Blade Skill Online: Gomi Shokugyou de Saijaku Bukide Kuso Status no Ore, Itsunomanika "Last Boss" ni Nariagarimasu! - Vol. 1 Ch. 6 - The decisive bat…

[StormSen]

Pontaro are such such cute little demonic delinquents! E.g. page 15:
Yuri: Why is this title calling me a Pyscho?!? I'm not a Psycho! Right? Right?
Pontaro: [Sweating] Uh yeah boss. Totally not a pyscho!

 

[hybras]

Been reading the WN translation, there will be patches to (some) of the abilities, but then they'll turn around and find new ways to break the game, starting their WAR AGAINST THE DEVS.

Makes sense. Although i bet this mmo wont last long. Gaming breaking bugs every other week tends to turn away legit players. Then player base numbers dwindle with only cheaters. Then the mmo collapses.

 

[Nolonar]

The problem with that is that putting all your points into luck means no points into strength or agility, which destroys your ability to do damage or even wear anything but beginner armor. So even if high luck + guts allowed you to survive, you wouldn't be able to actually defeat anything. Yuri only succeeds because a specific combination of complete garbage turns out to work well. And even there, the key is getting the living weapon early on, and putting it into a beginner (shit stats, but unbreakable) arrow.

When testing a complex system, it's essentially impossible to test all combinations, and even an army of testers isn't going to go everywhere (especially in a limited amount of beta time).

And in the game, it wasn't a misconception of the beta testers, bow, summoner and luck really were (inidividually) weak. Much as players might prefer it, developers frequently don't balance all classes. That's a hard task in general, and would be a nightmare in this game which had a massive number of weapons available for it.

The main problem here isn't that Yuri accidentally stumbled upon a combination that nobody else would've tried and turned out to be surprisingly overpowered.

The problem is that the Guts skill alone is ludicrously overpowered, and it went unnoticed for the entire beta phase.

Remember that Yuri was invincible from the start. No, that is not an exaggeration. He managed to beat a normal player barehanded in a fight that lasted over 3 minutes, even though a single hit from the weakest monster takes half his HP. And despite having just lost to a rabbit (and without dying, apparently), he managed to defeat a rare monster that was powerful enough to increase his level by 5. The fact that this was his first kill ("I can't even kill a single rabbit") means his stats are the same as when he started the game. The only difference is that he gained the "Direct Fight" skill, which is an offensive skill, not a defensive one.

Let's do the math, shall we?

Spoiler

Yuri survived a fight with a player for over 3 minutes. That's at least 180 seconds. Assuming the opponent could only attack once per 2 seconds, that's still 90 attacks he landed. And if we assume he did only 1/10 the damage of a rabbit, that means he needed at least 20 hits to reduce Yuri's HP to 0. In other words, the Guts skill triggered 70 times in a row. If we assume the likelyhood for this to happen is 50%, that means the Guts skill had a probability of over 99.01% to trigger. 99.014676181855661697758030739646% to be precise. Notice how I've been very generous with my estimate. His opponent looks like he'd be built for melee combat, so in reality his attack speed and (barehanded) damage should be higher.

Let's assume that the Guts skill has a minimum activation rate of 0% at 0 Luck and scales linearly with Luck. That means every point in Luck increases the probability by a little over 0.9%. You'd need at least 112 Luck to become fully invincible, and a player who'd spend the average of 20 points in Luck would survive a killing blow with a probability of 18%.

That's surprisingly high considering this game allows stats to grow beyond 1000. And in chapter 7 he:

Spoiler

receives 3 pieces of clothing that increases his Luck by 90. These 3 pieces alone allow Guts to trigger with a probability of 81%.

Let's have a look at character progression. In chapter 7 we can see that Yuri is level 20 and has invested 290 points in Luck. He started at level 1 with 100 Luck (not including the +10% from his Enhanced Luck skill) and gained 190 Luck in 19 levels. Therefore he got 10 stat points per level up. Assuming a maximum level of 100, he'll have gained a total of 990 stat points for a total of 1090 stat points. Assuming a uniform stat distribution, the average level 100 player has 218 Luck. That's almost twice the amount needed to become invincible.

Fun fact: you only need to invest a little over 10% of your stat points in Luck to be invincible. 10.275229357798165137614678899083% to be precise.

Guts is clearly way overpowered.

And there's no problem with having 0 Strength and Agility in an MMO. A pure healer doesn't need any offensive capabilities to be highly popular in a party. And an invincible "Lucky Guts" tank won't even need a healer in the first place. Yuri's problem is that the summoner is a solo class (you need to be solo to tame a monster to summon it). There's no reason why a beta tester couldn't figure out how clearly overpowered a Lucky Guts tank is. Then there's the fact that Luck apparently affects drop rates. Imagine an invincible tank whose mere presence in your party makes farming for rare loot a breeze. How is that "useless"?

