Dragon Quest Online (SAO/Worm)

[Malaquez]

Reducing it from the freak out is big, but reducing it from the early attempts to organize are less so.

The two biggest things I can think of early on would be helping with that guide for newbies that Argo is going to start putting out, if we can use Golems to scout areas where good materials or enemies to farm are; and then stopping the first push against the floor boss from ending in a lot of deaths. We should at least be able to throw meat shields there, and maybe we could even stop that one duel from going down, since it probably made a lot of people less likely to help out there?

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I guess we should find Argo soon-ish.

 

[CaesriusPolybius]

It's supposed to go in the same order as the rhyme they use to teach the classifications, but I can never remember it. So maybe?

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Wouldn't it be based on which was modifying which? So, say, a Tinker Thinker would be a Thinker who's thinker abilities are optimized for tinkertech(like Dragon), while a Thinker tinker would be a Tinker who's creations grant whoever uses them a potential Thinker Rating(like Cranial)?

 

[Zanorin]

[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Explain to Yui that AIs aren't real, and are nothing more than than impossible dreams proposed by unrealistic sci-fi. As such, there is no way Cardinal could be an AI, and it must really be some guy sitting at a terminal. The lack of a response probably just means he's out to lunch or getting coffee or some such. Everything will be fine once he gets back.
--[X][Update Action] Having no doubt successfully reassured Yui, while at the same time throwing her and anyone else listening off the trail of finding out your real nature due to your flawless deception, take a moment to bask in success, then panic internally.
---[X][Update Action] No wait, panicking is stupid. Everything is probably fine. Instead just take things in stride and use the situation to experience life with a body. I mean food, am I right? After all, what could possibly go wrong?

 

[Lazurman]

[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Maybe you'll just wait until that event and you'll be able to log out after that?

 

[Nixeu]

True. I'm leaning towards helping Yui, because IMO reducing the death toll seems too big of a task too soon. Though, if it helps Yui and she specifically asks us too, then I'm okay with that.

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The death-toll is a major reason she goes nuts, yes.

Yeah, the golems sound pretty damn cool. Also plays well with the way Dragon processes stuff here.
Though I would also add training Search. It's basically Observe from The Gamer.

EDIT: And Sense, too. If we're gonna go down the golem route and be more control-orientated, being aware of our surroundings sounds great.

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Search and Sense are very useful skills. I'm still trying to figure out how Dragon should equip herself, though. As useful as the golems are, we need to be able to protect ourselves as well. I can't decide if we should go heavy armor, high HP or go with light armor and dodge attacks.

Reducing it from the freak out is big, but reducing it from the early attempts to organize are less so.

The two biggest things I can think of early on would be helping with that guide for newbies that Argo is going to start putting out, if we can use Golems to scout areas where good materials or enemies to farm are; and then stopping the first push against the floor boss from ending in a lot of deaths. We should at least be able to throw meat shields there, and maybe we could even stop that one duel from going down, since it probably made a lot of people less likely to help out there?

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That could actually be a very good idea, though I think we'd have to seriously focus on grinding Golem Construction levels to pull off helping Argo. Scouting requires relatively independent golems, possibly with some way of recording info, which I don't think we have yet. But yeah, Golems as meat-shields for boss-fights should seriously reduce causualities.

I think we're going to want to start making connections with the merchant players early on, once things settle down a bit, since making Golems is almost certainly going to require materials. Possibly with the crafters in-general, since they might be able to help design or create parts we can use to make golems. I think getting some Blacksmithing levels might be a good idea too. If we can farm mob drops with golems, that will be really helpful to the merchants and crafters, and the more and better equipment people have access to, the fewer deaths there are going to be. It also makes the PKers more powerful, but hey, that's life for yah. They're likely to be a threat no matter what we do, really.

 

[Datcord]

[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Maybe you'll just wait until that event and you'll be able to log out after that?


[X][Update Action] There's no such thing as bug-free code.
-[X][Update Action] File a bug report about the lack of bug reports. Maybe find some other kind of feedback form to submit? Seriously, you don't care if this game is run by the best AI in all of existence, this just seems arrogant beyond belief. Nothing ever works perfectly on the first time, and even if Cardinal catches bugs and fixes them on the fly, why would you trust it to catch every single bug on its own, but not let it look at user-submitted issues? Actually, screening user feedback and running them through Cardinal would probably be an excellent way to develop game balance, now that you think about it, and - [tinker rambling intensifies]

And I want you all to know that it physically PAINED me not to suggest the many, many possible things Dragon should experience with her "real body" at this point.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think being in the middle of a death-game would probably mean that RP'ing is contraindicated.

