Sword Art Online

[Buffalobiian]

Kirito advanced to the 8th Floor in the beta like he says. There's no reason to lie about that here. The fact that he only managed to break through the first floor in the real SAO with a party means that the beta was significantly different and perhaps harder.

Here's the thing. None of that makes a lick of sense. If the beta was so hard why was the first floor more difficult on live? .

That's a typo on my part. I meant the beta was easier than the real deal.

[Y]

That's a typo on my part. I meant the beta was easier than the real deal.

The beta was undoubtedly much harder than live, relatively speaking. On live, permadeath means you can never wipe to learn an encounter or understand a boss's ability. If the game was as easy in beta as it was on live, presumably everyone would have had a huge advantage due to the lack of permadeath.

[Buffalobiian]

The beta was undoubtedly much harder than live, relatively speaking. On live, permadeath means you can never wipe to learn an encounter or understand a boss's ability. If the game was as easy in beta as it was on live, presumably everyone would have had a huge advantage due to the lack of permadeath.

The fact that after 1 month no one had cleared Floor 1, and that higher boss abilities trickled down to lower levels compared to the beta clearly suggests that the Live was harder than Beta.

[Y]

The fact that after 1 month no one had cleared Floor 1, and that higher boss abilities trickled down to lower levels compared to the beta clearly suggests that the Live was harder than Beta.

I'm purely talking about encounter difficulty in a design sense. Obviously the reason no one cleared Floor 1 is because they expected to be rescued, were refusing to participate, were playing SUPER cautiously so as not to die, etc, not because it was made harder from a design perspective. The change to the first boss didn't even make it harder, it just made it different from what they were expecting.