Let's face it, this manga is simply badly written. Enjoy it all you like, but don't pretend it's anywhere near "realistic" when there is not a single commercially available game with such glaring balancing flaws that are this easily and quickly exploitable, yet somehow remained unnoticed during beta.

If players can discover such obscure exploits as the Glintstone Phalanx self-parry (which requires 2 very specific spells to be used one after another in a way that no sane player normally would) in Elden Ring within a month, they can find something this obvious during beta.

 

[StormSen]

So first point: Yes, Yuri's build is clearly broken. This would obviously be bad for the game once it's realized, and a sane live game would have to fix it. But of course, this story is of the genre "I'm OP even though my skills/stats/abilities were supposed to be trash!" So that the story will do that is absolute given -- it's just a question of how fun and (semi) credible that situation is. The author doesn't have to make it completely believable, but rather just give us enough an excuse to believe it. In other words if the genre is going to make you flip your lid, then you're probably better off skipping this one.

Okay with that caveat out the way...

You're calculating Guts based on the fight with baldhead. But Baldhead didn't use any skills or abilities, and adjusted his strength down to Yuuri's level. I.e. baldhead made it an even fight that just depended on the players' innate fistfighting skills. So your whole calculation goes out the window.

As for her fight with the sword, she first traps it to prevent it from damaging her, then traps it on the ground and melees it with the arrow (Direct Fight triggering to increase her damage). It escapes after taking a beating, then takes off her right arm, now she can't trap it anymore. It goes in for the kill, but guts triggers (once!) preventing her from taking damage, which apparently means that her fists becomes an impenetrable object, at which point the sword's own momentum backfires on it (i.e. it just slammed itself into a brick wall), which finishes it off. So in this fight, Guts only triggers once.

As for Guts, I believe that there's a level based resistance to it. I.e. Guts is less likely to trigger against higher level monsters. So the amount of luck you would need would increase with level.

As for likelihood of being discovered: Your example is one of finding a bug early on. But there are plenty of bugs and glitches that don't get found until years later of heavy usage. Again: Complex systems are very hard to test fully. Generally the solution to that is "not make the system that damned complex" and do things to factor the design so that glitches in one area don't compound with glitches in another. Plus of course, doing things like putting soft caps on stats etc. But yeah these game designers got cocky and didn't do that. And cocky people do indeed make these sorts of mistakes.

 

[nubychuriz]

So first point: Yes, Yuri's build is clearly broken. This would obviously be bad for the game once it's realized, and a sane live game would have to fix it. But of course, this story is of the genre "I'm OP even though my skills/stats/abilities were supposed to be trash!" So that the story will do that is absolute given -- it's just a question of how fun and (semi) credible that situation is. The author doesn't have to make it completely believable, but rather just give us enough an excuse to believe it. In other words if the genre is going to make you flip your lid, then you're probably better off skipping this one.

Okay with that caveat out the way...

You're calculating Guts based on the fight with baldhead. But Baldhead didn't use any skills or abilities, and adjusted his strength down to Yuuri's level. I.e. baldhead made it an even fight that just depended on the players' innate fistfighting skills. So your whole calculation goes out the window.

As for her fight with the sword, she first traps it to prevent it from damaging her, then traps it on the ground and melees it with the arrow (Direct Fight triggering to increase her damage). It escapes after taking a beating, then takes off her right arm, now she can't trap it anymore. It goes in for the kill, but guts triggers (once!) preventing her from taking damage, which apparently means that her fists becomes an impenetrable object, at which point the sword's own momentum backfires on it (i.e. it just slammed itself into a brick wall), which finishes it off. So in this fight, Guts only triggers once.

As for Guts, I believe that there's a level based resistance to it. I.e. Guts is less likely to trigger against higher level monsters. So the amount of luck you would need would increase with level.

As for likelihood of being discovered: Your example is one of finding a bug early on. But there are plenty of bugs and glitches that don't get found until years later of heavy usage. Again: Complex systems are very hard to test fully. Generally the solution to that is "not make the system that damned complex" and do things to factor the design so that glitches in one area don't compound with glitches in another. Plus of course, doing things like putting soft caps on stats etc. But yeah these game designers got cocky and didn't do that. And cocky people do indeed make these sorts of mistakes.

Man's writing an entire game theory video essay 💀

 

[Kinklynn]

Had some thoughts and figured if other people were writing essays then I could too.

