Can someone explain to light novel authors how MMOs work? ‘in this MMO the only thing anyone can ever do in combat is hit thing with sword’. ‘in this mmo there are four classes- spear, sword, bow, and shield- noone ever uses the shield’. ‘There’s monstrous races with extreme advantages but equally extreme disadvantages, so they’re rarely played’.
Because if there’s one thing MMO players hate, it’s(in order), trying different classes with different specialities in combat, having dedicated players whose job it is to keep the rest of the party safe, and min-maxing.
Pretty sure Log Horizon is the only time a light novel has understood MMOs.
Despite the lack of magic, Sword art online is completely modeled after early Ultima Online. A game that had no classes but many individual skills that gave the player unlimited control over the build of their character. Allowing for builds that specialized in DPS, Tanking, support, scouting etc without having defined classes. This allowed a primarily DPS character like Kirito to also specialize in stealth skills. Something that greatly helped his survivability as a solo player.
So yes the Author did know how MMOs worked at least the ones he played back in 2001 when the story was written. If that doesn’t mesh with your modern MMO stylings, then yes read Log Horizon.
“despite the lack of magic…”
Ultima Online used magic to a huge degree to enable a variety of play styles. Saying it’s ‘based on Ultima Online’ while admitting it lacks a core mechanic of Ultima Online is admitting that yes, in fact, this MMO is lacking core mechanics. SAO’s Aincrad has no method of healing(outside those crystals that don’t always work, and aren’t a class option but an item), no (explored, I suppose) methods of drawing aggro, no ranged combat options, no AoE options, etc. The game is just ‘hit with sword’.
There’s no experimentation, no value in making “new builds”, because every character can max out every skill. It’s fucking Runescape, but with less mechanical complexity in combat.
The only thing it has going for it is its full scale VR allowing for perhaps the single best sword fighting simulator ever. Which is great! And when, six months down the line, someone else took that exact same technology and built an MMO with all the things Aincrad had plus bows, magic, and more complex options in combat, you’d have a really successful MMO.
Why do people that have zero knowledge of Sword Art Online always have to be like this. Just admit you have no idea how the actual mechanics of the game work or just not tag your post and we’d have been fine.
Whether or not Ultima used magic to grant variety to it’s play styles or not is irrelevant to the fact that it still used it’s skill based system to allow it’s diversity to work. Your complaint is “in this MMO all you can do is hit thing with a sword” which is false. Except for magic SAO has that same diversity that Ultima had.
If you wanted to complain about the SAO anime that’s fine. But don’t act like pretty much every complaint you just made is something that is a thing in the actual game of sword art online in the novels. There are multiple ways to heal other than crystals (which always work btw, you’re thinking of teleport crystals). All the relevant aggro drawing skills to create a normal MMO tank exist. Ranged weapons while rarer do exist. The sword skills themselves are pseudo-magic that create ranged attacks wide area attacks etc. You can create any common MMO class or combination of other than mages or healers.
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