Don't mess up Sega, Phantasy Star Online 2

General Discussion
61

PSO had something similar to that in the form of Race/Class bonuses that were specific to each combination as well as max stats limits, max tech limits, and max hp/mp. Each class played in its own unique way, and playing any one class in the end game meant that both your strengths and weaknesses were pretty relevant. I don’t know how I feel about the whole skill tree aspect of character customization unless the development team is highly transparent with regards to enemy stats.

For instance, your Dr. B RAmar had the highest ATA in the game, which was great for accuracy and special attacks, but a low tech limit meant that in a team fight, the casts out damaged you, and the FOs/RAmarls were much better support than you. RAmars were great for Episodes 1 and 2, but when you got into Episode 4, there were enemies specifically designed to wrecks RAs, and your lower attack power meant that switching to melee was generally a bad call. Even then, when going through PW4, I wouldn’t want anyone but a RAmar using that Spread Needle/Snow Queen from max range.

The PSO system is definitely super simplified and straightforward, but I think I like it like that. There was still plenty of variety and customization available- and that made team play necessary in the later parts of the game. The more variation put into character creation, the greater change for gross imbalance there is, and when you are spending hours upon hours grinding away in PoD, you don’t want your character to be obsoleted by some OP skill combinations.

62

PSO/U were fun as all hell, played the shit out of them.

Sega’s support is, and has always been shit though for anyone living outside JP. I’m not even getting hyped on this until they announce no segregated US/JP servers and put an end to the JP favoritism that plagued past titles.

Also the NA PS community is a bunch of 12 year old fucktards that jerk off to their own character designs while they attend “phashion shows”. Seriously some of the worst players/forum moderators/gm’s in any video game (or the internet for that matter) can be found within the PS universe. I’ve been a member on srk for nearly 10 years without 1 moderator issue, and on those boards (psow/official) I had them deleting threads and posts on a daily (or hourly) basis. If you ever feel like the srk mods are being rough, by all means try becoming a PS community member. You’ll come back here and never be happier.

I’m severely lucky I found a good group of solid players who were reliable and hated the same crap I did so we could get a lol out of the game while we were trolling them. Seriously good times, and extremely good trolling was had.

63

no challenge mode. fucking fail

64

tons of weapons in pso have specials…arguably the special “makes” the weapon. for example, slap a sacrificial special on an otherwise average weapon and suddenly its usefulness shoots way up. meleeing is kinda “weak” in pso because meleeing usually gets you slapped in the face a few times, which isnt really a big deal if you have good gear/are good at running around, but why even bother with that when you can just pewpew everything from the safety of range? the lizards in ep4 arent that bad, just swap to a charge partisan (or even better weapons if youre lucky enough to have one) and chop them.

pso has always been more about the items than the character skills. not saying a skill tree thing couldnt work but it wouldnt really be close to the same game.

a little bit of tweaking on the char classes themselves would help though, at least for hunters. fleshy hunters are good (hunes: great) solo because of shifta/deband/jellen/zalure buffs, but in groups its usually better to have 3 androids and a FO; you get all the wonderful buffs/debuffs, more total ATP on your attackers, AND freeze traps which are really damn good.

65

You must have been playing a different PSO than I did, on GC and PC, on official servers and Schtack, for years, because there is absolutely no required team play for the “end game” (which didn’t really exist) other than “have enough HP to survive unavoidable attacks and don’t attack Falz when he soul links someone.” There was very little variation amongst the four Hunters, unless you’re counting HUnewearls being unable to hit the broad side of a barn with weapons a unique and defining feature. Differing max stat totals aren’t meaningful differences: that’s why, when it came time to make Ken different from Ryu and to make Yang different from Yun, more than just that was tweaked. And the Rangers weren’t much different; get Spread Needles, get Frozen Shooters, go to town (everything else is gravy).

Episode 4’s approach to disabling Rangers was ridiculous. It wasn’t a thoughtful change: a thoughtful change would be to make enemies attack at range while taking less damage from ranging, forcing the ranger to choose between a distance war of attrition or closing the distance and switching weapons. All that happened in Episode 4 was “hey, we’re Sonic Team, we can’t make a game to save our lives, so let’s make some enemies just immune to one entire Archetype’s chosen weapon.”

