Sword Art Online - Episode 8 Discussion / Poll

[Arya]

Originally Posted by Clarste

I don't think it's that reckless. "The boss can't leave the room" is another one of those absolute rules they've lived with for 74 floors already. It's related to the fairness of the game that Kirito was talking about earlier. You simply don't fight the boss until you're ready, and you can always run away. You can either accept it or give up and die. Given that they no longer have any beta knowledge to tell them even vaguely what to expect from a boss, entering the room to see what it does and then resetting it before it gets dangerous would be the only way to develop any kind of strategy. Of course, it's not perfectly safe, but that's why there's so much tension in the scene. It needs to be done though. Think of them as a scouting party.

My concern has been explained well by Klashikari, what if the door would close? The concern btw comes from Asuna stating how unpredictable monsters has been lately. You know, a bit of an ominous statement just before jumping inside the boss room It looked like a hint on what will happen.

Originally Posted by Adigard

To be fair Kirito was rather upfront earlier in the episode about not planning on fighting the boss. But someone, somewhere eventually has to gather intel on the boss in order to succesfully fight it.

I'd be amazed if next week's episode started with them closing the door and deciding to duo the boss rather than waiting for the other 498 front line fighters to get there and slowly gather intel on the boss. We've seen a boss strategy meeting for a floor boss, and a field boss. It's safe to assume no one ever decides to just fight the boss for kicks in a death game.

As I said, what I'm expecting is that the monster itself will close the door, forcing them to duo him.
Even if they are really strong, I couldn't see them survive to such a bad situation. Or I could see, but I had to revalue how strong Kirito and Asuna are. Much stronger than what I think they are right now. BTW that wouldn't mean nothing, given that I don't have a real clear-cut idea of how much he or she are strong. Yes, I can have it in PvP. But not really in PvE. It's just that it would be more believable if they couldn't duo a boss.

[HandofFate]

I feel that the "Keep a teleport crystal in handy" is a jinx.

Since floor 45 or something when Kirito's guild got massacred, it seems almost everything is an anti-crystal field.

I guess given its nature, SAO is more forgiving on boss fights on that you can actually run out the door. Nowadays, boss rooms are sealed once you enter and its either kill it or end up wiping.

[Iron Maw]

Originally Posted by itoastmysocks

I am pretty sure ~10000 EVE Online players would dissagree with you, but no that's actualyl a pretty damn common tactic in FFA-MMO's

Funny enough, I've never experienced this, but then again I'm not a huge MMO gamer.

Originally Posted by Kamui04

I think you need to watch ep 4 again. When Silica asked about why Rosalia was green, Kirito mentioned the tactic as in it's one commonly used by other PKs, not one specific to Rosalia's guild.

I see, thanks for the confirmation.

BTW, Does anyone think the Laughing Coffin member might have gathered his guildmates and followed Kirito and Asuna into the dungeon? This seems like a good opportunity to PK them especially after their interference during the Grimlock incident.

[Klashikari]

Originally Posted by FlareKnight

I don't think its a problem long as they are careful about it. At that point they still seemed to be pretty close to the door. Doors that big are going to cover a wide area when opening and closing. So if they stay close the doors would just naturally push them right back out.

That depends what kind of "immediate barricade" system the game uses for a given room. It could be a portcullis dropping flat, or simply a "game barrier" that would instantly activates.
It would be fine if that room is only dependant of the initial doors with a specific speed, but you have the usual the usual "instantly trapped" trope in many RPG.

That's why I expect a party composed of 4-6 players instead, in order to check the layout and apparent gear of the boss, instead of only 2 players, however skilled they are. The series at least points out that Kirito is aware that anything can happen, thus the teleport crystal ready to be used, but considering anti crystal property is unpredictable, that precaution is not enough to my tastes... well just a little nitpick.

[Karakuri]

Originally Posted by Iron Maw

Funny enough, I've never experienced this, but then again I'm not a huge MMO gamer.



I see, thanks for the confirmation.

