PSU-PC: How can we save PSU....

[DrEngrish]

As all of you are aware of, or at least I would assume, PSU-PC is whithering away like last week's lettuce...

We hardly have the user-count online to fill a single server at times of the day. The economy is so far out of tune, that synthesis seems like something of fairy tales. Not to mention, hackers are slowly taking over the game we all rushed to get when it launched.

What can we do?...What should SEGA be doing?...

At this rate PSU wont last to the end of this year...

....

I want to hear other peoples input on this in hopes to collectively find some sort of solution. As a large community within the game, I feel that PSOworld as a whole could make a difference. We have to get SEGA to hear our complaints, or nothing will change... Lets save our game everyone.

[Skuda]

I think adding the elemental photons into the synth shops would be a wise move to help level out the economy somewhat. Other than that, during maintenance, wipe all the S-rank weapons and armor off of the accounts, minus the 2 avaliable double sabers and 2 avaliable rods.

Perhaps Sega of America actually having active GMs check up on players and player activity in the lobbys would help. The addition of support tickets would also be nice. Banning IPs of frequent abusers of the PSU ToS would also be a plus (if not already in effect).

[Jae]

Save PSU? Good luck with that.

It's been what, seven years now since PSO v1? I really hoped that Sega would get its act together for PSU. Too bad I was dead wrong.

[Ether]

Unlock all the content. All of it. Stop dragging us along and trying to justify the monthly fee with "unlocking" the same stages with the same monsters but 20 levels higher. The game should've had adjustable monster levels to begin with, stop acting like its a new stage

Delete all the hacks, stop the hacks for good, ban everyone involved

Make it possible to join any mission from any counter on that planet

Add a way to access your PM storage from towns and outposts

Completely redo how elemental percents work. Either tone them down (Gamecube style where a 50% weapon added half of that weapons own atp, not Dreamcast style where it multiplied your entire atp by 50%) or standardize them to around 20% for all armors, and 30% for all striking weapons

Get rid of synth failures on S-Ranks. We'll hunt down the boards, we'll hunt down the materials, but don't slap us in the face with 70% chance of failure after a 24 hour synth that took 2 weeks to get materials for

[Cry0]

All I can say is serves sega right, like how they treated me with their shabby customer support.

[Mattardo]

I have no problem with duped mesata at this point. After failing synths, weapon grinds, having to spend loads of money on scape dolls I have absolutely no problem with duped mesata and selling photons to make money. I don't think I could afford to play this game without selling photons.

[Valius]

-Change the synthing, like Ether said, if we have to find the board and materials we shouldn't have to deal with a "maybe" (at least with rares).

-Change the grinding, instead of having weapons break when a grind fails just have it go down a point or two. (+1 being a 100% success rate.)

-Better PR, Guild Wars sets an excellent example for this, having a person who logs on regularly to dialog with the players.

-MUCH better security, my only major complaint, even if they don't have GMs around having fixes to at least cutdown cheating would be a boon.
Heck if they were hiring GMs I'd do it for free, pro bono, if you would.


Well, those are my only ideas other things like cotent and system optimization could come in later editions (if there ever are).

[Sc0pe]

PVP
Challenge Mode
Boss Time Trial Mode
MORE MISSIONS

[Shaidar]

Put an end to the cheating, unlock all the current content and implement a working pvp system (some kind of arena please).

And finally, release an expansion where you can walk around in a huge free world, a life outside the tube. I don't mind if it's an instanced world where only your party can go, it works fine in Guild Wars and it would work even better here since the actual gameplay is so much fun.

[ljkkjlcm9]

If they unlock everything, the "hacks" really won't mean much of anything any more. Now not only are S-Ranks annoying to synth, but they get elements as well, so even if you synth, you can get a crap 10% element. Great? No, you can buy a 9* at the store and get a 50% eventually, and it'll be better. Weapons should get an automatic element percent, and it should be set on how many photons you put in. Each photon is 2%, from 5 to get 10% up to 25 photons to get 50%. You just want the cool looking weapon, you use 5, you want a powerhouse element weapon, you save up 25 and use them. It's complete crap that as a ranger or force you have a good weapon as long as it finishes, but as a hunter you may need to make 20+ weapons just to get a half-way decent element percentage.