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And comments like that aren't helping my resolve! (It's fully interactive! FULLY. INTERACTIVE.)

 

[NemoMarx]

And I want you all to know that it physically PAINED me not to suggest the many, many possible things Dragon should experience with her "real body" at this point.

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We got food, I bet Dragon would enjoy like some sort of sport maybe? I'm surprised that never seemed to become a thing in SAO outside of fishing. Even minor stuff like feeling the warmth of the (admittedly fake) sun is probably going to be nice.

We should consider making a comprehensive list and trying them all out in order, bread-chan style. Dragon's a pretty analytical person, yeah?

(edit: wait, wasn't there a whole sideplot later about working out how to replicate real foods using the in game ingredients because SAO didn't really have a full stock of foods and stuff?

How does everyone feel about food science?)

 

[Nixeu]

And I want you all to know that it physically PAINED me not to suggest the many, many possible things Dragon should experience with her "real body" at this point.

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...I'm going to assume you don't mean with Yui. Also, yeah, of course you would, Datcord. In the last Worm quest Vebyast ran you RP'd an AI who was constantly hitting on Dragon. I do believe I started to suffer from medium-grade hypoxia from all the laughing I did because of your posts.

And comments like that aren't helping my resolve! (It's fully interactive! FULLY. INTERACTIVE.)

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Good, good. Let the double entendres flow through you.

We should consider making a comprehensive list and trying them all out in order, bread-chan style. Dragon's a pretty analytical person, yeah?

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If Datcord gets involved that list would be rated NC-17.

 

[Malaquez]

Search and Sense are very useful skills. I'm still trying to figure out how Dragon should equip herself, though. As useful as the golems are, we need to be able to protect ourselves as well. I can't decide if we should go heavy armor, high HP or go with light armor and dodge attacks.

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I was thinking going more of the light armour route. The battlefield changes pretty much constantly, and while going tank does make us better at taking hits, it also limits our range. We also don't know if there's a range limit to our control.

I think we're going to want to start making connections with the merchant players early on, once things settle down a bit, since making Golems is almost certainly going to require materials. Possibly with the crafters in-general, since they might be able to help design or create parts we can use to make golems. I think getting some Blacksmithing levels might be a good idea too. If we can farm mob drops with golems, that will be really helpful to the merchants and crafters, and the more and better equipment people have access to, the fewer deaths there are going to be. It also makes the PKers more powerful, but hey, that's life for yah. They're likely to be a threat no matter what we do, really.

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I actually thought that the skill would do the crafting for us; we just needed to provide the materials and mana. I guess we'll have to wait and see if it's expanded upon more.
Ah, good ol' @Datcord . I actually missed you and your...uh, giggly-ness after Prytaneum went on hiatus.
I can't wait for the next C&C.
Or do you call it something different here?

 

[Nixeu]

I was thinking going more of the light armour route. The battlefield changes pretty much constantly, and while going tank does make us better at taking hits, it also limits our range. We also don't know if there's a range limit to our control.

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Hm. Fair point, although I think we'll have to learn more about how golems work first. If there is a range penalty that puts a major damper on our ability to help Argo with the guide. It doesn't stop us, but it means we won't be able to cover anywhere near as much ground.

I actually thought that the skill would do the crafting for us; we just needed to provide the materials and mana. I guess we'll have to wait and see if it's expanded upon more.

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Magic wasn't really a thing in SAO. Or at least is a very minimal aspect of the game. There are crystals that have various semi-magical powers, and there are certain attack skills that are semi-magical, but flat-out, flinging fireballs spell-casting wasn't a thing in the original SAO. Whether or not that's going to be true here is a question I can't answer. It's possible that Vebyast has added spell-casting, but until we know for sure, I'm going to assume it isn't really a thing. As such, our golems are probably made purely via a crafting skill.

 

[Malaquez]

Hm. Fair point, although I think we'll have to learn more about how golems work first. If there is a range penalty that puts a major damper on our ability to help Argo with the guide. It doesn't stop us, but it means we won't be able to cover anywhere near as much ground.

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Never mind, I think the fluff text states it pretty clearly:

This skill lets you design, build, and animate golems that you can send forth to do your bidding. Well, sort of. They're kind of stupid right now. I suggest working on that.

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So we have to design, build then animate the golems ourselves.

