The Gamer

[ThirdEmperor]

Hm. Now that's something I'd have to whole-heartedly agree with. I like the chapter, but, yeah, it's out of place.

[Flickerdart]

Well, here's another chapter about nothing.

[Lethologica]

...Huh. I just favorably compared Ready Player One to this story. It may be time to stop reading.

[Dragoa]

I'm tempted to let it build up a bit of a buffer and just go through a bunch at once(story seems to read a lot better in chunks then week to week).

That said, yay exposition, yay healing, and yay awkward offers of sex?

[Anteros]

So I stopped reading for a few months and was deciding whether to come back. This thread is not a good sign.

[Aquillion]

New chapter! I guess they're sort-of discussing plot?

I do like the worldbuilding, anyway.

[Felyndiira]

So I stopped reading for a few months and was deciding whether to come back. This thread is not a good sign.

I feel that the gamer haven't really changed much. Most of the manga's appeal is still watching the hijinks of the main character and his RPG powers, rather than some deep or intricate overarching plot.

I don't feel that the webcomic is any worse in that regard, though.

[Nettlekid]

I feel that the gamer haven't really changed much. Most of the manga's appeal is still watching the hijinks of the main character and his RPG powers, rather than some deep or intricate overarching plot.

I don't feel that the webcomic is any worse in that regard, though.

See, my complaint is that it's almost the opposite of that. That we're dealing far too much with the other powers of people in the world and in The Abyss, and although the main character's RPG powers are a novelty that people with more typical powers find interesting, people can more or less do all the same things (learn magic and cast spells with mana mostly) just in non-RPG terms. As soon as they talked about "mana regeneration items" it really broke it for me, since those are so game-ish that I would have thought the main character is the only one who should use something like that. It makes the main character less special.

They've also really dropped off the whole thing with like, exclamation marks over someone's head if they have something for you to do, and loyalty points like he got with him mom in the beginning. That was part of the draw of the whole series, and I'm disappointed that it's not really coming up anymore.

[Olinser]

See, my complaint is that it's almost the opposite of that. That we're dealing far too much with the other powers of people in the world and in The Abyss, and although the main character's RPG powers are a novelty that people with more typical powers find interesting, people can more or less do all the same things (learn magic and cast spells with mana mostly) just in non-RPG terms. As soon as they talked about "mana regeneration items" it really broke it for me, since those are so game-ish that I would have thought the main character is the only one who should use something like that. It makes the main character less special.

They've also really dropped off the whole thing with like, exclamation marks over someone's head if they have something for you to do, and loyalty points like he got with him mom in the beginning. That was part of the draw of the whole series, and I'm disappointed that it's not really coming up anymore.

The thing is that the MAIN CHARACTER is the one that referred to it as mana regeneration earrings. And that is the true source of his power.

I'm sure whoever he bought them from called them 'ki restoration earrings' or 'chakra restoration earrings' or some such.

THAT is his biggest power - not the fact that his ability is, in itself, unique. It's the fact that his ability allows him to use and integrate ANY ability, regardless of discipline, school, power source, etc, and then amplifies them.

So far the biggest demonstration of this was his healing. So far we have seen 2 relatively powerful clans (Chunbumoon and Yunhon) absolutely SHOCKED at his healing abilities. Yet this is not an ability that he created himself - this was straight up taken from the Yunhon. THAT is his power. He absorbs everybody else's abilities and then takes them to the next level.

[ThirdEmperor]

So I stopped reading for a few months and was deciding whether to come back. This thread is not a good sign.

Run. The art is improving at an impressive clip, but that's it. For every panel with some good use of faces and shading there's another with nothing but the vague shapes of characters - because there's nothing for the art to relay. We have entered an Illusion Dungeon that eats time and spits out more worldbuilding in RPG terms.

[Slayn82]

It's not Tower of God, but the pacing isn't that bad for a korean webcomic. I actually enjoy the story so far. The protagonist is way over the mundane world, and even for a rookie in the Abyss he is very powerful. But he is a newcomer and simply doesn't have a cause to fight for.

