Nasuverse You made a Fulldive Game! (FRO setting)

daniel_gudman

KING (In Land of Blind)
Staff member
#1
So, on the FRO talk thread, there's been some discussion about Floor Themes. I'm not going to be using most of them because they stray too far from the "Common Sense of the World", which adds another layer of complexity to the Game (can Kayaba even accurately simulate what magecraft would do in space?), and further, the fundamental gameplay is too far from what I'd be doing.

But, it's still kind of fun to think about that stuff, right? There are lots of things that aren't going to happen inside FRO, that might still be interesting to consider.

Also, if you've followed the Idea thread for a while, then you're probably aware that I don't want to use Alfheim as a game after SAO is cleared. Simply because the "high fantasy flying elf" stuff would muddy up my urban fantasy setting. That is to say, when we've got kids who can do [Simulated Real Magecraft] and [Game Magic] at the same time in a VR game, that's too confusing.

Here's a new forum game, like the You're Trapped in FRO thread.



You are a designer for a FullDive game in the FRO setting.



Kayaba programmed a "poison pill" into Cardinal that doesn't allow anyone to add [Supernatural Powers] to a game. No magic, no psychics, nothing like that. (Rubber science is okay though; so a Fulldive Gundam game could have the giant humanoid robots, but not the Newtype Psionics.)

daniel_gudman said:
...every time somebody used [Magic] or [Psychic Powers] during testing of gameplay elements, then weird-but-harmless things starting happening in their brain waves, almost like they were hypnotized. Testing proved that it wasn't something at all related to the "Trapping people in a deathgame" thing and is basically harmless, but it's still strange.

So Recto got spooked even if further testing proved it wasn't dangerous; in the meantime, there was an internal directive to stay away from spells and junk, and that stuck.
Nobody really knows why that's so. That's just the way things are; the best anyone can tell is, that something deep in the guts of the physics engine doesn't allow it. Well, as an audience member for FRO you understand why, but as a game designer that's outside the SAO incident, you don't know anything about what's going on inside there. So in this thread, you don't know why.

That being said, after the SAO Incident started up, your company (probably a subsidy or division of Recto Progress) is launching a FullDive game (anywhere from singleplayer to MMORPG), and you are part of the group that's working on that game. What are you making?

"Winning" entries will get stolen by me for use after Game Clear, or something. (I've got ideas for the game Leafa and Recon are going to be playing, but it's more about mechanics than setting fluff and flavor, for example.)

EDIT:
If you all are game designers, then I'll be playing the role of semi-befuddled corporate executive, who has unsolicited feedback to make your game "better".

EDIT 2:
Based on feedback from lask, the premise of this game has been tweaked.
 

Deathwings

Well-Known Member
#2
A survival horror game, using traditional Japanese folklore monsters that are made to be as fucking accurate as possible, in all their eldritch glory.

Funny thing tough, about between a year or two after the game launch (and not too far from SAO being completed), one of the player decide to perform a traditional exorcism for the lulz...only for Cardinal to accept it as valid despite the developers never coding it in.

Kayaba then proceed to rush to hide it, resulting in the incident becoming a famous Internet Myth.
 
#3
Okay, first off, I would do the easy thing: recreate the Battle Room from Ender's Game. That's just one room with laser pistols and low gravity. I have wanted this to be a thing ever since I read that book almost twenty years ago. (Also not sure why they didn't keep the game going in-setting; they have gravity manipulation so there's no reason they couldn't set up Battle Rooms planetside).

Like, most FullDive games have a traditional MMO setup, but there's no reason you couldn't have one that operated on Counterstrike style round-based combat. I could see there being a huge market for [Gladiator] style arena combat games - Chivalry, Counterstrike, World of Tanks, etc.
 
#4
Well, one of the first things I think about would be Simulation games, where one can simulate science.
For instance, maybe a game where you create cars and race them, or aircraft or things like that. This will allow people to experiment with various ideas for vehicles, and then maybe license them for the real world, where people could create them in real life. This game should have realistic and unrealistic sections, and maybe also architecture too. Basically a place for Engineers to simulate things before testing in real life with expensive parts. Has city building exercises too. Basic idea of it is that multiple people had ideas of simulating real world conditions for various things, and the projects got combined, as they were all simulating the same thing, and had similar purposes, and were really complex. Eventually could have exotic simulations/projects, like making a colony that could work on mars, or making an orbiting space station.

