Sword Art Online - Game Mechanics and Technology [for Novel Readers, with Spoilers]

[SagaraSouske]

And I can gag your mouth from behind before you can shout. Just think how you would Kidnap someone in RL and translate that into SAO.

As for the point of framing someone, if you intention was to frame someone in the first place, you design the duel and kill around getting the system message show up for enough people such that they will investigate and then check the monument. The duel message will most likely show (Type of Duel - to the death and not first strike, winner and loser). So people will know who killed who in town. Otherwise how do people find out about sleep PK in the first place?

[Clarste]

Well, it'd be pretty damned hard to get the message to appear in a public place without revealing yourself by dragging the bodies back and forth really quickly.

I was actually wondering myself how they found out about it, and came to the conclusion that they randomly caught someone in the middle of doing it. I don't see any other way to.

[Awrya]

Either someone just witnessed how a player moved a sleeping player's hand or people asked Heathcliff why players die due to decisive duel mode.
Of course he wouldn't simply give out the answer, but give hints like A Murder with players figuring the rest out after some testing.

About gagging and so, Kirito said the game was 'fair' and Heathcliff thought of many (if not all) possible scenarios. If you are harassed by someone and scream for help, it is quite likely the guards and/or NPCs will come to your help.
Besides, no green player would do something like that, if he is caught he will never find others to party with and orange/red players can't stay in the city long enough to pull it off.

[SagaraSouske]

Here is one possible scenarios.

You and your partner grab the target(sleeping player you want to frame), disable ethics code using his or her menu, rent a room with a street exit behind a building or some streets with barely any people passing by using that player's menu. Rent another room somewhere close and have a second player already gagged and bound in there. Use player 1 to kill player 2 just outside the player 1's room in the street when no one is around such that the message will show to people in the building and on the busier street on other side. Move player one into his own room then exit via windows and what not to go back to the room you operate from. When people come to investigate and they will only suspect the sleeping player because death occurred right outside of his room and his name show up on duel message as winner.

Sure, it takes planning on choosing the right location, time of day and getting to the target successfully. But with what the PKer has done in the LN, especially those from LC, they are certainly capable of pulling it off.

A pure collision system is not fair because it is open to abuse, exploit and even brute force methods. Players control their own avatar with their neural signal is fair and makes far more sense for most of what we read in the LN.

[Clarste]

Well, except for the extremely, absurdly suspicious part where the person being framed just went to sleep 5 seconds after executing a complicated premeditated murder, without even trying to hide himself.

Also, I'm not quite sure about your "image" of the scenario. Maybe I'm just picturing it incorrectly, but since the message appears between them and the person's arm is being controlled sloppily like a puppet, it seems to me that that no matter what you do the message is always going to appear exactly on top on the guy dragging around a sleeping body like a puppet. The only way to avoid that would be ranged attacks or delayed attacks (like the spear). And I doubt you could accurately throw with someone else's hand.

[SagaraSouske]

Not if you think no one noticed that you have killed.

I would think the message not only appears between the duel party but for everyone that is within a certain radius of distance as a pop up.

[Clarste]

That seems a bit weird, doesn't it? Why would the system want to spam you with info you probably don't care about? Duels by their nature are usually public events, and in a visceral VR setting like SAO it's easy to imagine people standing around and watching. So naturally there'd be one big message where everyone's looking.

And if everyone got personal messages, they'd be kind of useless for finding the culprit, wouldn't they? How would that help Kirito chase down a murderer immediately?

[Vocah]

The message of the duels outcome spawns exactly in the middle between duellants

also, why the hell do you make such a complicated scenario @SagaraSouske? If he has enough time to move players around (which would be impossible if he doesn't have a stretcher item or super high capacity) than he could simply kill them on the spot in duels. From my understanding you only get flagged a criminal when you attack someone. A duel is (normally) a setup between two players and should not flag you a criminal, even if the other player dies

[SagaraSouske]

First Strike Duel would be a public event, I doubt people make duel to the death a public event, even if it is between two consenting players. The fact that there is an option for Duel to the death is already strange.

