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Phantasy Star Online 2 -- Beta Live, 3 Invites Available From Those Already In Game

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Posts

  • Magic PinkMagic Pink Tur-Boner-Fed Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Henroid wrote: »
    Magic Pink wrote: »
    One of my favorite series and it's moved to PC only.

    Fuck you, Sega.

    Pfft, I've been saying that since Sega killed the single-player awesome-RPG series Phantasy Star. 8-)


    No, they really needed to do that. It was completely boring.
    And I agree, this won't remain PC only for long. PS3 version at the very least.

    I really don't think it will. The big bitch about PSU is the lack of updates and SEGA has dropped rumours that they're really really sick of how hard it is to update the console games versus the PC games.

    Magic Pink on
  • kriegskriegs Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Reynolds wrote: »
    I had one that looked like a floating toilet seat. The lid even opened and closed continuously. Loved that thing.

    Apsaras for Supreme Overlord of Mags.

    apsaras.jpg

    It's like wearing the most badass cape in existence.

    It's a shame that trailer on the last page doesn't work anymore.

    kriegs on
  • AaronKIAaronKI Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    The PSO Blue Burst private server thing is still a huge kick for me. I dunno, it wouldnt be hard to recapture that magic. Its just something Sega seems terrible at.

    Is that legal/ok with Sega since the servers were shut down?

    I had a magenta version of this cat/fox things back in the day.
    shato.jpg


    Here's a working version:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxqukE7UfLk

    AaronKI on
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  • PunkBoyPunkBoy Thank you! And thank you again! Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    I remember playing the Blue Burst trial and enjoying it, but I never got into PSU. What were the main gripes about it?

    PunkBoy on
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  • EliminationElimination Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    PSO was amazing, but I'm seeing far too much PSU influence here to recapture that magic. There isn't a MAG shown in any of the footage, and symbol chat is gone for good. I'll probably give it a spin, but those were my two favorite parts of PSO, and I won't stick around without them. At least not MAGs, I loved the crap out of those things, especially the rare ones and hardware-based ones. Nothing cooler than plugging away at enemies with a Dreamcast floating behind me.

    Keep in mind we are looking at an Alpha build or something here, it isn't even showing all the classes and races, or even costumes variety that will surely be in the final game. There will most likely be some kind of Mag, there even was in PSU. I doubt they'd scrap that. It probably just was a feature that isn't complete enough in development to show off yet.

    To answer the above poster as well about PSU. I dont kow how other felt, but for me the biggest gripes I had with PSU was the monthly fee totally not being worth it (especially for Canadians, where for some reason they charged more.), as well as the slow pace of updates, and the fact they made the game for the PS2 first and ported it over to the 360 and PC after. A really bad decision imo, made the game graphically outdated by years right on release day. Other than that and the way they did mags, i really had no real gripes, i enjoyed the gameplay and the storyline missions, the online was good enough, character customization was good and there were a lot of classes and progression which was nice to see over PSO's very, very basic class system.

    Elimination on
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  • DelphinidaesDelphinidaes FFXIV: Delphi Kisaragi Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Looks good, I've always had fond memories of the PSO series.

    But in regards to jumping (someone had mentioned it and gotten my hopes up) it seems like it only happens during combat moves and when the character gets to an object that needs to be jumped on. Not once did I see someone just randomly jump in the field. :(

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  • Rex DartRex Dart Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Looks good, I've always had fond memories of the PSO series.

    But in regards to jumping (someone had mentioned it and gotten my hopes up) it seems like it only happens during combat moves and when the character gets to an object that needs to be jumped on. Not once did I see someone just randomly jump in the field. :(
    But the trailer specifically mentions "jump action." I doubt they'd call attention to it in the trailer if it was just a contextual thing.

    Rex Dart on
  • DelphinidaesDelphinidaes FFXIV: Delphi Kisaragi Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Rex Dart wrote: »
    Looks good, I've always had fond memories of the PSO series.

    But in regards to jumping (someone had mentioned it and gotten my hopes up) it seems like it only happens during combat moves and when the character gets to an object that needs to be jumped on. Not once did I see someone just randomly jump in the field. :(
    But the trailer specifically mentions "jump action." I doubt they'd call attention to it in the trailer if it was just a contextual thing.