PSO wasn’t straightforward. Where are you getting that from? If it was straightforward, I wouldn’t need copious amounts of web resources on Material limits, Mag stat raising, etc. The variety and customization was about picking between one of several end game weapons, maxing your techs if applicable, and that’s it. Variation leads to potential imbalance but thoughtful variation leads to depth, strategy, and fun; to decry a skill tree system on the basis that “some builds might suck” is fallacy. PSO is mired in gameplay issues; fun though it may be, it’s a bad game. A sequel should seek to correct these problems and offer players a chance to truly make their characters their own.

It’s not supposed to be the same game. It’s a sequel. It’s supposed to build upon, improve, and overhaul as necessary.

Dr. B shits Photon Drops.

66

YES. Dragon Sakai is the producer of this game, confirmed by The Magic Box.

This game has a chance now that it’s not headed by Sonic Team (aka Segac). Good stuff.

67

I feel like cryin. Like, legit mantears of joy kind of cryin. No homo.

Bring back the float chairs!

fuck yesssssssssssssssssssssssss

68

I’ll get caught up on the thread in a sec., but I just caught this elsewhere on the net: Colonel Sanders returns from the grave to help you in Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity | Joystiq THE COLONEL arrives in the Phantasy Star universe.

I’m just now finding out about PSP:Infinite thanks to this thread and the board over at gamefaqs (*also reminds me to check out PSOW forums… I haven’t been there in over a year)

*dammit…so PS: P2 is out already?! I thought it was delayed…now I have to wait until tomorrow I guess to pick it up from some random place…

*…and of course… I left the PSP AC/charger thing on my desk at work…of course.

69

It’s still early yo, hope they bring back the Section ID’s

70

ooh yeah those were pretty cool, although all i ever got was yellowboze
soooo muuuuch meseta

this news also makes the next couple of days for me

71

^that brings back a few more memories… I remember there was some little java(?) thing on a website at the time where you could see what section ID any random name gets…and it was indeed accurate to how the game generated the IDs. I used that site when creating the names for most of my characters. heh, I remember getting Bluefull most of the time from my ideas, and that section ID kinda sucked if I recall.

PSU classic memory…In the first time I played online with a full group of people on Parum(6-man DEATH Squad?!), there was one great “anime powerup shit!” moment (as Deadpool apparently says in MvC3) when De Ragan showed up, when the 4 beasts on the team all transformed at the same time the very second De Ragan landed. Of course he was no match for all this “true power” being fully unleashed. We killed that sumbitch in probably a matter of seconds after going Beast-mode. This is one example of why Beasts are forever The Shit?. Yeah…feel the POWER, bitch.

speaking of those beast characters----the Defense form “Boggo Val”(?) was what I usually chose. The defense boost was so outrageous that you were close enough to invincible to make the actual Invincible “Vande Val” form nearly pointless, imo. At least Vande Val’s perfect invincibility is useful to keep you safe from Megid-spam (which isn’t even a threat anymore in PSPortable 1 though) and that meteor attack from the final boss. Defense and Power forms were the best and most useful to a team, imo. Of course I haven’t tried out the new forms since I still don’t have PSPortable 2.

Sadly, my time with PSU wasn’t quite as memorable beyond that particular adventure with a full squad… I remember making a He-man character as a Beast…a Lion-O, and of course my usual “Dookieman” character.

*…just remembered that I never made a human character. Humans a boring and weak…just like in real life.

72

One of the very few things I loved about PSU was when people turned Beast, they would always type “THUNDERCATSSSSSS! HOOOOOOOO!!!”

That was pretty funny.

73

He wishes he could shit spheres like the dupers on Schtack.

End game meaning the timed Episode 4 quests, Phantasmal World quests (especially PW4), and even the last couple stages of Episode 2. While you could technically get through seabeds solo, it certainly wasn’t easy- and if you were planning on getting some of the best drops (Kondrieu/Saint Million/random EP4 rare monsters) you were either partying or spending a lot of money on TPs and Scapes. PSO was straightforward in so much as once you knew the limits of your character, it wasn’t a guessing game as to which strategies to level or whats going to be practical late game. Yes, the game system was anything but transparent- unless you knew of PSOW (and Tycho’s site for BB) then you were basically screwed when it came to knowledge.