THE JACKEL

[Almalexia]

There's really nothing any of us remaining players can do to "save" PS2/PC. Those people have left and they've made a strong point to never coming back. All we do is keep playing until we burn out from the game ourselves.

[Vhex]

Let's save our game? From what? Sucking?
Sega made bad moves when making this game.

Let's face it, we like PSU because we are addicted. Theres way better games out there to waste time on, and theres no reason why others would choose this over the others. Hell, theres no reason to leave PSO BB, to PSU.

The seperation of the JP servers to the NA/EU servers guantee failure, that and the split between 360, importers, and PC/PS2.

Come to expect a small population...

[Orin654]

I am staying. I would go to the xbox version, but I cant stand the slowdown. The economy may be ruined but there are still plenty of quest, rares, and other enemies that still havent been released. Ill probably only be trading with the good people of PSO World.

[trust_kill]

NA community destroyed it per usual.

[Dhylec]

On 2007-02-01 06:26, trust_kill wrote:
NA community destroyed it per usual.

Yeah, some messed up this game pretty bad, but not all are from here. Many are doing it from the other side of the pond too.

[Ryo_Hayasa]

I just don't understand all the negetivity. i can understand that we're all upset in one way or another with all the happenings on PC/ps2 PSU but, i mean... by giving up on the game, it isn't helping, right? There's a way, we have to get ST off their butts and get them to play a active role, they HAVE the power. they're just not using it for whatever reason.

And i'm not sure if unlocking all content would help. Fixing some Synth rates would work. i mean, where is our 100% synth rate on weapons? Is there anything, even 1-star items that have a 100% synth rate (with elements)

I too would like to become a GM if they need one (And they do, because the current GMs, aren't doing anything that i can see)

[A2K]

This thread seems to have deviated from "how do we save PSU" to "how I want the game to actually play", which isn't to say that the two are mutually exclusive, but they aren't exactly the same thing, either.

It seems rather apparent to me that Sega is unwilling to commit the resources and staff necessarily in order to clean up our PC/Playstation 2 servers. They need to be openly scrutinized about this, and by that I certainly don't mean a bunch of nerds complaining about it in a discussion board would be enough.

For all our complaints, though, there are things about the game we do like, or else we obviously wouldn't be bothering. Tell people about those things, spread the word. Draw some fan art, post about positive experiences--fanboy(or girl) out, basically.

[AweOfShe]

On 2007-02-01 07:01, A2K wrote:
This thread seems to have deviated from "how do we save PSU" to "how I want the game to actually play", which isn't to say that the two are mutually exclusive, but they aren't exactly the same thing, either.

It seems rather apparent to me that Sega is unwilling to commit the resources and staff necessarily in order to clean up our PC/Playstation 2 servers. They need to be openly scrutinized about this, and by that I certainly don't mean a bunch of nerds complaining about it in a discussion board would be enough.

For all our complaints, though, there are things about the game we do like, or else we obviously wouldn't be bothering. Tell people about those things, spread the word. Draw some fan art, post about positive experiences--fanboy(or girl) out, basically.



Took the words right out of my mouth. :P

[Merumeru]

XD nope no saving it for me, im just glad i got to play to get to most of the end-game content before everything went to hell, which is a chance i never really had with the original PSO

i love this game to death, but seems the next time ill be meeting it is in the hands of some user moderators XP

[panzer_unit]

That's too bad, 'ruru. Have fun doing... other things... uh... what else is there to do again?

I don't see what any of the big deals are. I'll probably end up playing until they turn the servers off for good or a more shiny glowsticks & forcefields action-RPG comes along.