    That doesn't surprise me at all, it has the desired effect, it gets people excited for jumping, but it certainly doesn't mean you can just jump whenever.

    Welcome to marketing.

    That being said I hope you are right, that would be a nice change, but from the video I saw I really don't think that is the case it really looks situational to me, and the jumping attack seemed like it was a move that just had a jumping animation to it.

    Honestly whether there is jumping or not really would not impact my decision to play the game. It really looks very good and I look forward to more information coming out about it.

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  • Black_HeartBlack_Heart Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    The main things that killed PSU for me were...
    • Combat didn't feel fluid or fun - It was like when you swung at an enemy, they would get hit a split second too late, it felt like there was lag in the entire game, even when playing offline, the combat didn't have weight to it and the monsters acted like you weren't even hitting them half the time. It wasn't satisfying
    • Poor character designs - I hated the designs in PSU, everything felt really generic and all the male and female models looked exactly alike, I think all races shared the same animations too.
    • Poor game flow/progression - Felt like there was no progression in the game. Do a dungeon on a this planet... with no boss, then go to another random planet and do another one for no reason. None of the areas were connected and I didn't know wtf my goal was. PSO and Diablo 1/2 were both linear in that you knew where you needed to go.
    • No classes - I actually like having different classes with different abilities and limitations/strengths. PSU was confusing in that everyone could do everything and it was all based off your weapon or something? It was really confusing and made no sense to me.

    From what I've seen of the combat in PSO 2, it looks wonderful and a lot of fun, unlike PSU's dull derivative combat. I love the character designs so far, if they bring back classes or race specific weapons and gear, make a solid game flow, and make the game controller compatible, it will be what I've wanted for a decade.

    Black_Heart on
  • FiarynFiaryn Omnicidal Madman Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    My experience with Phantasy Star is solely Phantasy Star 2 Portable.

    And it's a game I really want to like but it has the most uncomfortable fucking controls known to man, good god.

    Fiaryn on
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  • ReynoldsReynolds Gone Fishin'Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    PSU also had the worst crafting and weapon grinding system I've ever seen. After like 10 levels you can no longer buy any good weapons or armor and have to craft all of them. Everything. With ridiculously rare materials. Then you need to use grinders to 'level up' your weapons. Except if the grinder fails randomly? The weapon breaks.

    Forever.

    No repairing, you just lose your precious rare item made from rare materials that likely took days to gather.

    Reynolds on
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  • EnigEnig a.k.a. Ansatz Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Never played PSU. PSO (gamecube) was my digital crack for a while. If they recapture that - and hopefully refine it for 2011 - I will be in trouble.

    Enig on
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  • ToothyToothy Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    I really liked in PSU how character level and class level were separate features.

    What I didn't like was that the classes were essentially proficiency lists for weapons. Stats also changed, but there was no distinction between them aside from that. I want to see a little more interesting division of abilities than that this time around. We've always had hunters, rangers, and forces, I just hope they make them a choice beyond melee, ranged, or spell-caster.

    Toothy on
  • AaronKIAaronKI Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Reynolds wrote: »
    [...] Then you need to use grinders to 'level up' your weapons. Except if the grinder fails randomly? The weapon breaks.

    Forever.

    No repairing, you just lose your precious rare item made from rare materials that likely took days to gather.

    Wow, that's awful. What was the rate of failure? I only ever found three interesting rares in the gamecube version: Dragon Slayer, Last Survivor, and a yellow pair of daggers I can't remember the name of. I probably would have ragequit if a grinder broke one.

    AaronKI on
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  • The Dude With HerpesThe Dude With Herpes Lehi, UTRegistered User regular
    edited April 2011
    You should know they changed it quite some time ago (AoI?) so that failing a grind doesn't destroy the weapon.

    For any given weapon you have a starting max of 10 grinds. I.E. you can potentially get your weapon to be a +10. Some weapons this makes a major difference in power.

    Anyway, the way it works now, and again, for some time, is that if you fail a grind, it'll lower your max potential. So if you are 8/10 and fail your weapon becomes 0/9. You can grind it back up to a max of 9/9 at that point.