There's probably enough room for a game about creating art in various ways. Whether it be by sculpting, painting, sound, or architecture. Could be merged with the first game, which is the science/engineering simulator.

Another idea would be simulating martial arts, as well as using swords and other weapons, and you can fight in various exotic environments like space, in a volcano, or underwater. Given that this is basically Aincrad redone though, it would be problematic to sell though. Could be realistic, or a placeholder for a fantasy RPG, with lore. One piece of the lore could be that there was magic at one point, but isn't currently. I.e. they are planning on updating it with magic once they reverse-engineer the FullDive code enough to figure out how to add magic/unrealistic qualities to it. Given that SAO trapped its users in comas, it could possibly become legal to directly look at and modify the source code of that game to figure out why exactly it doesn't allow magic.

Fourth game would basically be a First Person Shooter, MMO, a bit like Gun Gale Online. Has tournaments that are basically FPS games.

Fifth could be a puzzle creation/solving game. Basically familiarizes a person with creating things in FullDive, as well as solving puzzles. Top performers could be invited to create/playtest all new complete games with various puzzles and lore in it.

Sixth idea could be a homework importer, where you could do homework on the Fulldive system, and uses your mental state to cause simple changes in the Environment to help make it easier to focus on it. Mainly a curiosity piece. Could also relate to the art game idea, which would make art that changes based on your brain state and whatnot.

One idea for your main story is that Kayaba could be taking various pieces from the physics engines of these other games in order to make Aincrad more realistic.
 

zerohour

Well-Known Member
#5
Hm... I think I would go with a Post-Apocalyptic Space opera style game.

After some event (WW3 for a placeholder), humanity is forced to leave the earth an now dwells in dozens or hundreds of massive space arcs. Initially, they worked together in hopes of finding a new earth and founding a new society of peace and harmony, but they had difficulties.

Resources began to get strained, things began to break down. Eventually, things got so bad for one ship, that they attacked and looted another one, leaving everyone aboard to die. This was initially hoped to be a anomoly, but it happened again, and again, until it became clear that humanity remained the same, and would turn on each other. The Grand Fleet shattered, and each ship went its own way.

Fast forward a few years/decades/centuries. One of the ships on it's last legs discovers a habitable planet. It is about to collapse, and can't survive long enough to land themselves, so their last actions are to broadcast a message to all the surviving ships.

They all begin to head towards the planet. However, after so long at war with each other, it seems unlikely that there can be a peaceful resolution.

There could be various factions. After living in the lifeless void of space for so long, each ship has adapted to best survive. They might not even be recognizable as human any more, depending on what extremes they went to to survive. Cybernetics, android bodies controlled by preserved brains, genetic engineering, or just sheer guts and firepower, plenty of different ways things could have gone.

The only hard and fast rule for the battle would probably be no touching the planet. After so long without a home, none of them would want to risk losing it again. Everything else is fair game.

Thoughts?
 

happerry

Well-Known Member
#6
Personally, I'd probably end up designing an RTS. After all, we've hard RTS's trying to make 3D matter for a long time, this is just the next natural step... and it'd be a lot of fun, too, don't you think?

I'd also consider something set in a Dyson Tree or in the upper limits of a Gas Giant or something. Low Gravity but air everywhere, lots of floating platforms, Jetpacks, lasers, low gravity personal artillery guns, deployable combat drone minions, either hovering for offensive support or fixed to the platforms for defensive support, recoil being used as a maneuvering aid...
 

Vanigo

Well-Known Member
#7
One thing that will definitely exist is Minecraft. Just, actual, not-an-expy Minecraft ported to FullDive.

