slenderman1942
Jungle Tyrant
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despite how it wouldn't be possible, I think it would be really cool if his title allowed him to upload map data in the form of UBW
Fate/Revelation Online
- Thread starter daniel_gudman
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From what I understand, Kayaba gives out titles as part of his encouragement to advance the magecraft system. Mainly because, without titles, Cardinal would nerf their (Shirou and Illya's) magecraft to maintain relative balance - and this is something Kayaba doesn't want, as they represent a development of the SAO proto-thaumaturgy engine in the direction of the real world's own principles of magic and magecraft (alchemy, conceptual magecraft and reality marbles).
Essentially, the cardinal auto-balance system, without titles, would work directly against the evolving thaumaturgy-mimicking engine. As Kayaba's goal is not a "fair and balanced game" but instead an accurate model of real-world physics and metaphysics, he hands out titles to players who develop their magecraft in ways that help the metaphysics engine adapt towards its "true" end result, but would result in nerfbatting from Cardinal, or perhaps he would also hand them out where progressing further in a specific field would be unintuitive if not for a title, to encourage a specific field of study.
tl;dr, Kayaba will give titles to those creating [Unique Spells] and making novel developments, as those advance the thaumaturgy engine.
Thus, by my reckoning, the people most likely to receive a title (and thus, those likely to receive a title soon-ish) are, in order: That one dude from LC, Argo and Kirito. There are undoubtedly others who fit the criteria I used better, that I simply can't think of right now, but others might be able to point those out. These people are exploring parts of the thaumaturgy system that others aren't, at least not fully, and thus would seem to be the most likely to acquire a title, based on the fact that they are doing something novel, that advances the metaphysics engine, while perhaps damaging the balance of the game.
First, That One Guy From Laughing Coffin, which I am leaving deliberately non-specific, as it kinda applies to all of them, are very likely to get a title in my mind as they have done three things that we know others haven't, things which could be construed into title-worthy efforts. First, from one of the first LC interludes, we know that Johnny Black was one of the first to experiment on what can and can't be reinforced, creating the [Unique Spell], [Extend Poison] - notably, this is a [Unique Spell], not an [Extra Spell], so at least at that time, he was the only one to have it. Obviously, Johnny, from nearly the very beginning, was experimenting with magecraft in ways that others weren't, ways the system didn't anticipate, which means he might stumble into a title just by advancing his magecraft. Second, we have PoH, who grasped something very, very important - the game's engine respects thaumaturgy. His cursor-colour illusion is a one way ticket to a whole lineage of unique spells that test the engine. The depth of field of explorable paths that you can take once you realise that the game respects thaumaturgy is ridiculous and most likely lead, in part, to LC experiments with summoning. Which constitute my third point - LC made the engine pause, momentarily, through their summoning. This was something that came so far out of left field that the thaumaturgy engine stalled while it tried to work out a solution. LC is making waves, magecraft-wise, as they are trying new things, hunting for exploits, thinking outside the box and so forth. Someone from LC is going to come out with a title, just as a matter of time, the question is how long will we have to wait, and how many of their upper leadership will get one.
Candidate number two is Argo, and this is where my arguments get a little shaky - Argo needs different things of magecraft than other players, and unlike many of the other front liners, those needs do not flow in the direction of "moar dps", because, as an info-broker, she has different goals she wants to achieve compared to front-liners players. Furthermore, she has Shirou as an instructor, and has extensive access to the builds and information of other players. If Argo decides that a certain effect would let her get tons of money from her clients, she'll probably try to work it out, with Shirou's help. Argo I think, might receive a title if she takes Shirou's [Nerve Circuit] spell and goes ham with it, progressing further along the [Form Temporary Crest] metamagic path, maybe pioneering her own form of Vancian casting. Alternatively, she might puzzle out divination, and gain access to the "code" of the "world", and start interacting with "the system", or Cardinal!Gaia/Alaya. If we set certain bars (proper divination, understanding circuits, etc.) as title-worthy, many of those are within Argo's reach.
