SAO Regressive fanfic help

[DianeDelacroix 0]

Hi, everyone. I recently watched the Progressive movie, and it inspired me to start working on a fanfic called Sword Art Online Regressive, which basically takes the opposite approach to reimagining the original compared to what Progressive did.

For reference, I have watched the anime series and skimmed through the original light novel (not the Progressive one) to get a feel of the lore, but there are dtill some things in canon that don't really make sense to me. I could of course change them, but if there is an official explanation, I'd rather take it. I don't want to dig through the entire series, so I would appreciate some pointers. The SAO Wiki helps a lot, but there are still some questions I have:

- How many people can fight a Floor Boss at the same time? If the only limit is physical space, why do they not send bigger squads?

- Is there any way to see the names of other players if they are not on your friend list or your party members?

- Can you tell which rooms are no-crysral areas, or is it just trial and error?

- What exactly does the game consider harassment and what is the punishment? Does it only work in safe zones?

If anyone can point me to answers to these questions in canon, or at least to make an educated guess, it would help a lot!

Thanks in advance.

[Raidou 1]

Here's my loose interpretation:

1. Availability, not everyone wants to risk their neck given frontline fights are dangerous and even if most wanted to not more then the ones present are strong enough to participate

2. As far as I know, there is no way to see the username of a player without them being in your friends list or party.

3. Any that have blue flames on its perimeter, which if you look was the gleam eyes fight and canonically should also be where Sachi died.

4. Harassment as far as I know are any sort of physical altercation, like pick pocketing or punching someone. The punishment is a temporary cursor color change until enough harassments have occurred or an extreme form of exploitation (I.E. murder) has transpired, upon which they will be permanently red/orange markered. This will prevent them from being able to freely traverse safezones, use warp gates, or access safe zone shops.

[Hirru 0]

Oh boi, let's talk about the stupidity that is the canon system of Cardinal.

Combat against A.I., especially the intelligence that most mobs used, was progressive enough to 1v1 a player.  Without any sword skills/ arts, the A.I. will win as most players probably aren't experienced weapon users.  Remember, this world is still VR, so your own movements are the key to fighting, and if you don't know how to use a sword.. well.  It is one big reason of a few that 100k players died during the first month.  In that, the game has its own way to help the players:  Sword Arts.  A system of locomotion activated animation attacks that allow players to do what they physically couldn't before.  Allowing the player to move faster and more efficiently than before to overwhelm the mobs.  Even a simple diagonal <<Slant>> art is more effective on low level mobs than swinging your sword wildly. 

Though, that doesn't work to well on mid to high tier mobs, as they will actively use these same arts to their own advantage.  There is no in game skill that can help with that, but players (mostly the beta testers) started to find something interesting.  Partying up against mobs and attacking together worked well to cause the A.I. to have issues with prioritizing targets.  The issue with attacking together though, is that Sword Arts don't discriminate friend from foe.  As soon as the art activates, it just goes towards where the player was facing; usually towards an enemy.  Those flashy movements can be wide and fast, so if multiple people are attacking a target at the same time, they might be hitting each other during the chaos.  Maybe, also killing each other in the process.

This is where <<Switch>> comes to play.  It is not an in game skill that you can put points into to learn, it is a technique learned through having multiple players interacting against the creatures 1v1 while still tricking the A.I. from the previous attacker changing to a new one.  It is mostly in this technique that most floor boss raids didn't have large groups, but multiple small groups.  Each one having three or more players could rotate through each other while still observing the bosses (and adds) movements.  Though, it was also the matter that most people didn't want to die, there were several guilds including at the beginning that wanted nothing more than to defeat each floor, and get back home.  Determination and adversity are key to survival, even during the harshest of times.

--

The user interface and hud was roughly simple.  The anime shows it well during the first scene when Kirito enters SAO for the official release.  Simple name and health sitting in slight view of the upper left hand peripheral, time to the far right.  When you pulled your thumb and forefinger down in a "Zipping" motion, you open your menu with EVERYTHING ELSE.  Your stats, equipment, skills are shown to easily customize.  Friends, Party, Guilds, and messaging systems were available there.  Questing and map data for adventuring, and of course the all important: System tab, where one could contact a GM or [Log Out].  Obviously, this is all a player would have from the beginning, but what do they see when they look at another player?  They'll see the person in general with whatever equipment that they deemed to be using at that time.  Slightly around their head, they see a long, translucent health bar that curves around the player, and a green (or yellow) crystal above their head.

That's it.  Unless you party with someone, or befriend them, you won't know their "Player Name" until then, even if they choose to tell you.

--

Unfortunately, I have no information on this.  Most of the time, the anti-crystal rooms were reserved for trap rooms, like the Sachi death scene.  Though, the Gleam Eyes and 75th floor boss showed otherwise.  To that end though, the floor bosses before could easily be teleported away from before.  It was how the front lines scouted the boss fights.  An elite team would jump into the fight and gather information on the amount of mobs, attack patterns and room conditions, then jump out before they got killed off by final health bar changes, which was normally the case.  If they were so elite, then why would they not kill the boss right then and there.  These guys are usually one or two of those small teams from before.  Their resources are much more finite than a couple guilds worth going in, so they need to get as much information as possible before teleporting out.  Was that what the ARMY was doing on during Gleam Eyes?  Most definitely not.  They surged forward without any knowledge what so ever, especially since Kirito and Asuna were the ones that found the room, and they didn't even try to fight it.  Even Kirito was near deaths door after trying to solo the bloody thing with Dual Blades, so think what a small group or two would be doing!

--

It's about how society is today.  Did someone touch someone or do something to someone that they didn't like?  That someone would be punished for it.  The system does the same here.  A good scene to go off of was the Kirito waiting on Asuna scene, where she is running out of the teleporter from her KoB bodyguard (forgot the name) and runs into Kirito.  The result was him being pushed down and accidentally groping her.  The anime doesn't show this, but the light novel tells her that she is being touched inappropriately and asks if she wishes to seek justice, to which she waves it away after she smacks the shit out of the boy.  There is a prompt for situations that are in favor of the victim in these cases.  Now, for attacks and murder, the yellow status is automatically inflicted upon the attacker, as they have actively harmed another.  Remember the first part where other players could hurt and kill each other if they activated Sword Arts against a singular enemy?  Yeah, that goes into it.  Harm in any way will give the status, unless one was in a dual.  Duals, obviously, require the harming of another player so the system doesn't count that towards the criminal behavior.  This was exploited at one point, when a player with great sneak and lockpicking could come into a players room/apartment, and the player could then manipulate the players body to open their menu, have it visible to others, trade everything they own, send a dual request to 0 hp, and then kill the player in their sleep.  The victim is dead, and the perp would be nearly unknown.