[AeraLure]

Put an end to the cheating and exploits. That's what drove me away. I'm not spending hours on end farming things and/or meseta when others can do it instantly and I refuse to do that. Unlike PSO where you could still at least occupy yourself with pure hunting, PSU relies as much or more on economy. Broken economy = broken game.

Can they fix it? By all indications no. Its still a fun game despite flaws though. I agree with Ether. At this point unlock everything, since they havent the ability to prevent basic problems, might as well have an open game. Not sure I would come back, but maybe. Dunno. Some at least would in that case.

[Akaimizu]

Funny enough. Nothing in this game has happened, which made me quit much of playing PSO online, in its day. Nothing in this game has ever equated to NOL attacks, on a regular basis. That junk alone was 5 times worse than pretty much everything that has happened in PSU. If you want to compare the evils of hacks ruining PSU in comparison to PSO, there is just no comparison. Not a one. You can still get everything by pure hunting, in this game, but it just takes longer for the great stuff. Well, give or take based on your luck.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Akaimizu on 2007-02-01 08:33 ]</font>

[DrEngrish]

On 2007-02-01 07:01, A2K wrote:
This thread seems to have deviated from "how do we save PSU" to "how I want the game to actually play", which isn't to say that the two are mutually exclusive, but they aren't exactly the same thing, either.

It seems rather apparent to me that Sega is unwilling to commit the resources and staff necessarily in order to clean up our PC/Playstation 2 servers. They need to be openly scrutinized about this, and by that I certainly don't mean a bunch of nerds complaining about it in a discussion board would be enough.

For all our complaints, though, there are things about the game we do like, or else we obviously wouldn't be bothering. Tell people about those things, spread the word. Draw some fan art, post about positive experiences--fanboy(or girl) out, basically.



I couldn't have said it better myself. SEGA will have to be publicly "scrutinized" about its poor service before they actually take steps to make any changes.

By no means will, merely posting on a forum and sending individual emails help (very much...) in this sort of situation. This already has been tried by tons of users, who now no longer play; not to mention that SEGA doesn't even read its own forum.

I was thinking more along the level of mass emailing and or contacting major websources and magazines like GameInformer, IGN etc.

By no means can we expect any overnight miracles, but on the other hand, I don't expect them to do nothing, when having to respond to several articles about hundreds of dissatisfied customers.

I really do believe, we can do something. Those of you who gave up on this should be ashamed of yourself. It's not as though the game is totally boring as is, because I personally still play a lot (this drives me to search for a solution). But how can you justify paying your monthly fee if its not being used how it should?

...

We can make a difference, if we take the right steps.

[Merumeru]

On 2007-02-01 08:14, panzer_unit wrote:
That's too bad, 'ruru. Have fun doing... other things... uh... what else is there to do again?

I don't see what any of the big deals are. I'll probably end up playing until they turn the servers off for good or a more shiny glowsticks & forcefields action-RPG comes along.


XP yah i know it shouldnt be a big deal, i mean, i cant still figure out if its the hacking or the fact that ive near reached maximum level in an MMORPG that is detering me XP

i mean, the hacking sort of ruins the team aspect for me, i mean, the motivation of finding rares/meseta has always built me an interesting party, but once those things lose value, its kind of hard for me to see myself fighting for much besides raising my level...

or maybe i just enjoyed this game so much and played a ton, and don't know what my next milestone is. Maxing out PAs? Why would I do that for weapons ill never use. Try to get the best weapons/armor/units? Eh, things that stick some additional stat points on me have never struck my interest.

X3 ah but i do love you guys, the ones who've made me laugh my ass off and everyone whos done what they could to always invite me to play wif em when i was stuck in a 6p party XD we'll see...i would love some more shiny glowsticks action <3 but i might just be looking for it somewhere else ;-;

[foamcup]

I've been losing interest in this game for weeks, and last night was it. A buddy joins my game and he's like "Check out this stuff a friend gave me!" He had six Crea Doubles. S-Rank stuff is supposed to the valuable stuff, not given up for any reason it would seem to me, and someone just handing six of them over to another player for free is just bullshit. Svaltus Sword is in the wild now, what other unreleased stuff is out there?

