Nasuverse FSN + SAO: j-jam it in!

[TehChron]

I think you're going about this the wrong way.

The point of a burrower is the element of surprise, and from what you're describing of the worms basis, I think that rather than shoot off adds, you should go with something more visceral.

Have the damn thing erupt from the ground, bite down on an individual player during the burrowing phase, and have it apply a corrosive debuff or something for the duration of the biting down. Under certain circumstances, the player can be freed from the beasts maw and the raid continues normally, or...

And this is one I like

Make this kind of situation the red line attack style of the boss, and the only way to reliably finish it off as its shooting around like a meaty bullet train is to actually get inside the damn thing after getting bitten down on.

Once inside the belly of the beast, the player has a race against time to finish off the boss before the things digestive juices finish them off.

Keep the lightning and fire shit for the majority of the fight so that way it starts as a positioning heavy encounter, and then the switch to insane locomotive burrower serves as an excellent dosage of mood whiplash.

Er...Sorry if I came on a little strong there, but I think that kind of scene would have a lot more tension than random offsplitting of multiple heads or summoning of extra mobs. It'd also fit the behavior of a giant carnivorous worm more, I think.

 

[Vanigo]

Make this kind of situation the red line attack style of the boss, and the only way to reliably finish it off as its shooting around like a meaty bullet train is to actually get inside the damn thing after getting bitten down on.

Once inside the belly of the beast, the player has a race against time to finish off the boss before the things digestive juices finish them off.

While this would be fine in certain genres, Kayaba's going for a "Magecraft is serious business, and doing stupid shit like climbing down a giant carnivorous worm's throat will get you killed" vibe here.

 

[TehChron]

For everything except the boss battles, this is indeed the case.

The point of the Matou penis worms infesting bosses when they hit the red line is to introduce a chaotic and insane berserker state to force the raid to the point of desperation.

Cutting Ilfang having the added status debuff of getting your blade caught and then getting slashed in the face.

Chaotic berserker state for that bovine guy, combined with cannibalism in order to cause the raid to panic and forget about the necessity of positioning.

A worm suddenly decided to go Tremors after a relatively static positioning fight with elemental magic attacks, requiring an unorthodox and highly risky wincon is completely in line with the abrupt shifts in battle tactics that the other two have shown so far.

And besides, the point is that they exploit the bosses attack pattern to finish it off. Not take stupid risks. Since as someone else already said, rune magic to ward off poison and acid damage.

It'd finally be time for the Rune Knight to shine and get his Last Attack bonus.

 

[Nasuren]

Moved from the story thread by request.

The Enforcers aren't fighting 12 hours a day, either; the time constraints are a little different in Aincrad.
That said, I'm sure most of the direct combat magecraft will be developed by front-liners - although more because they have the most incentive, and because people who suck at it will tend to either leave the front lines or die. But everything else? The mystic codes they use to communicate on floors where [Private Messages] are disabled? The bounded fields they use when [safe zones] start disappearing? The tracking and mapping magecraft used when exploring dungeons, the ice resistance spells everyone needs on the tundra floors, the weight reduction spells that everyone wants once the [inventory system] gets nerfed... The front liners aren't going to be working on these things, they're too busy being front liners, and the time they do have for research is going to be spent on things that are directly front-line related.

(In fact, because encouraging everyone to work on magecraft is one of Kayaba's primary goals, he's going to actively encourage this behavior.)

I don't think you understand. The Guilds? Even with Diabel alive, each guild will be in competition for the top spot. For fixing problem, like the loss of long distance communication, most guilds would actually try to develop a method in house to solve the problem and keep the result secret to gain an edge over the competition.

Mid-liners? They'd most likely focus on the problems and events that relate to them first before inventing a Mystery that isn't really necessary at the moment.

Another guild tapping into your guild's mapping system? Sorry, we have a group breaking bounded fields in town that we need to address first. Have you ever thought of simply drawing them yourself? Item problems? Have that carpenter guy next door build you a wagon.

 

[Hardcore Heathen]

I think you're going about this the wrong way.

The point of a burrower is the element of surprise, and from what you're describing of the worms basis, I think that rather than shoot off adds, you should go with something more visceral.

