Sword Art Online

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nightreader
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Re: Sword Art Online

Post by nightreader »

Sludge wrote: and that last line of your is obviously true, since that is the entire purpose of SAO :)
I wonder where his soul is watching from, for the other books and what he thinks about is happening
in the real world. Oh, guess it is time to read Vol 11. Looks around. No book yet. I guess the
translators can take a short break, since more is coming soon.
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mythu
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Re: Sword Art Online

Post by mythu »

gnx00 wrote: I actually wonder how Heathcliff plan to battle in floor 100 though.
nightreader wrote: I wonder where his soul is watching from, for the other books and what he thinks about is happening in the real world.
Kayaba is probably still waiting at the last floor in ALO's new Aincrad as an bottom-up type AI player, he didn't really care about the real world Idk if he might have changed in the meantime.
Since Heathcliff is classified as a player a only viable way to fight him would be a 2vs1 duel if a party can be formed as a maximum 2 people(yet somehow I'd say the maximum number allowed is 7 but Heathcliff could use his own created aiding minions in the boss room and assign them in his party or as "tamed" AI like Pina).
Let's say outside of a duel Heathcliff could be classified as an immortal object, in a duel he is re-spawned if he dies and he can finally leave the throne room.
Just have patience and see, it's irrelevent to debate the unlimited posibilities.
Spoiler! :
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Facing life&death ++
"I am nothing in the eternity of this world..nor can I do anything in this vastness all by myself"(茜新地花屋散華 2, 26)
"the one to be envied is he who loves, however little he gets in return"(Eric Berne)
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Skeptic
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Re: Sword Art Online

Post by Skeptic »

For the original plan for the 100th floor boss fight, "minions" is probably the right answer. Even the first floor boss had them. Possibly terrain would be a factor too; an entire floor of the Scarlet Castle might be the battleground instead of just the throne room.

That also gives more room for the other unique skills to be important. The winning player strategy becomes this: pin the boss in one room for a Dual Blades vs Holy Sword and Shield showdown while keeping minions from interfering. And you'd want that to be a big (preferably round) room instead of somewhere with a narrow choke point, since that shield would be pretty much invincible if he just stands in a doorway.

It'd be very interesting to see if Kawahara decides to cover the final 25 floors in Progressive. Imagine the absolute chaos among the playerbase if the early reveal still happens, but everyone declines the early final duel offer, or he doesn't even offer the early duel. That basically decapitates the strongest clearing guild AND removes a godlike defensive unique skill from the clearer arsenal. Who will step in to lead? How will the general population handle the crushing despair? IMO if he's going to try for that plot branch, we'll see other heroes start to arise well in advance.
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Re: Sword Art Online

Post by Sludge »

Skeptic wrote:For the original plan for the 100th floor boss fight, "minions" is probably the right answer. Even the first floor boss had them. Possibly terrain would be a factor too; an entire floor of the Scarlet Castle might be the battleground instead of just the throne room.

That also gives more room for the other unique skills to be important. The winning player strategy becomes this: pin the boss in one room for a Dual Blades vs Holy Sword and Shield showdown while keeping minions from interfering. And you'd want that to be a big (preferably round) room instead of somewhere with a narrow choke point, since that shield would be pretty much invincible if he just stands in a doorway.

It'd be very interesting to see if Kawahara decides to cover the final 25 floors in Progressive. Imagine the absolute chaos among the playerbase if the early reveal still happens, but everyone declines the early final duel offer, or he doesn't even offer the early duel. That basically decapitates the strongest clearing guild AND removes a godlike defensive unique skill from the clearer arsenal. Who will step in to lead? How will the general population handle the crushing despair? IMO if he's going to try for that plot branch, we'll see other heroes start to arise well in advance.
If he gives good coverage to Klein with Fuurinkazan and also maybe Agil , they can step up to lead the clearing group with Asuna and Kirito probably.
I'd like that as a plot twist , Kirito attacks him ... he smirks , converts to his red robe form and disappears into the ceiling like he did at the start leaving no doubt who he is and shocking everyone.
Also it was said before that even though KoB was the strongest there were still other strong guilds that could probably take over.
Maybe they will all unify into one major guild going with boss fights taking only the strongest warriors every time with nearly unlimited resources for items / potions and crystals.

Haaaaa I can't wait! :)
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Skeptic
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Re: Sword Art Online

Post by Skeptic »

Sludge wrote:Also it was said before that even though KoB was the strongest there were still other strong guilds that could probably take over.
Yeah. By the time of the murder mystery, DDA was a close rival, and I think any other guild was far behind those big two. We don't really have much info on the state of the clearing guilds by the time of the 75th floor. I get the impression that the rivalries had faded somewhat, as the number of active clearers steadily dropped. I would think the scouting party they lost was a mixed group, for example.

If we trust the anime on this, by the time of the 75th floor, no guild is really dominant anymore aside from KoB using Heathcliff to tank and Asuna to plan. It looks like boss battle tactics have long since set aside guild pride, and everyone just sends only their strongest; KoB only has 3 known members in that fight in the book version, more like 6 in the anime; Klein is the only member of his guild present; and in the anime I only noticed 3 members of the DDA there. (I saw Schmitt there!).