Luck most likely applies a .1% increase to drops and skill chance per tick.

IE; 100 Luck = 10% increase.

This seems reasonable considering what a player need to do to get that 100 points in luck, either devoting equipment, skill points or skills to increasing it so high.

Based on the story, Yuri finds an ungodly amount of rare drops to be used for armor crafting later, so having a 10~15% drop rate minimum due to Luck seems appropriate where other players would be farming hundreds of monsters for the same loot.

Guts also is likely affected by this heavily. If we assume Guts has a 30% chance of activation and leaves the player at 1hp to die in the next hit, Yuri's build has bumped it up to 42% at lvl 1.

Considering how often Guts has successfully activated in the story, this estimate seems close.

With current build as of this chapter and before any nerfs, Yuri has an almost 100% for drops, ability activation, monster capture, and crits with anything at .1% chance and nearly 20% for anything at .01%.

This manga really tickles the mathematics in my brain and I'm excited to see what probabilities Yuri will explode next.

 

[FLuffyMofu]

xD that make sense

 

[Blaze_Rod]

I am definitely not the only one who is absolutely dumbfounded by the author's absolute audacity to write in stupid as hell but also incredibly convenient skills that only benefit the MC, such as "gain double melee damage when you throw away your bow". what the fuck??? this isn't even the MC being clever, like with figuring out that they didn't need health. these skills are such bullshit, there is no world in which any person would make these kinds of things when making a game. all of the skills they gained except the one that doubles all stats at low health are so fucking dumb, even then, that seems a bit dumb too.

I could see such skill being a thing for pure ranger builds, where the only melee weapon they carry around is a dagger. Tossing a bow in emergency to gain double damage to your shitty dagger sounds like something that would exist.

Not that the game isn't retarded. Every single game in these type of manga is horrible and nobody would play them because the balance is insanity and the devs are actively inhaling crack while designing mechanics.

 

[AncientWatcher]

Gothic lolita is a very fitting style for our genderbent lead!

 

[Nolonar]

In other words if the genre is going to make you flip your lid, then you're probably better off skipping this one.

I do hope I'm allowed to enjoy a story and still think it's bullshit, thank you very much.

You're calculating Guts based on the fight with baldhead. But Baldhead didn't use any skills or abilities, and adjusted his strength down to Yuuri's level. I.e. baldhead made it an even fight that just depended on the players' innate fistfighting skills. So your whole calculation goes out the window.

I never claimed baldhead used any skills or abilities or that he was stronger than Yuuri. In fact, I explicitly assumed that baldhead was weaker than the weakest monster in the game.

Maybe actually read what I write before continuing a pointless discussion?

 

[StormSen]

I do hope I'm allowed to enjoy a story and still think it's bullshit, thank you very much.


I never claimed baldhead used any skills or abilities or that he was stronger than Yuuri. In fact, I explicitly assumed that baldhead was weaker than the weakest monster in the game.

Maybe actually read what I write before continuing a pointless discussion?

You: This is garbage!
Me: If this is garbage, maybe don't read it?
You: Don't tell ME not to read garbage! I'll do what I want!

It's fine to rip on some aspect of something, but like it for some other aspect. But if that's the case, then it would be more sensible if you say what you like about it. Or is it that you just like reading garbage?

You: "Maybe actually read what I write..."

Ah, it's the "No, you!" counter.

Even in making him weaker than the weakest monster, you're still making assumption about the strength of the hit. And you're making an assumption about how many hits get in. The main point is we're explicitly told in the text that baldhead put himself on equal footing statwise with yuri in the battle. And we're told that RL fighting skills apply in the game. But again, you ignored that.

 

[Nolonar]

You: This is garbage!
Me: If this is garbage, maybe don't read it?
You: Don't tell ME not to read garbage! I'll do what I want!

I never said it was garbage, though. That said, can we stay on topic, please?

It's fine to rip on some aspect of something, but like it for some other aspect. But if that's the case, then it would be more sensible if you say what you like about it. Or is it that you just like reading garbage?

I'm honored that you would like to know more about me, but let's focus on the main issue at hand, which is: "it doesn't make sense for people to call the Luck stat garbage when it's very clearly not."

Even in making him weaker than the weakest monster, you're still making assumption about the strength of the hit. And you're making an assumption about how many hits get in.

You: claims the Guts skill triggered only once, based on the assumption that Guts turns you into an impenetrable object, which had already been proven to be wrong 2 chapters earlier when Yuri suffered a clearly visible wound on the stomach despite Guts explicitly activating.

