Takao

see you, space cowboy

goodnight sweet prince

You could try those anime avatar creators if you wanted to go that route, or you could just find a character that looks similar to Kirito. He's not exactly the most original looking guy around. If you wanted something custom though, you'd probably have to pay somebody.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) aren't you nosy

how lewd

this isn't the tigger i remember

The Introductions page is a good place to start. Otherwise, I'm sure a few people will offer to thread up before long.

Yup!

Well, yes. Obviously we need to think like that, that's the basis of a balancing mindset. However, the statement still stands that whether or not something is fun to somebody is subjective. An individual's idea of fun is based on their own preferences and opinions, therefore making is subjective by definition.

And for everything else; yes. Making things unbalanced isn't good. Making things balanced is. Most of what you said is just common sense.

As it stands, the effects of the unique skills have already been created, and the general consensus from staff is that they're balanced. The only reason they haven't been released yet is because the process of how they're obtained is still being story-crafted.

Well, number 3 and 4 are blatantly subjective, so "answering those questions positively" isn't something that can be done. Players on SAO-RPG are greedy; this change to SP is a blatantly good example. The ratio changed from 1:1 to 1:3, that's three posts for 1 sp compared to, let's say the ratio for SPs which are 20:1. Or PPs with 1 other player, which is 10:1. The players still get a substantial amount of skill points per post, but some people started losing their minds (and immediately after trying to save face by claiming they didn't care about the SP) because the number they received dropped by even just a little bit.

Ultimately, the unique skills won't please everybody. There will be players who are vehemently jealous of others for having something they themselves don't have, and there's nothing I can do nor anything I care to do about that, because I refuse to entertain that sort of behavior. But both myself and the Staff team continue to do what we've always done, which is attempt to create an environment that is fair and balanced for everybody, and reward players that work hard.

People have wanted uniques for a long time, and they're a long standing part of both the site and the narrative. I don't see any reason to remove them now.

I hate the idea of uniques. It does not fit with the medium at all. But hey, people like them, and I would probably be hunted down IRL if I tried to remove them entirely.

Way back then, sure. The scales were definitely tipped in their favour.

What made Tristan OP was that he gave himself a unique skill that halved damage on top of parry, returned damage on top of parry, and he also had high mitigation on top of creating tank-based boss drops that gave him a demonic with Holy Blessing, which is literally just a buffed, reworded version of mitigation.

I don't know if I would count something that gave evasion to be a tank meta. I guess the only time I'd wager there was a tank meta was back when parry was godlike.

there never really was a tank meta. there was a tristan meta tho

I don't think that's necessary. SAO is a DPS oriented meta as it is, and combat oriented threads already get plenty.

Monster fights really have no bearing on the SP rewards of a thread at the moment, though. Quest/Dungeon monsters sure, I guess. I really don't have any intention of removing SP rewards from social threads.

I'd probably be burned at the stake if I tried to remove SP rewards from social threads.

Not particularly. The only thing that changes is big events like this one. If the focus is put on enjoying the event (as it was intended) instead of the rewards one might get from attending, it becomes a considerably more congenial. It's also pretty disappointing and especially sad for Beatbox if people are only going to his event to grind up SP.