Progressive could easily revise the player strength situation using things that showed up in later books, of course. In book 1, only the clearers were strong. In book 2, sparring matches in safe zones were mentioned. By book 6, some more safe training mentions were mentioned (Kirito, Asuna, Klein and the gang did advanced hide and seek, XaXa had continued practicing while in prison). By book 8, there were a bunch of player-run dojo in ALO. It's not hard to imagine a mass effort in old Aincrad to find ways for the clearers to safely train up lower level characters in both actual system skills and essential outside system techniques.
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gn_x00
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Re: Sword Art Online

Post by gn_x00 »

Skeptic wrote:For the original plan for the 100th floor boss fight, "minions" is probably the right answer. Even the first floor boss had them. Possibly terrain would be a factor too; an entire floor of the Scarlet Castle might be the battleground instead of just the throne room.

That also gives more room for the other unique skills to be important. The winning player strategy becomes this: pin the boss in one room for a Dual Blades vs Holy Sword and Shield showdown while keeping minions from interfering. And you'd want that to be a big (preferably round) room instead of somewhere with a narrow choke point, since that shield would be pretty much invincible if he just stands in a doorway.

It'd be very interesting to see if Kawahara decides to cover the final 25 floors in Progressive. Imagine the absolute chaos among the playerbase if the early reveal still happens, but everyone declines the early final duel offer, or he doesn't even offer the early duel. That basically decapitates the strongest clearing guild AND removes a godlike defensive unique skill from the clearer arsenal. Who will step in to lead? How will the general population handle the crushing despair? IMO if he's going to try for that plot branch, we'll see other heroes start to arise well in advance.
Actually, covering the last 25 floor in progressive means that it will change the original story. Might be better to called the last 25 floor arc as "IF Route" instead of Progressive
and for the minion, Imagine if the "minions" are 2 dungeon boss (like maybe floor 95 boss or something?)
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Re: Sword Art Online

Post by User753 »

Greetings.
Spoiler! :
Skeptic wrote:Yeah. By the time of the murder mystery, DDA was a close rival, and I think any other guild was far behind those big two. We don't really have much info on the state of the clearing guilds by the time of the 75th floor. I get the impression that the rivalries had faded somewhat, as the number of active clearers steadily dropped. I would think the scouting party they lost was a mixed group, for example.

If we trust the anime on this, by the time of the 75th floor, no guild is really dominant anymore aside from KoB using Heathcliff to tank and Asuna to plan. It looks like boss battle tactics have long since set aside guild pride, and everyone just sends only their strongest; KoB only has 3 known members in that fight in the book version, more like 6 in the anime; Klein is the only member of his guild present; and in the anime I only noticed 3 members of the DDA there. (I saw Schmitt there!).

Progressive could easily revise the player strength situation using things that showed up in later books, of course. In book 1, only the clearers were strong. In book 2, sparring matches in safe zones were mentioned. By book 6, some more safe training mentions were mentioned (Kirito, Asuna, Klein and the gang did advanced hide and seek, XaXa had continued practicing while in prison). By book 8, there were a bunch of player-run dojo in ALO. It's not hard to imagine a mass effort in old Aincrad to find ways for the clearers to safely train up lower level characters in both actual system skills and essential outside system techniques.
I think that Schmitt will probably be the next candidate for the strongest tank if that ever happened.
Spoiler! :
gn_x00 wrote:
Skeptic wrote:For the original plan for the 100th floor boss fight, "minions" is probably the right answer. Even the first floor boss had them. Possibly terrain would be a factor too; an entire floor of the Scarlet Castle might be the battleground instead of just the throne room.

That also gives more room for the other unique skills to be important. The winning player strategy becomes this: pin the boss in one room for a Dual Blades vs Holy Sword and Shield showdown while keeping minions from interfering. And you'd want that to be a big (preferably round) room instead of somewhere with a narrow choke point, since that shield would be pretty much invincible if he just stands in a doorway.

It'd be very interesting to see if Kawahara decides to cover the final 25 floors in Progressive. Imagine the absolute chaos among the playerbase if the early reveal still happens, but everyone declines the early final duel offer, or he doesn't even offer the early duel. That basically decapitates the strongest clearing guild AND removes a godlike defensive unique skill from the clearer arsenal. Who will step in to lead? How will the general population handle the crushing despair? IMO if he's going to try for that plot branch, we'll see other heroes start to arise well in advance.
Actually, covering the last 25 floor in progressive means that it will change the original story. Might be better to called the last 25 floor arc as "IF Route" instead of Progressive
and for the minion, Imagine if the "minions" are 2 dungeon boss (like maybe floor 95 boss or something?)
Agreed, but won't two 95th floor bosses is an overkill? Since it's a castle, I think there'll be some (re)spawning troops or royal guards until the (royal)guard captains or something instead. Although, since it's Kayaba that we're talking about, it's possible that he thought that both included with some anti-crystal areas will be fun (as long as there's no insta-kill foes like that Skull Reaper). (Finally able to cover the 30+ page of this forum thread page that I missed)
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ssdan
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Re: Sword Art Online

