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

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by Znail

hmm

probably had it block out form my memory as how bad that scene made the novel look. Really wish the anime had cut it out.

[Netto Azure]

Originally Posted by Xellos-_^

probably had it block out form my memory as how bad that scene made the novel look. Really wish the anime had cut it out.

I dunno, It's one of those anime tropes I think where the "ghost" character pops up to give blessings to the protagonists. To me it's certainly a nice touch.

Anyways anyone here remember the distinctions between "Top-Down" AI's like Yui and NPC's, and "Bottom-Up" AI's like those in Alicization? It's pretty enticing to think the repricussions those could have in modern society too.

I remember someone mentioning a while back how Alicization focuses on things like Military Technology races between countries such as Drone Technology and Space Elevators/Exploration. And how Politically Japan wants to be more independent from the US. How would those revolutionize technology in the future?

[larethian]

Like what Flere821 said, given that it appeared in v8, it could be foreshadowing for Fluct Light. Why would you want it cut out if there's a deeper meaning behind it? :/

[HashiriyaR32]

I have a question about GGO. What's the scale of combat within that MMOFPS?

I'm gonna list a few examples for scale.

CoD/Counter-Strike------Battlefield 3 CQB-------Battlefield (infantry-only)------Red Orchestra------Battlefield---------Bohemia's Operation Flashpoint/ArmA.

To the left would be small-scale combat, while all the way to the right would be large-scale (including vehicles). Where would GGO fall into?

[Krono]

Originally Posted by HashiriyaR32

I have a question about GGO. What's the scale of combat within that MMOFPS?

I'm gonna list a few examples for scale.

CoD/Counter-Strike------Battlefield 3 CQB-------Battlefield (infantry-only)------Red Orchestra------Battlefield---------Bohemia's Operation Flashpoint/ArmA.

To the left would be small-scale combat, while all the way to the right would be large-scale (including vehicles). Where would GGO fall into?

GGO would fall towards the large-scale end of things. They have various vehicles, and the map for their tournament battle royale is 10 kilometers in diameter.

[Divini]

^ Battlefield (infantry only) + vehicles only for mobility purposes.

[Clarste]

It's pretty small scale in that there aren't really that many people on a huge map.

[lightbringer]

For me, GGO is kind of like Planetside 2 plus PvE plus class system plus RMT minus vehicle combat. There really aren't that many MMOFPS out there which are open world though, and GGO is, tournament aside, certainly open world with PvE content (not to mention the sniping distance is like 1-2km). But the engagements we have seen in GGO were squad-sized.

[ronelm2000]

GGO is understandable in size because of its insane funding. (I mean... you can exchange points for money? And vice versa....?) The tournaments are probably there to boost sales... but how do they get the money to pay for the "Pros"? Sheer advertising? Investments?

...also, isn't GGO American-based?

[Adigard]

Originally Posted by ronelm2000

GGO is understandable in size because of its insane funding. (I mean... you can exchange points for money? And vice versa....?) The tournaments are probably there to boost sales... but how do they get the money to pay for the "Pros"? Sheer advertising? Investments?

...also, isn't GGO American-based?

Governments and the military can have lots and lots of money to throw around, if it's for certain aspects of research.

And the exchanging points for money bits of GGO reminded me more of Eve Online's PLEX system, where successful player's can have their sub fees paid forever, rather than having their mortgages paid.

[Clarste]

They get paid for by the subscription fees of the lesser players, obviously. Everyone who plays dreams of being a Pro, but most of them aren't. There's a reason they claimed the game legally fell into the category of "gambling".

Also, buying and selling of items for real money seems to be encouraged. They might have something like Diablo 3 where the publisher gets a cut of every sale.

[ronelm2000]

Adding to the discussion, isn't <<GGO>> part of <<The Seed>> which has the inherently "defective" <<Cardinal>>? I wonder how they handle that. I would have guessed that they just disabled it, and let the gun creation be left out to the developers themselves...


...which would probably be the reason why the Lethal Joke Weapon exists in the first place. (I mean c'mon! Who'd put a Light-saber in an MMOFPS!?)