Also you: complains about assumptions being made.

Fine, no assumptions then: We've never seen Yuri die or respawn. Not even once. If Guts wasn't broken from the start, this manga did a poor job at showing how "useless" it and the Luck stat are.

The main point is we're explicitly told in the text that baldhead put himself on equal footing statwise with yuri in the battle.

Which doesn't mean that all his stats were the same as Yuri's. Level scaling is neither magic nor rocket science. It's grade school mathematics. Literally. Even if his stats were scaled down to level 1, he would still have more Strength, Agility, and Defense than zero. But that's just us making assumptions on how the level scaling works in that game and how baldhead chose to build his character.

And we're told that RL fighting skills apply in the game. But again, you ignored that.

And we're also told that it's very clearly established that Yuri has improbably bad luck in real life. So assuming (sorry) his bad luck is actually real and not just a convenient plot device to explain why Yuri went full Luck, skills like Guts or Taming (both of which have "low probability") would not have triggered so conveniently with Pontaro, unless they were guaranteed to trigger. But you ignored that.

And despite her RL fighting skills, Yuri couldn't even beat a single rabbit. You'd think she could just grab the rabbit by its horn and stab it with arrows, like what she eventually did with the living sword when the plot demanded it. But again, you ignored that. And before you come up with the classic "desperate death or life situation" excuse:

1. This is still a game with no real life consequences.
2. Whether she's killed in 2 hits by a rabbit or by a living sword makes no difference.
3. She hasn't even managed to kill anything yet, and even considered resetting her character, so she literally has nothing to lose, even if there's a penalty for dying.

Also, RL fighting skills were only confirmed to apply to bows, not to combat in general. It's kind of like how you need real aiming skills to properly use a sniper rifle in an FPS, yet can still use CQC without knowing how to do it in real life. But now we're making assumptions about how the combat system works.

Speaking of things that you ignored, let me remind you of my other arguments you conveniently ignored in favor of "Herp Derp, if no kill, it no use":

• Luck builds are perfectly suited for farming rare loot. You just need a party to do the killing for you. It's so good that even a level 11 character can obtain the materials to craft "the best equipment currently possible".
  
  
• Luck builds are perfectly suited for tanking, even in the absence of a "useless" healer. And given how Guts is available from the start, this isn't even a case of "I need to somehow survive until I can learn Guts and be useful".

But I suppose "then why are you still reading it?" is a great way to distract from the real issue at hand. Except it really isn't.

 

[StormSen]

I never said it was garbage, though. That said, can we stay on topic, please?


I'm honored that you would like to know more about me, but let's focus on the main issue at hand, which is: "it doesn't make sense for people to call the Luck stat garbage when it's very clearly not."


You: claims the Guts skill triggered only once, based on the assumption that Guts turns you into an impenetrable object, which had already been proven to be wrong 2 chapters earlier when Yuri suffered a clearly visible wound on the stomach despite Guts explicitly activating.

Also you: complains about assumptions being made.

Fine, no assumptions then: We've never seen Yuri die or respawn. Not even once. If Guts wasn't broken from the start, this manga did a poor job at showing how "useless" it and the Luck stat are.


Which doesn't mean that all his stats were the same as Yuri's. Level scaling is neither magic nor rocket science. It's grade school mathematics. Literally. Even if his stats were scaled down to level 1, he would still have more Strength, Agility, and Defense than zero. But that's just us making assumptions on how the level scaling works in that game and how baldhead chose to build his character.


And we're also told that it's very clearly established that Yuri has improbably bad luck in real life. So assuming (sorry) his bad luck is actually real and not just a convenient plot device to explain why Yuri went full Luck, skills like Guts or Taming (both of which have "low probability") would not have triggered so conveniently with Pontaro, unless they were guaranteed to trigger. But you ignored that.

And despite her RL fighting skills, Yuri couldn't even beat a single rabbit. You'd think she could just grab the rabbit by its horn and stab it with arrows, like what she eventually did with the living sword when the plot demanded it. But again, you ignored that. And before you come up with the classic "desperate death or life situation" excuse:

1. This is still a game with no real life consequences.
2. Whether she's killed in 2 hits by a rabbit or by a living sword makes no difference.
3. She hasn't even managed to kill anything yet, and even considered resetting her character, so she literally has nothing to lose, even if there's a penalty for dying.

Also, RL fighting skills were only confirmed to apply to bows, not to combat in general. It's kind of like how you need real aiming skills to properly use a sniper rifle in an FPS, yet can still use CQC without knowing how to do it in real life. But now we're making assumptions about how the combat system works.