Falz was hardly late game, even going through the game level by level, he was only 1/3 of the way through the game. Sure, he can be challenging if you are under levelled and he is one of the more entertaining fights, but not really supposed to be a challenge once you get into the triple digits.

Difference between HUs was enormous:
HUmar was the worst class in the game, but still does decent damage and can Resta in a pinch. He was also the best at having spiky yellow hair and being named XxGokuxX.
HUnewearl was a support class HU- meaning you had access to SDJZ when needed, she also had the best sword animation, which meant she was the crowd control when you didn’t have a RA spreading behind you.
HUcaseal had the highest ATA and the best dagger/twin swords attack animation (by something like 20% iirc) being able to consistently hit with the Daylight Scars’ special attack made HUcaseal amazing in team fights when you have a FO to Resta you.
HUcast dealt the most base damage, which meant if you needed a good DPS class, you wanted the HUcast with Charge gatling/mechguns/repeaters/whatever the highest tier of weapon in that class is. HUcast also had the highest HP which meant you were the one dropping traps into the mobs.

Literally, when you got to the end game- the different HUs played like entirely unique classes. The FOs were probably closest in their late game applications, where differences only really arose in multi-FO parties. What was your character’s name on Schtack? I played there for a long time using a RAcaseal named Launch-Oct and several other characters.

74

So I’ll come right out and admit I never min-maxed the HUs, but what you’re describing still don’t sound like meaningful differences, just different considerations based on stat differences. They’re all Hunters, but some do better in certain situations and with different weapons than others, but (except for the obvious tech/trap seperation) they could, in a pinch, fill each others roles. Hell, I remember, as a RAmar, being the FO of a group full of casts, keeping them alive and buffing with level 15 Restas, Shiftas, Debands, and Rabarta (I’m convinced Rabarta’s freeze chance is based on ATA: RAmars have an insanely high freeze chance, but that could be observation bias and I’m digressing).

My “main” on Sega’s servers and Schtack was a grey-haired RAmar named Langis, which I gave to my brother and cousin for Schtack PC, as eventually PSO’s isms became too pronounced to ignore. We all shared characters pretty liberally, the way Dr. B shares oxygen with the human race.

75

RAmars were awesome back in the day. I remember my Yasminkov 7000V fondly, shooting targets from so far away you literally can’t even see them on screen yet and killing things behind you without having to turn around. The range on that gun was godlike, and it looked effing awesome (auto-shotguns for the win).

Although, my favorite class by far was a melee FOmar. Those dudes wrecked shop if you set them up right.

76

RA differences were more subtle and situation based, but they were definitely there.
RAmar was a workhorse using Spread Needle (or a custom Needle with seize) and Snow Queen to disable everything possible.
RAmarl was the support RA able to use level 20 SDJZ and Resta to best keep a cast party moving.
RAcast had the highest ATP, so he was the DPS RA of choice and good ones abused this in groups with high damage mechs (like Yasminkov 9ks, Guld Milla, etc)
RAcaseal had the highest DFP and extra traps, so while she is probably the worst RA in terms of Ep1 and Ep2, the trap bonus and high defense made her great in episode 4 for being able to whip out a Custom Scythe on lizards without leaving the party gimped against Pazuzu and friends.

RAmarl was also good for having ridiculous TP and being able to solo better than any other class thanks to level 20 techs and the Heaven Striker set.

While I’m at it, the FO difference is mainly based on tech choice. There are some people that liked going melee FOs, which is fun and all- but ultimately not very good.
FOnewearls- (FOneys) God, I hated this class. Major boost to the basic level attack techs, had the highest MST in the game which made them good at all points in the game (and especially insane in Challenge Mode). This FO class is second best support (high MST = super Resta) and second best nuke (Foie and Zonde were great at nuking things that needed to be nuked and being basic techs means they cost very little to spam).

FOnewms- Why did all of their costumes have to have that gigantic ass? I really saw no point in that. Anyways, best nuking FO in the game thanks to the RA-level boosts, probably 4th in support just because you’re going to be wasting so much TP on nukes that you won’t have enough to effectively support in all phases of the game.