So he is aproaching different groups near him, and slowly getting involved in their troubles. He is more or less forming a truce between Shumbumoon, Yunhonmoon and the Black Summoner, something that may end up being his greatest acomplishment so far - while other factions that opposed these groups before are starting to notice him. People interested in buying information on him, like the Blackrock Alchemists around chapter 60, know he has a Gaming Ability - but that is very vague by itself. If people knew Jee Han can create Instant Dungeons that have loot, he would atract much more atention and danger.

And now there's an special dungeon and there's the begining of a team - Sun-Il(friend), Shi-Yun (red haired girl), Sung-Ah (Black Summoner's daughter). It's kinda becoming like a Persona story. So far he faced a few above his level challenges, like Blackrock and the Company, and managed to contribute enough to create the crucial chance of victory for his allies.

He isn't stomping people left and right for free like the protagonists of Re:Monster or Overlord. It's a bit closer to Combat Continent. I like to see his effort paying off. He is a bit special, but he is facing a dangerous world, has to be prepared, as reality won't give him freebies and powerups in the middle of a battle.

[Douglas]

THAT is his biggest power - not the fact that his ability is, in itself, unique. It's the fact that his ability allows him to use and integrate ANY ability, regardless of discipline, school, power source, etc, and then amplifies them.

As I recall, there's an explanation a while back that there are a bunch of types of power - ki, mana, and others. But to him, all power is mana, and all power costs are mana. Full stop. That allows him to use power from one type of ability to fuel an entirely different kind of ability, which lets him do crazy synergistic combinations that are impossible for everyone else. I think the way he amps up the Chunbumoon ki-based melee stat boosts by pouring mage power into them is an example of this.

So far the biggest demonstration of this was his healing. So far we have seen 2 relatively powerful clans (Chunbumoon and Yunhon) absolutely SHOCKED at his healing abilities. Yet this is not an ability that he created himself - this was straight up taken from the Yunhon. THAT is his power. He absorbs everybody else's abilities and then takes them to the next level.

I'm not so sure that's an example of "taking to the next level" so much as "game-like simplification". In the "real world", that technique accelerates the body's natural healing and gives it more resources to draw on, or something along those lines, and that takes time and has immensely complex interactions with unusual injuries. In a game, the equivalent healing technique does "set hp to current plus X, and cure status conditions". That happens instantly and works on everything that doesn't have special healing resistance. This is one of the more spectacular differences between how real life and games work, so Jee-Han's power in this area is particularly exceptional.

His techniques do level up exceptionally well and quickly when he practices them, but I think the "treat reality like a game" aspect of his ability is the bigger part of this particular technique.

[Spojaz]

"I want to make this very clear. Going in the dungeon is dangerous. It is almost surely a deadly trap, and even if you escape, you feed an unknown party an unpredictable, illegal, powerful force that could make them a god. Now that I've cleared up why you should never, ever, ever go in to the dungeon, I'm bored. Let's go in the dungeon!" -Witch of Slaughter

[Olinser]

"I want to make this very clear. Going in the dungeon is dangerous. It is almost surely a deadly trap, and even if you escape, you feed an unknown party an unpredictable, illegal, powerful force that could make them a god. Now that I've cleared up why you should never, ever, ever go in to the dungeon, I'm bored. Let's go in the dungeon!" -Witch of Slaughter

I shall henceforth refer to her as 'ADD Loli Perv'.

[The Mormegil]

See, my complaint is that it's almost the opposite of that. That we're dealing far too much with the other powers of people in the world and in The Abyss, and although the main character's RPG powers are a novelty that people with more typical powers find interesting, people can more or less do all the same things (learn magic and cast spells with mana mostly) just in non-RPG terms. As soon as they talked about "mana regeneration items" it really broke it for me, since those are so game-ish that I would have thought the main character is the only one who should use something like that. It makes the main character less special.