Have the damn thing erupt from the ground, bite down on an individual player during the burrowing phase, and have it apply a corrosive debuff or something for the duration of the biting down. Under certain circumstances, the player can be freed from the beasts maw and the raid continues normally, or...

And this is one I like

Make this kind of situation the red line attack style of the boss, and the only way to reliably finish it off as its shooting around like a meaty bullet train is to actually get inside the damn thing after getting bitten down on.

Once inside the belly of the beast, the player has a race against time to finish off the boss before the things digestive juices finish them off.

Keep the lightning and fire shit for the majority of the fight so that way it starts as a positioning heavy encounter, and then the switch to insane locomotive burrower serves as an excellent dosage of mood whiplash.

Er...Sorry if I came on a little strong there, but I think that kind of scene would have a lot more tension than random offsplitting of multiple heads or summoning of extra mobs. It'd also fit the behavior of a giant carnivorous worm more, I think.

This reminds me of the C'thun boss fight from AQ40 in WoW. (Oh yeah, vanilla WoW references). Basically, the boss itself was an invulnerable eye-monster thing that would periodically shoot a Beam of Death out and circle it around the room, so you had to run to keep ahead. It would also spawn tentacle monsters, some of which would eat you and swallow you. Once inside, you could wail away at C'thun's...tonsils (they really looked like tonsils, I'm sorry) and then once those were busted you could actually deal damage to the real "boss."

Also C'thun had a reverse chain-lightning you might want to take: for every leap, C'thun's lightning doubled in damage. Watching a vid of the first raid run into the boss fight, all clumped up...well, it was amusing. And very short.

Edit:

Mid-liners? They'd most likely focus on the problems and events that relate to them first before inventing a Mystery that isn't really necessary at the moment.

The reason that non-1st-tier-raid people in MMOs don't contribute a whole lot crafting-wise is that materials and recipes tend to drop in the high-level raid instances. In SAO, where the recipe is their ingenuity and the strength of their soul's will...what need have they of combat? Every second spent fighting or using a known mystery is a second that could have been devoted to researching the magic system. There isn't really a skill cap for Thaumaturgy. Levels are meaningless, and you get levels for spell research anyway. The people who spend the most time fiddling with magic are going to be the ones with the best understanding of it (Real Magi aside) and they're the ones that the frontliners will have to come to when they run into a problem that can't be solved by shoving the right type of elemental energy into a sharp object.

Though I have no trouble imagining people wasting their time with stupid shit that you can't actually do, like trying to magic up a Log Out spell.

 

[Nasuren]

Edit:

Mid-liners? They'd most likely focus on the problems and events that relate to them first before inventing a Mystery that isn't really necessary at the moment.

The reason that non-1st-tier-raid people in MMOs don't contribute a whole lot crafting-wise is that materials and recipes tend to drop in the high-level raid instances. In SAO, where the recipe is their ingenuity and the strength of their soul's will...what need have they of combat? Every second spent fighting or using a known mystery is a second that could have been devoted to researching the magic system. There isn't really a skill cap for Thaumaturgy. Levels are meaningless, and you get levels for spell research anyway. The people who spend the most time fiddling with magic are going to be the ones with the best understanding of it (Real Magi aside) and they're the ones that the frontliners will have to come to when they run into a problem that can't be solved by shoving the right type of elemental energy into a sharp object.

Though I have no trouble imagining people wasting their time with stupid shit that you can't actually do, like trying to magic up a Log Out spell.

You act like front-liners aren't capable of doing both research and combat at the same time. Like a swordsman who swings a sword all day, the front-lines who are constantly using Magecraft in battle are the ones more likely to refine the spells they use or alter them into something new. This isn't taking into account of any resources the front-line guilds find or the Magecraft/ideas for Magecraft they acquire.

Now I would also remind you folks of something you're forgetting: What reason does people have to share Magecraft?

Here's an example: Most of the ideas for pushing non-players to get off their butts and start experimenting with Magecraft was the idea of tearing away the safe-zones. The problem is the moment someone releases a 'basic bounded field' to the public is the moment that said person releases it to someone that would eventually learn how to bypass it. Mid-liner learns a new spell and sells it to a front-line guild? What to ensure that the mid-liner only sells it to them?