Magic wasn't really a thing in SAO. Or at least is a very minimal aspect of the game. There are crystals that have various semi-magical powers, and there are certain attack skills that are semi-magical, but flat-out, flinging fireballs spell-casting wasn't a thing in the original SAO. Whether or not that's going to be true here is a question I can't answer. It's possible that Vebyast has added spell-casting, but until we know for sure, I'm going to assume it isn't really a thing. As such, our golems are probably made purely via a crafting skill

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Aw, no magic. Archery is still a thing right? We could go like the Kirito in my sig and use spears as arrows.
A good comparison would be the giant dude from DS3. Chucking giant spears at undead zombies all day, err day.

 

[Ehorin]

Originally SAO explicitly had no usable ranged options, there were low damage "picks" used for things like the Ragout Rabbit but not serious combat. There's been a few interesting character studies about why

 

[Nixeu]

So we have to design, build then animate the golems ourselves.

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Animate could mean non-magical methods, like adding a power source, but the skills in SAO are semi-magical, so maybe we animate them using certain tools or something.

Aw, no magic. Archery is still a thing right? We could go like the Kirito in my sig and use spears as arrows.
A good comparison would be the giant dude from DS3. Chucking giant spears at undead zombies all day, err day.

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It doesn't seem like bows are a thing, but you can throw weapons, though there might be limitations.

Originally SAO explicitly had no usable ranged options, there were low damage "picks" used for things like the Ragout Rabbit but not serious combat. There's been a few interesting character studies about why

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Main reason I can think of is that it increased the death-toll. Which, come to think of it, makes our Golem Construction skill somewhat suspect. Could be the AI fighting back against it's programming. Could be a glitch that we brought in with us. Could be a lot of things, really.

 

[Malaquez]

It doesn't seem like bows are a thing, but you can throw weapons, though there might be limitations.

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Y'know, looking at the skill tree, I believe it's possible that we could get golem armour way up the tree. See where Avatar, Complexity and Intelligence converge? I think that means we might be making homunculus soon, not just simple golems.

Off to sleep now. I'll think on it further.

 

[Nixeu]

Y'know, looking at the skill tree, I believe it's possible that we could get golem armour way up the tree. See where Avatar, Complexity and Intelligence converge? I think that means we might be making homunculus soon, not just simple golems.

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Not gonna lie, that would be pretty freaking awesome. I think if we really want to help Argo, we need to focus on increasing the number of Golems we can deploy (which is assumably what Pop: 1's branch is) and the complexity of the actions we can have them do, which would be Intellegence, Control, and maybe Complexity, from what I can tell. Personally, I think we should focus most of our effort on Golem Construction. It's a pretty cool skill and seems like it could be very useful, if potentially a bit expensive to train.

Off to sleep now. I'll think on it further.

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Good night.

 

[CaesriusPolybius]

It doesn't seem like bows are a thing, but you can throw weapons, though there might be limitations.

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There is a limitation; the same one that keeps the average player from running around, duel-wielding swords- there's no sword skills for thrown weapons, and non-SS attacks are reliant on your own ability to use the weapons. If you really knew what you're doing, you could be an utter terror, simply due to the ability to use wildly nonstandard attack styles and a lack of attack time cooldown(alongside Sword Skills when you were in desperate enough need to put up with the cooldown).

 

[Aklyon]

[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Maybe you'll just wait until that event and you'll be able to log out after that?


[X][Update Action] There's no such thing as bug-free code.
-[X][Update Action] File a bug report about the lack of bug reports. Maybe find some other kind of feedback form to submit? Seriously, you don't care if this game is run by the best AI in all of existence, this just seems arrogant beyond belief. Nothing ever works perfectly on the first time, and even if Cardinal catches bugs and fixes them on the fly, why would you trust it to catch every single bug on its own, but not let it look at user-submitted issues? Actually, screening user feedback and running them through Cardinal would probably be an excellent way to develop game balance, now that you think about it, and - [tinker rambling intensifies]

 

[Nixeu]

There is a limitation; the same one that keeps the average player from running around, duel-wielding swords- there's no sword skills for thrown weapons, and non-SS attacks are reliant on your own ability to use the weapons. If you really knew what you're doing, you could be an utter terror, simply due to the ability to use wildly nonstandard attack styles and a lack of attack time cooldown(alongside Sword Skills when you were in desperate enough need to put up with the cooldown).

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Huh. Interesting. So someone with a basis in martial arts could use that to some extent, for example. And you could theoretically hone that sort of skill while in the game, too.

Could this also allow us to build things like catapults, ballista, or steam-engines, assuming we had the appropriate knowledge? We should maybe try that at some point.