They've also really dropped off the whole thing with like, exclamation marks over someone's head if they have something for you to do, and loyalty points like he got with him mom in the beginning. That was part of the draw of the whole series, and I'm disappointed that it's not really coming up anymore.

This is how I felt about this yet didn't know how to express, so thank you.

[Synar]

I read it whole last night. Liked it. No idea why everyone is complaining.

[Lethologica]

I read it whole last night. Liked it. No idea why everyone is complaining.

TL;DR: Pacing and consistency.

[Olinser]

I read it whole last night. Liked it. No idea why everyone is complaining.

People complain because they're used to manga ZOMG SOMETHING BIG HAPPEN EVERY EPISODE style of webcomics.

Read as a group, it holds up very well.

Read on a by-chapter basis when every chapter comes out, some of the chapters do drag a bit.

If people don't like the pacing I've told them to treat it like a monthly manga and read 4 chapters at once each month.

[danelsan]

The pacing is slow for my taste, but I think it has more serious flaws. And some things that I just find annoying.

Overuse of exposition. The author is pretty bad at "show, don't tell" at times. Worse yet, the exposition is often explaining things that are obvious to the those likely to be interested in the premise (how many of the people who read this need to be told what is DLC, for instance?).

Poor action scenes. The teacher uses his blackhole-like powers to defeat the corporate clown who had power over the very space-time of where the fight happens, and the comic manages to make it boring. I also found the art in general to be kinda "meh", but it has improved enough that I have no complaints about that anymore. It remains to be seen if big action scenes will be more exciting.

Leaving aside small touches that reinforced the premise. In the beginning he was gaining more skills from mundane activities, seeing "quest-NPC" icons when people had something for him to do and so on. He even has that Options screen that was barely explored.

Getting Skills and then apparently forgetting about them. It might just be that the author is setting things up for way in the future, but right now it seems that, for instance "Life Drain" was acquired...only for later receive some half-assed explanation of why it was not being used. That Martial Arts Skill that required Int 90+ was not even mentioned again, despite Jee Han now being capable of learning it. We went through that whole plot about the teacher doing that ritual to cure his daughter's curse, with Jee Han treating the symptoms with his healing skill...while he has a Skill that removes curses. That sort of stuff.

[Olinser]

The pacing is slow for my taste, but I think it has more serious flaws. And some things that I just find annoying.

Overuse of exposition. The author is pretty bad at "show, don't tell" at times. Worse yet, the exposition is often explaining things that are obvious to the those likely to be interested in the premise (how many of the people who read this need to be told what is DLC, for instance?).

Poor action scenes. The teacher uses his blackhole-like powers to defeat the corporate clown who had power over the very space-time of where the fight happens, and the comic manages to make it boring. I also found the art in general to be kinda "meh", but it has improved enough that I have no complaints about that anymore. It remains to be seen if big action scenes will be more exciting.

Leaving aside small touches that reinforced the premise. In the beginning he was gaining more skills from mundane activities, seeing "quest-NPC" icons when people had something for him to do and so on. He even has that Options screen that was barely explored.

Getting Skills and then apparently forgetting about them. It might just be that the author is setting things up for way in the future, but right now it seems that, for instance "Life Drain" was acquired...only for later receive some half-assed explanation of why it was not being used. That Martial Arts Skill that required Int 90+ was not even mentioned again, despite Jee Han now being capable of learning it. We went through that whole plot about the teacher doing that ritual to cure his daughter's curse, with Jee Han treating the symptoms with his healing skill...while he has a Skill that removes curses. That sort of stuff.

You need to read more carefully then. Life Drain wasn't a half-assed explanation at all. Channeled abilities are very common in games, and they are very rarely useful as a solo person because they prevent you from moving or casting for their duration. It makes perfect sense he wouldn't want to use it. As with any real game, some skills are more useful than others. After he learned Spinning Magic Arrow, Jee-Han hasn't used a regular Magic Arrow - and why would he? He has a better technique now.