In short, screw this game, it can't be saved now. I'm gonna go look at World of Warcraft.

[Wheatpenny]

On 2007-02-01 08:33, DrEngrish wrote:

On 2007-02-01 07:01, A2K wrote:
This thread seems to have deviated from "how do we save PSU" to "how I want the game to actually play", which isn't to say that the two are mutually exclusive, but they aren't exactly the same thing, either.

It seems rather apparent to me that Sega is unwilling to commit the resources and staff necessarily in order to clean up our PC/Playstation 2 servers. They need to be openly scrutinized about this, and by that I certainly don't mean a bunch of nerds complaining about it in a discussion board would be enough.

For all our complaints, though, there are things about the game we do like, or else we obviously wouldn't be bothering. Tell people about those things, spread the word. Draw some fan art, post about positive experiences--fanboy(or girl) out, basically.



I couldn't have said it better myself. SEGA will have to be publicly "scrutinized" about its poor service before they actually take steps to make any changes.

By no means will, merely posting on a forum and sending individual emails help (very much...) in this sort of situation. This already has been tried by tons of users, who now no longer play; not to mention that SEGA doesn't even read its own forum.

I was thinking more along the level of mass emailing and or contacting major websources and magazines like GameInformer, IGN etc.

By no means can we expect any overnight miracles, but on the other hand, I don't expect them to do nothing, when having to respond to several articles about hundreds of dissatisfied customers.

I really do believe, we can do something. Those of you who gave up on this should be ashamed of yourself. It's not as though the game is totally boring as is, because I personally still play a lot (this drives me to search for a solution). But how can you justify paying your monthly fee if its not being used how it should?

...

We can make a difference, if we take the right steps.



BTW I agree on the above post
After all it is simple we all get our facts and details together and submit SEGA's incompitence to every game website both big and small..If they don't want to do something then MAKE them care then..I gurantee if we did something like that SEGA would not want the negative PR...

[drizzle]

SEGA has shown for the past decade that they're not able to run an online game properly. I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Love it or hate it, a hacked to bits PSU is the only PSU you'll ever have.

[panzer_unit]

PSU never really grabbed me with the loot hunting, which is good because it was really limiting in PSO "I want a chainsaw so I have to play this level with this section ID"... I guess what keeps me going when I'm not being a show-off in combat for my friends is getting my level/rank/PA skills up, for me running my robot bad-ass around is its own reward.

[_Deliverance_]

You know what? It's still early into release. I think that if we could draw a lot of attention to the problems now, it wouldn't be too late.

-Premium security against hacks
-Merge servers
-Action taken to secure the economy (ie elemental photons in NPC shops)


We have to keep in mind that his is a young game. I'm in it for the long haul, as I have RL friends that are of the same mind.

[JaiBlue]

Why can't they just seperate the PS2 servers from the Pc versions of Psu, we all know the mainstream hacking comes the the Pc users anyway.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: JaiBlue on 2007-02-01 09:04 ]</font>

[Para]

Merumeru expresses some of the thoughts I share with some others... It really sucks when you strive so hard to equip yourself with hard earned weapons when some others get them with little effort. It makes your efforts go to waste it seems and that you got jipped.

What sucks even more is that if you establish a group of friends and suddenly one of your friends gets all these godly items out of the blue with no effort put in >_> It sorta wrecks the fun.

[Shaidar]

The cheating sure does ruin the balance and, as an example, even if you go "I'm the only one that have a legit [insert weapon]" it doesn't take away the fact that you're not the *only* one. All one can do is resist it and never approve of the cheating. I could tell plenty of stories about these things, but whatever. It doesn't matter. Just enjoy this awesome game! It's still fun. :3

Bah, I've only got to party with ya a few times Meru, but it was a blast D: So well...Don't go quitting now! The fun has only just begun!