But as for why people would care, I would care if there are duels going on that someone is killed, wouldn't you?

But we are getting side tracked and pigeon holed into this argument about sleeper duel. My original intention was to point out collision system do not make sense for SAO. There can be other examples outside of the town in the game world where that would be so as well, not necessary focusing on sleep PK in town. A system that allows other players to be able to forciblly control another player's action cannot be a fair system.

[Awrya]

Originally Posted by SagaraSouske

Here is one possible scenarios.

You and your partner grab the target(sleeping player you want to frame), disable ethics code using his or her menu, rent a room with a street exit behind a building or some streets with barely any people passing by using that player's menu. Rent another room somewhere close and have a second player already gagged and bound in there. Use player 1 to kill player 2 just outside the player 1's room in the street when no one is around such that the message will show to people in the building and on the busier street on other side. Move player one into his own room then exit via windows and what not to go back to the room you operate from. When people come to investigate and they will only suspect the sleeping player because death occurred right outside of his room and his name show up on duel message as winner.

1. Vol. 2 The Black Swordsman, only the player who rented the room can open (and likely close) the door (once again, likely windows). The killers could open the window and leave, but they can't close it. If players check there would be a loophole.


2.

"It'll appear in the middle of the duel participants. Or, if both sides are ten meters apart when the
victor's decided, there'll be two windows appearing at the closest point to them."

In your scenario they are extremely close when the duel concludes, so it'll just appear between them. When no one is around, no one will notice. Besides, a winner message doesn't mean someone died, people could think it was a [First Strike] duel.
Vol. 2 RNR, the time a player avatar disappears is 10 seconds (resurrection item Kirito got from Santa), the winner message will disappear after a few seconds as well. After 10 seconds there won't be a corpse left, so if no one witnessed the duel, which means seeing first hand how the duel took place, no one will know that someone died in a duel.

If they check on the monument, it'll say he died in a duel/his HP dropped to 0/etc, but since it was a duel it won't say it was a PK.

[SagaraSouske]

Originally Posted by Vocah

The message of the duels outcome spawns exactly in the middle between duellants

also, why the hell do you make such a complicated scenario @SagaraSouske? If he has enough time to move players around (which would be impossible if he doesn't have a stretcher item or super high capacity) than he could simply kill them on the spot in duels. From my understanding you only get flagged a criminal when you attack someone. A duel is (normally) a setup between two players and should not flag you a criminal, even if the other player dies

You are right, one huge system message window appears between duelers for 30 seconds.

As for why, if you read back my previous posts, it just to illustrate that a collision based control system does not match what is shown in the LN.

[Vocah]

They simply can't control them.

You can't open another players menu (you can't steal others stuff, if you could open the menu you could steal stuff) but a duel initiation produces a popup for the other party which you could accept with a sleeper

[Clarste]

Originally Posted by SagaraSouske

First Strike Duel would be a public event, I doubt people make duel to the death a public event, even if it is between two consenting players. The fact that there is an option for Duel to the death is already strange.

But as for why people would care, I would care if there are duels going on that someone is killed, wouldn't you?

I was talking about the designers of the game, not the public reaction. They wouldn't program the Winner message like that because it's stupid and annoying to all the players eating in restaurants nearby or whatever. Also, not at all how it's described in the story.

But we are getting side tracked and pigeon holed into this argument about sleeper duel. My original intention was to point out collision system do not make sense for SAO. There can be other examples outside of the town in the game world where that would be so as well, not necessary focusing on sleep PK in town. A system that allows other players to be able to forciblly control another player's action cannot be a fair system.

It all comes down to realism. People want to be able to touch other people. if you can't do that, then there's no point in inventing VR. It's as simple as that. So being able to wrestle with someone or whatever has to be intended. This isn't "unfair" because strength is an arbitrary system. Girls aren't weaker than boys, or any of the other "imbalances" that plague real life. It doesn't even have to be based on their character's strength stat (although it is, in GGO anyway). On the other hand, there's no reason to believe it has to be so accurate that mouths can be covered up to prevent speech. Being able to verbally forfeit a duel or report harassment is incredibly necessary for normal gameplay, and hardly breaks immersion at all since most people don't have a strong sense of when a mouth has been completely 100% covered.

