Sword Art Online perfected what Dot Hack tried to do. Do you agree...

Sword Art Online perfected what Dot Hack tried to do. Do you agree, or do you believe Log Horizon is better than either of them?

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Dot Hack is superior.

>Sword Art Online perfected what Dot Hack tried to do
I know this is bait but god damn

Is this bait? Dot Hack has some of the worst pacing I have ever seen in an anime; every episode is two people talking about things we already know in the same repetitive scenes. The series hinges on a mystery, but SAO does the exact same thing while also keeping a brisk pace and spicing things up with excitement,

I'm always interested in seeing more anime in the genre so if you have any suggestions I'm open to them

It's a lot more unnerving being the sole person who can't get out that being trapped with a lot of people.

The first 4 games, IMOQ, blow SAO out of the water. SIGN is probably the only good .Hack anime, and that also makes SAO pale in comparison. Sure, it's not action packed like SAO is, but it's narrative is a hell of a lot better.

The other .Hack anime are pretty mediocre and G.U.'s story isnt all that hot, though.

but that's exactly why SAO succeeds and Dot Hack fails. SAO is about people coming together to work together inside an MMO, while Dot Hack is about _____.

Sword art online had promise but then devolved into some generic harem shit. Dot hack hasnt had the best anime run but the series as a whole including manga, light novels, games and anime has a more interesting design to ots universe as well as a more fleshed out world and lore.

>Sao season 5: oh shit bro your bitch is atuck in another video game but this time its a *insert gimmicm genre here* game. Can you win bruh?

>the IMOQ games cost like 100 dollars a piece
>they give G.U a rerelease

You'd think they would stop playing mmorpgs and just be with eachother instead.

>work together
That's hilarious

Log Horizon is the MMO anime equivalent of Star Trek The Motion Picture

.hack//LOTT is what got me into anime.
Beyond that, I've gone on multiple levels with both series.
With .hack, I experienced it as a clueless individual, and as a master of the genre.
SAO I was on at the beginning, but then dropped after the second novel.

I'm currently going through IMOQ right now, and I have to say that .hack really captures more of the fear of isolation, and being dropped into a world that's not your own. It plays a lot more into global overarching themes, something that which SAO doesn't do.

My vote goes to .hack. I'd deposit 3 years worth of semen into Black Rose, than Asuna.

The whale movie was pretty good. Almost made me forget the movies I had to see to get to that point.

I would sell both of my testicles to see IMOQ get a remaster with G.U.'s combat system.

.hack//Sign was perfect because it showed exactly the kind of people who use MMOs as an escapism. It's less about the game itself and more about the characters.

How does G.U. play? I skipped that series because I could never find Quarantine and didn't want to get invested in another series I wouldn't be able to finish.

>Sword Art Online perfected what Dot Hack tried to do. Do you agree, or do you believe Log Horizon is better than either of them?
.Hack's problem is that, most clearly with Sign, the studio had no idea what an MMO plays like.

I am almost certain not a single member of the production team actually ever played an MMO back with they made the original anime. The portrayal of the MMO just wasn't realistic.

This is fixed as time went on, with the later sequel anime series very clearly written by people who have an idea what it is actually like playing an MMO.

Sign had great ideas, but ideas that, in the end, was divorced from MMOs as a concept.

Also looking at this. I was only ever exposed to the anime so I would like to know.

>That feel when watching the original animation videos alongside the games for infection and mutation.

Please tell me this continues. It really cranks up the immersion.

This is why Log Horizon is such a masterpiece, IMO. It's clearly made by people who understand how MMOs work and how people play them, which is something Dot Hack was never able to do. Dot Hack has no understanding of things like skill rotation, resource management, or even raiding in general, which is why everything comes across as boring and pointless.

.hack is literally about a hero bringing together a bunch of characters who have lost someone to The World and morganna. It sounds like you're only familiar with sign which is really unfortunate because without playing IMOQ sign is pretty worthless

I disagree. I always felt like the ideas behind .hacks MMO were more of something to look forward to in the future of MMO's. IMOQ did a decent job of capturing the MMO feel.

logshit horizon is hot garbage and inferior to both. only delude hipsters believe otherwise

Ill leave you guys with some nice music

youtu.be/HgPjpdYdsxk

You could always go watch gameplay videos of G.U., but the gameplay is a straight improvement upon IMOQ. The game still feels real stiff playing it today, since it came out in 2006, but can still be fun. The later games improve upon this, and it gets a lot more fluid.