Finally, and least likely for titling, is Kirito - Kirito is creating many unique advancements and playing around with the thaumaturgy system a lot, and would be higher up on this list if not for one reason - he uses Isopsephy, and as Kayaba's own philosophy, Kayaba could just as easily integrate all of of what Kirito has done himself, if he hasn't already. Kirito isn't going to get a title for testing the engine, as Kayaba has certainly already tested the engine's ability to emulate numerological principles extensively - thus Kirito has to go one step further and use them to break the game balance - when Kayaba has likely already anticipated many of the ways it could be done and accounted for them.
EDIT: By the whole "unique developments" logic almost all other members of the BSM are potential title-holders, to one degree or another.
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I'm pretty sure that wasn't going to happen. It was one of the possible resolutions of the imbalance, but the whole magic system is an imbalance and Cardinal has not once done any rebalancing in regards to it. Plus Cardinal can't nerf the real skills from the players, and that was what was the most game breaking with Shirou. What it would've done (and what everybody was really concerned about) is let Shirou and Ilya's performance influence the Player Skill Curve, thereby making the whole game harder.
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Eh, the announcement specifically said "Exlcuded from automatic game balancing by [Cardinal]" - while a fake-out on Kayaba's part is not impossible, I do think that there is at least one balancing system to nerf the skills/spells of players, hidden somewhere. While it might have been a little white-lie in there to make players come to the right kind of conclusion from the wrong question, I don't think it was. And remember, Cardinal could very well prevent Shirou from using his external skills - simply refuse to actuate any magecraft that draws on UBW. Remember, they aren't really doing magecraft "IRL", as one might say, as if they were, people would have picked up on the random body-temperature spikes and the like, as well as any physiological responses to doing magecraft in excess of ones limits - they are only doing magecraft in the context of the game-world. Cardinal could prevent Shirou from using [Trigger: On] by standing in between Shirou and his in-game circuits (I'm not saying blocking him from his RM, which is another question altogether) - which are not quite his real circuits. Shirou is connected to his in-game circuits by Cardinal, not by virtue of them being his literal actual circuits. Cardinal could block the use of circuits in conjunction with UBW, if it has any way of detecting when he draws on it, which I believe it does. As we can see from players forming the basis of monsters' magic circuits, Cardinal can control the circuits of players.
Wether it would have elected to do this over just shifting the difficulty curve is debatable, and one thing we cannot assert without input from the author. The point is, Cardinal can fuck around with players' magecraft, and it has a different core intent (fair and balanced game) than Kayaba wants from the evolving metaphysics-engine (an accurate model of magecraft et al.). Without titles, I could see these two processes acting against one another - where the metaphysics engine happily integrates something like Sacchi's MEoDP (don't worry about it, just an example) for the purpose of something new to play with, Cardinal auto-balancing goes "wtf no", and tries to deal with this ridiculous game-breaker. Thus, that a title excludes you from autobalancing makes sense - Kayaba wants what you're introducing into the metaphysics engine more than he wants game-balance. Perhaps there is literally no balancing at all, but there has to be, at least in some form, even just as a necessary part of how the Thaumaturgy engine adapts to new spells that players create, or Cardinal develops new procedural content.
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Balancing around thaumaturgy is prolly done by fiddling with numbers for magic resistance and modifiers to damage taken on mobs.
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I'm not sure why you think that Illya would have overmuch choice in the matter. Care to explain why you think that she would?
She's already demonstrated that she can absolutely contest Cardinal's control over her Circuits - reread the first few chapters, I forget exactly where it is.
Also, the nature of magecraft is that any use of magecraft is real. Or rather, the "real world" that we live in isn't actually any more real than Aincrad - we live in our own little self-sustaining reality bubble, the Common Sense of Man, and project magecraft into it. Cardinal can fiddle with that to some extent, and a lot of the "strain" is taken by the fact that Aincrad is a nascent World and so is a valid target for magecraft in itself, but ultimately cutting off a magus from their magecraft is a whole hell of a lot of bother, never mind someone who seems to have their own personal Foundation like Shirou.
I'll grant you that Cardinal does, empirically, seem to be enacting some sort of spiritual interference, so it's not completely impossible to trick a magus into thinking he's casting when he's not - but actually preventing a cast if they really know what they're doing and are really determined to do it?