Speaking of things that you ignored, let me remind you of my other arguments you conveniently ignored in favor of "Herp Derp, if no kill, it no use":

• Luck builds are perfectly suited for farming rare loot. You just need a party to do the killing for you. It's so good that even a level 11 character can obtain the materials to craft "the best equipment currently possible".
  
  
• Luck builds are perfectly suited for tanking, even in the absence of a "useless" healer. And given how Guts is available from the start, this isn't even a case of "I need to somehow survive until I can learn Guts and be useful".

But I suppose "then why are you still reading it?" is a great way to distract from the real issue at hand. Except it really isn't.

Okay, first I'll ignore the snark and focus on any actual arguments (time permitting).

Good point about whether guts makes you invulnerable or not. It's not clear from images, she does as you point out take damage from the gut strike, but my guess was something like: "Maybe take damage up to the point where you only have one hp, and then become invulnerable?" So I cheated a bit and checked the source WN:
"At that moment, all my skills activated thanks to my overwhelming Luck! My bones, which literally became harder than steel thanks to ‘Guts’, smashed the tip of the Living Weapon!"

As for not dying yet... She retreats from fights where she's losing, and then beats the Living Weapon on the evening of the first day. And it seems that she still had her first set of starter arrows, so she doesn't seem to have been in many fights. So guess on the order of 10 bunny fights and retreating from all of them until she gets into and wins the fight with the weapon.

Fundamental premise of the story is that his RL bad luck does not apply in the game. Irrational as that might be, that was his hope going in, and it seems to have worked. (Though he was hugely unluckly in only seeing the troll bad info every time it was reposted, but that was IRL, not in-game.)

Level scaling: Again we're explictly told that baldhead put his stats on par with Yuri. Unlikely as that might seem given the games that I'm familiar with, it's given as a fact, so that's that. Obviously the devs could program in such an ability if they wanted.

IRL skills apply? Yes, we're told that about bows. But we're also shown it for street brawling, where Yuri's IRL street brawling skills allow him to (barely) win against the on-part baldhead. This is a fairly common premise in VR game stories -- that RL skills can also be used.

Vs: Rabbits: But she didn't try to melee them. She was playing it as expected using the bow as designed. She only went melee against the living weapon because she was only down to one or two arrows. I.e. she was desperate and pissed and did something crazy.

Luck Farming Rare Loot: We don't know that. We do know that some behavior is very group dependent. E.g. specifically for summoners, they must beat the enemy with no help whatsoever. So trying to assemble a party with one really lucky person might not work, e.g. maybe the luck gets averaged across the party for party loot. Or maybe it averages across the attackers doing damage.

Luck/guts tanking: Again we don't know that would work in a party. The most obvious possibility is that the "luck tank" would be unable to gain or hold aggro.

... Even I feel that this is over nitpicking. So, I'll just end with this: 1) I'm nitpicky and analytical, and generally will strongly notice if the chips excessively fall the MCs way. 2) But if it's the premise of the genre, then it's to be expected. 3) Even given that genre-premise, I find that that this author does a very good job of making it believable. As I've gone through the various examples above, the author does consistently provide a pretty reasonable explanation.

If I thought you had valid points, then I'd admit it. Nothing wrong with nitpicking (in my book at least). But your points aren't valid. 🤷

 

[Nolonar]

If I thought you had valid points, then I'd admit it. Nothing wrong with nitpicking (in my book at least). But your points aren't valid. 🤷

Nice try, but that's only assuming your points and counterarguments are valid in the first place. See, sometimes people make mistakes and they don't realize it. And right now you're assuming that you haven't made a single mistake in countering my arguments, which is already a mistake in itself.

It also doesn't help that you've been the only one who so far hasn't bothered providing a single link to support any of your claims. Take this for instance:

So I cheated a bit and checked the source WN:
"At that moment, all my skills activated thanks to my overwhelming Luck! My bones, which literally became harder than steel thanks to ‘Guts’, smashed the tip of the Living Weapon!"

I don't read the WN, so you could just be pulling that out of thin air for all I know. And before you tell me to use Google, I did (web cache because I currently can't reach the actual page).

Putting that aside, your WN quote doesn't actually prove anything, as much as you'd like to believe otherwise.

Do you remember complaining about making assumptions? Well, the WN is only a valid source if we assume that the manga is following it to the letter. That is not necessarily the case for adaptations.

Now, I don't typically read WNs or LNs, so I can't really provide any specific examples of manga adaptations that are different from their WN source, so I'll just link to a discussion about WNs and LNs being different instead. I'll also trust that you understand that if a LN adaptation can be different from its WN source, the same can be true for a manga adapation.

