choose and change, what incentivizes people in a literally alien death world to not all stick together and slowly converge into one faction? Sure there might be crazy outliers but anyone who is sane would join the strongest faction in a heartbeat. I mean even if the leadership is oppressive, as long as it shows results without using people as cannon fodder one always knows that it is the best way to get out alive and after that it doesn't really matter anyway.
Tribalism might be a thing but usually that happens after either separate communities form in earnest or if there's no common outside threat. Assuming that the MMO imprisons everyone the first time they log in, people have pretty good chances to have friends and allegiances all over the various races as long as they chose them on their own instead of coordinating for a shared leveling experience or something.
prostitution would absolutely be a fairly significant 'profession.'
How developed will NPCs be? Do they have actual personalities at the level of real humans? Because in that case I could see prostitution coming a lot from that source too, as long as PCs have the freedom to "repurpose" NPCs.
u/None [+1] (10 hours later)
Voting for the faction leaders of each race is to function as a true democratic system
In a highly violent situation I highly doubt it.
I would expect something a bit closer to vikings or maybe, maybe a deeply class based "democracy" like rome with its high slave populations
u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (13 hours later)
If the game mechanics are hard-coded to function that way then it will probably be that way. I mean imagine if every day/week/month everyone gets a pop-up in their mental eye that asks them to write in some player's name as faction leader or something. No matter how unintuitive in a crisis, they'll still end up electing leaders democratically. How much that actually matters depends on what mechanical powers said faction leader gets. If it is just some administrative guild hall abilities and asset lists or whatever then I could easily see some factions being actually lead by the strongest military guilds that force the technically chosen "faction leader" to do whatever they think he should do.
u/SnowGN [+1] (a day later)
Yeah that's the point. When I said true democracy, I wasn't implying that this was a good thing. True democracies were quite chaotic, personality dominated affairs.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
I was thinking true democracy is to stupid to survive; while violence doesn't promote true intellect, it does promote a special kind of pragmatism.
u/Kishoto [+1] (20 hours later)
Check out my reply to alexanderwales' comment. There's an SAO AU fic that does something very similar. It's incomplete but very, very good. You may consider it worth a read.
u/Mizu25 [+1] (a day later)
Cutting edge raiders are absolutely provided with women by their guilds
Only female prostitute? Are they NPC or player? What happens if the raider is female and doesn't find girls attractive?
u/zaslavsky [+1] (8 days later)
An interesting way to reduce the grimdark and increase the scheming is to have a 'blob' mechanic where if you defeat your enemy in a specific way (eg. reduce their hp to 10 points without killing them) you can force them to join your faction. Factions would be rewarded or penalized as a group for their successes and failures. 2 interesting results of this would be that every combat group would have a low power attacker to try to enslave the bosses, and that people would usually stay loyal to their faction because the only way to leave is to come close to death.
u/SnowGN [+1] (8 days later)
That's a very interesting idea. I approve and will think long on this.
u/ancientcampus [+1] juggling kittens (22 days later)
I think that SAO handled the risk-minimization element well: the time limit. The players are acutely aware that they do not have forever to clear the hundred floors.
u/boomfarmer [+0] Trying to be helpful (5 hours later)
(And if the game combats risk minimization, I would expect an enormous attrition rate.)
Bingo!
u/Faust91x [+10] Iteration X (an hour later)
You could also draw inspiration from Log Horizon. On that anime the MC is a somewhat rational mage whose specialty comes from strategy and planning, he doesn't fight in the front lines but rather directs the party keeping close control of their health and mana levels.
He also deals with the ramifications of a system where there's no set economy and the NPCs as resources or characters on their own right.
I think the first days would be chaos and the characters would require to stay together and avoid getting into trouble until things settle. Everyone would be in need of leadership so if they're charismatic enough they could rally them and form the first guilds.
Kirito was a misantrophist and wasn't much of a team player. Depending on what you want to focus on, you could keep him like that and have
KleinBallsDeep69 (the fun but sadly forgotten support character) manage social interaction or have a more people person Kirito trying to lead his group.There's also the fact the SAO system wasn't defined, in most MMORPGs you can't get by going solo against everything and you require to party. My main grip with SAO was how Kirito seemed to roll over any enemies on his own when that's usually counterproductive in RPGs.
u/GaBeRockKing [+11] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (2 hours later)
How to write a better SAO:
Take Log Horizon
Add kirito and asuna as background characters with cool designs but no lines.