Unfortunately, the recent remaster of G.U. doesnt make any groundbreaking changes. It will feel smoother than the orginal release, but still will feel somewhat slow compared to modern jrpgs. The final episode of G.U., despite being brand new content, ultimately just copypastes what was in the the previous 3 G.U. games.

I've looked around the net for the chances of an IMOQ rerelease and it's all people whining about wanting the original gameplay changed.

I really fucking hate that people seem to think playing older games is so horrible. I get that IMOQ does things you wouldn't see nowadays but damn it, all I want is a jC version of the PS2 games

The MMOs of their day aren’t ours. Sign came out 2002, two years before WoW.

>The MMOs of their day aren’t ours. Sign came out 2002, two years before WoW.
Yes, but even then, MMO was not yet common in Japan back then, especially since PC gaming was always a minority there. So i am pretty confident that the studio didn't have any MMO experience.
And as I said already, latter sequels like Quantum was MUCH more familiar to common MMOs. If they were meant to imitate some other game, they would not have a reason to make changes for Quantum.

.Hack is absolutely the best.

no

Which one has the best music?
Trick question. The answer is Kajiura Yuki.

SAO

Log Horizon is more interesting because it s actually players that are behaving like players traped in a real mmorpg. In hack and SAO, the mmorpg thing is just a flavor.

>Sword Art Online perfected what Dot Hack tried to do.
Both came at the same time.

This, essentially. .hack used it to tell stories about the dichotomy between a virtual and a real life and a virtual world and a real one, and how it can get all mixed up. Could have just as easily been a Second Life knockoff, aside from needing to make the game part of the multimedia franchise. Log Horizon uses it as a classic example of "if the world is like this, how do people react" set up. SAO uses it to tell a typical pandering harem shit battle story. Neither SAO or Log Horizon are even attempting to do what .hack did, so the comparison is really just for shitposting purposes.

I feel like all of them sort of miss the great depth of social dynamics you can draw on from real MMO. Typical guild drama shit sure, but stuff like people spreading virtual plagues or sabotaging war efforts EVE style. Something about the way the consequences are less in a virtual realm but they often matter a lot more to the people who are really invested. I guess SAO actually did that the most, with those murderers who pretend to kill people through the game but they're just going to their houses to kill them. Treated more like their quirky power than a constant strategy thing, which I guess fucking murdering people would have to be.

>SAO is about people coming together to work together inside an MMO
You mean Kirito carrying the whole fucking team?

Here is my question: why is it important for the series to get the mechanics of an MMO "correct?" How does it improve the plot that they understand how WoW works?

DEEP IN THE NIIIIIGHT~

The one actually require teamwork is log horizon

It's not necessary to a good story, but it's sort of like arguments about how hard a scifi story should be. There's a lot that can be mined from how MMOs have actually worked and developed that can used as interesting ideas for plots or setting details that characters have to deal with to accomplish what they want. A fairly obvious example is that if you want something in a raid, beating it requires you to have a certain set up for a party, typically with a certain number of people too depending on your skill and character's level. This right here is a pretty typical basis for a "hate these people but you have to deal with their bullshit or else you'll have no one to work with" plot. There's other stuff depending on how detailed you want to get. It's fairly easy to find examples of "crazy thing that happened in an MMO because of a glitch or someone being a dick" that would make good fodder for a universe or stories. It just being "virtual fantasy world MC gets to swing his big nerd dick around in" can feel a bit like a waste sometimes.

The story can be good or entertaining without any of this, but it always feels like if it's going to be an MMO, why not take advantage of it?

>Here is my question: why is it important for the series to get the mechanics of an MMO "correct?" How does it improve the plot that they understand how WoW works?
It improves the plot the same way getting details right in a WW2 film is. You don't have to tell a historically accurate story in a WW2 film, but in order to make the audience invest in a WW2 story you still have to pay attention SOME of its elements.