BTW, Does anyone think the Laughing Coffin member might have gathered his guildmates and followed Kirito and Asuna into the dungeon? This seems like a good opportunity to PK them especially after their interference during the Grimlock incident.

Hmmm...I highly doubt since Asuna is from the strongest guild, and Kirito being a Beater who has been on the front lines, without leveling up in groups, meaning he is VERY strong.
It could happen, yeah, but I think the % of it happening is quite low, since LC wouldn't want to mess with the front liners AND the strongest guild, for sure.
Well, that's my guess

[lightbringer]

Originally Posted by Klashikari

The series at least points out that Kirito is aware that anything can happen, thus the teleport crystal ready to be used, but considering anti crystal property is unpredictable, that precaution is not enough to my tastes... well just a little nitpick.

It's fairly safe to say that Kirito was using his monkey brain when he made that call. Maybe he subconsciously wanted to look good in front of Asuna, or maybe it's simply his pride and curiosity as a top-class gamer. It's fairly obvious that, just because the previous 73 floor boss battles were open rooms with no anti-crystal field, it doesn't mean that the next 27 floor boss battles have to follow the same format. They even noticed the increased difficulty in AI algorithms on the upper floors. It's a death game, too - safety first?

[Adigard]

Originally Posted by HandofFate

I feel that the "Keep a teleport crystal in handy" is a jinx.

He has said it fairly frequently in prior episodes... it's practically a mantra for him now.

Originally Posted by Klashikari

That's why I expect a party composed of 4-6 players instead, in order to check the layout and apparent gear of the boss, instead of only 2 players, however skilled they are. The series at least points out that Kirito is aware that anything can happen, thus the teleport crystal ready to be used, but considering anti crystal property is unpredictable, that precaution is not enough to my tastes... well just a little nitpick.

It's a safe assumption that they're just going to look at the boss. Having a pair of player's engage a raid-style boss in a death game is rather silly. They'd probably lose half (or more) of their health from a single blow from a boss. Neither of them are exactly tank-type builds.

[Iron Maw]

Originally Posted by Karakuri

Hmmm...I highly doubt since Asuna is from the strongest guild, and Kirito being a Beater who has been on the front lines, without leveling up in groups, meaning he is VERY strong.
It could happen, yeah, but I think the % of it happening is quite low, since LC wouldn't want to mess with the front liners AND the strongest guild, for sure.
Well, that's my guess

This didn't stop them from going after Schimdt (a well known frontlier) or wanting to attack Kirito before. You're also assuming that they aren't as strong as either Kirito or Asuna. LC members seem to like PKing strong players for sport and with Kirito and Asuna by themselves it seems too good of opportunity to pass up if only for payback. Kirito only escaped from them before due to bluffing.

[deedlit]

Originally Posted by orpheus2

I find cooking not necessary whenever I play. I would rather increase skills related to battle unless that cooking also have some significant benefit. Most of the time any skill not directly related to increasing battle performance and efficiency, I would not increase.

if I get to taste the food in mmo, I will raise my cooking skill too. So I can get to satisfy my taste buds in mmo, while being on a diet irl

[Clarste]

Originally Posted by Klashikari

That's why I expect a party composed of 4-6 players instead, in order to check the layout and apparent gear of the boss, instead of only 2 players, however skilled they are. The series at least points out that Kirito is aware that anything can happen, thus the teleport crystal ready to be used, but considering anti crystal property is unpredictable, that precaution is not enough to my tastes... well just a little nitpick.

And then 4-6 people die instead of 2, and you still learned nothing because the door was closed. 4-6 shouldn't be nearly enough either. 1 would be the ideal because then there's the least loss in event of emergency, but maybe 2 is better because they can cover for each other. Anything more than 2 seems reckless though. Think of it in the long term: they only have so many players willing to fight on the front lines at all. Players are a valuable resource. Given that 1 player can do hardly anything by himself, what you'd want to conserve most is numbers. If they lose too many people than clearing the game becomes simply impossible.