    Also, the frequency of holidays and events which give bonuses to grinding in the past few years has been absurd and if you find yourself with a weapon you want to grind up just wait a week to do it. Just use the grinders that allow your grinds to be 100% chance to work (iirc, you can get up to 6/10 with high level grinders without a chance to fail, outside of holidays/events/lucky days) then wait and do it the rest of the way. When you see people selling or using equipment that is like 4/4 then they were either impatient or had no clue what they were doing.

    And actually I don't think your weapon would always break early on when you failed a grind. I think you had a chance at breaking it but otherwise you'd just fail the grind and reset the grind power.

    by the time equipment showed up that was higher than 9-10 stars, they had already changed the grind system, and that lower level stuff was a joke to obtain.

    The Dude With Herpes on
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  • AaronKIAaronKI Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    That sounds a lot more reasonable. To compensate for the failure chance, did grinders have higher drop rates in PSU then PSO?

    AaronKI on
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  • ReynoldsReynolds Gone Fishin'Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Yeah, but all that crap made my friends and I drop the game in the first month. Maybe if they'd brought over the year of patches Japan already had when it started, it would have already been fixed. It really made no sense to delay patches that fixed crap like that and added new content.

    Reynolds on
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  • chocoboliciouschocobolicious Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Just wanted to make a few comments here:

    In the original PSU, classes had variation based on type. It wasn't just a weapon list, because it also effected what rank you could get techs up to. Also trap useage. Also with AoI you had some classes that had passive speed boosts and other bonuses as well. Faster PP regeneration, etc. The classes had a really good bit of variety to them, when you get down to it.

    They expanded that in Phantasy star portable 2, quite a bit. With classes learning skills and whatnot (Though you could then equip them between classes, kind of making high level play pretty homogenized, which sorta sucked.)

    My biggest beef with PSU was
    A) Things didn't flinch much if at alll. So if you were wailing on them odds are they'd just wade into my giant man-sized sword and beat my face in.
    B) After the normal difficulty, getting my face beat in more or less meant death. You were way too weak. This went even further in Phantasy star portable 2, wherein you could block and roll and such. They took this to mean they should make everything ever on the face of the planet capable of killing you in one hit, so you better roll son, better roll.

    I still really enjoyed the series in general, though. I miss Phantasy Star games. They were always so interesting and different compared to the other console RPGs available.

    chocobolicious on
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  • AaronKIAaronKI Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Has anyone played Phantasy Star 0? I forgot that it existed until I started poking around PSO World.

    AaronKI on
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  • Magic PinkMagic Pink Tur-Boner-Fed Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    AaronKI wrote: »
    Has anyone played Phantasy Star 0? I forgot that it existed until I started poking around PSO World.

    I did. I love me some Phantasy Star but I couldn't stand that game.

    Magic Pink on
  • spookymuffinspookymuffin ( ° ʖ ° ) Puyallup WA Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Magic Pink wrote: »
    AaronKI wrote: »
    Has anyone played Phantasy Star 0? I forgot that it existed until I started poking around PSO World.

    I did. I love me some Phantasy Star but I couldn't stand that game.

    I played it to completion of the single player mode. It was decent fun.

    spookymuffin on
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  • V FactionV Faction Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Just as an FYI, the official site http://pso2.jp/ updated with the trailer in Hi-Res and with Engl(r)ish subtitles.

    The combat looks like it feels good.

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  • spookymuffinspookymuffin ( ° ʖ ° ) Puyallup WA Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Seeing a better quality trailer really makes me want to play this game immediately. I might have to load up Blue Burst to take care of the itch until this comes out.

    spookymuffin on
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  • The Dude With HerpesThe Dude With Herpes Lehi, UTRegistered User regular
    edited April 2011
    AaronKI wrote: »
    That sounds a lot more reasonable. To compensate for the failure chance, did grinders have higher drop rates in PSU then PSO?

    Not really. S rank grinders, unless something changed later on, were only crafted. It got to the point where you could get the materials for them for chump change, so I guess the drop rate was ok for them.

    But then you had to actually go through and craft them, assuming you had leveled up your PM properly and then hope you proc some high rank grinders (they went from base to +10) so that you can grind that S ranker above 4 or so without a high chance at failure.

    Honestly, grinding in PSU, like many of the systems were too convoluted for their own good.