If you create a story within an MMO, the argument is the same; you are using MMO to explain story elements, and if characters don't act like they are in an MMO, then you might as well just have the story being a normal Isekai. Setting the story in an MMO has to mean something, it has to be relevant to how the story is told.

Another example is The Titanic movie.
The main plot of the film has very little to do with the ship sinking. It is just about a girl deciding to start a new life in America and being free. But the accurate details in the film portraying the sinking was incorporated into the story, so we can buy into the setting being the actual Titanic despite the protagonist girl being fictitious.

>.Hack's problem is that, most clearly with Sign, the studio had no idea what an MMO plays like.
Because SAO did so much better

dot.hack did not take place in World of Warcraft or modern MMOs. It was a futuristic MUD.World of Warcraft didn't even exist when it was released so there's no way they could integrate modern MMO mechanics. This is like saying Neuromancer is bad because it doesn't have emoji.

And anyway, the point was never to show how people set up skill bars or run guilds or whatever. The idea was to use the imagery of a fantasy world as a representation of online spaces and escapism.

>dot.hack did not take place in World of Warcraft or modern MMOs. It was a futuristic MUD.World of Warcraft didn't even exist when it was released so there's no way they could integrate modern MMO mechanics. This is like saying Neuromancer is bad because it doesn't have emoji.
I am just not sure they based .Hack on any kind of game out at the time. As I said earlier, if your argument is sound, they would not have changed the portrayal of The World over different series to more resemble modern games, while not once claiming any changes were ever made.

I just watched a few episode in //hack so I don't know exactly how the "mmo" is supposed to work but it certainly didn't sound convaincing as a game. It just served as a pretext to set up another world actually.

But SAO is by far worst. I don't even see the point of having a mmo theme when it discards all it specificities.

>SOME of its elements.
Which Sign had. NPC's, Town Hubs, Guilds, parties, quests, loot and bosses. They also took into account the different kind of players, like the roleplayer, collector, pvp player etc. The only thing it didn't have was the interface, so I don't get the complaints here.

>Sword Art Online perfected what Dot Hack tried to do
.Hack didn't try to do shit.

The first anime was a long boring soul crushing pretentious slog that lead to an out of nowhere surprise dyke ending that basically killed it's potential in the west.

No, fucking PSO did everything the people who created .hack were too incompetent to do in terms of gaming and SAO did everything that the anime creators had no idea how to do or even cared to do

Is this about the series themselves or the anime?

That only happens on one intance in a boss battle. The other bosses have been stated to be pretty grueling battles.

But usually it is Kirito who pulls something out of his ass each time. In season one, he just beat it because he already did the boss earlier. Another time, he pulls out the dual wield skill out of the blue. He carried his teams more times then you think in my opinion. Even if the battle is hard, doesn't change the fact, without him there they wouldn't stand a chance.

I'm looking for some fun?

Log Horizon is boring info dump that takes 2 novels to establish a world, half a novel to explain "updates" a further 2 novels on politics. I'm sorry but it's not thought provoking nor is it any fun, the characters are rather flat and almost one-tone most of the time since they don't get given any sort of dynamic.

t.person who dropped the novels halfway through volume 5

It would make the work feel more genuine to the very audience who would be interested in the concept of the story in the first place.

You thnk someone being trapped in a video game/computer world/another world is interesting in and of itself?
Fuck no.
The only thing they had going for them was the newness of the virtual world and MMOs and an understanding of it would have gone a long way to making it work and giving t hem some idea of how to write the very premise of it correctly.

They don't even get the kind of people that would play the game correctly. They even toss in some ridiculous bullshit about level caps being beaten by...goddamnit, what the name of the thing where the japanese think that by running face first into fists they would automagically become super powerful?

if they understood the basics they would have clever battles and at least had some interesting people who weren't all just sad hateful insufferable nolife faggots.

Nigga without anyone there he'd get fucked. His HP was close to 0 during the Gleam Eyes battle, the reason he hasn't fucking died was because of Klein and Asuna.

t.brainlet who doesn't understand what a good Isekai looks like

They’re all really good until the next gen movies. If you didn’t like Wrath of Kahn and The Undiscovered Country then I don’t know what to tell you.

