Koga

My only complaint about the mechanics of the fight was that the wall was up too frequently/felt really repetitive. Every couple posts having to take the thing down was more of an annoyance and didn't really feel like it added anything to the fight itself. Other than that, two thumbs up!

Yes if and only if the rewards are limited to:

- Discord Roles
- Some sort of 'Wall of Acknowledgement" similar to the Memorial of Life...except not of dead players...
- A custom role on the site which could be displayed on the home page
- Similar rewards that have 0-effect on the game itself but acknowledge the work that has been put in

I'm gonna be very clear here at the beginning. I'm not trying to be an ass, or be rude, or anything like that. But I'm struggling to formulate a way to express this in a way that doesn't achieve that in the eyes of some party in some way shape or form.

I adminned and wrote events and bosses for roughly three years, and similarly adminned on another site for another one or two years. I understand where staff is coming from, don't mistake that. Its grueling, its draining, and it generates way more stress than it has any right to. I'm a full time student, and whatever free time I had pretty much got taken up by my responsibilities to one site or another. You all have real lives in addition to what's here, and it can stack up.

But in more than three years, I never asked nor expected rewards for the work I put into those sites. The reason for this is because I felt like I was giving back to the community, not that I was getting something out of it. Eventually when I got too busy, too tired, or just plain too sick of doing the job, I found someone who could do the job as good or better than me and left whatever position I'd held.

The issues with rewards that go beyond what Bahr has detailed (which, by the way, if that's what you guys are thinking, go crazy. I fully support acknowledging people who work hard) is that it breeds an environment of competition. Being staff isn't about doing a job to help the community or make the site better anymore, it eventually becomes about what rewards you get for doing your job, or maybe even just part of it.

And that kind of mentality destroys sites.

That is the last thing I wanna see happen here. I've been on this site for no more than maybe a month and a half, and I've really enjoyed it. For purely selfish reasons I wanna see this site continue on so I can subject you all to my terribly written characters some more. But without a clear idea of what you guys might consider appropriate rewards for being staff, I can't make a vote that I'd be comfortable with backing.

That being said, I would really like to see Staff take this back to the drawing board and have some unified outline of what you are all thinking of as rewards and then reopen a poll asking if giving those kinds of rewards would be acceptable to the community.

I really do think that the Staff deserve to be treated well and acknowledged for the kind of time and effort they pour into this place (which is a hell of a lot, so hats off to you guys, I really do appreciate all of you and the quality of what you've managed to create here) and would like to see the community support them more in the future. I'm not about to axe this yet, but for me personally, I need more clarification than what's been given.

I mean, being a former staff member of multiple site or factions in these sites, I get why staff-members would like rewards for the work they do, really, I feel for you guys. But also, we always played under the same rules as everyone else. That meant no rewards that we would benefit us in the roleplay. We volunteered for the work we wanted to do in an effort to give back to the community, not the other way around, but that's just my two cents.

THAT BEING SAID: There is absolutely no indication as to what these 'rewards' might be. To me, this poll is pretty ineffective or misleading only because the different answers as to what the rewards would be would result in very very different answers from community, or at least, be less accurate in my opinion. If these 'rewards' are not directly related to roleplay outside of cosmetic or vanity items, then by all means, got nuts you guys. However if the rewards directly affect the roleplaying experience by augmenting stats or free gear, that is a big fat no from me.

I will be waiting for clarification as to what these rewards are before voting. Again, I get why staff would like recognition and recompense for the work they've done, but also, if it makes the game unfair, in no way can I support this.

Quote

Increasing specificity of Sword Arts

@NIGHT

I actually hadn't thought of that, and really like it as just a general improvement given the admins had infinite amounts of time to devote to the site but real life is lame Just having more options is always nice, albeit difficult to implement

TLDR

So before I start spewing out my stream of conscience, I do want to note that I'm really new to SAO (sub one week) but am studying Game Design in college...so honesty, this just seems like a good time to practice what I've learned and apply it, I don't mean to step on any toes.

That being said, in my opinion the issue isn't necessarily with the Sword Arts cooldowns themselves, but rather the energy regeneration system. (Note: I'm not sure if you're talking about conventional cooldowns, wherein you must wait x amount of posts before being able to use a Sword Art again, or the currently in place regeneration system)

Proposal A is right on point in my opinion, that the sense of character progression is integral to gameplay of anything, but its especially important in an RPG setting like SAO-RPG (it's in the name afterall lol). So removing the sense of getting stronger by removing the longer cooldowns feels like a bigger detriment than advantage to me. The longer cooldowns lend the writer/player the sense that they are doing something much more powerful than just your standard attack, with a higher price but bigger pay off.

On the other hand, Proposal B suffers the same problems that the current system does, wherein if the player/writer can run into situations where they have to choose between not attacking at all (or a limited amount of times since energy regen buffs are a thing if I recall correctly), since that still drains energy. Either choice you make ultimately leaves the player/writer feeling helpless (which in some cases may be the goal, but general combat that sounds like a big no-no) as you either are forced to make weak attacks and never (or wait a very long time to...) have the chance to make a worthwhile strike again, or weather someones attacks and hope you survive.

The Compromise ultimately suffers the same issues as Proposal A, so I won't bother rehashing that.

The core problem here, as I see it, is the regeneration of energy, since it's the core resource for combat next to HP. There needs to be a way to regenerate energy, whilst still attacking (albeit weakly). This could be accomplished in a couple ways:

Method 1: Offer the player/writer the opportunity to make a weakened basic attack for a percentage of damage (let's say half rounded down) at no cost. This allows the player the sense of, yes being weaker and backed into a wall since they are not able to use their full strength, but still leaves the opportunity for a full retaliation in the future. This also plays into a sense of 'exhaustion' as the player/writer recuperates and gathers there strength and adds an additional layer of roleplaying into the mechanic. This could even be extended to Sword Arts, in that Sword Arts could be used at half strength for half their energy if the writer/player's current energy is below the normal required energy usage.

Method 2: Remove the cost of basic attacks entirely and boost energy regeneration (but also the cost of Sword Arts as you go up in rank). This works in a similar manner as Method 1, but is just a different way of implementing it. By allowing the players/writers to continue to regenerate their energy and still attack, it mitigates the sense of helplessness and still provides them with the possibility of full retaliation, just without the potentially messy half energy/half damage mechanics.

Method 3: Just get rid of the energy system entirely and opt for a more traditional cooldown system, wherein there is a set number of posts a player must wait before being able to use a particular Sword Art again. Its been tried and tested in hundreds of real world MMORPGS and has stuck around for a reason. It works.

All three of these methods still allow for the complexity and strategizing that comes with the current Sword Art system which in my opinion is what makes part of combat (or at least I assume) on SAO-RPG fun and should be kept. I do think that the specifics cooldowns need to be tweaked so that there is more consistency and leaves no doubt about what the potential of a weapon is. (IE one-handed weapons should always (or at least usually) be faster than 2 handed weapons, but a dagger is also faster than a straight sword). If none of the methods which I detailed appeal to staff or audience, then I'd say Proposal B follows most closely with the idea that each weapon has advantages and disadvantages, and should then be the one used. Even still, I feel like there needs to be larger ranges of energy usage to account for this, and appropriate tweaks to energy pool and regen be made to account for that.

...wow, I just wrote a whole essay pretty much...

In any case, I hope that what I said is helpful, and failing that an enjoyable read. And failing that at least understandable...and failing that still English...thanks for letting me rant for some 800+ words :D