... Not by that route. They are bound by a contract, but that contract will have terms and those terms will have had to be ones that sounded reasonable when, say, Grimlock read the EULA (because of course he did), so they're going to be relatively blunt and last-resort things like "don't break the system or escape". Cardinal isn't going to be able to do fine-tuned fiddling with even Grimlock's spellcasting - never mind Shirou's.
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The real thing here, I think, derives from how a magus has circuits in their soul and in their body - Cardinal can, evidently, replicate the bodily half of a magic circuit, but it draws on the "actual" spiritual half of a circuit (replicating the spiritual half of a circuit would constitute, at least an Imperfect Third True Magic) that Kayaba claims is almost always present, even if the "subroutine" for bodily expression is never called. If Cardinal can link the soul half of the hardware of a magus to a "fake" set of bodily circuits, then it can likely sever that same connection, at which point, anyone without magic circuits in the real world is outta luck, and anyone with magic circuits in the real world is going to be casting from those alone, if they can become aware of them through the game's interference - which is an interesting question itself: could a magus with their mind in the game use their real world circuits to affect the game? An LD shows that Shirou can, while in the game, possibly use his real circuits to affect the real world, but how would he fare with using them to affect the inside of the game?
I'll have to go re-read to find that bit about opposing cardinal's control, and make sure its not just a line about system assist.
Because Illya can bust out of Kayaba's world if she so desired? If Kayaba's creation could stop her from escaping, then that, quite obviously, wouldn't be an issue.
The big one is that Kayaba considers "Ilya decides she doesn't want to play nice anymore" an actual threat to his system, and while he's generally confident in his contract he's not so confident that he isn't willing to cut a deal to avoid the problem altogether. So Ilya at least has the ability to do real magecraft in the system, and she's only different from other magi in a quantitative way, really - she has boatloads more power and, yes, Wishcraft, but ultimately she's an orthodox magus in the way she casts.
As far as affecting the inside of the game... well, see physical interference. There's no particular reason to believe that Cardinal is more powerful than Gaia in its area of operation even given its drastically smaller domain, and the best Gaia can do is force existential attrition on things (to be paid for with prana.) Which is nasty, to be sure, but it's not an instant "nope" most of the time. So I'd expect the inside of Aincrad to be much the same - forcing an inconsistency with the programmed Laws of Aincrad requires upkeep in the form of prana, or else they cease functioning, magnitude of prana costs proportional to the degree of the change. Something like Shirou's magic, that really just performs an unauthorized instantiation of a valid object and then leaves it alone, is probably relatively cheap (though Aincrad can't actually bear the weight of a Noble Phantasm yet...).
Now, an interesting thought experiment is a magus using magecraft in canon, non-magus-created Aincrad. Shirou's magic is still cheap, because again it's just instantiating valid swords, but, say, physical interference to create a fireball would not be, being not only an invalid object created through an invalid operation but also something that goes entirely against Aincrad's themes as "a world of swords."
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Um, no? Kayaba says that the contract that binds the players to Aincrad is at the level of a Command Seal, and Illya falls a little short of that. His literal response to her asking "why can't I just leave" is that she'd be fighting a command seal, in essence.
Your points are valid, but I'm on the fence of wether or not Kayaba is truly afraid of Illya in that context, and how much is him manipulating her into doing what he wants, letting him direct the playerbase how he wants. And there is the element of uncertainty - Kayaba might be 99% sure that everything will work exactly how he wants, but that infinitesimal chance of failure makes it not worth it, as he can't really try again.
In addition, I think Wishcraft is exactly why Kayaba is afraid of her, at least a little, as she doesn't need to know what she's doing to succeed, only what she wants, which might be where a weakness of his broadcast spiritual interference comes into play. If any other Magus would have to know SAO, Cardinal and Aincrad perfectly to mess around with Kayaba, Illya doesn't have to know, she just has to fling prana until it sticks.
I feel that this would be a factor that comes into play, but that it wouldn't be one of great magnitude - such an Aincrad has no spiritual presence beyond what is generated as a consequence of the ten thousand players and countless developing AIs inhabiting it.