[panzer_unit]

On 2007-02-01 09:16, Para wrote:
Merumeru expresses some of the thoughts I share with some others... It really sucks when you strive so hard to equip yourself with hard earned weapons when some others get them with little effort. It makes your efforts go to waste it seems and that you got jipped.


Yeah, but where are you going to go that's any different? People are born into money or win lotteries IRL. Some businesses are just big hax for making money before the people running them can get caught. Even in totally clean games, people with connections get their 'leets for free or at least much easier than anyone else.

If anything, at least PSU gives you a proper chance of making yourself count for more than your numbers add up to. I know plenty of people I'd rather have on my team using 3* weapons than random punks with hax S-ranks.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: panzer_unit on 2007-02-01 09:46 ]</font>

[Shaidar]

On 2007-02-01 09:39, panzer_unit wrote:
If anything, at least PSU gives you a proper chance of making yourself count for more than your numbers add up to. I know plenty of people I'd rather have on my team using 3* weapons than random punks with hax S-ranks.


Truth.

PSU isn't point and click. I've noticed that after being inactive for a week or so I get rusty and feel I mess up alot more than I normally do. Just an example.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Shaidar on 2007-02-01 10:15 ]</font>

[Xtasisanu]

This sound exactly like whats happeneing to the PS2 version... cept for the cheating stuff.

[bob02]

Can't save this game... i will leave soon... when my friend leave... maybe i will stay longer if NPC sell elemental photon...

[BahnKnakyu]

Gameplay bitching aside (A2K put it rather fluently), there are a few things that ideally need to be done.

- The game needs its own built-in anti-hax system. Programming a game and slapping a THIRD PARTY anti-hax system (and one that gets easily cracked anyway) leaves you at the mercy of the company that makes it. GameGuard is a joke, and with each update it more or less slows down those who hack it by maybe a week or two.

- Get some active GMs on and more importantly, visible. This is meant to discourage casual script kiddies and to more or less enforce the ToA/ToS or whatever that stuff is called on the players whom violate them. On top of that, having active and visible GMs gives reassurance to the community that is playing that there IS someone who gives a rip about what's going on. They can receive feedback from players and report it to whoever's responsible for making those decisions so that the lines of communication are quick and direct, not based off of a "Report Form" that users submit and hope a response is made for.

- Competently program the PSU equivalent of Diablo II's Rust Storm. As a previous poster pointed out, there are only four known S-Ranks available. It's pretty damn obvious that things such as Psycho Wand should be checked for in the player's inventories at this time because it's physically impossible to get.

- More updates. Not content updates, but rather, just news updates. You get in-game updates in most multiplayer online games - usually in the form of a news sidebar before you log in. PSO used to have this, albeit it was poorly implemented and poorly maintained, but it had it.

All of this requires work, money, and risk to get PSU up to par of the other multiplayer online games out there. Sega can use the "oh it's not that popular" excuse all they want for this game, but I think if they just took a some time, effort, money, and risk into pushing this game into the main market, it would go a long way for them. Some multiplayer online games get popular from the get-go because of the name that's slapped behind it (Blizzard, Sony/Square, etc.) but others had to do it from the ground up - e.g. Guild Wars.

PSU actually had a fairly solid userbase at launchtime, but it was quickly lost on a not-so-smart move on their part to leave significant content updates such as Moatoob and the Advanced Class ones to much later. The pace they're going with the updates now is pretty good, but if they were just one month earlier with what they were doing they probably would've been able to keep a good number of that userbase.

The userbase could've possibly made better if they did the above things I mentioned too. By doing so you got word of mouth traveling about how well maintained the game is, and that word of mouth eventually hits the "big gaming news sites". The only time we've ever gotten news on this game from the popular gaming news sites was BEFORE and WHEN the game was released - that's it.

Oh well - enough of my ramble. Sega just isn't what it used to be - the userbase have a strong dislike for the maintainers, and the maintainers don't seem to want to really do much for the userbase at the moment (though of course we never have anyone DIRECTLY saying that, but their actions speak for themselves). I do like the current pacing of the content updates - something to do every week - I just hope they keep up with this and stay on par with the JP updates, even if they end up doing things in a different order.