    I am trying not to get my hopes up for PSO 2. From what I hear the PSP games are quite good and I had heard good things about PS0 too. I do hope however that they go with a KISS doctrine and realize what made PSO so good in the first place, and why PSU failed for so many people.

    If nothing else I hope they drop the dipshit ass "class" systems they introduced in PSU and go back to ranger, hunter, force; with variations based on your race. Nothing else was ever needed.

    The Dude With Herpes on
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  • chocoboliciouschocobolicious Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    I disagree.

    Don't get me wrong, I played PSO more than was healthy. At the end of the V1 lifecycle my FOnewm had enough XP to hit level 200 almost twice had they let us carry excess XP into V2. (Yes, I'm really not even exaggerating that.) and I played V2 nearly as much.

    I still quite enjoyed the class system in PSU. It probably needed even more definition than it had, but I really enjoyed Protranser. Just because it was so different than the rest.

    What it really comes down to is they need to make classes matter, or go back to the PSO system, just not half-assing it.

    chocobolicious on
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  • The Dude With HerpesThe Dude With Herpes Lehi, UTRegistered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Nah, this shit is absurdly convoluted when you consider the game is pretty much a glorified diablo style loot pinata.

    Base types: ok.
    Forte types: eh, redundant, just make the base types take care of this. No need to level two types to do the same damn thing.
    Mixed Types: I can see the draw, but they rarely did anything as well as the pure types so their usefulness was mitigated by lower skill caps and/or less versatile weapon choices
    Master types: again, totally redundant. I get it. They needed new types for people to level up, so they narrowed the focus of the base types even more. They just were totally unneeded and the base types should have been able to just do what they could do.
    Protransers: well, interesting, I suppose; but the way and speed at which most runs moved, their usefulness was very situational.

    There isn't anything that was added by the types in PSU that couldn't have been solved with expanding the roles of the base classes as they leveled up. The mixed types weren't necessary at all. In PSO if you wanted to be a force and still hit shit just roll a Fomar; but people usually didn't because their damage output didn't even compare to a maxed out fonewearl or a fonewmar.

    I think they can keep to the basic 3 types from PSO and have it be just as rewarding and interesting as they intended the types in PSU to be. They just need to keep some of the combat expansion from PSU like photon attacks and such. IMO the flow of combat, for the most part, in PSU was perfectly fine. I think techs could have been considerably more useful than they were in many cases; without requiring as much grind to level them as did; but that can be balanced. They just went in a vastly different direction from how powerful they were in PSO.

    EDIT: Only semi-related; I think it'd be cool if they stole a bit from Hellgate London and allow rangers to play entirely like an FPS if they want. I thought it worked quite well and allowed a different playstyle for the ranged classes. I think it could work in PSO also. I don't expect it, however.

    The Dude With Herpes on
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  • chocoboliciouschocobolicious Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    ..Rofl, protranser only situationally useful? We must have played a different game. I had far and away the highest DPS of anyone, ever, and could speed run things by my lonesome. Traps could simply be dropped /on/ things, there was no reason to try to be all strategic about it. You ran up, bombed them like it was jihad and moved on to the next room.

    And, again, the types weren't in the least convoluted, unless you wanted them to be. You played a ranger til it capped out. Your growth was then based on level alone.

    You then switch to fortegunner if you wanted to keep on doing that, and your growth resumed. Til that capped out, and your growth was stunted again.

    Another level cap raise, addition of master class. Again, switch to that. All it did was raise your stat modifiers, some various weapon types got higher class ratings. And maybe a boost to PP regen, PP usage reduction or some damage mods.

    The only 'convolution' in the whole system was if you wanted to do a hybrid class. Which still wasnt that complex. You want a warrior/mage, level warrior and mage. Bamf, get warrior/mage.

    The 'base classes' existed just fine though, all you had to do was go to a counter and switch up when your 'basic 3' hit cap and do it again. A small two minute distraction. You could ignore the system completely at that point. (Unless you got to the level capped 'advanced stat gain' thing wherein things got a bit interessting and fun, if you could be assed to grind for it.)

    Of course, the key problem came in the min/max mentality, wherein other classes were 'better' (Protranser and acrofighter come to mind.) so people somehow thought getting them was a necessity, when in reality it was just there for min/max pleasure or variety.