Look, I said it once and I'll say it again: The guild system introduced politics to the game. I cannot see a guilds like the DDA not set up their own research group to gain an edge over the others when they keep their discoveries to themselves.

 

[MasalaQuaker]

Now I would also remind you folks of something you're forgetting: What reason does people have to share Magecraft?

There is a large EXP inventive, as well as bragging rights if you become a big shot by making the definitive heal, THE barrier, etc. There is little reason to hold back the majority of magecraft produced.
While I concede that there will be some withholding of bleeding edge magecraft from the guilds jockeying to be the Top Badasses (and some vanity "This is MY heal spell! It's purple!"), withholding too much might put them at an EXP disadvantage to those that spread their knowledge, as well as making them look like assholes that don't want to cooperate, alienating them in the eyes of the player base if they're holding back critical stuff like communications or mapping rather than like +3% dps or +5% comm range, minor things but enough to put them on 'top'. What incentive is there to be at the top if everyone thinks you're a bag of dicks? Yours might be bigger, but those guys that spread heals and barriers for cheap are certainly getting their e-peen stroked harder.

The problem is the moment someone releases a 'basic bounded field' to the public is the moment that said person releases it to someone that would eventually learn how to bypass it

This isn't a PvP game. The majority of people do not have an incentive to tear down or slip past that which protects them. Rather, more knowledge of both how to set up and bypass fields in the general pool of knowledge would help game progression, as clearers and midliners will have to deal with them. There are, of course, criminals, but they would get around to their dirty deeds somehow, and the slowdown in overall game progression is likely not worth deterring the relatively low amount of criminal activity.

 

[Nasuren]

...why in the heck does 'mapping' qualify as 'important'? You can do the exact same thing with a pen and paper.

Listen MasalaQuaker, I want you to read your own post. Why would someone want to hold back a communication spell? Because they can make and sell communication crystals to corner the market and gain significant influence until someone can do better. The ability to intercept messages and sell them to rival players/guilds wouldn't hurt.

This isn't a PvP game. The majority of people do not have an incentive to tear down or slip past that which protects them. Rather, more knowledge of both how to set up and bypass fields in the general pool of knowledge would help game progression, as clearers and midliners will have to deal with them. There are, of course, criminals, but they would get around to their dirty deeds somehow, and the slowdown in overall game progression is likely not worth deterring the relatively low amount of criminal activity.

...this is a death game with limited resources. Everyone wants to get the quest with the best rewards, have access to the best spells and top of the line equipment to ensure their survival. To quote MIB:

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.

You talk about game progression and general knowledge like it's everyone's priority. It not, survival is. You posted as if I was talking about bypassing the bounded field that surrounds the city. I'm talking about the fact that if safe zones are eliminated, monsters aren't going to be the biggest problem. With safe zones gone, PVP elements can happen in the city like theft. What's stopping a group like DDA or a player like Kibaou from hiring a thief to break into a building and steal rare items or Magecraft notes? If a guild finds out about a quest from Argo that nobody knows about, what's stopping them from trying to kill her to ensure only they can grind it?

Masala, I'm not trying to pick a fight or anything, but this is the Nasu-verse. It's not a perfect world where people would put aside their own agendas to work for the common good.

 

[daniel_gudman]

If it's "the Nasuverse", keep in mind that "magecraft culture is weak and stupid" is like Kayaba's whole thesis.

So what I'm trying to have happen is something like a "scientific culture" emerges.

If "nobody shares anything with anyone" is zero and "everybody shares everything with everyone" is 100, then what I'm trying to create is a position where most people are somewhere around 50 - 80 individually.

Like, let's say Joe Bounded Field creates a Bounded Field that's basically a Whitelist line drawn in the dirt; where anyone that meets the condition can cross but it becomes an impermeable rubber wall to anyone that doesn't. Maybe he'll release the recipe for drawing that line in the dirt so you can scribble the Circle around your house so NPCs cannot enter, and maybe he'll hire out to draw a magic circle around your guild base so only Guild Members can enter, and maybe he'll keep the secret Blacklist version that forces all Orange Players to fight until dead as his secret trap card.