[Clarste]

Originally Posted by ronelm2000

...which would probably be the reason why the Lethal Joke Weapon exists in the first place. (I mean c'mon! Who'd put a Light-saber in an MMOFPS!?)

Why wouldn't they? It's a sci-fi game and FPS games always have melee weapons available. Reminds me of Halo's Beam Sword actually.

[Xacual]

Originally Posted by ronelm2000

Adding to the discussion, isn't <<GGO>> part of <<The Seed>> which has the inherently "defective" <<Cardinal>>? I wonder how they handle that. I would have guessed that they just disabled it, and let the gun creation be left out to the developers themselves...


...which would probably be the reason why the Lethal Joke Weapon exists in the first place. (I mean c'mon! Who'd put a Light-saber in an MMOFPS!?)

I don't think the Seed has Cardinal built in. The only game that did was SAO, and then ALO because it was more of a copy of SAO, it wasn't built off the Seed the same way the other games were.

[Krono]

Originally Posted by ronelm2000

GGO is understandable in size because of its insane funding. (I mean... you can exchange points for money? And vice versa....?) The tournaments are probably there to boost sales... but how do they get the money to pay for the "Pros"? Sheer advertising? Investments?

...also, isn't GGO American-based?

Probably a combination of the way that World of Warcraft makes money, Starcraft 2 gets money for pros, and Diablo 3 has a Real Money Auction House.

So subscription fees, advertising and sponsorship for tournaments, and a cut of officially sanctioned buying and selling of items and accounts.

Originally Posted by Xacual

I don't think the Seed has Cardinal built in. The only game that did was SAO, and then ALO because it was more of a copy of SAO, it wasn't built off the Seed the same way the other games were.

Actually, the Seed has a stripped down version of Cardinal according to the Caliber side story:

Spoiler for Relevant Caliber snippet:

"——This «ALfheim Online» has one major difference from other standard VRMMOs from «The Seed». That is, the game operation isn't based on the feature reduced version of the «Cardinal System», but uses the same full specs version as the one used in the old «Sword Art Online»."

That was certainly correct. It wasn't a story I wanted to remember, but ALO was created by a man whom was possessed by greed, in order to use some of the old SAO players in his illegal research, he copied the whole original SAO server. So the autonomous system operating the world «Cardinal» in ALO has the same capability as the one used in SAO, of course.

Yui looked around at our attentive listening faces, then added,

"The original Cardinal System has a few functions which had been cut out in the shrunk version. One of them is the «Automatic Quest Generation Function». It will collect legends and folklore of the world through the network, and continue to generate infinite amount of quests using proper names and story patterns."

So GGO runs a version of Cardinal that's likely much less capable, requires more administration, but is less prone to generating it's own set of headaches.

[M1sFyr3]

It's also possible they tried to lower the capabilities of the Cardinal to encourage gambling, making it one of the reasons the game was popular so they profited from it.

[Clarste]

That doesn't make sense given what was just posted. It's implied that all games other than ALO have the lesser version, so GGO doesn't need any particular reason.

[ronelm2000]

It depends on how Kayaba designed <<The Seed>>... which, to our headaches, did not really elaborated upon... :/


...btw...what MMOs use dynamic quest generation or NPC generation (like in <<Cardinal>>) nowadays?

[Clarste]

None that I know of. If you could do that you'd be putting an awful lot of game designers out of a job.

[ronelm2000]

Originally Posted by Clarste

None that I know of. If you could do that you'd be putting an awful lot of game designers out of a job.

I don't think so.... or at least not yet.

As long as ideas need to be put into code. (Not even the <<The Seed>> has gotten to do that; even the idea for the <<Excalibur>> story came to be because the admins were probably putting lots of "stories" into the ALO server.

It does, however, seem to be a great investment to do/program. (I mean, I would. )

The real challenge in programming would probably be creating a Bottom-Up AI using current desktop technology. If I think about it, a bird's brain has more circuits than the nearest notebook laptop....