    I had a pretty high level character that never touched anything but force->forteforce->masterforce, and I can say the experience wasn't somehow worth less than when I played my PT and just blew up the world.

    chocobolicious on
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  • AaronKIAaronKI Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    I booted up PSO last night and started a Ranger for the first time. If they can make PSO2 half as fun as PSO1, I think I'll be in trouble.

    If I realized how easy it was to stay alive as a Ranger, I probably would have played one back in the day. My 15 year old brain was too easily influenced by the ginormo swords that Hunters could use, though. (I somehow ignored the fact that my average combo with one went "hit, miss, miss" followed by getting pounded by a monster.)

    Also, why in the world does your character walk so slow when you're close to something that can kill you? You'd think they would be trying to run away from the landmine that just appeared instead of shuffling their feet.

    AaronKI on
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  • The Dude With HerpesThe Dude With Herpes Lehi, UTRegistered User regular
    edited April 2011
    ..Rofl, protranser only situationally useful? We must have played a different game. I had far and away the highest DPS of anyone, ever, and could speed run things by my lonesome. Traps could simply be dropped /on/ things, there was no reason to try to be all strategic about it. You ran up, bombed them like it was jihad and moved on to the next room.

    And, again, the types weren't in the least convoluted, unless you wanted them to be. You played a ranger til it capped out. Your growth was then based on level alone.

    You then switch to fortegunner if you wanted to keep on doing that, and your growth resumed. Til that capped out, and your growth was stunted again.

    Another level cap raise, addition of master class. Again, switch to that. All it did was raise your stat modifiers, some various weapon types got higher class ratings. And maybe a boost to PP regen, PP usage reduction or some damage mods.

    The only 'convolution' in the whole system was if you wanted to do a hybrid class. Which still wasnt that complex. You want a warrior/mage, level warrior and mage. Bamf, get warrior/mage.

    The 'base classes' existed just fine though, all you had to do was go to a counter and switch up when your 'basic 3' hit cap and do it again. A small two minute distraction. You could ignore the system completely at that point. (Unless you got to the level capped 'advanced stat gain' thing wherein things got a bit interessting and fun, if you could be assed to grind for it.)

    Of course, the key problem came in the min/max mentality, wherein other classes were 'better' (Protranser and acrofighter come to mind.) so people somehow thought getting them was a necessity, when in reality it was just there for min/max pleasure or variety.

    I had a pretty high level character that never touched anything but force->forteforce->masterforce, and I can say the experience wasn't somehow worth less than when I played my PT and just blew up the world.

    Protranser might have been able to solo perfectly fine but I rarely ever saw them able to keep up and/or really add to much in party play. High level hunters would kill things so fast that by the time you could even get up there and get your traps off everything was dead. Rangers/Gunners had the same issues often. If you had a couple geared hunters in your party little could keep up at all. Since I mainly played a gunner it made most of the stages up to the bosses a game of keep up with the hunters. The rarity I even saw protransers they weren't doing a whole hell of a lot. Maybe it was different on another system? But on the 360 this was the case pretty much any time I played.

    Plus it wasn't as simple as "well, get to the cap of ranger then move to fortegunner, then move to Gunmaster. Gunmaster required level 10 FG and WT, WT required level 5 RA and level 3 Hunter.

    And even then Gunmaster was so limited as to what weapon types you could use, it wasn't just a natural upgrade from Fortegunner and Ranger. You lost pretty much any ability to attack more than one thing at once, except with shotguns which were rarely worthwhile, grenades were typically more useful in situations where you were attacking multi-hit bosses or masses of enemies; and lasers but again, good luck getting enemies to line up for you to make them very useful.

    If you're playing solo, ok fine. But the game was incredibly boring to play solo and I'm not sure why you would. Many of the challenges added later in the state of the game literally couldn't be completed solo, so focusing on a type that might have been able to solo great against white dragon or something, just couldn't keep up when you're working on speed runs to get s ranks in the challenges.