And of course Steve Magic Circle can recreate the Whitelist Line Magecraft just based on having heard somebody describe it and figuring out how to do the same thing with his Circlecraft or whatever.

Personal examples...
Diabel's objective isn't "to lead the strongest guild", his objective is "to be the most popular, most important person"; leading a strong guild is only part of that, even if it's a big part of it; so he'd be totally willing to sacrifice a little battle edge for the moral authority to ostracize and criticize people who don't play by his rules, and make that stick. That's why Diabel's sending out his strong players to support the Gatherers and handing out basic magic for free; so if Diabel says "I am very disappointed in you", that person is shunned, so that he has that power over people.

Yeah, the DDA are probably going to develop secret guild-only magic, as an attempt to seize the title of "strongest group on the front lines." But so what? There's a certain amount of self-correction that will go on once a certain critical point is reached; it's an intrinsic behavior for humans, as primates, that we help people that need it... but if they received help in the past without giving back, we say "screw 'em."

And as for mid-liners and crafting...
Well, in most MMOs, there's a balance between equipment dropped from monsters / bosses and equipment crafted by players. But here that balance is going to tip all the way to one side and stick there because monster drops are going to be increasingly worthless vendor trash.

But this is getting into something even more fundamental than the [Magecraft System]; this is where I start describing a game that's designed as someone's Doctorate in Economics that Kayaba's forcing you to play.



Economics in SAO
So there's something unique going on in SAO, compared to other games, compared to other MMOs.

If Front-Liners didn't make any money and had to be subsidized by all the other players, would there still be Front Liners?

That is... if the amount of raw materials such as [Iron] and [Wood] that was gathered by [Gatherers] was incomparably greater than what was gained from fighting mobs; if equipment gained from fighting monsters was worthless; if the money earned clearing the lines was meaningless; in short, if Front-Liners supplied nothing to the game economy, would people still become Front Liners and support them? They would if they wanted to clear the game!

This is a little monetary policy nerdy, but....

As part of "the disaster", I was planning that I would collapse the "Col" or hyperinflate it to worthlessness, and push the characters into, functionally, a barter economy... until Guild Leaders are given the special command [Issue Currency]. Of course, since it's a fiat currency, it's only worth as much as whatever people believe it's worth, based on whatever the Guild Leader backs it up with (If the BSM issues a currency that's guaranteed with Shirou-produced swords then it's worth as much as the stock of swords they have backing it up, for example; plus it lets me have a scene where Ilya scolds Shirou for, like, counterfeiting "money"). Maybe it can be backed by a stock of "Gold Ore", but then it's a fiat currency worth whatever people think shiny yellow metal is worth, rather than it being worth your guarantee.

And of course, one of the major advantages of making all the floors above the fifth or so basically uninhabited, that maybe I haven't explicitly explained, is that then all the buildings are capital investment owned by other players; so if you want to stay in an Inn on the 50th Floor, you've got the pick of Hotel Agil and Takachan's BnB... and of course, one of the things they compete on is the advertised quality of their Bounded Fields so you can sleep easy, knowing Griefer Wolves won't spawn next to you. (Or you can build a house, or hire someone to build one for you).

So one of the things you have to keep in mind is that the "Front Liners" aren't going to produce anything as a result of being "Front Liners". There's no benefit inside the game economy in Clearing the Game; the military has to be subsidized by the rest of the economy because they don't produce anything (well in some analysis they "produce" security that guarantees the marketplace against warfare but that's getting a little abstract compared to the point I was trying to make).

tl;dr
I'm rewriting the basic economic premise of MMOs here so that "strong players" are sponging off "weak players"???

 

[Lost Star]

Umm, as nifty as that is, I think it would detract a lot from what the central tenat is supposed to be. Which is magic. And it sounds like a massive amount of distractions for the players themselves. You are basically axing half the players from ever being able to research magic and placing them into a place where they need to basically play 'cook' and 'inkeeper'.