Done.
u/Faust91x [+5] Iteration X (2 hours later)
Add in some red eyed chuuni mages and KonoSuba style humor and you're set. Masterpiece!
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+5] Roll the Dice on Fate (10 hours later)
Step 2:
Don't fuck up the second season by removing all the things that made it good and unique instead and focusing on a bunch of idiotic kids as they come to faux insightful conclusions about the world around them.
Yes I'm still salty.
u/GaBeRockKing [+2] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (10 hours later)
Eh, there was less material available for the second season to cover, so as someone who binge watched the whole thing I'm pretty OK with it.
I get that, if you had watched it as it aired, it would have been tedious, but I liked the kids' arc well enough. The raid arc still stood out more from a storytelling perspective, and the genius arc from a worldbuilding perspective, but I don't agree with all the flak the kids' arc gets.
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+1] Roll the Dice on Fate (10 hours later)
I was indeed watching as it aired. I kinda lost hope during the battle for the city where they decided to wax philosophical in full view of their friend being beaten to hell and back instead of helping him. Does it get better against after that?
u/GaBeRockKing [+1] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (13 hours later)
Definitely. The next two arcs are still a little slow-paced, but they have quite a bit of worldbuilding. And again, watching them all one after another greatly reduces pacing issues.
u/SnowGN [+5] (2 hours later)
I really liked a certain aspect of Kirito's character that SAO only every so often touches on. How he's a competent problem solver, capable of piecing together genre-pertinent information, and a competent mercenary besides. Kirito is a very good character to use as a window into worldbuilding and problem solving.
My intention with the story's dark swordsman is to have him as a competent mercenary who quietly work on behalf of several faction leaders while he's piecing together the greater mystery behind the world - finding the identity of the Game Master and his accomplice, and other lesser criminals. He's in an unusual situation. He's forced into being a solo-er as much out of circumstance as by his own choice.
Guild leadership/battlefield leadership is more intended to be the role of the heroine and the main character's friends.
Thanks to this thread I'm realizing that in a setting as guild-centric as this one will have to be, the main protagonist can't quite be a second Kirito. He won't be as dominant in the raiding scene. I'll have to consider how to go about this.
u/Faust91x [+3] Iteration X (2 hours later)
Maybe he could form a mercenary group like Laughing Coffin where he takes care of unsavory tasks the other guilds can't afford to be known doing and reaping the benefits from them.
I liked how you wanted to focus on faction betrayal and your ideas on guild politics. Some guilds may want to assasinate key figures in other guilds but do so covertly to avoid an all out guild war. That's where Kirito and his mercenary group enters the scene, taking care of the obstacles or undesirable players so that they can stay focused on grinding and clearing the game. Asuna could be his main link to the Knights of the Blood Oath and primary contractors, and have romance and the like come from those deals.
That would also mean he can ask for good fees and get rare drop items from the guilds as payment if you want him to still be a powerful and dangerous enemy. Conflict could come by him butting heads with other mercenary factions like Laughing Coffin that perform the same "services" his group does.
u/SnowGN [+2] (2 hours later)
That's......a very interesting idea. Making the protagonist the GM of a laughing coffin equivalent. I need to think hard on that.
Thanks. This is a very very good idea.
edit: I suppose he could also keep up in player power by putting in place large experience point bonuses for successful player kills.
u/Faust91x [+2] Iteration X (2 hours later)
That could work. I mean a joke I liked from SAO: Abridged is how Kaayaba was a sadist and purposely put mechanisms in place to mock the players and promote conflict.
If he's as deranged in your fic as in Abridged, you could write he implemented a system where PKing also gives you drops and experience points.
u/zaslavsky [+1] (8 days later)
A good mechanic would be
if P1 kills P2: P1.exp += constant1^(P2.level-P1.level+constant2)-constant3This system would make high level players targets, and low level players untouchable. It would also provide an excuse for the high-level loner archetype; high level players would be afraid of assassins and lower levels would be afraid to become collateral damage.
u/SnowGN [+1] (8 days later)
Excellently thought out. Yeah, it would probably be best to build the system in such a way that a high level character doesn't decide to go on a rampage of the lowbies for EXP.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+9] Godric Gryffindor (14 hours later)
Each player has randomly assigned unique abilities or ways to gain power, not just the protagonist. AI random generated and then AI tested for game balance. But not matched to player personalities - a pacifist might gain the ability to poweup by killing, a shy person might gain the ability to empower others by romancing them.
u/MondSemmel [+3] (a day later)
Are you aware of Wildbow's Weaver Dice system? It's a pen&paper-ish system à la Dungeons & Dragons. But because it's set in the Worm universe, no-one chooses their superpowers; instead, at least the broad strokes of the powers (and their disadvantages etc) are determined entirely by dice rolls.