With the Chunbumoon Divine Technique, of COURSE it makes sense it was never mentioned again. We're talking about a high level technique that is a closely guarded secret of the clan. The Elder very obviously only gave him the book in the first place because he didn't expect him to be able to use it. The Chunbumoon aren't simply going to hand over secret techniques to somebody they don't really trust (friendship with Sun-Il nonwithstanding). Sun-Il even stated this flat out in one chapter when Jee-Han said he was going for 90 Int.

And it was explicitly stated that he ATTEMPTED to remove the curse but simply did not have the power. He reduced it to a lower level but could not cure it completely, and without being cured completely it quickly started growing again. Given Jee-Han's power relative to how much Black Summoner had to use to cleanse it out, it makes perfect sense he couldn't make a dent in it alone.

[ThirdEmperor]

I'm of the opinion that the comic giving excuses doesn't actually make either of the first two better.

They're all Chekhov's Guns - a skill he has but never uses, a skill that's powerful and mysterious, etc - that are never fired. In fact, we have a character pop in to say 'We're putting the gun back in the safe now, and we've lost the code so you should just forget about it.'

It's just bad.

[Flickerdart]

Spoiler: New comic

Show

Is the Harem King just a mis-translation of the Irregular Magician we've known about already, or is he a new guy?

[Dragoa]

Spoiler: New comic

Show

Is the Harem King just a mis-translation of the Irregular Magician we've known about already, or is he a new guy?

Not really sure, both are sort of shadowy void figures. I'm going to run with it just being a mistranslation, especially since Jee Han already knew about the Irregular Magician, and didn't ask for a point of comparison.

[Aquillion]

No, they're different figures. The author lists them separately here in their QA session, confirming that the Irregular Mage is not Jee Han's mother and the Harem King is not Jee Han's father. They're apparently from his earlier works.

[Flickerdart]

Hm...was the Harem King mentioned before? Jee Han seems awfully not interested in who the Harem King is.

[Aquillion]

Since it's a reference to the author's previous works, I wouldn't be surprised if it's just an Easter egg and won't play a major role. Going by that QA session, the author seemed a bit surprised that Korean fans had focused on them and made so many theories about them.

On the other hand, they seem to be playing an increasing role in the story, especially if the Harem King is protecting Jee Han for unknown reasons. Given that we know he's not Jee Han's father, who else would have a reason to protect him? I suppose it's possible that Jee Han's parents are involved in the Abyss in some other way and struck a deal with the Harem King for protection.

[2xMachina]

No, they're different figures. The author lists them separately here in their QA session, confirming that the Irregular Mage is not Jee Han's mother and the Harem King is not Jee Han's father. They're apparently from his earlier works.

Could be the other way around. He never said the Harem King is not his mother, & the Irregular mage his father :P

[Aquillion]

Also, a new chapter is out.

Spoiler

Show

Apparently the labyrinth is powering itself from people playing the online game, or something like that? And it looks like we'll be getting more Sae-Young or something. And the main character intends to train in his own copy of that ridiculously deep dungeon?

[Olinser]

Could be the other way around. He never said the Harem King is not his mother, & the Irregular mage his father :P

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExactWords

[Olinser]

Also, a new chapter is out.

Spoiler

Show

Apparently the labyrinth is powering itself from people playing the online game, or something like that? And it looks like we'll be getting more Sae-Young or something. And the main character intends to train in his own copy of that ridiculously deep dungeon?

I think it's more of a feedback loop.

I think what we're looking at is somebody skirting the rules of Abyss affecting the real world.

That many people playing a game that avid gamer Jee-Han hadn't even heard of smacks of some form of compulsion. The labyrinth was probably created first, and the power they got from Abyss residents entering it gave them the power to influence the masses to PLAY GAME NOW, and now the 'normals' playing the game are further feeding the labyrinth, and they are in a cascading loop that will keep getting stronger.