    Having numerous types that didn't flow in a way one would expect from previous types that you needed to level to earn the "stronger" ones was convoluted. It's not intuitive at all that as you go from Ranger > Fortegunner > Gunmaster that each step you'll lose abilities to use more weapon types and that sucks. Speaking of these classes specifically, because I tended to focus on ranger types, losing versatility in a type that already had a hard time keeping up in many situations was not fun. But the overall photon/technic/bullet caps for the higher level types made it hard to go back.

    Someone can like the system, and I have no doubt you did. That's fine. But it's not intuitive at all, the higher level types aren't natural progressions of the lower types; and the sacrifices of versatility you often had to give up sucked. A lot. And for someone who hadn't really played the game before, the game itself doesn't explain the differences very well at all. So unless you spend much time on pso-world or psupedia you can get lost very quickly. Your average player is not going to understand why when going from Fortefighter to Fightmaster you go from 12 different options of weapons to four. It gets even more annoying when you start trying to figure out differences in the Acro types when their benefits aren't communicated in game at all.

    My point is that PSO had a much more friendly type system and it made sense to everyone. You wanted to cast spells, you picked a force. Among forces, you chose your race based on whether you wanted to be a paper tiger for parties or hold your own in solo. As you leveled up you got stronger, and had access to more gear. Not less.

    The Dude With Herpes on
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  • CheesecakeRecipeCheesecakeRecipe "Should not be allowed to post in the Steam Thread" - Isorn Squalor Victoria, Squalor Victoria!Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    AaronKI wrote: »
    I booted up PSO last night and started a Ranger for the first time. If they can make PSO2 half as fun as PSO1, I think I'll be in trouble.

    If I realized how easy it was to stay alive as a Ranger, I probably would have played one back in the day. My 15 year old brain was too easily influenced by the ginormo swords that Hunters could use, though. (I somehow ignored the fact that my average combo with one went "hit, miss, miss" followed by getting pounded by a monster.)

    Also, why in the world does your character walk so slow when you're close to something that can kill you? You'd think they would be trying to run away from the landmine that just appeared instead of shuffling their feet.

    RAcast for life, always mained one since DC v1 baby. 8-)

    CheesecakeRecipe on
  • AaronKIAaronKI Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    AaronKI wrote: »
    I booted up PSO last night and started a Ranger for the first time. If they can make PSO2 half as fun as PSO1, I think I'll be in trouble.

    If I realized how easy it was to stay alive as a Ranger, I probably would have played one back in the day. My 15 year old brain was too easily influenced by the ginormo swords that Hunters could use, though. (I somehow ignored the fact that my average combo with one went "hit, miss, miss" followed by getting pounded by a monster.)

    Also, why in the world does your character walk so slow when you're close to something that can kill you? You'd think they would be trying to run away from the landmine that just appeared instead of shuffling their feet.

    RAcast for life, always mained one since DC v1 baby. 8-)

    I ran through the Forest with a RAcast and RAmarl as well, but ended up choosing the RAmar for the added accuracy and techniques. Plus the RAcast's walking sound drove me completely batty. :P

    Speaking of going batty, I'm currently trying to obtain a brown mag to match my costume. It's one of the four colors can only be obtained randomly, so I have a 1 in 18 chance every time I make a new character.

    AaronKI on
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  • CheesecakeRecipeCheesecakeRecipe "Should not be allowed to post in the Steam Thread" - Isorn Squalor Victoria, Squalor Victoria!Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    AaronKI wrote: »
    AaronKI wrote: »
    I booted up PSO last night and started a Ranger for the first time. If they can make PSO2 half as fun as PSO1, I think I'll be in trouble.

    If I realized how easy it was to stay alive as a Ranger, I probably would have played one back in the day. My 15 year old brain was too easily influenced by the ginormo swords that Hunters could use, though. (I somehow ignored the fact that my average combo with one went "hit, miss, miss" followed by getting pounded by a monster.)

    Also, why in the world does your character walk so slow when you're close to something that can kill you? You'd think they would be trying to run away from the landmine that just appeared instead of shuffling their feet.

    RAcast for life, always mained one since DC v1 baby. 8-)

    I ran through the Forest with a RAcast and RAmarl as well, but ended up choosing the RAmar for the added accuracy. Plus the RAcast's walking sound drove me completely batty. :P

    Speaking of going batty, I'm currently trying to obtain a brown mag to match my costume. It's one of the four colors can only be obtained randomly, so I have a 1 in 18 chance every time I make a new character.