Another idea: a post-sci-fi-apocalypse feudal world that was originally concieved as "a fantasy world with just enough this-is-ancient-lostech-not-magic painted on to work." Except, Cardinal turned out to be a lot smarter about it than the designers expected, so the sci-fi elements are actually pretty unsubtle. There are still dwarves and elves and whatnot, rationalized as genetically-engineered humans, and society is pretty standard swords-and-sorcery, but the no-really-it's-nanotech never worked, so, like, the legendary healing springs are pretty obviously Bacta tanks, the wizard stones are handwavium smartphones that can hook into surviving satellites to scry, etc. In-character all the NPCs call it magic, but the players worked it out pretty quickly. They're divided over whether this is a bold decision to represent forgotten history by not telling anyone or a stupid bait-and-switch.
 

MasalaQuaker

Well-Known Member
#8
3D Custom Maid, this is the platform for you!
It'd probably be some time before a decent R-18 game comes out for full dive, though.
 

daniel_gudman

KING (In Land of Blind)
Staff member
#9
Reader Responses

Survival Horror
Deathwings said:
Funny thing tough, about between a year or two after the game launch (and not too far from SAO being completed), one of the player decide to perform a traditional exorcism for the lulz...only for Cardinal to accept it as valid despite the developers never coding it in.
This is rad, I think maybe I'll use it.



Zero-Gee combat
Hardcore Heathen said:
Okay, first off, I would do the easy thing: recreate the Battle Room from Ender's Game. That's just one room with laser pistols and low gravity.
A zero-G combat game, huh?

happerry said:
I'd also consider something set in a Dyson Tree or in the upper limits of a Gas Giant or something. Low Gravity but air everywhere....
I would probably tell you two to go rip off Larry Niven's Integral Trees as the setting and go from there.



The (probably solvable) problem of Player Avatars
happerry said:
Personally, I'd probably end up designing an RTS. After all, we've hard RTS's trying to make 3D matter for a long time, this is just the next natural step... and it'd be a lot of fun, too, don't you think?
I've also wondered how you'd run a 4C game on a Fulldive system; like, what would Civilization 12 look like.

For RTS, 4C games, even turn-based small-squad like XCom; all those sorts of games where the Player is managing multiple units from a menu, I think there would have to be interface considerations because a Fulldive game requires an Avatar.

Kerbal Space Program (and also Kerbals Racing Cars) like TheMage1 wants to play could have the same problem; this Fulldive Immersion thing is rad, but there still needs to be some kind of Player Avatar.

I think it's definitely a solvable problem, and I think most games in these genres will converge on a "best" solution, but I don't know what the best solution will be, whether the player is a bodiless mote of light, inexplicably standing on an air platform like Kayaba did, or is fluffed into some kind of Control / Throne room with a bunch of NPC sidekicks standing around.



Amnesiac Space Punk
Vanigo said:
Another idea: a post-sci-fi-apocalypse feudal world that was originally concieved as "a fantasy world with just enough this-is-ancient-lostech-not-magic painted on to work." Except, Cardinal turned out to be a lot smarter about it than the designers expected, so the sci-fi elements are actually pretty unsubtle.... In-character all the NPCs call it magic, but the players worked it out pretty quickly. They're divided over whether this is a bold decision to represent forgotten history by not telling anyone or a stupid bait-and-switch.
If I was on the design team for this project, and we kept slamming into that wall, I would definitely pivot the fluff 45 degrees; the NPCs would carry on about all the magicalness and stuff, but the Players would be brought into the joke, by making it obvious in indirect ways too, like all the magibabble is clearly corrupted technology terms that the NPCs don't understand.

There are still Races, but they're even more clearly a mix of gengineering and cybernetics, like people can get "Golemcraft" limbs attached as replacements.

zerohour said:
After some event (WW3 for a placeholder), humanity is forced to leave the earth an now dwells in dozens or hundreds of massive space arcs. Initially, they worked together in hopes of finding a new earth and founding a new society of peace and harmony, but they had difficulties.
Probably I'd roll this in and scale it down, place it somewhere that the Players can recognize with just a little help from Wikipedia.

For example, the NPCs have a complex mythology like the Great Wheel of Planes from DnD, but in reality, the setting is a bunch of space colonies orbiting Jupiter; the "Prime Material" planes are all O'Neill Cylinders, the "Elemental Plane of Molten Fire" is Io, the "Elemental Plane of Cold Water" is Europa, and the "Boundless Ghenna of Screaming Wind" is obviously Jupiter proper.