[Vhex]

On 2007-02-01 08:37, foamcup wrote:
... Svaltus Sword is in the wild now, what other unreleased stuff is out there?


Every single weapon/armor, lol.

[Katrina]

While I enjoyed my time playing PSU, the lack of support and cheating ultimately drove me away. Grinding away for meseta and finally synthing something succesfully was both fun, and frustrating at times, but gave me a nice sence of accomplishment when all my grinding paid off.

Seeing people dupe meseta and items I would have to grind away hours and sometimes weeks to achieve took away some of that feeling of accomplishment which I enjoyed.

I had friends tell me to ignore the hacking, and continue to enjoy the game. You'll get there, it just may take a bit more time. Sonic Team knows the issues, give them time to make things right. And for a while, I did. I still grinded missions over and over, I saved up my meseta, and continued to work towards my goals.

I just didn't feel like the time I was putting into the game was worth the effort. Watching people make money and items out of thin air that would take me weeks and weeks to achieve started to turn me off. For a while, I told myself just have fun with the game, meeting new ppl, and focus on the positives. In the end, I just didn't feel my $10 a month supporting Sonic Team was worth it, and decided to move on to something else.

I had fun with PSU, and the community is great. I wish everyone luck, and hope you all still continue to enjoy the game.

There are some very good ideas on how to save the game, and a big part of that is support from Sonic Team. I just hope that someday they listen, and achieve the resources to make a difference.

~Pixie

[Golto]

Yeah there are only 3 sranks available legitly in US servers. Once the second hive mission comes out we will finally get the chance for an srank gun, the blackbull rifle board from the boss box making 4. I agree that when it lauched we had 2 full servers on pc/ps2 but now we barely get 1. The low lvl caps, so much still left to be unlocked, and lack of any real effort on their part to curb hacking really cut the population down. I wouldn't be surprised if in a few months you could fit everyone on one universe during peak hours.

[Rashiid]

easiest way to save PSU: come to the 360, bwhahah! lol

[pokefiend]

OMG... compared to the PC/PS2 version, the 360 version is doing incredibly well (economy wise)

[Rashiid]

^ well some ppl hav wierd prices, but yes its controlled, and hax-free, so if u se sumeone w/ crea doubles, you can actually congrats them http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif

[Jae]

Everyone is forgetting one thing. It's not our responsibility to save PSU. That's Sega's responsibility. They don't deliver when you're paying them $10 a month? Stop paying them. Let's face it, there isn't much left to be unlocked that can't be played offline in story mode. Like someone said earlier: same missions only 20 levels higher.

Personally, I'm having a blast in WoW Burning Crusade. I said I'd never go back, but that was when PC/PS2 PSU was actually showing some potential.

[Gigas]

I don't know what the hell some of you guys are talking about. You act as if what's happening in PSU is a massive death-threatening plague. Everytime I play everything is normal... and yes I'm on PS2. The way you guys make it sound is as if money and s-ranks are flying around everywhere and people are 1-shotting s-rank enemies. PSU's situation is nothing like what PSO's was. So stop exaggerating.

Also who cares if the economy is becoming inflated? Guess what, here's a solution: sell your stuff for ridiculous prices too. You know what this is doing? It's making it so the general population of the game has more money to buy from other people and NPCs (especially with some of the crazy prices of NPC stuff... imagine simply grinding for all of that money instead of having a player shop). I can't seem to understand how the economy inflation is a bad thing, unless you are still trying to sell for extremely low prices. You have to go with the flow. If a lot of people are raising their prices, then you should too, otherwise the economy is going to go crazy.

The population is low. There is no doubt about that. Let's face it, the Phantasy Star series has never really been that popular. However I have a few questions for all of you: first of all, I don't even know what the stars in the universe menu mean. Does anybody actually know in numbers how many people one star is? Also, does the account ID correlate to how many people there are?