(Also, it's still work-in-progress.)
See e.g. here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Weaverdice/comments/4dy6ws/welcome_to_weaverdice/
u/SnowGN [+2] (14 hours later)
This, I will need to think strongly on. It sounds a lot like the Danmachi trait/powerup system.
u/None [+7] (2 hours later)
SAO thematically hits on bridging the divide between the real and the unreal, when it's not Kirito doing OP crap and wooing all the women. One of the worst things about keeping Kirito as the Main Character is that by him being a lone wolf, you can only explore the world through his eyes, and he's too bland to really explore in the original Aincrad run, serving more as a suit for the reader in a power and respect fantasy. Nerf Kirito, and expand the scope to an Anthology, like a tales from Aincrad. How do people adjust to a far less domestic world, and still make it their own? Who becomes a better person and who becomes worse when death hangs over your head by the rules of a mad GM? When the games over, is there anybody who wants to go back?
u/SnowGN [+3] (3 hours later)
A concern of mine is the story's Kayaba Akihiko.
Kayaba is not the type of person who would put in place a multi-faction deathgame, punish the players who don't kill the final boss, etc. When Kayaba created Aincrad, he did it in order to create something of beauty - Aincrad was to him a work of art that could only be properly enjoyed by living it (so obviously to be truly immersed you would have to take the risk of losing that life).
This motivation and mindset is one I really, really want to keep for my story's villain. But I have to figure out how to weigh that angle of altruism-gone-horribly-wrong (in the end burning out the architect himself) against the creation of such an obvious death game/murderfest as this multiple faction Aincrad is shaping up to be.
This world should be something beautiful, something to be enjoyed...I'll have to consider this.
u/None [+6] (4 hours later)
Mad AI?
Kayaba and the Nervegear was the weak link of the original SAO for many people, in that never was it explained why nobody was able to hack into SAO, or why the Nervegear was okayed for consumer use if it was even remotely possible to microwave your brain with an off the shelf model, or even where Kayaba was holed up for two years. An AI built to entertain people within the game could logic that the more time a player has logged, the more entertained they are, and if they are no longer playing the game, they are not their problem anymore. Introduce the threat of death, you save on resources when they logout, keep things fresh for the existing players, and don't have a human point of failure when the feds get involved. It makes sense, but I haven't thought too hard about it yet.
u/SnowGN [+2] (3 hours later)
Fantastic post.
I absolutely 100% agree that the main theme of SAO was bridging the gap between the real and the virtual. I need to do that in my own way.
I'm not willing to outright nerf Kirito, he's too useful as a independent, unaligned problem solver. But dramatically changing his story role could work. Elsewhere in the thread the idea was raised of making Kirito the GM of Laughing Coffin - making him the leader of a guild of cleaners, assassins for hire who clean up after broader faction conflicts. I like and am strongly considering. It's a really dark road to take his character down though, I'd have to figure out how to make it work without bogging the story down in PTSD.
Your last three rhetorical questions are all fantastic.
u/Faust91x [+4] Iteration X (5 hours later)
If you want to justify Kirito becoming a player killer without turning him into a sociopath you could play up the abuse low level players suffered at the hands of the more advanced ones in SAO. There was one episode where Kirito and Asuna have to rescue the villagers in a low level village that were forced to pay taxes and serve some high level players that were taking control of the town.
Guilds are powerful entities and having backing and resources from powerful players is a good incentive to join one. Kirito may create his unaligned mercenary group as a response to seeing guilds abusing players to bring a certain level of control and fairness to the game.
That would be like sending a message, "you can organize and deal all you want with petty politics, but step out of line, abuse the weak players and you may get a nightly visit from Laughing Coffin (whatever Kirito's guild name is)".
u/None [+3] (3 hours later)
Maybe that could work. Kirito is recognisable as a "man with no name" archetype, who would wander in, solve the problem of the day, and wander off into the sunset if it wasn't for him being addicted to the front lines. If he came into becoming the guild leader of Laughing Coffin, it would likely turn into a PK-killing guild, shrouded in myth, sworn to keep the peace, and enabling his own power fantasies of being the hand of the law where the law fears to go.
u/None [+12] (an hour later)
I am not very interested in death game MMO.
Log Horizon actually does a far more interesting job even without permadeath. Conflicts are more about the quality of life and homesickness.