Yeah, between Information Weapons like potent computer viruses and regular weapons, the colonies were massively depopulated, and all their stored data was either lost or corrupted into strange, inaccessible forms. Maybe the life support systems are extremely robust and self-repairing, but are also locked behind passwords nobody remembers.

...

This is actually a really good match for the kind of setting that I wanted to do with the replacement for Alfheim.



Rule 34
MasalaQuaker said:
3D Custom Maid, this is the platform for you!
It'd probably be some time before a decent R-18 game comes out for full dive, though.
Ha ha ha, I bet they'd be totally cool, though.
daniel_gudman said:
Strange Fake said:
Kayaba stood on his floating pedestal, staring down at the world he had created for the sake of his ambition and enjoying a good gloat.

When his cellphone alarm went off, going "cha cha cha", he sighed and turned it off, going back to his work.

First, he queried the database of [All Player Spells] for updates and changes, to update his knowledge of what his pawns were capable of.

However, he paused while reading through the entries, when he came to a particular line.

It seemed that Asuna and Kirito had independently invented prana exchange rituals while... experimenting.

He scratched his chin, and then sighed.

"Yui." He commanded.

The holographic interface that the AI preferred materialized next to him. "Yes?" It asked with that little girl voice.

He considered, and then finally just asked his question directly without any refinement. "Why are people such perverts?"

The Yui blushed, tilting it's head down and placing its hands on its cheeks. "Ah... momma and poppa are just healthy teenagers, that's all."

Kayaba narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "You..." he began. "Were you watching?"

The hologram blushed even brighter as it turned away and began stammering, but Kayaba ignored the simulated embarrassment.

Instead he sighed with depression, head lolling back as he stared at the sky. "Why do Players always insist on H-mods?" He whispered, in his frustration and despair.
 

Deathwings

Well-Known Member
#10
I don't know about Civilization style game, but for RTS there's already a game that has a pretty good setup for Fulldive : Supreme Commander. It's acknowledged in the game's fluff what we, the players, see through our computer screen is actually the ACU's main display.

Yeah, technically, SupCom is a First Person RTS.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#11
TheMage1 said:
There's probably enough room for a game about creating art in various ways. Whether it be by sculpting, painting, sound, or architecture. Could be merged with the first game, which is the science/engineering simulator.
Sounds like Legendary Moonlight Sculptor. The actual world is a full-scale 'do anything' medieval fantasy world, but the main character sculpts stuff and is damn badass



But let's be honest, at least half of all Fulldive traffic will be to R18 games.
 

lask

Well-Known Member
#12
Honestly? If the system is usable to make anything but Aincrad expansions, then it's possible to add 'magic,' though it might be awkward for the developers. Here's everything you need to make impracticably inflexible to make that not possible.

An inventory system. If you have an inventory, it can be re purposed to hold 'spells' instead of 'items' - since what's a spell and what's an item is arbitrary, and a fireball and a rock don't have to be different except in the ways the system says they are different.

An equipment system. There isn't really a difference between a shirt and an aura, a pistol and the mark of the outsider.

Status effects and triggered preprogrammed events. Vampires and werewolves, basically anything that needs to interact with the system in a different way, anything timed or attached to external events.

Moderator/Admin privileges.

Attributes that change how you interact with anything.

...

I could go on, but the basic point is that yes it's possible for Kayaba to stop developers from adding magic/special powers (well, no it's not, but it's possible to make it REALLY HARD), but any sufficient effort in that direction is going to render his engine so limited that they won't be able to use it to develop games in. He can make it harder by making it so there's no direct place to plug a magic system code into, but as long as any of the system I mentioned above are supported in anything but the most crippled ways, it will be possible to repurpose them for magic, and then those tricks will get shared between developers.

If he has made them so inflexible, then no one will use his operating system, they'll develop their own just like how a new safer fulldrive technology was developed after SAO lunched. And that's the opposite of what Kayaba wants, as he wants everything to be compatible with his magic patch so he can distribute it far and wide.
 