But let's assume the WN is a valid source because the manga is absolutely faithful. It's clear from the cached translation that the narrator is Yuri. Does Yuri even know what skills triggered? Possibly, considering the wording of the preceding paragraph:

‘Guts’ activates! You survive with 1 HP from a fatal wound!

‘Head-to-Head’ activates! Damage increases!

‘Fatal Strike’ activates! Damage increases!

Critical hit! Damage increases dramatically from hitting a weak point!

"You survive" implying that this isn't being narrated by Yuri, and is instead a skill activation notification.

But because the narrator is Yuri, the truthiness of the narration depends on Yuri's understanding of what happened and how accurately she remembers the events. In this case, Yuri is assuming that all her skills activated thanks to her "overwhelming Luck". A reasonable assumption, since we know that Luck affects skill activation rate. But how does she know that it is Guts that turned her bones "harder than steel"? Could it not have been caused by another skill, such as Fatal Strike or Head-to-Head? The notification for Guts doesn't tell us anything about Yuri's body turning to steel, so where does that knowledge come from?

But I'm going off-topic. In the end, it doesn't matter if Guts turns her to steel or not. I know your entire argument hinged on the premise that Guts only triggered once, so my calculated 99% activation rate becomes meaningless, but it really doesn't prove anything. My calculation was based on the fight between her and baldhead, which was completely skipped in the manga. The fight against the living weapon was merely the first time we actually witnessed Guts activating. The skill activation notifications were left untranslated, but they are clearly visible. All we really know is that out of one possible random event, Guts successfully activated once, which is a success rate of 100%. But a small sample size of 1 is not representative. We do know that Yuri has impossibly bad luck, however.

We also know that Yuri encountered 5 events with "low probability" in a row. Guts and Fatal Strike, critical hit, Head-to-Head, and finally taming. Assuming they all have the same activation rate, and assuming the chance of all 5 triggering one after another is 50%, that means each event had a likelihood of 87%. That is still incredibly high for a level 1 character, and not "low" at all.

PS: I had a peek at chapter 10 of the WN, which coincides with chapter 6 of the manga. In the manga, we only see notifications for 2 skills, while the WN has 4. So much for the manga being faithful.

As for not dying yet... She retreats from fights where she's losing, and then beats the Living Weapon on the evening of the first day. And it seems that she still had her first set of starter arrows, so she doesn't seem to have been in many fights. So guess on the order of 10 bunny fights and retreating from all of them until she gets into and wins the fight with the weapon.

You're estimating 10 bunny fights, but based on what assumptions?

How do you know she hasn't been in many fights? Do you know how many arrows she started with? How many arrows she used per fight? How many arrows she managed (or failed) to recover after each fight? How do you know how much time passed? How quickly does time pass in this game? How do you know it's still the first day? It's already day in the next chapter, yet we haven't seen Yuri log out, nor were we told it was a new day.

And how do you know she managed to escape from every single one of those fights without Guts triggering?

Fundamental premise of the story is that his RL bad luck does not apply in the game. Irrational as that might be, that was his hope going in, and it seems to have worked. (Though he was hugely unluckly in only seeing the troll bad info every time it was reposted, but that was IRL, not in-game.)

Yes, it was his hope going in, not "the premise of the story". We've witnessed Yuri's bad luck firsthand, so we know it's real and not just a figment of his imagination. But we haven't seen him play anything other than a lucky character, so we have no comparison and therefore no way of knowing if Yuri's assertion that "luck doesn't matter in the world of video games" is true or just his belief.

And as irrational as it may seem, Yuri's assertion is actually true in the right condition: If your Luck status is high enough to cause your skills to trigger with 100% probability, then your real luck does indeed not matter, because 100% is still 100% no matter how unlucky you are.

Although to be absolutely fair, it's still possible for a cosmic ray to flip a random bit, resulting in a 100% guaranteed event not happening (or a 0% impossible event happening). It's so incredibly unlikely, however, that no developer really cares if it happens or not (partly because there's very little they can do against this). Besides, probabilities are typically computed on a central server (to prevent cheating), which use ECC memory to automatically detect and correct memory corruption.

Level scaling: Again we're explictly told that baldhead put his stats on par with Yuri. Unlikely as that might seem given the games that I'm familiar with, it's given as a fact, so that's that. Obviously the devs could program in such an ability if they wanted.

If you want to be pedantic, the only stat we know has been adjusted is the Strength stat. But "equal strength" can also be interpreted to mean "equal level". You yourself are interpreting "equal strength" to mean "equal stats", but I think we can both agree that baldhead does not have 100 Luck in that fight. Not that there's any way to prove it or anything.