The second half of this is whether or not the menu should be "touchable" or just reading the motions of your arm. Honestly, I'd just attribute this to laziness. The rest of the game is already programmed to work with collision, and depending on arm positions and such there's a very real possibility of the menu motion de-syncing with the arm motions if they worked on entirely separate levels. Given that sleeping in a game is not really a thing that would come in beta or design, and that there are plenty of anti-harassment tools available to prevent people from touching you without your consent, it's extremely easy to imagine that it just never came up.

Originally Posted by Vocah

They simply can't control them.

You can't open another players menu (you can't steal others stuff, if you could open the menu you could steal stuff) but a duel initiation produces a popup for the other party which you could accept with a sleeper

That also makes a lot of sense. It's also true that we'd hear about the sleep-thieves way before the sleep-PKs, given that most people are reluctant to kill in the first place. A way to steal items from other players is a much bigger deal than a weird duel exploit. Again, in terms of the programmers.

[SagaraSouske]

Originally Posted by Awrya

1. Vol. 2 The Black Swordsman, only the player who rented the room can open (and likely close) the door (once again, likely windows). The killers could open the window and leave, but they can't close it. If players check there would be a loophole.


2.
In your scenario they are extremely close when the duel concludes, so it'll just appear between them. When no one is around, no one will notice. Besides, a winner message doesn't mean someone died, people could think it was a [First Strike] duel.
Vol. 2 RNR, the time a player avatar disappears is 10 seconds (resurrection item Kirito got from Santa), the winner message will disappear after a few seconds as well. After 10 seconds there won't be a corpse left, so if no one witnessed the duel, which means seeing first hand how the duel took place, no one will know that someone died in a duel.

If they check on the monument, it'll say he died in a duel/his HP dropped to 0/etc, but since it was a duel it won't say it was a PK.

1. The whole point of a collision system is you can manipulate the other player, you simply use his hands to open the window. Not a loophole at all. This shows exactly why collision system does not make sense.

2. I am assuming the message will display the type of duel. And the message is suppose to be huge and stay up for 30 sec (just looked up LN). So it's likely it get noticed.

[SagaraSouske]

Originally Posted by Vocah

They simply can't control them.

You can't open another players menu (you can't steal others stuff, if you could open the menu you could steal stuff) but a duel initiation produces a popup for the other party which you could accept with a sleeper

Please explain how you are able to accept for the sleeper since the sleeper does not have control. If it is collision based by having the sleeping player's hand touching the OK button to accept, we back to square one. A collision based system will allow others to manipulate the player just as they are able to get him to accept the duel.

[Clarste]

Originally Posted by SagaraSouske

Please explain how you are able to accept for the sleeper since the sleeper does not have control. If it is collision based by having the sleeping player's hand touching the OK button to accept, we back to square one. A collision based system will allow others to manipulate the player just as they are able to get him to accept the duel.

The menu gesture summons an object in the world can be interacted with. Ergo, the menu gesture is "special" in that it's the only part that is based on the neural signals before an object even exists. It literally can't be based on collision since there's nothing for it to collide with. However, challenging someone to a duel makes a "Yes/No" menu object appear without any input on their part. Presumably you could also make a trade window appear in the same way, but you wouldn't be able to open their inventory to put stuff in it. The insidious "Sleep-gift giver" wouldn't be very scary.

Incidentally, if it works like this it would also mean it's impossible to get a sleeping player to challenge another to a duel.

[Vocah]

Controlling menus are collision based, but opening the menu is input based (ie a signal from the nervegear)?

[SagaraSouske]

Originally Posted by Clarste

I was talking about the designers of the game, not the public reaction. They wouldn't program the Winner message like that because it's stupid and annoying to all the players eating in restaurants nearby or whatever. Also, not at all how it's described in the story.