That, and it has a pretty big chance to go horribly wrong if not managed properly since there are a lot of moving parts that can get pretty fiddly.

 

[daniel_gudman]

Ugh, you're right, I didn't load that down with enough qualifiers.

Well, that was some of my "throw darts at the wall and see what sticks" brainstorming, so it's not like I'm married to it.

Well, really my point is, Kayaba's whole entire goal is to encourage players to develop and share their magecraft, so I've put thought into how he can manipulate everybody into doing that.

 

[Nasuren]

I see a few flaws in your idea as well, Daniel. Front-liners have the significant advantage that you seem to have forgotten: They are the first on a level. They are the ones that grinds on fields and scout it out first. I can literally see some guilds selling locations of resources and bringing back samples of local flora for the mid-liners. This isn't taking into account the possibility of players harvesting monsters instead of simply looting them. Hair alone is a significant component in Magecraft.

Next, you're forgetting the value of using knowledge to create a service instead of selling it. Ask yourself: Is it more valuable to sell your bounded field right away or keep it for a bit and provide it as a service? I said it once before, people will see to themselves before the good of others.

It's not necessarily a bad thing. If a business needs to hire someone to create a top of the line bounded field not released to the public instead of simply using a lesser publicly released version, both parties gain something. The maker gains resources that he could use to help support himself and his group while the business itself gains a security that wouldn't be as easy to break.

 

[Sunder the Gold]

Odd thought.

Shirou's Sword element allows him to easily do ridiculous things related to the concept of Swords, like turning a rolled-up aluminum poster into a weapon capable of parrying a few hits from Cuchulain's Gae Bolg.

Can Silica use her Beast Element with self-Reinforcement to become a werecat? Cait Sith!

It also fits the [Druid] archetype she's going for.

 

[happerry]

The thing is, Providing a Service is still changing into a more 'scientific' method of progress because you're showing off your goods to make people want to buy them from you instead of hiding them away so no one else knows it's possible. You can't sell things that no one knows you have after all. And if people do hire you to make those bounded fields everywhere, well, you've just shown them off to everyone else, and now anyone else with interest has lots of chances to poke them, figure out how you did it, and then make their own copies. Or, hell, even without poking them, just by you listing the effects you can provide, you've let people know it's possible and profitable, so they're gonna copy it.

One of the scary things about magecraft is that it honestly doesn't need much irreplaceable and hard to find tools, in general. Once someone figures out how to do something, it's really hard to take away their ability to do it if you give them any free time at all to poke at things. Anything that's shown off is only going to be a lasting secret if no one else wants to copy it, you're respected enough that no one is willing to steal from you, or it's so specialized no one else feels it's worth the effort.

 

[Nasuren]

The thing is, Providing a Service is still changing into a more 'scientific' method of progress because you're showing off your goods to make people want to buy them from you instead of hiding them away so no one else knows it's possible. You can't sell things that no one knows you have after all. And if people do hire you to make those bounded fields everywhere, well, you've just shown them off to everyone else, and now anyone else with interest has lots of chances to poke them, figure out how you did it, and then make their own copies. Or, hell, even without poking them, just by you listing the effects you can provide, you've let people know it's possible and profitable, so they're gonna copy it.

One of the scary things about magecraft is that it honestly doesn't need much irreplaceable and hard to find tools, in general. Once someone figures out how to do something, it's really hard to take away their ability to do it if you give them any free time at all to poke at things. Anything that's shown off is only going to be a lasting secret if no one else wants to copy it, you're respected enough that no one is willing to steal from you, or it's so specialized no one else feels it's worth the effort.

It still takes time, though. For that time people poke and prod in an attempt to figure it out, the creator is still providing a service and gaining materials/money that he can put back into research. Sure, eventually there will be a point that other groups reverse engineer it and create their own, but the competition would literally drive all parties forward and promote the advancement of Magecraft.