Imagine that food only tastes like soggy crackers.
u/GaBeRockKing [+11] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (2 hours later)
What I really, really like about log horizon is that spoilers
u/Faust91x [+5] Iteration X (2 hours later)
It'd be interesting to see the social and technological ramifications of that effort. It would be kinda like Avatar, what do you do when Log Horizon
Heh that'd be a cool Log Horizon fanfic.
u/GaBeRockKing [+4] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (2 hours later)
I don't actually think it would be that much of a problem because spoilers
Heh that'd be a cool Log Horizon fanfic.
Yeah, I think doing a near-future LH fanfic where there's an incredibly expensive per-capita but reliable way to travel between both worlds would be fun. Something that heavily limits the rate of transfer so the author doesn't need to keep track of 30k different adventurers in japan alone, but still gets that societal sci-fi vibe. Unfortunately, the LH fanfiction section is underpopped and I'm an attention whore, so I probably won't write it.
u/jldew [+1] (5 hours later)
Log Horizon seems interesting. Is there a dub available?
u/GaBeRockKing [+2] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (5 hours later)
No clue. The subbed version is on crunchyroll, though, so you might be in luck. I wouldn't count on it, though.
u/Marthinwurer [+1] (a day later)
u/traverseda [+0] With dread but cautious optimism (9 hours later)
*cough*.
u/jldew [+1] (9 hours later)
Yes, yes, I know. Dubs are bad. I'm a peasant. I've heard it all.
u/traverseda [+1] With dread but cautious optimism (9 hours later)
...
*cough*.
u/jldew [+1] (12 hours later)
I'm missing something glaringly obvious, aren't I?
u/traverseda [+2] With dread but cautious optimism (12 hours later)
Yeah. I recommend you check for secret links.
u/jldew [+2] (a day later)
Well thanks! I don't know how I missed that.
u/ghost-pacman4 [+6] (4 hours later)
Well, give the villain an actual reason for locking everyone in the game, first of all. That would be nice.
u/None [+8] (7 hours later)
F2P Monetization gets really, really screwed up in the future.
u/puesyomero [+4] The Culture (9 minutes later)
for starters a fleshed out stat and skill system, more realistic and rational player interactions, the inevitable MMO economy inflation or how the death game master deals with it, PSTD and how it affects people who suddenly can die in a game. I might get more ideas later.
u/SnowGN [+3] (47 minutes later)
Yeah - the stat and skill system.
What I've been leaning towards is a two-part leveling system. Leveling of the character and, more importantly, their skills. Character leveling (player power increasing) is intended to be strongly logarithmic, if graphed out. A max level character (intended to be functionally impossible, there will be exponentially increasing diminishing returns on the speed of character leveling as one approaches level 100) will be stronger than a base level character, but only by severalfold, like how a world-top weightlifter can bench only several times what a random joe off the street could.
The real onus of character progression is intended to be in their skillset. A high level character will be many times more mobile, have more stamina, have a far higher mana capacity, have a much broader skillset for defensive abilities, illusions, healing, armor piercing, CCing/tripping up enemy movement, etc.
It is intended to be a difficult stretch to overcome, but a level 1 starting character should absolutely be capable of beating a max level character. Leveling up won't increase one's base walking or attack speed, weapon skill, won't dramatically increase HP or base weapon damage, etc. A critical headshot will still kill anyone.
Inflation is to be dealt with by a strongly resource intensive crafting system. a housing market, taxes and rent (faction and guild taxes - the faction leader is a player, also system rent fees for owning the property), and middlemen fees. There will be no Auction House. Rather, raiders will have the strongly incentived option to sell their unneeded drops, farmers sell their farmed goods, to brokers - middlemen - who in turn sell to players who make a full time living selling in the central town square, etc. Where possible these economic functions are handled purely within the guild (guild brokers and mechants and farmers). Solo players and members of non-elite guilds will have a more expensive life, in general.
u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (13 hours later)
taxes (faction and guild taxes - the faction leader is a player)
If the tax revenue goes to actual players instead of vanishing into the ether (the way WoW's auction house tax does for instance) then it won't really help in any way to prevent inflation. The moment the guild/faction leaders purchase something from the player driven market it's all out there again.
Also, what role exactly will NPCs play in your world and how much will they be people vs being automatons that look like people?
u/None [+4] (2 hours later)
[deleted]
u/Bowbreaker [+3] Solitary Locust (13 hours later)
The future probably has incorporated women into the hardcore gaming crowd to a greater degree, but there could still be a wide demographic split and I'd love to see how "white knights" and competition for relationships would affect things.