    The thudding is just a warning for all my foes out there about the pounding they are about to receive.

    If I could have my RAcast fall from the sky and land like a Hildebear/torr, I would do it every single time.

    CheesecakeRecipe on
  • chocoboliciouschocobolicious Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    ..Rofl, protranser only situationally useful? We must have played a different game. I had far and away the highest DPS of anyone, ever, and could speed run things by my lonesome. Traps could simply be dropped /on/ things, there was no reason to try to be all strategic about it. You ran up, bombed them like it was jihad and moved on to the next room.

    And, again, the types weren't in the least convoluted, unless you wanted them to be. You played a ranger til it capped out. Your growth was then based on level alone.

    You then switch to fortegunner if you wanted to keep on doing that, and your growth resumed. Til that capped out, and your growth was stunted again.

    Another level cap raise, addition of master class. Again, switch to that. All it did was raise your stat modifiers, some various weapon types got higher class ratings. And maybe a boost to PP regen, PP usage reduction or some damage mods.

    The only 'convolution' in the whole system was if you wanted to do a hybrid class. Which still wasnt that complex. You want a warrior/mage, level warrior and mage. Bamf, get warrior/mage.

    The 'base classes' existed just fine though, all you had to do was go to a counter and switch up when your 'basic 3' hit cap and do it again. A small two minute distraction. You could ignore the system completely at that point. (Unless you got to the level capped 'advanced stat gain' thing wherein things got a bit interessting and fun, if you could be assed to grind for it.)

    Of course, the key problem came in the min/max mentality, wherein other classes were 'better' (Protranser and acrofighter come to mind.) so people somehow thought getting them was a necessity, when in reality it was just there for min/max pleasure or variety.

    I had a pretty high level character that never touched anything but force->forteforce->masterforce, and I can say the experience wasn't somehow worth less than when I played my PT and just blew up the world.

    Protranser might have been able to solo perfectly fine but I rarely ever saw them able to keep up and/or really add to much in party play. High level hunters would kill things so fast that by the time you could even get up there and get your traps off everything was dead. Rangers/Gunners had the same issues often. If you had a couple geared hunters in your party little could keep up at all. Since I mainly played a gunner it made most of the stages up to the bosses a game of keep up with the hunters. The rarity I even saw protransers they weren't doing a whole hell of a lot. Maybe it was different on another system? But on the 360 this was the case pretty much any time I played.

    Plus it wasn't as simple as "well, get to the cap of ranger then move to fortegunner, then move to Gunmaster. Gunmaster required level 10 FG and WT, WT required level 5 RA and level 3 Hunter.

    And even then Gunmaster was so limited as to what weapon types you could use, it wasn't just a natural upgrade from Fortegunner and Ranger. You lost pretty much any ability to attack more than one thing at once, except with shotguns which were rarely worthwhile, grenades were typically more useful in situations where you were attacking multi-hit bosses or masses of enemies; and lasers but again, good luck getting enemies to line up for you to make them very useful.

    If you're playing solo, ok fine. But the game was incredibly boring to play solo and I'm not sure why you would. Many of the challenges added later in the state of the game literally couldn't be completed solo, so focusing on a type that might have been able to solo great against white dragon or something, just couldn't keep up when you're working on speed runs to get s ranks in the challenges.

    Having numerous types that didn't flow in a way one would expect from previous types that you needed to level to earn the "stronger" ones was convoluted. It's not intuitive at all that as you go from Ranger > Fortegunner > Gunmaster that each step you'll lose abilities to use more weapon types and that sucks. Speaking of these classes specifically, because I tended to focus on ranger types, losing versatility in a type that already had a hard time keeping up in many situations was not fun. But the overall photon/technic/bullet caps for the higher level types made it hard to go back.

    Someone can like the system, and I have no doubt you did. That's fine. But it's not intuitive at all, the higher level types aren't natural progressions of the lower types; and the sacrifices of versatility you often had to give up sucked. A lot. And for someone who hadn't really played the game before, the game itself doesn't explain the differences very well at all. So unless you spend much time on pso-world or psupedia you can get lost very quickly. Your average player is not going to understand why when going from Fortefighter to Fightmaster you go from 12 different options of weapons to four. It gets even more annoying when you start trying to figure out differences in the Acro types when their benefits aren't communicated in game at all.