At least that's the theory. If Kayaba wants to promote the sharing of magecraft, he might want to think things a bit differently. Maybe pull a system like in Fullmetal Alchemist in which a 'government' formed from united guilds that encourage the sharing of most of their knowledge for various support. Doing this would establish a version of the association that Kayaba could directly influence through releasing his own knowledge under an alias to one that was more to his liking. By releasing magecraft to the public, he's basically attempting to make magecraft a part of everyone's lives. Hell, he could trigger it to a point that people could attempt to recreate modern technology through magecraft...

Great, now I'm imagining Diabel setting a big viewing crystal that others can watch as him and his allies fight the floor bosses.

 

[daniel_gudman]

How about a [Patent] Mechanic where everyone who uses your Spell automatically pays you a fee each time they cast it within a set time period, like for three months, or until ten floors have been cleared, or something?

Here's nit-picky stuff that could change:
1) You can change the fee to whatever you want; if you just want to maximize profit then you multiply how often it's cast vs. how expensive it is and just guess at the best balance for it. You can whitelist people (guilds, from your friendlist, etc) for a discount.

2) If they don't have the money to cast it... I'm kinda thinking they go into debt, but maybe it's just a special case of spell failure?

 

[Nasuren]

How about a [Patent] Mechanic where everyone who uses your Spell automatically pays you a fee each time they cast it within a set time period, like for three months, or until ten floors have been cleared, or something?

Here's nit-picky stuff that could change:
1) You can change the fee to whatever you want; if you just want to maximize profit then you multiply how often it's cast vs. how expensive it is and just guess at the best balance for it.

2) If they don't have the money to cast it... I'm kinda thinking they go into debt, but maybe it's just a special case of spell failure?

Ever thought that once the player/group/guild that develops it and released it publicly, for a limited time any player that buys it from them can't give it or attempt to reverse engineer it? After a while the spell will be able to be traded amongst player with the creator(s) taking a small cut for a while before it becomes 'public domain' and can be traded for free.

If you want to punish keeping Magecraft secret, try introducing a mechanic that a thief could steal a spell from the guild library after a period of time and release it to the public as his own product. The originally creators would still be noted, but it would say 'released by:XXXX'.

 

[daniel_gudman]

Ever thought that once the player/group/guild that develops it and released it publicly, for a limited time any player that buys it from them can't give it...

Yeah, I haven't mentioned it explicitly yet but "copy protection" on spell-books so people can't resell them without permission to do so is already a thing (that's why the [Paladins] charge a pittance for [Cure] instead of giving it away for free; with the system settings, gratis assumes libre).

...or attempt to reverse engineer it?

This is mind control. I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it either means Cardinal is monitoring your thoughts, or people are agreeing to a Geas involving what they think.

 

[Nasuren]

...or attempt to reverse engineer it?

This is mind control. I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it either means Cardinal is monitoring your thoughts, or people are agreeing to a Geas involving what they think.

That's the point. In the real world, a Geas is the only way a Magus is ensured to keep his world. Before the players log out, they need to know what a Geas is and the severity of it.

Yeah, I haven't mentioned it explicitly yet but "copy protection" on spell-books so people can't resell them without permission to do so is already a thing (that's why the [Paladins] charge a pittance for [Cure] instead of giving it away for free; with the system settings, gratis assumes libre).

...hmm, not a bad idea...

 

[Ravraxas]

Odd thought.

Shirou's Sword element allows him to easily do ridiculous things related to the concept of Swords, like turning a rolled-up aluminum poster into a weapon capable of parrying a few hits from Cuchulain's Gae Bolg.

Can Silica use her Beast Element with self-Reinforcement to become a werecat? Cait Sith!

It also fits the [Druid] archetype she's going for.

That would be Alteration, I think, as she is adding animal attributes to herself and it would be stupidly powerful. I gess she could manage it, if she survives the initial fuck ups she is going to have in initial experimentation and testing.

 

[lask]

You also need to make a distinction between evolutionary and revolutionary magecraft, and magecraft that requires additional components. You really want Shirou to share his 'nerves to circuits' spell, and you really want Argo to share her 'create fire and forget nerves to sacrifice' spell. Those are revolutionary - there should be big returns on them if they spread far. System rewards like 'one respawn' or a town portal scroll that can rescue an entire party, things like that after the spell has spread a certain distance. Everyone can use a safety net, after all.