It all comes down to realism. People want to be able to touch other people. if you can't do that, then there's no point in inventing VR. It's as simple as that. So being able to wrestle with someone or whatever has to be intended. This isn't "unfair" because strength is an arbitrary system. Girls aren't weaker than boys, or any of the other "imbalances" that plague real life. It doesn't even have to be based on their character's strength stat (although it is, in GGO anyway). On the other hand, there's no reason to believe it has to be so accurate that mouths can be covered up to prevent speech. Being able to verbally forfeit a duel or report harassment is incredibly necessary for normal gameplay, and hardly breaks immersion at all since most people don't have a strong sense of when a mouth has been completely 100% covered.

The second half of this is whether or not the menu should be "touchable" or just reading the motions of your arm. Honestly, I'd just attribute this to laziness. The rest of the game is already programmed to work with collision, and depending on arm positions and such there's a very real possibility of the menu motion de-syncing with the arm motions if they worked on entirely separate levels. Given that sleeping in a game is not really a thing that would come in beta or design, and that there are plenty of anti-harassment tools available to prevent people from touching you without your consent, it's extremely easy to imagine that it just never came up.

That also makes a lot of sense. It's also true that we'd hear about the sleep-thieves way before the sleep-PKs, given that most people are reluctant to kill in the first place. A way to steal items from other players is a much bigger deal than a weird duel exploit. Again, in terms of the programmers.

Most mmo display duel messages to others in the vicinity. You may be right that for SAO it may disrupt the immersion.

As for realism, I am not saying collision system does not exist. It definitely does since that's how the virtual avatars interact with each other and with the world. I am simply saying the control of one's avatar is not through collision system. There is a reason why the helmet is named nerve gear and it intercepts all neural signals the player send to their real body and redirect it to their in game avatar instead. The command and control still comes from the player. With a collision based control system, the player does not have full control of their avatar but rather the polygon space their avatar occupies create all the actions and that can be manipulated and exploited, to a far more degree then accepting a duel request while sleeping.

[SagaraSouske]

Originally Posted by Vocah

Controlling menus are collision based, but opening the menu is input based (ie a signal from the nervegear)?

What you are saying is that the designer made a separate control system for operating the menus, that someone can accidentally bump into someone operating a menu and cause them to choose different options from what they originally trying to select. Would that fall under 'mostly fair' system? It's better then complete collision control but it still allow too many 'accidents' to happen, intentional or not.

Example, I buy something expensive from you. Let's say the agreed upon price is 1 mil col. I put 100000 col in my trade window and prompt you to accept and bump your arm 'accidentally' to select yes before you can read clearly the amount I put in. Is that fair? Incidents like this and of other nature would happen all the time if this is the case.

As for Clarste's Duel acceptance being collision only, what if I am a high level Pker and challenge you to a duel to the death then bump your arm so that you accidentally click on yes instead of no. That means high lvl PKers can seek out lower level targets and force them to duel to death even without them being asleep and there is nothing other player can do about it while the PKer is green and in town.

[Clarste]

Originally Posted by SagaraSouske

Most mmo display duel messages to others in the vicinity. You may be right that for SAO it may disrupt the immersion.

As for realism, I am not saying collision system does not exist. It definitely does since that's how the virtual avatars interact with each other and with the world. I am simply saying the control of one's avatar is not through collision system. There is a reason why the helmet is named nerve gear and it intercepts all neural signals the player send to their real body and redirect it to their in game avatar instead. The command and control still comes from the player. With a collision based control system, the player does not have full control of their avatar but rather the polygon space their avatar occupies create all the actions and that can be manipulated and exploited, to a far more degree then accepting a duel request while sleeping.

If someone grabs your arm, you can't move it. Yes, it's true that this takes control away from the player, but arguably the game would be much worse if you didn't let that kind of thing happen. Taking control away from the player sometimes is a perfectly natural thing to do. It's no different from being stunned or paralyzed. And with the harassment system, you can easily get them to stop so it's not really a problem. Being able to grab a sleeping player's hand and move it around is only natural.

The only problem is whether or not the menu objects actually exist in the game world's programming.