Originally Posted by Iron Maw

This didn't stop them from going after Schimdt (a well known frontlier) or wanting to attack Kirito before. You're also assuming that they aren't as strong as either Kirito or Asuna. LC members seem to like PKing strong players for sport and with Kirito and Asuna by themselves it seems too good of opportunity to pass up if only for payback. Kirito only escaped from them before due to bluffing.

Also keep in mind that they only have to catch them off guard and paralyze them. Being distracted by a monster is likely the best time to attack. Heck, maybe the monster will do your job for you.

[Karakuri]

Originally Posted by Iron Maw

This didn't stop them from going after Schimdt (a well known frontlier) or wanting to attack Kirito before. You're also assuming that they aren't as strong as either Kirito or Asuna. LC members seem to like PKing strong players for sport and with Kirito and Asuna by themselves it seems too good of opportunity to pass up if only for payback. Kirito only escaped from them before due to bluffing.

I forgot about Schmidt, hehe...
LC left after attacking Schmidt, but they may have not told the front liners about the incident, so they wouldn't bring up the robbery of the ring and get into trouble, probably.
But if they had killed him, or if LC killed Asuna and Kirito, since Asuna is KoB's member, I think they wouldn't allow such a thing to pass through, it's not like only KoB's members or super high-leveled players are important and should be avenged or something, but normally, they would try to endure it, I think...so they wouldn't get blood in their hands, I mean, no one would like to kill someone with their bare hands, would they? The front liners would probably get some plan to avenge them and get them jailed, or even kill them if that was the case.
I know they like to kill high level players for fun, but even then, I can't see them trying to kill such high leveled players, Asuna and Kirito are probably one of the most high-leveled players...
I mean...I don't think LC would go ahead and try to get 500 enemies...lol
Front liners have endured 'till now, I think any more commotion about LC would bring intense wars betweem LC and Front Liners, and they probably should be aware of it...
But well, I dunno, crazy killers coming from Anime producers are waaaay over what I can think of hehe

[Clarste]

Laughing Coffin is enemies with everyone by default. They're famous even among the front liners for being a red guild. They probably don't care at all who they piss off. What's more fun than a challenge after all? People are way funner to fight than boring old monsters.

[FlareKnight]

Originally Posted by lightbringer

It's fairly safe to say that Kirito was using his monkey brain when he made that call. Maybe he subconsciously wanted to look good in front of Asuna, or maybe it's simply his pride and curiosity as a top-class gamer. It's fairly obvious that, just because the previous 73 floor boss battles were open rooms with no anti-crystal field, it doesn't mean that the next 27 floor boss battles have to follow the same format. They even noticed the increased difficulty in AI algorithms on the upper floors. It's a death game, too - safety first?

I'm not sure it was such a reckless call. Just because it's possible something special might happen here doesn't mean it's at all likely. All the more so when there is no indication that floor bosses have ever done that. Why would this boss suddenly have such special circumstances? If a change in enemy AI meant bosses would get even worse then that would be more likely to come into play on the first few floors of 70. Besides getting a bit of information about the boss is safety first, safety for the entirety of the front-liners. Certainly there are risks (they exist just going through these dungeons), but doing a bit of reckon while being prepared to get the heck out of there isn't unreasonable. Even a little bit of info leaves the scouting teams better prepared and let's the guilds start their planning a little bit sooner.

Though in the end we can't make many assumptions about the setup of the boss fights. We've seen 1 boss fight and saw the planning for a boss they were going to lure into a town. Can hardly make assumptions about the other 71 floor boss battles fought to this point.

Originally Posted by Adigard

He has said it fairly frequently in prior episodes... it's practically a mantra for him now.

Yeah, have to think at this point Kirito says this to absolutely all his clients. He is a solo player after all, being cautious should be second nature at this point.

[Karakuri]

Originally Posted by Clarste

Laughing Coffin is enemies with everyone by default. They're famous even among the front liners for being a red guild. They probably don't care at all who they piss off. What's more fun than a challenge after all? People are way funner to fight than boring old monsters.