But assuming it really does literally refer to the strength stat (and, of course, assuming we can trust Yuri's words), that still gives baldhead an edge in terms of Defense and Agility.

IRL skills apply? Yes, we're told that about bows. But we're also shown it for street brawling, where Yuri's IRL street brawling skills allow him to (barely) win against the on-part baldhead. This is a fairly common premise in VR game stories -- that RL skills can also be used.

The fight was skipped, so we're not shown anything, actually. The only thing we see is Yuri landing a surprise punch, which is not something that requires much skill in particular. And if, as you claim, baldhead really lowered all his stats to 0 to match Yuri's, Yuri barely winning could also be simply a result of him getting the first hit.

Luck Farming Rare Loot: We don't know that. We do know that some behavior is very group dependent. E.g. specifically for summoners, they must beat the enemy with no help whatsoever. So trying to assemble a party with one really lucky person might not work, e.g. maybe the luck gets averaged across the party for party loot. Or maybe it averages across the attackers doing damage.

So...

1. A single very lucky person still increases the average luck of the entire party.
2. Being a lucky tank, you'd still be doing damage, even if not much.

Sure, the developers could have gone through the trouble of nerfing Luck so much that it can't affect drop rates in a party, but if they went through this much trouble, they'd also have used a formula that doesn't allow a level 1 character to trigger Guts every single time.

... Even I feel that this is over nitpicking. So, I'll just end with this: 1) I'm nitpicky and analytical, and strongly notice the chips excessively falling the MCs way. 2) But if it's the premise of the genre, then it's to be expected. 3) Even given that genre-premise, I find that the author does a very good job of making it believable. As I've gone through the various examples above, the author does consistently provide a pretty reasonable explanation.

And I find that the author does not do a good job of making it believable.

1. Yuri is unlucky. I think you agree with this much.
   
   
2. Yet somehow he just so happened to stumble upon a combination of job, weapon, stats and skills that makes him OP. All that with nothing more than a level 1 character with beginner's gear.
   
   • Because he was coincidentally reading a strategy guide in the short period after it's been vandalised by trolls and before it's been restored.
     
     
   • Because he was lucky enough to fight someone willing to lower his stats and not use skills.
     
     
   • And because he was lucky enough to encounter a living weapon (we're never told that Luck affects rare monster encounters)
     
3. And we're expected to believe that nobody else got as lucky as Yuri (who's supposedly unlucky) during beta.
   
   
4. We're also expected to believe that the bow is garbage purely because it requires real life skill. Imagine claiming that "dodging is garbage" only because it requires real timing skills. Nevermind whether the payoff is worth the difficulty or not. If people say the bow is garbage, the payoff probably isn't worth it, but there's no way you can claim that the author provided "reasonable explanation" in this case.
   
   
5. Not to mention the summoner job, which is only said to be garbage because taming your first monster is hard. But is the summoner still garbage after he's tamed his first monster? Does a summoner even have a limit to how many monster they can summon at once? Yuri already has more monsters (I count 20) than a party can have members (12), isn't that already quite OP, regardless of how long it would've taken to get there without the extreme luck? Again, no explanation beyond "difficulty equals garbage".

You claim to be nitpicky and analytical, but I see no evidence of it. You immediately and unconditionally accept Yuri's words as truth without accounting for possible mistakes, misunderstandings, or flawed assumptions (such as whether luck still matters in a game or not). You also accept anything that is being said as true without asking yourself if this may be a case of Informed Attribute (warning, tvtropes link). That is the opposite of nitpicky and analytical.

 

[StormSen]

Nice try, but that's only assuming your points and counterarguments are valid in the first place. See, sometimes people make mistakes and they don't realize it. And right now you're assuming that you haven't made a single mistake in countering my arguments, which is already a mistake in itself.

...

And people complain about my walls of text... Lol. Anyway... As before, I'll ignore/skip any snark. Also, I argue for getting at the truth, not for the sake of arguing. So I generally won't bother arguing points that I think any reasonable reader will see. So, let's see what's left...

Link for WN Quote (regarding guts/hand of steel): https://zkytl.wordpress.com/2022/09/16/bso-chapter-4/

As you note, it's possible for a manga to diverge from it's source WN. I think the argument is clear to a reasonable person here, but I'll spell it out anyway: 1) It's in the WN. 2) There's no indication that the manga contradicts the WN in this instance. 3) The manga seems to be following the WN pretty closely. (vs other WN/manga pairs that notably diverge.) 4) The explanation given in the WN is consistent with what we see in the manga. 5) More than that, just looking at the manga, you would have to wonder, "Why doesn't her arm get split in that direct to blade attack?" Guts/imperviousness to damage is the most obvious explanation. So the WN just spells out what seems to be implicit in the manga.