Cure is Evolutionary - there are already healing spells that probobly work just about the same way, just less refined, it's revolutionary. You want players to spread them, but

Ilya's mystic eyes might be either, but it depends on Alchemical transmutation of the eyes. The eye transformation spell is the revolutionary aspect, the actually spell is just a component of the whole.

 

[Sunder the Gold]

That would be Alteration, I think, as she is adding animal attributes to herself and it would be stupidly powerful. I gess she could manage it, if she survives the initial fuck ups she is going to have in initial experimentation and testing.

Daniel has already said the lines are fuzzy between Reinforcement and Alteration.

Also, she's not adding much of anything. She's adjusting the values of the hair on her ears, the light sensitivity of her eyes, the length and flexibility of her tail bone, and her Utter Cuteness.

 

[Vanigo]

I see a few flaws in your idea as well, Daniel. Front-liners have the significant advantage that you seem to have forgotten: They are the first on a level. They are the ones that grinds on fields and scout it out first. I can literally see some guilds selling locations of resources and bringing back samples of local flora for the mid-liners. This isn't taking into account the possibility of players harvesting monsters instead of simply looting them. Hair alone is a significant component in Magecraft.

What resources? As I understand it, resource quality is going to cap out very quickly - the [Telluric Iron] on the second floor, for instance, is already the best iron ore in the entire game. Hair and glands and such harvested from mobs may be an exception, if they're thaumaturgically useful, but there's no [runeweave cloth], no [black ironwood], no [luminite ore]... The system is, by design, limited to real-world resources, and they aren't hard to come by.

Next, you're forgetting the value of using knowledge to create a service instead of selling it. Ask yourself: Is it more valuable to sell your bounded field right away or keep it for a bit and provide it as a service? I said it once before, people will see to themselves before the good of others.

But what service are the front-liners going to sell? They're the best at killing things, and by and large, that's about it. Someone else is the best at bounded fields - someone who worked on making better bounded fields when the front-liners were working on killing things better.

You keep talking like being the best at throwing fireballs automatically makes you the best at drawing bounded fields, or tracking spells, or whatever. That just isn't true. In fact, unless you're comparing the front-liners to the stay-at-home crowd, it's the exact opposite of true. This may sound bizarre to you, but that's because you're thinking about it like an MMO. You should stop thinking about it like an MMO, because Kayaba is going way out of his way to challenge your [common sense of MMOs].

 

[Nasuren]

What resources? As I understand it, resource quality is going to cap out very quickly - the [Telluric Iron] on the second floor, for instance, is already the best iron ore in the entire game. Hair and glands and such harvested from mobs may be an exception, if they're thaumaturgically useful, but there's no [runeweave cloth], no [black ironwood], no [luminite ore]... The system is, by design, limited to real-world resources, and they aren't hard to come by.

The resource quality cap? Dude, the fact that resources might be capped doesn't mean that demand isn't going to increase! Making a decent sword, for example, requires someone to go out into the field and mine the materials, bring them back and then process them into ingots that then can be made into a sword. Then a blacksmith would be able to forge when his workload enables him to do so. He's not only producing weapons and armor, but soon he will be producing things needed to make and maintain buildings.

This is all taking into effect that resources have to respawn, each with a limited material yield. See where I'm going?

But what service are the front-liners going to sell? They're the best at killing things, and by and large, that's about it. Someone else is the best at bounded fields - someone who worked on making better bounded fields when the front-liners were working on killing things better.

You keep talking like being the best at throwing fireballs automatically makes you the best at drawing bounded fields, or tracking spells, or whatever. That just isn't true. In fact, unless you're comparing the front-liners to the stay-at-home crowd, it's the exact opposite of true. This may sound bizarre to you, but that's because you're thinking about it like an MMO. You should stop thinking about it like an MMO, because Kayaba is going way out of his way to challenge your [common sense of MMOs].

Gatherers go out to 'mine' resources. If the front-liners discover a vein of raw material it will be them that will have sole access to it until the gatherers grind enough levels that it's possible to send them out to gather them themselves.