Deathwings

Well-Known Member
#13
lask said:
I could go on, but the basic point is that yes it's possible for Kayaba to stop developers from adding magic/special powers (well, no it's not, but it's possible to make it REALLY HARD), but any sufficient effort in that direction is going to render his engine so limited that they won't be able to use it to develop games in. He can make it harder by making it so there's no direct place to plug a magic system code into, but as long as any of the system I mentioned above are supported in anything but the most crippled ways, it will be possible to repurpose them for magic, and then those tricks will get shared between developers.

If he has made them so inflexible, then no one will use his operating system, they'll develop their own just like how a new safer fulldrive technology was developed after SAO lunched. And that's the opposite of what Kayaba wants, as he wants everything to be compatible with his magic patch so he can distribute it far and wide.
This chain of logic fails to take into account the fact that in this story, Fulldive technology is actually a form of MAGITECH that is constantly being monitored and controlled by Cardinal, an AI.

So, if you try to cheese the definition of "magic", Cardinal will totally catch on and shut you down. There is an actual intelligence enforcing Kayaba's seemingly arbitrary rules here.

This also make developing your own OS to replace Cardinal pretty much impossible, as you not only need magitech for it to work at all, Cardinal probably won't take it standing down and is likely to subvert your shiny original OS outright.
 

lask

Well-Known Member
#14
Deathwings said:
lask said:
I could go on, but the basic point is that yes it's possible for Kayaba to stop developers from adding magic/special powers (well, no it's not, but it's possible to make it REALLY HARD), but any sufficient effort in that direction is going to render his engine so limited that they won't be able to use it to develop games in. He can make it harder by making it so there's no direct place to plug a magic system code into, but as long as any of the system I mentioned above are supported in anything but the most crippled ways, it will be possible to repurpose them for magic, and then those tricks will get shared between developers.

If he has made them so inflexible, then no one will use his operating system, they'll develop their own just like how a new safer fulldrive technology was developed after SAO lunched. And that's the opposite of what Kayaba wants, as he wants everything to be compatible with his magic patch so he can distribute it far and wide.
This chain of logic fails to take into account the fact that in this story, Fulldive technology is actually a form of MAGITECH that is constantly being monitored and controlled by Cardinal, an AI.

So, if you try to cheese the definition of "magic", Cardinal will totally catch on and shut you down. There is an actual intelligence enforcing Kayaba's seemingly arbitrary rules here.

This also make developing your own OS to replace Cardinal pretty much impossible, as you not only need magitech for it to work at all, Cardinal probably won't take it standing down and is likely to subvert your shiny original OS outright.
Then the government doesn't let any new fulldrive technology be sold at all. Kayaba's program has already killed people, less then in canon but it still has. If something that can't be control that's tied to him is still in control of the technology then libility means that all of it is pulled. Full stop. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200$.

Of course it if took magic simply to run Kayaba would never have gotten away with it, it would have been too obvious, so the basic technology has to be something that has entered into the realm of common sense, so you can simply start from scratch and throw out all of Kayaba's work, and he would have to work damn hard to make sure that doesn't happen anyways BEFORE the OS is slaved to a hostile A.I. that no one anywhere trusts.
 

happerry

Well-Known Member
#15
daniel_gudman said:
Zero-Gee combat
Hardcore Heathen said:
Okay, first off, I would do the easy thing: recreate the Battle Room from Ender's Game. That's just one room with laser pistols and low gravity.
A zero-G combat game, huh?

happerry said:
I'd also consider something set in a Dyson Tree or in the upper limits of a Gas Giant or something. Low Gravity but air everywhere....
I would probably tell you two to go rip off Larry Niven's Integral Trees as the setting and go from there.
That was actually the exact book I was thinking about when I came up with the idea.
 

daniel_gudman

KING (In Land of Blind)
Staff member
#16
lask said:
Honestly? If the system is usable to make anything but Aincrad expansions, then it's possible to add 'magic,' though it might be awkward for the developers.
The facile response is that what you're saying is outside the scope of the thread.

But that's just dodging the question, so it's more like:
It's not that it's impossible, it's that Cardinal (the part that automatically generates content) is secretly sabotaging every attempt to make it "magic."

