Was there more to the R:2 grunties or were they just for jokes?

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Airon
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Was there more to the R:2 grunties or were they just for jokes?

Post by Airon »

Hey all, I got to the grunty meet-up quest and got to thinking that it's kind of weird that the grunties hang out like this on their own time, and that includes Raven's grunty which should be secret since Raven isn't supposed to be out and about as a guild. Mellow grunty also had the whole "running away" quest when Moontree went down.

It made me think if there's more to the grunties than just silly NPCs. Like, could they be some form of AI that form naturally based on their guilds leaders? Sort of like vagrant AIs but with more purpose?

Of course I could be over thinking it, they could just be entirely comic relief and you're not meant to over think it. I just find it strange that a game goes out of its way to simulate an MMO experience but then would have in-world quests that involve NPCs that would be irrelevant to anyone else but Haseo.

Was there ever anything about these little guys released?
emptyazureskies
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Re: Was there more to the R:2 grunties or were they just for jokes?

Post by emptyazureskies »

Well the world is an ai breeder so your spot on.. I guess they have their own quests and things to do..
Lindz
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Re: Was there more to the R:2 grunties or were they just for jokes?

Post by Lindz »

Grunties are pretty weird with how they take after their guildmasters. Like, whoevers programming 'em has ta have knowledge of the players and then whip up a personalized one when they put in a request to start a guild. Thats gotta be ridiculously extravagant and expensive, ontop of the whole spying thing. So I reallyyyy doubt they're as scripted as other NPCs like Dr. Pao. I like to think Yata whipped up the Melo event in a moment of guilt for having to shutdown Moon Tree... or just to get Atoli and Haseo out of his hair prior to his disappearance lol.
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Kuukai
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Re: Was there more to the R:2 grunties or were they just for jokes?

Post by Kuukai »

I feel like it's a joke for fans, but you could think of them as very advanced virtual pets with very advanced behavior. The grunties of guilds with player connections might just have secret events. In the anime, NPCs are a little less "rigid" and robot-like so the reality might be this sort of thing is possible. But yeah, I try not to think of it as canon. Also the Lucky Animal who can predict the future...
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Airon
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Re: Was there more to the R:2 grunties or were they just for jokes?

Post by Airon »

shame there's no official word on them, would have been interesting for AIDA to maybe connect to the grunties and give them their personalities.
emptyazureskies
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Re: Was there more to the R:2 grunties or were they just for jokes?

Post by emptyazureskies »

Airon wrote:shame there's no official word on them, would have been interesting for AIDA to maybe connect to the grunties and give them their personalities.
Pretty sure its closer to them being on the morganna system ala Rin
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Airon
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Re: Was there more to the R:2 grunties or were they just for jokes?

Post by Airon »

Blanking out ,who's rin?
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(Phantom) Thief
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Re: Was there more to the R:2 grunties or were they just for jokes?

Post by (Phantom) Thief »

Rin is a Wandering A.I., (an a.i. that developed naturally within the game) from a story called .hack//Kamui within the original series. However I think Grunties were created using a program similar to what helped to create Aura. and using the black box, capturing the data of players actions and tranforming it into an NPC representing the guildmasters secret personallity.

IE. Haseo - Grumpy, Yata - Wise, Zelkova - Mellow, Gabi - Manly, Kuhn - Pervy, Ovan - Depressed, Silabus - Morbid, Tabby - Cuddly, Taihaku - Prideful, and then there's Pi -................

Image

Anyway in universe the only exception I can think of are Toki-Runty, who was oddly enough created by Saika, a fourteen year old girl with an paticular complex involving control over another fourteen year old boy. (That and or Tokio is just an ambitious person on the inside). But anyhow with that we at least know by 2020 someone's got the hang of it.

Image

However if we take a step further with Geist was created sometime around 2016 and common miracles such as Midori happed around that time as well. Then there was Helba who created Tsukasa, Subaru during 2010. Leaving an idea of an advanced AI like Melo Grunty no longer an odd occurance.

EDIT: There was also something about computer generated actors...
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Airon
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Re: Was there more to the R:2 grunties or were they just for jokes?

Post by Airon »

Capturing player data and turning it towards AI definitely seems like something that would be done eventually, as an extension of the main goal to digitalize people. Sucks there's no official word on the idea though. Midori and  Zelkova actually made me think about the grunties being more than just npcs. Both of these characters ended up just being part of The World, one as a PK and the other as  guildmaster pretty seemlessly, like the grunties.

I'd love to think there's more to them than cute anime quirkiness. Especially Death-Grunty and Melo-Grunty.

I hate Pi-Grunty. MY god.
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