>Here is my question: why is it important for the series to get the mechanics of an MMO "correct?" How does it improve the plot that they understand how WoW works?

Because the MMO is the world they live in. You need to understand the world the characters live in to understand why they behave the way they do. The world imposes its rules on the characters, and the characters have to deal with them, be it to follow them or fight them in their quest for success.

If a world does not have rules, then there is a huge inconsistency in how conflicts are resolved. Stakes and risk get muddled, conflict resolution is uncertain to the point of confusion, and victory or defeat are impossible to predict and unsatisfactory once achieved. This is the sort of messy story-telling that people excuse with "just turn your brain off if you want to enjoy it" when people protest that this or that was bullshit/unbelievable.

For example, we know the characters in SAO are trapped in an MMORPG with a given set of rules. They are pretty fucking generic rules, but they are understandable. "Your HP reaches 0, you die". But then, Kirito´s HP reaches 0 and he doesn´t die. He powers through it through sheer willpower. When was it established this was possible? Never. The possibility was never even hinted at. So how is anyone supposed to feel like this was satisfactory conflict resolution?

Without rules and limitations, a plot becomes the equivalent of a 5-years-old bedtime story. And people watching SAO are not nearly young enough that they should allow that bullshit to fly.

Even the first one?

To carry a team doesn't mean you win the whole fight for them entirely by yourself, but you sure made it a hell lot easier for the group to do it, like 50% of the work. And if you do 50% of all the work in a group of 20, yeah, it is carry.
For me in terms of MMORPG which Sword Art Online in general takes place in, he pretty much carries most people he is with.

>They’re all really good
God no.
>wrath of kahn
is that where Kirk's son dies? so deep. So emotional. The only good Star Trek movie was the fourth one. From the ones I've seen at least.

Well fuck... I thought the first season was pretty good if not a bit slow but if it drags it on in the LNs... That's even somehow worse than the very beginning of Alicization which took half a volume to explain things to Asuna on what's going on. But at least with that, it's split with two stories and the other one is quite engaging.

You are missing the point entirely. Good storytelling doesn’t require banal minutia to be good. Your criticism is weightless.

.hack isn't about the MMO setting or the MMOs gameplay. Its a story about nerds hanging out online when mysterious shit starts to go down.

I can tell by your posts that you just aren’t a very developed or intelligent guy. Sorry man, no time for ya tonight. I hope you figure out what writing is someday.

>When was it established this was possible?
It wasn't established in the beginning but I believe it was due to the Incarnate System which is integrated with the World Seed and is a focal point in the latest arc of SAO, Alicization. You see the glowing yellow eyes?

It's also in Accel World, Reki's other work which is in the same universe.

Well, you need to be a bit older to really appreciate them I guess. Try again when you’re eighteen.

>admitting to being underage
Wow. How does Sup Forums do it?

You're right.
I'm no intelligent.
But being intelligent has very little to do with writing a good story.
I'm fairly sure that the people who wrote .hack are very very intelligent.
They're just horribly untalented and lack any and all ability to make the very subject matter that drew the audience to the work in the first place give a shit.

The series is boring, ponderous, trash.

Yet again I argue that it only happens in that one instance. Clearly he's a dps and will do a lot of damage but against skull reaper, he's clearly shown to co-operating with the other players.

>muh pacing

and here is a consumerist drone and its habitat

Admit that Sign was fucking shite. GU was .Hack's peak.

Yet again, carrying a team doesn't mean cooperating is thrown out of the window.
A tank can be hard as fuck and have good positioning, making a fight easy as fuck to do.
A healer can have good positioning and good judgment of what's coming next, making it possible for the healer to outheal damage in a way which makes the other peoples positioning null.
A dps can have good positioning, high enough dps and in some instances, can tank for you when your tank fucks up depending on your class.
I know what you mean, but in my experience with MMO's, I'll call it carrying. But carrying doesn't mean you do everything, but you do a shit ton for the team out of proportion of the group.

>Admit that Sign was fucking shite. GU was .Hack's peak.
Are we alking about the game or the anime GU?

Bite me. I had high hopes for this fucker but since the author wrote Maoyu but nope.