Post by ssdan »

Covering the last 25 floors of Aincrad... that sounds like a bunch of OVAs or even a whole season on its own? That sounds... very delicious xD
hm.. floor 100 boss will be Heathcliff (man forgot how to spell his name :P) and aaaaall the bosses from floor1-99 vs all the front line players xD
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Re: Sword Art Online

Post by gn_x00 »

the cover for progressive vol 1 is out!
I have to say the art is really great XD
and it seems there's some minor detail in the coat that Kirito use which is different than the one in the Vol 1 and 2 of SAO (and also different from the anime version of Aria).
Well at least it looks cooler than midnight coat anime version
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Re: Sword Art Online

Post by SXIII »

ssdan wrote:Covering the last 25 floors of Aincrad... that sounds like a bunch of OVAs or even a whole season on its own? That sounds... very delicious xD
hm.. floor 100 boss will be Heathcliff (man forgot how to spell his name :P) and aaaaall the bosses from floor1-99 vs all the front line players xD
I'm guessing that Kayaba would more likely forcebily teleport ALL living players to floor 100 and prevent access to lower floors. By removing safe areas he would force front liners to divert part of their forces to protecting low level players 24/7. Since criminals would also be mixed in the group there would be an increased need for a dedicated police force. If ocasional large monster attacks were added in, then this way he would truly mess with everyone in SAO.

To make things balanced monsters could be permanently killed or their attack rate raduced by killing a large enough portion of them.
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Re: Sword Art Online

Post by skullxp »

already has a date for when the next volume will be released?(volume 11) :?:
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Re: Sword Art Online

Post by Skeptic »

SAO was hard, but the rules were fair - even Kirito admitted this. Some of these crazy theories completely contradict the way Kayaba does things.

Death is in SAO as a motivator; it makes the game immersive, forces the players to take it seriously, and strongly encourages them to fight through to freedom. You don't choke to death on your food in SAO, you don't trip and break your neck in SAO. You can kill yourself, you can die honestly challenging difficult areas, and you can be murdered by other humans, but the game itself doesn't just randomly strike people down just because it can.

Teleporting weaklings into a high level area? Making the last few levels effectively impossible by throwing multiple high level bosses at you at once? That's not Kayaba at all. Remember, Kayaba wanted to lose at the end of a hard, but honest struggle. He spent years specifically finding and training people to become strong enough to beat him! That other stuff is how Sugou would do things.
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Re: Sword Art Online

Post by acolyte »

A bit late, but congratulations for finishing vol10 translation! XD
^^OnMe wrote: Kirito
Q. Who was your first love? Also, what position would Asuna be, in order of the women you liked?
A. Someone who was in the “Black Cats of the Moonlit Night”… I guess. Basically, that would make Asuna the next person I ended up liking after her.

That's a pretty shocking revelation! I checked the red nose reindeer chapter and the story says that there was only one female member in the party of five. So that means that Kirito had a crush on Sachi (as he didn't express anything at all as far as we know) and had to see her die before his own eyes! No wonder he had such a trauma after that incident and didn't want to join any guilds afterwards... :'(
Seriously? I thought he said somewhere that he doesn't feel romantic feelings for Sachi, just a protective feeling, like a comrade..
I don't know where should I start being sad from.. From Sachi's death, or Asuna being second, or Kirito being not interested in Asuna in the first two floors (anime/side story/ME wise) etc etc..
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Re: Sword Art Online

Post by Richter »

acolyte wrote: Seriously? I thought he said somewhere that he doesn't feel romantic feelings for Sachi, just a protective feeling, like a comrade..
I don't know where should I start being sad from.. From Sachi's death, or Asuna being second, or Kirito being not interested in Asuna in the first two floors (anime/side story/ME wise) etc etc..
This was a retcon. Believe the taps blog stated the interview was from '05.

Speaking of retcons I really wish the progressor version would make Asuna of the first floors some new female character that Kirito grew to love and she ends up dying for consistencies sake, as well as the whole "kirito hates grouping cause he gets people killed" trauma. This would fit the story with minimal revisions. I liked how Kirito and Asuna grew on each other in the original.

This new version will probably make Asuna grow to dislike Kiritos seemingly lazy attitude towards clearing and that will be what causes a rift that is mended around the later floors. I just hope it is not all asunaxkirito for every single floor, though boss kills would make sense thinking about it.

We could also get some solo/"not grouped with kirito" asuna PoV's too, which would be a nice change of pace.

Also, in a my first post I would like to thank those who are helping to translate the work.
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ssdan
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Re: Sword Art Online

Post by ssdan »

Just cuz he think asuna's pretty won't make kirito automatically like her... It's the same concept as guys noticing that the chick walking by is hot but you won't be giving the matter a second thought... or something like that

I also think that the only reason why Kirito likes Asuna like he does now is because she is strong and won't let herself be killed like poor sachi so if asuna weren't as strong as she is asuna probably would have been just a regular friend like liz o.o
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