Oh, and @Datcord? The game censors mature content unless you go into options and select <<Moral Code Removal>>. Doing so also has the side-effect of increasing the amount of tactile data, so long as you don't have anything equipped. Just to let you know.

 

[CaesriusPolybius]

Huh. Interesting. So someone with a basis in martial arts could use that to some extent, for example. And you could theoretically hone that sort of skill while in the game, too.

Could this also allow us to build things like catapults, ballista, or steam-engines, assuming we had the appropriate knowledge? We should maybe try that at some point.

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For the former: theoretically, yes; however, Sword Skills are strong enough that pretty much no player is going to put their life on the line to try and learn something that might be helpful to have, and is usually less powerful than top-tier Sword Skills. Now, for an AI that could, theoretically, generate a complete, obtuse fighting style in a dedicated 24 hours*...

As for the latter, it is sadly unlikely that SAO's physics engine is complex enough to handle that sort of things。

*Yes, I am going to keep pushing this until we receive explicit confirmation that it won't work; because c'mon, double dps and obtuse fighting styles!

 

[Nixeu]

For the former: theoretically, yes; however, Sword Skills are strong enough that pretty much no player is going to put their life on the line to try and learn something that might be helpful to have, and is usually less powerful than top-tier Sword Skills. Now, for an AI that could, theoretically, generate a complete, obtuse fighting style in a dedicated 24 hours*...

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Sword Skills don't include ranged attacks. Also, I do hope we maintain some of our advantages over the regular mortals, mind-wise, but I suspect they're been reduced somewhat, though I don't think they're entirely gone.

As for the latter, it is sadly unlikely that SAO's physics engine is complex enough to handle that sort of things。

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The physics engine seems pretty complex to me, honestly. It might be worth a shot.

 

[the]

Well. I guess we're not here after the death-game aspect has already been established. I was kinda hoping we were, somehow. So we get to witness the mass-freak-out that follows that revelation. And Yui's subsequent descent into madness.

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Her entire job is to help people remain sane, that's why Cardinal kicked her out of the game system.

Spoiler: What could possibly go wrong?

[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Maybe you'll just wait until that event and you'll be able to log out after that?

[X][Update Action] There's no such thing as bug-free code.
-[X][Update Action] File a bug report about the lack of bug reports. Maybe find some other kind of feedback form to submit? Seriously, you don't care if this game is run by the best AI in all of existence, this just seems arrogant beyond belief. Nothing ever works perfectly on the first time, and even if Cardinal catches bugs and fixes them on the fly, why would you trust it to catch every single bug on its own, but not let it look at user-submitted issues? Actually, screening user feedback and running them through Cardinal would probably be an excellent way to develop game balance, now that you think about it, and - [tinker rambling intensifies]

 

[Nixeu]

Her entire job is to help people remain sane, that's why Cardinal kicked her out of the game system.

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Yeah, I know, I watched the show. Actually, my first exposure to SAO, in any medium, was the manga adaptation that roughly corresponds to the first season of the anime. When I told Alivaril this, his reaction was basically "WHY WOULD YOU READ THE MANGA!?!" Apparently it's considered the worst version. The anime is a lot better if you read the manga first, if only by comparison. I will avoid expressing any more opinions on the subject, since that horse has been beaten enough on this thread.

But yeah, we should try and support Yui by doing what we can to reduce causualities and improve people's lives here.

 

[AbZHz101]

There is a limitation; the same one that keeps the average player from running around, duel-wielding swords- there's no sword skills for thrown weapons, and non-SS attacks are reliant on your own ability to use the weapons. If you really knew what you're doing, you could be an utter terror, simply due to the ability to use wildly nonstandard attack styles and a lack of attack time cooldown(alongside Sword Skills when you were in desperate enough need to put up with the cooldown).

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I thought Kirito actually did use a ranged Skill at the very beginning. When he's explaining the game to Clien and how the Sword Skills work he picks up a rock, describes the skills in general and then hurls the thing like a major league pitcher. So there might be some ranged skills, if for no other reason than to make Knife Throwing viable.

 

[the]

But yeah, we should try and support Yui by doing what we can to reduce causualities and improve people's lives here.

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My point was HarleyQuinn!Yui, but yours is cool too!

 

[Ridiculously Average Guy]

[X][Update Action] Keep trying to get a response from Cardinal
-[X][Update Action] There's no such thing as bug-free code.
--[X][Update Action] Try to hack in.

Get that GM access mang.