Well, I guess you guys are right.
I was also expecting LC attacking them after he grinned, but even then I can't stop thinking they wouldn't do it so easily...
Well, if they did I think Kirito would be aware of them, since he has a tracking skill, which he leveled it up quite well as mentioned in this thread...
But oh well, I kind of want to see some more action, so I would like LC to attack, because obviously, neither of them would die without even getting to half of the series, so yeah hehe

[Trajan]

In the end, the side stories were serviceable slice-of-life moments enjoyable as vignettes, though I don't really think they necessarily added much to either the world of SAO or to Kirito's character.

As an anime-only viewer, I have to say looking back my main issue with the adaptation so far has been with the faithfulness of the anime to the original stories. Normally, this is a positive, but taking later-written stories and placing them first without adding exposition and changing certain details to make the anime more coherent is really quite lazy, and I think will hurt the series. It's especially troubling now that the anime is apparently going to retain explanations of things we already know, simply b/c the LN included them. A better adaptation would have moved some of the exposition to the side-story episodes and edited details to make the whole story flow better.

As for this episode, I found it fairly good introduction to the main story line. This episode still suffered from several technical and story-related problems though. Placing this immediately after Kirito's encounter with Liz creates the rather odd impression that, although Kirito and Asuna had a date in late June, nothing has happened in almost four months. Poor Liz, she stepped aside for nothing!

The boob-grabbing scene was unfortunate, but most unfortunate of all was to find out that you retain your momentum when transporting. Too bad Kirito and Liz actually went splat and died when they hit the cobblestones going 100mph last episode!

[Znail]

Originally Posted by Trajan

Too bad Kirito and Liz actually went splat and died when they hit the cobblestones going 100mph last episode!

Teleport crystals lead to safe areas and those are safe, even from fall damage.

[Clarste]

People always seem to forget that it's a video game. Physics need not apply. Damage is likely calculated from height anyway.

[Klashikari]

Originally Posted by Adigard

HIt's a safe assumption that they're just going to look at the boss. Having a pair of player's engage a raid-style boss in a death game is rather silly. They'd probably lose half (or more) of their health from a single blow from a boss. Neither of them are exactly tank-type builds.

...I know that already. What I implied was to increase the size of the -scouting- party in order to avoid issues already stated.

Originally Posted by Clarste

And then 4-6 people die instead of 2, and you still learned nothing because the door was closed. 4-6 shouldn't be nearly enough either. 1 would be the ideal because then there's the least loss in event of emergency, but maybe 2 is better because they can cover for each other. Anything more than 2 seems reckless though. Think of it in the long term: they only have so many players willing to fight on the front lines at all. Players are a valuable resource. Given that 1 player can do hardly anything by himself, what you'd want to conserve most is numbers. If they lose too many people than clearing the game becomes simply impossible.

Since when I stated all of them have to go at the same time? In fact, you can abuse game mechanics in that fashion: normally the door closes shortly after in order to let a full party to engage the boss/event. Which means, depending how the game is designed, the closing door mechanic can be prevented by having someone right where the door is supposed to close, assuming such abuse is possible.
The other point is that having other persons not close to engage the event/boss can relay information about the imminent danger (as it is impossible to communicate when you are in dungeon, as proved with Liz and Asuna), so should something goes really wrong, those who were supposed to stuck the door would at least be able to see what happened, or at least know the door is booby trapped.
The idea isn't to sacrifce more players as pawns, but rather lessen the possibility of losing players in the process, at least avoiding a complete waste of them. Should players die in the process, at least it wouldn't be in vain.

The best way to deal with that kind of uncertainty would be a single player with an absolute stealth, but that doesn't seem to be an option in SAO.

In fine, the point was rather odd to have the 2 among the best Players going through with scouting. Of course that wasn't a request or duty send to them. Logically speaking, they should simply leave and contact the guild to see what would be their scouting plan. That's actually what Diabel has done, except he relied way too much on the beta test data instead of checking thoroughly the boss during the battle.