Lastly I have another question for you guys. I've played a few MMO type games but have never really been around any of them long enough to witness the growth/decay of the population, or how it usually plays out. Do you guys think from here on out that the PSU community might increase eventually or just keep dwindling down? The population right now seems... extremely depressing. Then again, like I said before, I don't know the actual numbers. But how can it be that so few people play? I mean the PS2/PC servers are NA and Europe combined... you would think there would simply be a lot more people playing.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Gigas on 2007-02-01 12:32 ]</font>

[panzer_unit]

I started playing Monster Hunter for PS2 a year or two after it came out... last time I logged on to have a look around the population was about the same. A couple hundred people. All new faces as far as I could tell. It's not a lot but the fact that it's staying there after like 3 years says something.

I'd expect about the same from PSU... for the people playing PS2 there aren't a lot of competing options like you have with all the PC MMO's, so they probably aren't going to all jump ship.

[Axel3792]

ADVERTISE! Post ads in magazines or something, ST.

More money drops, better money rewards and elemental photons in the synth shops. In case you haven't noticed, it is REALLY REALLY annoying to make a new character unless you can give him cash from your main.

Poor noobs... no wonder they quit so early.

[Syl]

On 2007-02-01 11:14, BahnKnakyu wrote:
- Get some active GMs on and more importantly, visible. This is meant to discourage casual script kiddies and to more or less enforce the ToA/ToS or whatever that stuff is called on the players whom violate them. On top of that, having active and visible GMs gives reassurance to the community that is playing that there IS someone who gives a rip about what's going on. They can receive feedback from players and report it to whoever's responsible for making those decisions so that the lines of communication are quick and direct, not based off of a "Report Form" that users submit and hope a response is made for.


This is an extremely good idea. Not only will people feel like Sega is finally doing their job, but they will also get the assurance that people won't carry around hax anymore. A lot of players are quitting because they feel that Sega isn't behind them on this problem...

I'd be a GM for free, like other people have said lol

@ Gigas: The answer to your last question regarding population. Nothing is ceratin, but a lot of people felt that the game was updating too slowly and just decided to leave. I know some of them quit but will return once there is more stuff unlocked.

The pace of the updates is slowly speeding up. This can be a good indication of Sega finally bringing us some good stuff into the game.

[Golto]

You can only get how many accounts have been made by looking at the highest ID number but this will be much highe than the actual population. I don't think i've seen 2xxxx40000 yet. I also don't think they reuse ID numbers on accounts that have been banned/cancelled.

[Axel3792]

Eh, hopefully the expansion will fix some of these problems. If ST gets smart, they will give it a keycode. New weps and itmes aside, hopefully we will see something else added in: security.

Oh, and ST, WIPE THE SRANKS ALREADY! They should do a wipe every friday night maintenance, at the very least.

[natewifi]

To make this work we all need to agree on something.

SEGA NEEDS A COMMERCIAL OUT FOR THIS GAME, OR ELSE ITS GOOD AS GONE THERES SEEMS TO BE NO OTHER WAY OF GETTING MORE PEOPLE ONTO THIS GAME. EVERYONE IS BASING THIS GAME OFF OF ITS RATINGS. WE NEED EVERYTHING RELEASED ALREADY, HACKERS HAVE ACCESS TO EVERYTHING ANYWAYS IT DOESNT MATTER IF EVERY LAST OBJECT WITHIN THE GAMES IS UPDATED, WE NEED TO CONTACT SEGA OF AMERICA AND TELL THEM WHAT WE WANT AS THE CUSTOMERS OR THEY WAISTED ALOT OF MONEY FOR NOTHING.

[Zorafim]

There are a few things I find agitating about the game, and I don't see why they aren't easily fixable.