More importantly, how many people will actually be playing their real life gender? In WoW for instance I know that it is much more common for a man to play a female character than for a woman to play a male one. Both happen though and they usually don't reflect the player's real life sexuality in any way.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+3] Champion of Justice and Reason (19 hours later)
- what about virtual old age? That could definitely cause people to be more reckless instead of slow grinding.
u/SnowGN [+2] (2 hours later)
Yeah, I thought for a while about Endbringer-type enemies, as a way to force the lowbie players/cowards into taking action, but I don't think it's for the best. Awesome as the Endbringers are as a story mechanic, I don't think they are a rational solution to the setting's flaws and they would introduce some of their own. How would the people who stay in the Town of Beginnings be motivated by an Endbringer showing up? They'd just die or flee - they couldn't contribute to such a fight. Attrition on the front lines will be bad enough without putting in place unbeatable enemies. Motivation to force people to raid can be put in place by other ways.
Also, the Endbringers aren't characters so much as they are forces of nature. It's probably best to focus on purely human opponents and motivations.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+6] Godric Gryffindor (13 hours later)
The lower-level cities can just fade away... You have to move up.
u/SnowGN [+5] (14 hours later)
Too arbitrary and non-genre-compliant. It's natural and expected for only a certain significant minority of MMO players to be front-line raiders. And predictably removing the starting town/towns on higher levels would play havoc with the economy/housing market. There may be merit in having the city move up with raiding progression, but would have to think further on it.
There is definitely too much safety for the lowbie players, though...
Hm. Right now I'm thinking of what it would be like to have a/the starting town be a safe zone for several months to a year, but then a boss is kited (intentionally or unintentionally) to a faction city and due to mechanics becomes invincible there. I'm imagining what would happen if you had a Doom Lord Kazzak equivalent be kited to a faction capital, with no GM intervention. The city would have to be abandoned...
I'm not quite willing to go full on Endbringer. But this could work. The Endbringers were in any case a mechanic that operated over the course of decades. Only one or two Endbringer-caliber acts of destruction on the playerbase would be needed in the 1-2 year timeframe I have in mind for this story.
For reference - Doom Lord Kazzak was an open world boss in Warcraft that would heal whenever it killed a player or NPC, even ones that weren't in combat with it. If it wasn't killed within 5 minutes, it would also begin continuously spamming a massive radial AOE attack. It was kited to a faction capital and literally broke the city...there is potential in this.
u/alexanderwales [+4] Time flies like an arrow (16 hours later)
If we use World of Warcraft as our example, starting zones become ghost towns through natural progression of the world anyway. So long as there's some incentive for it to happen, elite raiders will trivialize content for lowbies simply by virtue of being able to come in, party up, and blow through everything. Back when I played this was fairly common, not just with elite raiders helping their real life friends, but also with smaller guilds trying to recruit new members. There's little risk involved for either party; the lowbie gets powered up in a hurry and the elite raider is at virtually no risk of death.
As for alternate incentives you might be able to use, if you think you need them, a raider needs support personnel, but he might benefit from those support personnel being higher leveled or with better attributes. I believe at one point World of Warcraft tied secondary skills (fishing, cooking, enchanting) to character level, though I have no idea whether that's still the case.
(I also think there's a certain level of narrative drama available in a ridiculously powerful guy in Tier 15 armor blasting his way through a dungeon for a herd of lowbies.)
u/RatemirTheRed [+4] (a day later)
The one thing I would really want to see with loner protagonist similar to Kirito is to make him lose because of lack of cooperation.
That is, present a weak, inexperienced character (let's call him Klein), hilariously incompetent but with decent management skills. The initial perception of 'Klein the comedy character' will gradually turn into 'Klein the guild master/strategist excelling at leading people towards the common goal'. But still being horrible at direct combat.
Will Kirito detest Klein as a 'coward who can't fight for himself'? Will he later realise that, perhaps, if he joined Klein earlier, he could have saved more people? Will Kirito resent Klein for that?
u/SnowGN [+2] (a day later)
Yeah thanks to this thread I'm for sure doing that.
u/RMcD94 [+3] (14 hours later)
People have mentioned log horizon but its not without its flaws. I wrote a number of stream of consciousness forum posts about it which I could link if you're interested I have before on this subreddit. Still better than sao though
u/SnowGN [+2] (14 hours later)
There are very good, sequel-related reasons why I'm not willing to go with a LH-type respawn system. Also, a theme I want to push in this world is the bridging of the reality and the virtual. Immersion and suspension of disbelief in this world is supposed to be nearly perfect. LH was too 'gamey' for what I want to make.