[Clarste]

Originally Posted by Klashikari

Since when I stated all of them have to go at the same time? In fact, you can abuse game mechanics in that fashion: normally the door closes shortly after in order to let a full party to engage the boss/event. Which means, depending how the game is designed, the closing door mechanic can be prevented by having someone right where the door is supposed to close, assuming such abuse is possible.
The other point is that having other persons not close to engage the event/boss can relay information about the imminent danger (as it is impossible to communicate when you are in dungeon, as proved with Liz and Asuna), so should something goes really wrong, those who were supposed to stuck the door would at least be able to see what happened, or at least know the door is booby trapped.
The idea isn't to sacrifce more players as pawns, but rather lessen the possibility of losing players in the process, at least avoiding a complete waste of them. Should players die in the process, at least it wouldn't be in vain.

The best way to deal with that kind of uncertainty would be a single player with an absolute stealth, but that doesn't seem to be an option in SAO.

In fine, the point was rather odd to have the 2 best Players going through with scouting. Of course that wasn't a request or duty send to them. Logically speaking, they should simply leave and contact the guild to see what would be their scouting plan. That's actually what Diabel has done, except he relied way too much on the beta test data instead of checking thoroughly the boss during the battle.

Those plans of yours make no sense whatsoever to me. If you can stand in the door, 2 should be enough, not that they have any reason to believe this might work since it's apparently never happened. If you can't contact people in dungeons, then it doesn't matter who's not currently engaged in battle. If 4 people are standing outside the door waiting for the other 2, then it doesn't matter if you only send 2 in the first place. Maybe you could explain what you mean better, but what you wrote there doesn't follow any kind of logic, gaming or otherwise.

As for having a scouting plan... they've been doing this for 74 floors. Asuna is a raid leader. They know what the standard scouting plan is, and there's no reason whatsoever to think this room is different. For all we know, what they're doing right now is the standard scouting plan. Why wouldn't it be? I can't think of a better plan.

Edit: If the door closes, they can't see through it. If the door doesn't close, they can run out. Not that they have any reason to believe that the door will close. Kirito thinks the game is fair, after all.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Clarste

Edit: If the door closes, they can't see through it. If the door doesn't close, they can run out. Not that they have any reason to believe that the door will close. Kirito thinks the game is fair, after all.

He thinks this, but they were also careful to point out that, ever since they hit floor 70, strange things have been happening. So I think we (in the audience) are certainly supposed to believe that Kirito is being reasonable in his decision-making (just open the door to scout, has crystal in hand, all appearances of playing it safe per lessons learned from 73 previous floors...), but I also think it's pretty obvious (based one various hints and the tone of the scene) that the door will, in fact, close, and Kirito and Asuna will have the challenge of their lifetimes ahead of them.

(This is only speculation; novel readers, please don't tell me if I'm right or wrong.)

Keep in mind that Kirito was soloing in that dungeon previously. If he hadn't been partying with Asuna, I think it's not unlikely that he might have opened the door and done the check on his own (I am supposing that he may have done this previously too). If that were the case, and the door does in fact close, he'd be totally screwed. As it stands, I think he and Asuna will be able to beat the boss, but this near-brush with death (along with his realization from Episode 7 that he wants to live and clear this game for other people's sake) will make Kirito realize that it isn't safe to go it alone anymore, and cause him to join the guild to be with Asuna (the one party member who doesn't get in his way). It would also, of course, have the effect of making Kirito and Asuna legendary... and make that Kuradeel guy even more jealous.


So yeah... I think both you and Klashikari are right. I think what Kirito is doing is not unexpected or unreasonable given who he is, his experiences, and what he thinks he knows. But, by the same token, we in the audience have a pretty clear sense that it's obviously more dangerous than he thinks it is. If he could detect the same clues we can, then he would surely do something different... but he's a solo player, and not used to thinking on that scale (plus, as you said, he doesn't know the extent of the oddities that were being hinted at yet). You could almost say that the game is "cheating" now, so whatever they think they know will be out the window (not unlike when they thought, for a while, that there was an exploit that would allow people to be killed in town).