FOmars- If I saw one more FOmar charging into a mob with an Excalibur with Tellusis mag, I was going to puke. Obviously a popular choice for whatever reason, they were bad at nuking despite a boost to Gi level techs because Gifoie is the only one worthwhile, and that was awful later in the game where the main point of nuking is to keep enemies in hitstun (Probably the worst) and were pretty lacking in the Support department thanks to low mst.

FOmarls- Best support class, had a huge range boost to SDJZ and a strong Resta to accompany it. Also had the highest FO ATA which was mostly irrelevant until late game when you could combine the Sweetheart Set with Slicer of Fanatic to do some major damage or with Vivienne to keep your TP filled. Best Support, but poor nuking abilities (although the 125% Grants damage was amazing when it was relevant).

Generally, the optimal team for end game was a support character (generally a FO unless you really can’t find one), a disable (generally RA with Spread, although the higher ATA HUs could accomplish this pretty well with a Red Sword with hit %), melee DPS (usually HU), and a ranged DPS for things that couldn’t be disabled or are otherwise problematic like Zus (usually a RAcast, RAcaseal, or HUcast with charge mechs). When trying to get that setup, you can see where the different classes specialized in different roles. Your RAmar would usually sit in the disable role, but could definitely play support in a party with a HUcast, RAcaseal, and HUcaseal.

77

dont forget Sephiroth, the pinkal humar with a duped TJS

i think both the female hunters had the same sword animation

regarding animations and such, it would be nice if they got rid of the /battle units and just made attack speed stay the same (or increase with level/equips). someone without a god/battle (or heavenly/battle or v101 or samurai armor) isnt really playing the same game as someone who has one, imo. it’s annoying to have to farm an item (that wont even drop for certain IDs iirc) just so you dont get whomped in the face while trying to melee something. yes, you can buy it from other players, but its still annoying!

78

I think the FOmar was popular because it was easier to make him look cool…as opposed to the big-booty outfit goofball-looking FOnewm. No matter what your idea was…your FOnewm character was most likely going to look ridiculous, just like everyone else’s version of him. Also, FOmar looked more like a traditional wizard character anyway…and there was also the melee potential. These are definitely the things that appealed to me. At least for me, it is more interesting in terms of gameplay when you have a character with both regular melee AND magical combat options. Things don’t really get stale when my character has the capacity to mix things up in any battle scenario. My old main character “Chojin” on Gamecube PSO was a level 152 FOmar. Yeah, despite my obsession with this game, and despite the absurd # of hours I put into it… I never had a legitimate level 200 character.

On the Dreamcast PSO version 1, my main was “Ultimate A.I.”— a HUcast that was a level *I remember now…level 86.

PSU main character was eventually “Dookieman” (Beast!)–both online and offline. Online, he was only level 50-something, I think. It’s been years since I played that. Offline leveling is way too easy in PSU; I had a level 100 in no time…both “Dookie” and “Zarbon”(yeah, I made a DBZ character…no shame.) were 100s. Zarbon was also a Beast, of course. Oh and Dookie had a store named “Fart*Mart”. The player-owned shop was the only way to make any significant amount of money in the game…that was one thing that annoyed me with PSU online. The reward for finishing a mission was pitiful, and it seemed purposely done to push the game more towards being a “grind”…players going the “legit route” would be broke for a LONG ass time…and your shop wasn’t even a guaranteed thing, similar to real life. It depends on whether or not other players actually wanted to buy what you were selling, and what the pricing situation was from your competition.

79

That’s true for the most part (about /battle items), but because they were so necessary, they were heavily farmed and often traded for around 10 PDs once the economy “stabilized”. Also, because it was usually a Zu drop, they were easy to farm once you got to that point in the game (referring to v101s). The more relevant “necessary” rare drop was the Spread Needle. Until you got that, your RA wasn’t doing anything relevant, and because of that, farming anything in Ruins was a pain in the ass unless you had a party member with a Spread already.

80

I dunno, FOmar Gizonde was pretty baller. That thing hit from 18 miles away when level 30. :rofl:

Also, a real ganking FOmar isn’t gonna be the guy with Excal, he’s gonna be the guy with the 50 Hit Charge Vulcs. Although, Excal was a popular option too (and honestly I can see why, high ATP + buffs + Zerk + heals after the Zerk? Come on now). My FOmar primarily used a Girasole though (private servers).