Game

Sign wasn't an action show. The characters talking about shit was supposed to be the meat. If you didn't like it, thats fine, but its not supposed to be about going on adventures or shit. It uses the same MMO backdrop as SAO but it honestly has more in common with Hyouka.

except from what we see, dot.hack's MMO doesn't deal with tabletop RPG-derived abstractions in the same way as our MMOs do. It's actually a major point of the story that things like player death are largely meaningless save for some wasted time, which is then contrasted with people's actual lives later being put in danger.

.Hack
2002
Phantasy Star Online
2000-2001

Then yes, the GU game was better than Sign. Roots on the other hand, I think was worse than Sign.

>Its a story about nerds hanging out online when mysterious shit starts to go down.
There is no sign of anyone nerding, nor were we shown any hanging out. We don't ever see what they actually do when people meet, because the studio didn't know themselves at the time. This was remedied in Quantum, but back in Sign no one actually know what it is actually meant to "play" in The World.

Sorry I'm retarded, I just realized what I wrote and what you meant. And by extension he's pretty much designated to that role since he made his equipment to that build. DPS do the damage to the boss but I'd argue that the Tanks in SAO does more for the team since they do keep the party alive even if they don't do as much damage. And even worse is that the aggro management is more difficult to keep track since to my knowlegde, you don't have "pull in aggro form all enemies" ability for them.

>Phantasy Star Online
>2000-2001
Once again, my point is that the studio clearly didn't have any staff who actually played MMOs when they made Sign. And it is not unusual because MMO was a new thing. The fact that PSO exists doesn't mean it was widespread enough for the studio to have played it.

...But .hack never tried to do that.

As long as you understand my viewpoint, I'm fine with it.

The game didn't matter. It was just a mandatory setting for a group of writers who didn't even like/care about MMOs. Its still good.

>don't have "pull in aggro form all enemies" ability for them
Christ, the aggro management for the bosses must be fucking ridiculous since there are bosses that spawn in enemies.

It was a fucking multimedia project which also had a manga and a fucking VIDEO GAME being made for it as well.

The staff not being forced to or even being aware of the at the time obscenely popular MMO is...
It's pure incompetence.

Many whelps, handle it.

Were there any Ranged DPS in SAO? I don't remember ever seeing a bow, only Shurikens and those throwing nails that Kirito has.

All three are bad.

No, not in the original.

In Progressive there's a guy who unlocked the ability to use Chakrams and there's such a thing as Shuriken throwing. And in the game, Sinon had the unique skill to use bows.

>It wasn't established in the beginning but I believe it was due to the Incarnate System which is integrated with the World Seed and is a focal point in the latest arc of SAO, Alicization. You see the glowing yellow eyes?
>It's also in Accel World, Reki's other work which is in the same universe.

Establishing a resurrection mechanic well past the point when it was used, or in a different work, is... a questionable world-building decision.

>except from what we see, dot.hack's MMO doesn't deal with tabletop RPG-derived abstractions in the same way as our MMOs do. It's actually a major point of the story that things like player death are largely meaningless save for some wasted time, which is then contrasted with people's actual lives later being put in danger.

SAO´s death-defying was just an example of inconsistency due to no rules being established, or being broken with no adequate foreshadowing. Log Horizon establishes that death is not true death, but a respawning mechanic. That is acceptable, as long as it is set up properly, unlike in SAO´s case.

That's kind of lame.
>Chakrams
Tell me more. That sounds perfect for a ranged DPS since it would bounce back all around each enemy.

It's pretty questionable yeah but Reki has acknowledged that Aincrad arc wasn't complete and therefore he's writing Progressive. I have no idea if he's ever gonna touch the realm of Incarnate System there but it's good thus far.

Because they are badly used. MMORPG players don't act like the ones in //hack at all. It is especially so awkward how clans/corpo/guilds behave in this show.

Not the majority maybe, but we are clearly not watching the majority.
I do find the whole "police" guild weird though. They are supposed to be moderators, but they act like regular players within the game with no ability to ban people.
Sign is supposed to ease you into the world of the .Hack games which came after. So you had a feel for what you are getting yourself into.

Log Horizon > Dot Hack > SAO