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Right, but the point stands that she's capable of resistance - whether or not she'd succeed is irrelevant, the point is that spending prana and casting spells is an option she has. It's the difference between having your legs tied up and having no legs in the first place 
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Right, but the point stands that she's capable of resistance - whether or not she'd succeed is irrelevant, the point is that spending prana and casting spells is an option she has. It's the difference between having your legs tied up and having no legs in the first place
True, true, but we've gotten a little off the initial track - that Cardinal could make it an absolute pain in the arse to cast spells it doesn't want you to - whether it inflates the prana of gamebreaking effects hilariously, or dicks around with system assist and interface stuff, disabling access to circuits and the like - that Cardinal can, almost certainly, mess with the magecraft of players on an individual level as part of an auto-balancing effect.
There is explicitly auto-balancing to account for magical development on the global scale, hence why the game, post thaumaturgy patch, remains challenging for players not named Emiya Shirou as they develop their magecraft and I think that Cardinal, as an adaptive AI, might have one day come to the conclusion that it was better for the purpose of balance to hamstring one player - it can come to conclusions like that, and while Kayaba might have headed things off a little early with the titles, the fact of the matter is that I think he did need to head them off.
As we have discussed, Cardinal has ways to hamper an individual caster whether they be a magus or not, and I believe that it is spontaneous enough to come to the same conclusions that the players did about balancing. Thus, individual auto-balancing is a thing that non-titled players might have to worry about with their magecraft, and conversely, Cardinal doesn't oppose the developments of titled players in terms of balance at all.
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.. yes, and what he says just few sentences later?
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Kayaba is unsure of victory. Kayaba is in waaay too deep to risk the whole SAO enterprise falling apart. Neither of these things mean that Illya could escape, just that Kayaba isn't certain that she couldn't. Illya is not explicitly capable of escaping Aincrad, just (from Kayaba's perspective) not definitely incapable.
EDIT: Kayaba is not perfect, he cannot anticipate everything - if, for example, it is wholly impossible for Illya to escape, that doesn't mean Kayaba knows that, and thus he will not act with that attitude. Kayaba is pretty sure Illya can't escape. He is not sure, and this Kayaba definitely comes across to me as the sort who would see Success < 100% and say "point one is not zero".
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Except they do. Kayaba is not certain that her chances are zero, which is an entire point of that exchange. Ergo, he can't just roll over her, ergo Cardinal can't just roll over her by taking away her magic.
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Kayaba has likely tested against having Magi trapped inside and attempting to escape - there is no way he would not be more stringent with player screening if he thought he was stuffed the moment a Magus was inside - what he specifically calls out there is Illya's Einzbern Magecraft (wishcraft), which he cannot pre-test for, which means that he may very well have a way of rolling over any other magus, he just does not, and cannot obtain, any idea of wether it would work on her. Wishcraft is a helluva thing, that does neatly fit into the bracket of things that you don't really know how to prepare against.
This is like playing pokemon without knowing your type-chart - if you are super- or even normally effective, you win, but otherwise you're fucked. Problem two, there are an arbitrary number of "types" that you cannot test before hand - how do you test your number type attack against the resistances of a wish type boss beforehand when they are the only thing with it you could encounter? Maybe its straight up immune to your attacks and says fuck you? Kayaba has a way of dealing with magi, I'm sure, what even Kayaba is unsure of is its efficacy in her specific case.
Kayaba has a way of sealing the magecraft of players, so lets assume he can seal the magecraft of magus-players that don't have wishcraft or a reality marble. Kayaba hasn't exactly tested against these two, in our hypothetical, so he doesn't know if it'd fail. The risk isn't worth it for him.
Just because Kayaba does not know for certain he would win, does not mean he wouldn't win in the end.
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Which is completely irrelevant to argument at hand. Fact that he is unsure proves that he has no way to restrict her magic, which, once again, translates to Cardinal being unable to do the same. Like, what's she supposed to do without being able to cast? Use her mad Einzbern hacking skills? If he could reliably shut down her magic with no resistance on her part, he would casually win any possible conformation they may end up having. If she can resist attempts to shut down her magic, then she can do the same against Cardinal.
Now, either actually address my actually argument or stop responding with asinine Pokemon analogies. I've got xp to farm.
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No.
This proves that if Kayaba is, in fact, in possession of a way to seal her magecraft, he is unsure if it would work. That is not the same thing as unable to do it.