    My point is that PSO had a much more friendly type system and it made sense to everyone. You wanted to cast spells, you picked a force. Among forces, you chose your race based on whether you wanted to be a paper tiger for parties or hold your own in solo. As you leveled up you got stronger, and had access to more gear. Not less.


    While you got fewer weapons, you got higher types. It was simply specializing. Just like in PSO, only warriors could use most melee weapons, only rangers could use most guns. They split that up a bit, sure. So certain types of weapons were only useable by certain types.

    I also made a mistake about the gunmaster thing. But then looking at the fortegunner list and its stat growth, there is no reason to ever change out of it, and it gets all the best gun types. Grenades, rifles, handguns. check. Done and done. So you do even less class switching than I thought.

    As for the hunters murdering everything before you got there... Dunno, I ran just as fast as hunters, and I had to be in the same range as they did for most skills/attacks... difference is mine hit everything around me so getting surrounded was never a problem? I mean.. I could solo most GAM stuff and whatnot just fine. A bit boring sometimes, but doable. Same with forteforce or forcemaster. Basically, ranger just sucked in PSU. I'm not even saying that to be like.. a downer. Its just kind of true. They buffed it in phantasy star portable 2 a decent bit. Added charge attacks and the like. Some new skills. Helped a good bit.

    Course, rangers kinda sucked in PSO as well. Everyone could use the best ranged weapons (Sans the heaven punisher. Which I believe was ranger only.) so there was really no reason to play a ranger. Im only talking about PSOv1, V2 and the GC one. I cant speak for Blue Burst as I never played it. But yeah... spread needle, Srank challenge mechs, ...that weird handgun that had rifle range I can never recall the name of... all useable by either hunter or force or both. (Srank mechs, so godly.)

    chocobolicious on
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  • spookymuffinspookymuffin ( ° ʖ ° ) Puyallup WA Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Am I the only one that likes the HUmar? So many RAs and FOs running around here...

    spookymuffin on
    PSN: MegaSpooky // 3DS: 3797-6276-7138
    Wii U NNID: MegaSpooky
  • KupiKupi Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Given that they made a trailer with two Hunters and two Rangers, I feel confident predicting that we who enjoy casting will once again get to play the "push button, receive bacon" game while the people who can't convert TP into HP are doing all the interesting work.

    Kupi on
    My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
  • chocoboliciouschocobolicious Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    I think I played the later half of my FOnewm's existence punching things with some good %'d angry fists.

    Course, casting animation was faster barehanded, so I got to wreck worlds with rabarta still~

    chocobolicious on
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  • AaronKIAaronKI Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Am I the only one that likes the HUmar? So many RAs and FOs running around here...

    HUmar was my preferred class back in the day and is still my favorite visually. I only switched to RA because I wanted to try something new. It's fun, but I do miss the ginormo swords.

    AaronKI on
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  • chocoboliciouschocobolicious Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    HUnewearl was still the best hunter type, though.

    chocobolicious on
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  • AaronKIAaronKI Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    HUnewearl was still the best hunter type, though.

    I also tried one of those when messing around with new characters. Even though my strategy guide says they have less accuracy than HUmars, she seemed to hit things way more often then my new HUmar did. Too bad I feel weird about playing a female character in online games. I think it goes back to having a creepy friend who would pretend to be a girl in MMOs.


    A japanese company started making figures based on PSO. Their first was the RAcaseal NPC, Elenor. The next one is the Shino. I'd like to see them make the default HUmar, Red Ring Rico, or Heathcliff Flowen.

    AaronKI on
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  • spookymuffinspookymuffin ( ° ʖ ° ) Puyallup WA Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    AaronKI wrote: »
    Am I the only one that likes the HUmar? So many RAs and FOs running around here...

    HUmar was my preferred class back in the day and is still my favorite visually. I only switched to RA because I wanted to try something new. It's fun, but I do miss the ginormo swords.

    Dual sabers all day.

    spookymuffin on
    PSN: MegaSpooky // 3DS: 3797-6276-7138
    Wii U NNID: MegaSpooky
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