I think a reasonable person could just look at the manga and the "body of steel" explanation and think "that makes sense". Even if you haven't read the WN, getting that quote from it fits what we see, and hence a reasonable reader would think "question answered".

So, I spelled that one out, but IMO all of your arguments here fall under the "Reasonable Reader" consideration, so I'l skip the rest.

 

[D1003Briner]

I am definitely not the only one who is absolutely dumbfounded by the author's absolute audacity to write in stupid as hell but also incredibly convenient skills that only benefit the MC, such as "gain double melee damage when you throw away your bow". what the fuck??? this isn't even the MC being clever, like with figuring out that they didn't need health. these skills are such bullshit, there is no world in which any person would make these kinds of things when making a game. all of the skills they gained except the one that doubles all stats at low health are so fucking dumb, even then, that seems a bit dumb too.

Well its the bullshit that says that because of the use of a determined action will automatically trough some future ai tipe bullshit its foing to create a skill.

 

[Nolonar]

As you note, it's possible for a manga to diverge from it's source WN. I think the argument is clear to a reasonable person here, but I'll spell it out anyway: 1) It's in the WN. 2) There's no indication that the manga contradicts the WN in this instance. 3) The manga seems to be following the WN pretty closely. (vs other WN/manga pairs that notably diverge.) 4) The explanation given in the WN is consistent with what we see in the manga. 5) More than that, just looking at the manga, you would have to wonder, "Why doesn't her arm get split in that direct to blade attack?" Guts/imperviousness to damage is the most obvious explanation. So the WN just spells out what seems to be implicit in the manga.

I think a reasonable person could just look at the manga and the "body of steel" explanation and think "that makes sense". Even if you haven't read the WN, getting that quote from it fits what we see, and hence a reasonable reader would think "question answered".

Right after I just said it doesn't matter if Yuri's body got turned to steel, here you choose to defend that very same irrelevant premise. And even then, you're not even addressing the main points I've made.

Let's assume Yuri's fist was "harder than steel" at that instant. And let's also assume that Yuri knows what's going on with his avatar's body (which is ironic, considering how many real people have to rely on a hospital for their own real body). But that doesn't mean his body became that way because of Guts. Hence why I asked: "Could it not have been caused by another skill, such as Fatal Strike or Head-to-Head?"

A reasonable person might or might not accept Yuri's explanation (warning, tvtropes link). However, a "nitpicky and analytical" person would definitely not accept the words of a character to be truth when we have not been shown reasonable evidence that said character has access to that information. In fact, he clearly lacks information related to the game, which is the whole reason he got his "garbage" build in the first place. So how exactly does he know Guts turns his body to steel, and not just some other skill? If he was a developer, we could reasonably assume that he knows because he was involved in the development process. If he was a beta tester, we could reasonably assume that he got that information from the beta period we were not shown. But he's not. He knows as much about the game as we do, since we've been following him since day 1. So where does that information come from?

But, as I said, whether Yuri's body turned to steel or not is irrelevant.

Instead, I think it says a lot that you chose to skip the part about Yuri conveniently getting his broken build by pure luck, when we were shown, not told (warning, tvtropes link) that he's unlucky, very unlucky, extremely unlucky, unbelievably unlucky. Even Yuri acknowledges how lucky he got in the very same WN chapter you're referencing:

I acquired ‘Head-to-Head’ after exchanging fists with the baldhead. I truly thanked my ‘luck’ to be able to meet him!

Unless you want to argue that a video game somehow knew Yuri would benefit from meeting baldhead, and then somehow managed to influence both of them so they'd meet, just because some game character had a high value in "luck".

I think a reasonable person would definitely not just look at that and think "that makes sense".

 

[Rukja]

thanks for the chapter
strangly sentient boss it is, also why would devcs allow to tame bosses? they do know what kind of problem it is to tame a raid boss, or ? and dont give me the, oh we thought it would be funny and gave it a super tiny little chance, thing

 

[rexmundi]

that is such a broken build

 

[Grimmycoffee]

It got cracked, which doesn’t make it useless, he could still use it to block several attacks after that. Does it make sense that he didn’t get a chance to hit her one more time when he’s melee oriented versus someone that, doesn’t have any real stats in combat at all? This is a boss after all, not a random trash mob.

He got one hit, MC just got Guts revive. Still ridiculous though, yeah.