Please read things nice and carefully: He can't reliably shut down her magecraft, as he hasn't tried, he hasn't tested, there is literally nothing reliable about his method when it comes to her. Reliable would mean having tested it multiple times and seen if it reliably succeeded, something he hasn't even tried once. He has no reliable way to shut down her magic because he can't test it for reliability - that does not mean that his untested method would not work against her.
Kayaba lacks surety of his victory, not necessarily the ability to succeed.
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And why would Kayaba's/Cardinal's ability to restrict magecraft be unreliable, given host of souls they can test it on? Given that he has completely analyzed Illya and her abilities?
You are making up silly premise to get away from the most obvious conclusion - Illya is too powerful to be easily bested, which harkens back to our initial disagreement, which is to say Illya not allowing Cardinal to nerf her.
You are making up silly premise to get away from the most obvious conclusion - Illya is too powerful to be easily bested, which harkens back to our initial disagreement, which is to say Illya not allowing Cardinal to nerf her.
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Because he lacks a host of souls that have Wishcraft, Illya's bullshit prana capacity, and the skill of a trained magus? Because in whatever simulations or divination hypotheticals he ran, he only won most of time? Because he has likely no more "completely analysed Illya and her abilities" any more than he has analysed the entirety of UBW? I'm curious as to where you pulled the "Kayaba is all-knowing" thing from.
And can you stop with your "obvious conclusion" bullshit? I'm not saying that for definite, Kayaba beats Illya, if you can comprehend that - I'm saying that Kayaba likely has a way to seal the magecraft of magi that don't run around with protagonist-power, that he has not tested on those with protag-power, because of the obvious, and is unwilling to risk his entire master plan going to shit if it fails? Regardless of wether or not Kayaba can actually disable Illya, it is a far more logical premise that something renders his method of messing with magus-players imperfect than to suggest he has no method of doing so at all.
I don't care, I don't give one single flying fuck about wether or not Cardinal or Kayaba could actually nerf Illya without her consent, the fact remains that Illya was not a planned element of his experiment. He made his preparations with something else in mind as his likely baseline. Saying "Illya wouldn't let it happen" requires we know exactly what the interaction here is, which is something neither you or I can do - possibly even the author can;t because he never bothered to decide on it becasue it is a non-issue.
You are assuming that Illya wins by default, I am saying that she doesn't win by default, because the situation is not an absolute. Kayaba isn't sure that he would win, but that doesn't mean Illya could no-sell his attempts, just that there is a chance she could, or even a chance she could resist enough to endanger his experiment. There is little to suggest that Illya could completely stop Cardinal from nerfing her, but on the other hand there is a dearth of evidence that suggests Cardinal would definitely win.
Can you understand that the situation is not an absolute and that there is allowed to be uncertainty in things?
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daniel_gudman
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Ilya can't escape from SAO.
Comparing Ilya with where I have Kayaba in terms of ability, then Ilya could probably smash her way out of his Spirit Trap.
But Kayaba could definately fry her brain before she could complete her escape. His Instant Death attack is potent and quick.
So from Kayaba's perspective, Ilya isn't really a serious problem.
Rin is.
For Kayaba, worst case is that he has to kill Ilya for getting too uppity.
And then Rin calls down the Clocktower on him as retaliation.
That's the particular scenario that Kayaba is trying to avoid. From his perspective the one he has to appease is Rin, not Ilya.
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BTW I'm out of town right now without access to my drafts, so I've seen the error catches, but I won't be able to add them until next weekend.
Comparing Ilya with where I have Kayaba in terms of ability, then Ilya could probably smash her way out of his Spirit Trap.
But Kayaba could definately fry her brain before she could complete her escape. His Instant Death attack is potent and quick.
So from Kayaba's perspective, Ilya isn't really a serious problem.
Rin is.
For Kayaba, worst case is that he has to kill Ilya for getting too uppity.
And then Rin calls down the Clocktower on him as retaliation.
That's the particular scenario that Kayaba is trying to avoid. From his perspective the one he has to appease is Rin, not Ilya.
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BTW I'm out of town right now without access to my drafts, so I've seen the error catches, but I won't be able to add them until next weekend.
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