That being said, I've only watched the first two episodes of LH. I really should watch it, if only to see if there are any ideas I can use and to be able to intelligently debate with the show's fans. But - yeah, link your post, I'm curious about what you wrote.
u/RMcD94 [+2] (14 hours later)
Yeah that's a fair enough reason though Log Horizon spoilers does not end up with death being ignored. If you haven't seen it I don't think my comments will be that intelligible.
On my phone at the moment but here's where I linked the post it was looking at log horizon if I was in charge of directing it and there are more subcomments.
https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3fj2e1/aldnoah_zero_rationalist_mech_anime/cu2t8r9
I will clarify again that these were spur of the emotion posts though I'm not so unhappy with them that I'm not sharing them.
u/SnowGN [+2] (14 hours later)
Yeah I know about the loss of memory of LH-respawning. That's something I absolutely don't want to deal with as a writer. If I learned anything from reading HPMOR, it's that messing with mental magics and memory distortions=shenanigans.
I'll respond again when I finish reading your post.
u/MugaSofer [+2] (18 hours later)
Floating castle setting possibilities:
A Hogwarts-like setting where the higher-level enemies are there in the halls, but only care about level-appropriate prey. Occasionally a "major" "villain" "attacks" in a free-for-all crossover event where everyone can help kill minions and the greatest players get to enjoy teaming up against the Big Bad.
The castle is neutral ground; you can only fight training dummies in the designated combat areas. There are "bridges" to other floating locations of varying difficulty, clearly labelled, and possibly requiring the entrant to be of appropriate level (a challenge to a skilled, underleveled protagonist who punches above their weight class.)
There are 100 floors to clear and 100 bosses. Bosses on the ground floors protect players. Bosses on the higher floors attack players; each is more fiendishly difficult than the last. Bosses below ground are weak and ineffectual, and the most ruthless players reign as kings. (EVE Online version.)
There are no posted difficulty settings and no explanations. Players make maps of the explored portions of the unfathomable-large castle, marking areas where no-one has returned, or which contain valuable resources, while others plot to exploit secrets they've discovered. Some use flying machines to travel quickly around the impossibly-small exterior. (Minecraft version.)
There are no enemies. Players construct dungeons filled with fiendish traps and empower themselves with insanely broken magic items. Low-level players must find a patron to survive, in exchange for promises to repay them later. (Ironfell version.)
The castle is under siege from flying demons. The players must specialize and cooperate in order to defeat the ever-more-powerful waves of enemies, using limited tools to enforce compliance. (Social experiment version.)
Fire melts metal. Metal smashes stone. Stone endures/extinguishes fire. The metagame constantly shifts between the pyro/ferro/terra-kinesis being dominant, as players reshape the structure around them in complex duels. (Or some other triad - perhaps archers defeat pikes defeat armoured knights defeat archers.) Weak players jump on board with the powerful faction only to find the tides turn before they've built up enough strength, while the most powerful have amassed enough that even their vulnerable element needs a master to penetrate their defence.
u/LesserWrong [+1] (22 hours later)
Have you read all the SAO light novels and stories in the Aincrad Arc? I'd do that first.
u/SnowGN [+2] (a day later)
Yes.
u/LesserWrong [+2] (a day later)
Ah good. All the various side stories and penetrative novels paint a much different picture of the setting and game itself than what the show gives.
u/whywhisperwhy [+1] (18 days later)
Would you be willing to sketch out the main differences between the anime and the light novels? The show seemed to skip about sometimes and had logic gaps, I'm curious how much of that was due to being adapted.
u/ancientcampus [+1] juggling kittens (22 days later)
SAO gets a lot of flack for "It could have been better". The way I see the anime, it did an excellent job at telling an excellent story in 15 episodes, then ended. (And then I simply ignore everything after the first season of the show.) It was very much character-focused, and did a great job showing the emotional aspects of a death game, and the domestic aspects of what it meant to live there. You have shops, you have schools, you have crime, you have power-hungry leaders, you have old fogies who love to fish, you have romance, and if you're really lucky, maybe something more.
So yes, you could stretch the Aincrad arc into a show spanning several years, and there'd be a lot to explore. Personally, I wish they did too. But as a 15-episode story, that wasn't its purpose, and they did a great job showing something new every episode.