Nowhere did I say:

You keep talking like being the best at throwing fireballs automatically makes you the best at drawing bounded fields, or tracking spells, or whatever.

What I said was the guilds and players have more incentives to develop magecraft that relates to their situation. The Front-liners will be best at SURVIVING in the wild in areas that most players would not be able to reach. What's the point in being good a killing things if you don't know how to gather food, make a fire to keep warm at night or set up a basic alarm system if a monster attempts to attack at night?

BTW, I'm not thinking in terms of MMO. I'm thinking in terms of [real life] and [survival situations], something Kayaba is attempting to prepare them for. I said it once, and I'll say it again: This is the Nasu-verse. When bad things happen, they tend to get worse before it ends.

 

[Vanigo]

The resource quality cap? Dude, the fact that resources might be capped doesn't mean that demand isn't going to increase! Making a decent sword, for example, requires someone to go out into the field and mine the materials, bring them back and then process them into ingots that then can be made into a sword. Then a blacksmith would be able to forge when his workload enables him to do so. He's not only producing weapons and armor, but soon he will be producing things needed to make and maintain buildings.

This is all taking into effect that resources have to respawn, each with a limited material yield. See where I'm going?

I see what you're saying, but I think you're seriously underestimating the respawn rate. DG has said that Kayaba isn't interested in making players work hard for basic resources that, in the real world, would be easily purchased-slash-stolen-with-hypnotism. Between that, and his recent post about front-liners not adding much to the economy, I expect that the first 10 floors will have enough resources to supply the entire player-base indefinitely. (Possibly a moving window of good resources 20-30 floors behind the front, so that the middle liners can't go completely without combat skills, but that's still a long way back and not something the front-liners will have anything to do with.)

Gatherers go out to 'mine' resources. If the front-liners discover a vein of raw material it will be them that will have sole access to it until the gatherers grind enough levels that it's possible to send them out to gather them themselves.

Again, I don't think there will be resources rare enough to justify mining near the front lines. But even if there is, it's much better to have a few front-liners escort a dozen or so actual miners than to have the front liners do the mining themselves. The front liners haven't been grinding their [mining] skill, after all; they've been too busy developing the skills that keep them alive on the front lines.
And if the guild wants to keep it all in-house for maximum profit, they still won't take people off the front lines - front-liners are more valuable where they are. They'll set up a [resources division] within their guild. The people in this division will not be front-liners; they will be miners (or woodcutters or whatever). Tougher than the average miner, probably, but still not people who are going to get involved in boss fights.

Nowhere did I say:

You keep talking like being the best at throwing fireballs automatically makes you the best at drawing bounded fields, or tracking spells, or whatever.

I know you never came right out and said "The front-liners are at the top of the combat game, so obviously they'll be at the top of every other part of the game, too", but it's pretty obvious from the arguments you've made that that's what you're thinking. Your answer to "Who will the front-line guilds get to do X" is always "The front-liners will do it themselves". This is perfectly sensible in an MMO where being level 70 makes you better at X, but that's not the way it works here.

What I said was the guilds and players have more incentives to develop magecraft that relates to their situation. The Front-liners will be best at SURVIVING in the wild in areas that most players would not be able to reach. What's the point in being good a killing things if you don't know how to gather food, make a fire to keep warm at night or set up a basic alarm system if a monster attempts to attack at night?

Okay, fair point, the front-liners will be the best at killing things and wilderness survival, and, in many cases, quick-and-dirty temporary defenses. But that's a long way from being a complete set of everything a top-flight guild needs. They're not even particularly applicable to anything except clearing floors and guarding burgeoning settlements. (Established settlements will be defended in large part by permanent bounded fields, which are a somewhat different skill set.)

BTW, I'm not thinking in terms of MMO. I'm thinking in terms of [real life] and [survival situations], something Kayaba is attempting to prepare them for. I said it once, and I'll say it again: This is the Nasu-verse. When bad things happen, they tend to get worse before it ends.

I... don't follow your logic here. I agree that the logout screen might as well say "congratulations on completing the tutorial", and that front-liners will in many ways be best-equipped to deal with what comes next, but I don't see what that has to do with the in-game social dynamics.