To take your very first example:
An inventory system. If you have an inventory, it can be re purposed to hold 'spells' instead of 'items' - since what's a spell and what's an item is arbitrary, and a fireball and a rock don't have to be different except in the ways the system says they are different.
Cardinal keeps insisting that those items are called [Grenade] and are a little metal ball shaped like a pineapple with that famous little handle on the side, and automatically "updates" the [Scroll of Exploding Runes] into a [Grenade]. And if you absolutely insist on the [Scroll of Exploding Runes], then the game will patch in an NPC sage somewhere to give a fluff speech explaining that the most important reagent is the "alchemically" treated paper, called Nitrocellulose in the Old Tongue.

In terms of backstory for how that happened in FRO, I'm not even sure I'd make it out as something that Kayaba deliberately intended, or if it's just Cardinal continuing to unexpectedly follow his (secret) orders to "clear the way" for the Release Edition of Aincrad, to automatically "fix" all the magic-like content that the other writers and artists working on Aincrad put in.

From a business perspective, I'd like to treat it as something that the writers and developers want to fix on the next game engine, but for now everybody has to grit their teeth and deal with it, because it's a race to the market to grab marketshare as quickly as possible, and the three years spent remaking the tools from the ground-up is still a year or two out from the first game.
 

lask

Well-Known Member
#17
daniel_gudman said:
lask said:
Honestly? If the system is usable to make anything but Aincrad expansions, then it's possible to add 'magic,' though it might be awkward for the developers.
The facile response is that what you're saying is outside the scope of the thread.

But that's just dodging the question, so it's more like:
It's not that it's impossible, it's that Cardinal (the part that automatically generates content) is secretly sabotaging every attempt to make it "magic."

To take your very first example:
An inventory system. If you have an inventory, it can be re purposed to hold 'spells' instead of 'items' - since what's a spell and what's an item is arbitrary, and a fireball and a rock don't have to be different except in the ways the system says they are different.
Cardinal keeps insisting that those items are called [Grenade] and are a little metal ball shaped like a pineapple with that famous little handle on the side, and automatically "updates" the [Scroll of Exploding Runes] into a [Grenade]. And if you absolutely insist on the [Scroll of Exploding Runes], then the game will patch in an NPC sage somewhere to give a fluff speech explaining that the most important reagent is the "alchemically" treated paper, called Nitrocellulose in the Old Tongue.

In terms of backstory for how that happened in FRO, I'm not even sure I'd make it out as something that Kayaba deliberately intended, or if it's just Cardinal continuing to unexpectedly follow his (secret) orders to "clear the way" for the Release Edition of Aincrad, to automatically "fix" all the magic-like content that the other writers and artists working on Aincrad put in.

From a business perspective, I'd like to treat it as something that the writers and developers want to fix on the next game engine, but for now everybody has to grit their teeth and deal with it, because it's a race to the market to grab marketshare as quickly as possible, and the three years spent remaking the tools from the ground-up is still a year or two out from the first game.
That doesn't deal with the most fundamental issue then, which is that Cardinal is way to obviously influential in the program, is too advanced an expert system, with Kayaba's influence still on it. That's too scary for fundamentally conservative risk adverse organizations like big business.

Companies wouldn't be willing to take the liability risk that Kayaba has another trick buried somewhere, and governments wouldn't be willing to give such obviously dangerous technology the all clean to be sold.

In canon, there was no obvious hidden doors/uncontrolled elements, but they still went through a big hardware update that eliminated the know issues and it still was an industry crushed down to one game with developers only starting to sniff around again around the time Aincrad ended, because no one else was willing to take the risk. You're saying with more obvious risk (because they clearly aren't in control of the software), more big companies will take the leap?

The lower death toll helps, but having to tell your manager "We can't do that because the built in management A.I., you know the one that has killed people over in SAO, it doesn't like us doing that," well... Yeah, that a short step to a cancelled project and a restructuring away from Fulldrive technology until it has been established as safe again.
 

daniel_gudman

KING (In Land of Blind)
Staff member
#18
Ugh, I don't wanna hear that, but I can't deny you're making a good point.

I really want to get away from "Flying Magic Elves" for the "successor game", but I don't want to make that change "just because lol", I want a logical rationale. So I liked blaming it on Kayaba (indirectly) because that meant that all of the problems came from one source.

...Actually, what if we completely judo-flipped it the other way?

It's not something Kayaba made happen, it's something that the risk-averse corporate people forbid.

Because, every time somebody used [Magic] or [Psychic Powers] during testing of gameplay elements, then weird-but-harmless things starting happening in their brain waves, almost like they were hypnotized. Testing proved that it wasn't something at all related to the "Trapping people in a deathgame" thing and is basically harmless, but it's still strange.

So Recto got spooked even if further testing proved it wasn't dangerous; in the meantime, there was an internal directive to stay away from spells and junk, and that stuck.
 

lask

Well-Known Member
#19
daniel_gudman said:
Ugh, I don't wanna hear that, but I can't deny you're making a good point.

I really want to get away from "Flying Magic Elves" for the "successor game", but I don't want to make that change "just because lol", I want a logical rationale. So I liked blaming it on Kayaba (indirectly) because that meant that all of the problems came from one source.

...Actually, what if we completely judo-flipped it the other way?

It's not something Kayaba made happen, it's something that the risk-averse corporate people forbid.

Because, every time somebody used [Magic] or [Psychic Powers] during testing of gameplay elements, then weird-but-harmless things starting happening in their brain waves, almost like they were hypnotized. Testing proved that it wasn't something at all related to the "Trapping people in a deathgame" thing and is basically harmless, but it's still strange.

So Recto got spooked even if further testing proved it wasn't dangerous; in the meantime, there was an internal directive to stay away from spells and junk, and that stuck.
Sure. Doesn't even require it to have anything directly to do with the magic engine - remember that your that soul and body are pretty tightly tied together in the Nasuverse, and fairies have WINGS. Anytime they started playing with non-human body parts, it started creating problems subtle problems, so that was scrapped.
 

happerry

Well-Known Member
#20
That doesn't keep other companies from pulling out magic games though?
 

raedric

Well-Known Member
#21
To improve boss ability in later parts of SAO, Kayaba releases a second game under a pseudonym. In this game you take control of various legends (all of which have been in a holy grail war.) The customization might be different but base abilities would be set. After this he turns it into it's own mmo and uses the fights from the top players as imported combat data to be updated into SAO. This way the fine details of the abilities could be hammered down for things he couldn't necessarily predict themselves, and gives them an interesting tie to Shirou later.
That's all I got.
 
#22
happerry said:
That doesn't keep other companies from pulling out magic games though?
they can

but the big industry leaders will probably do 'no magic' games first

if weird things are happening when you try to add magic (like player hypnotism) then the big leagues might stay away from or delay their magic games so that the first non-SAO big games are first person shooters and sims (space, racing, airplanes & tanks)

idea: hypnotism in action

a small game maker indie company makes a magic game, which is released prior to any big company releasing a magic game (some have a magic game partly completed but are dragging their heels because of strangeness) after a while the world is surprised when a badly injured man (gunshot to the stomach) limps into a convenience store and grabs a drink (mountain dew / or Gatorade) off the shelf and drinks it expecting to be 'healed' he yells a bit about "crappy healing potions" and dies. it is later revealed that he was a big name player in the magic game.

it is revealed that players in magic games suffer a derangement where they have trouble determining what is real and what is the game
 

happerry

Well-Known Member
#23
I... really don't think that 'some random magic' game would effect people's minds badly enough they can't tell the difference between a normal drink and a potion. It's not like all drinks in a game would be magic, and even if they were, they wouldn't all be healing potions. Even if the guy was confusing the game with real life I don't see why he'd think a soft drink was a healing potion instead of trying to find the ingredients that they'd actually use in game to make a healing potion or something.
 

lask

Well-Known Member
#24
happerry said:
That doesn't keep other companies from pulling out magic games though?
That there aren't very many games at all does, though. SAO almost killed Fulldive technology, there simply isn't a big enough market for more then two or three games, and they'll all be super conservatively design games.
 
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