Item prices: I think the terrible economy is as much the fault of the hackers as ST's. I think it's because of the item search that things are so out of hand. Instead of searching for a group of letters, they could have made the search look for a particular item from a group of selectable items. For instance, you could type in "dag" and get "crea daggers", "Daga Creasa", "daggers", "daga daga", etc along with their board counterpart. Instead of going strait to a shop that has the items, you could have a list of items that have the search term, choose that item, and have a list of shops with that item in it. Beyond that, they could have listed the shops by price, meaning that the cheapest seller would sell their item first (as opposed to having someone sell a ray photon for 250 have to wait as long as someone who sells it for 50k). I think this would both lower the inflation rate as well as make it easier for synthers and buyers alike. As it is, it's easier to synth something with NPC bought items than it is to search for the said items in shops, since most people tend to overprice items by 500%.


Party search: I find it difficult to find a party that I want to play with. If I don't like the people in my party, I should be able to leave and join another one. Just the same, the leader should be able to kick that annoying force and have another one quickly join. However, due to the low population size and the large amount of counters, it's difficult to find parties and replacements.
PSO didn't have that problem, since players could just go to the counter and start or join a party on the fly. They didn't need to go to a certain counter for a certain mission, all parties were seen in the same counter. Why not implement this in PSU? Have a universal counter in which you can search for parties across the solar system.
You would choose the planet you wanted to party on, then the mission. From there, a search is preformed to check on who is playing there. If there's a party that interests the player, he could instantly join the party. This would increase the success of the party, instead of having all the party disband if one player decides he wants to quit.

Storyline: Skies of Arcadia, a game made by SEGA, was a masterpiece in my eyes. It was beautiful, fun, addictive, memorable, and all around perfect. What the hell happened? I don't see why at least the story couldn't have been as memorable as SoA's. Even if SoA was asking for too much, what about the old PS series? So far, it just seems like ST just abandoned the story of the series and made a newer, more steriotypical one that isn't even close to the original. Why not rehire the team that did the masterpieces that SEGA produced before, instead of using a team that apparently doesn't know what they're doing?


I guess my writing this is a waste of space, since nothing will come of it. But it's at least nice to rant.

[Eliash]

Playing a small-community MMORPG (30k userbase during the first year or so) it has been my experience that the userbase will dwindle down (10k after 5 years). Most of the people you see are mostly those who have been there from the start, very rarely will you see new people. And the problem with the cheating on the PC/PS2 only adds to that fustration.

Think about what the new player has to go through.
1) They are launched into a highly inflated economy with little cash to actually buy items.
2) They are unaware of ways to make money quickly.
3) They aren't up to par with all the little 'tricks' we take for granted, most will not have scape dolls and get booted if they die without knowing why.
4) They will have a harder time finding a party than we did when we were low levels.
And the list can go on...

With that said, I think that the only way for SEGA to 'save' PSU for PC/PS2 is to completely restore the faith of their playerbase.

1) Active responces and updates regarding content and hacking situations.
2) Much more activity within the community, bannings of characters with unreleased items. Repeated offenses include a banning of the credit card and/or IP address.
3) A new version of the game for the PC offerered for free and required in order to play. This version should be available through download on their website. It will change the way information is stored, and will probably require a patch for the PS2 version if not a completly new version (which will have to be free).
4) A public letter stating their intentions, their stance on the cheating issues, as well as the plans for the future. It should also contain an apology to the userbase.
5) A free trial period that grants 3 month subscription to all people who held an account before the date of the change.
6) A month long free period that invites new players to try the game (like the 360 demo) but allows them to keep their characters and items.

I don't expect ST to do all of this. TBH (To Be Honest) I would be suprised if they did anything from the list. I think by the above actions they may salvage the game, but lets just say my hopes aren't high.

Also this doesn't even address the current issues within the game. For example the synthing system needs a huge increase in percents, no real reason why a item that is rare has only a 56% chance to make.

If the cheating moves to Xbox version I'll play for a bit to see how bad it gets. When nothing happens to the cheaters I'll quit and spend my money on a better built game. After PSO I promised myself I would never play another hacked PS game again.

This is officially my longest post ever.

[mariwan]

Im playing FFXI right now for very obvious reasons but i still play PSU(even though there are dicks out there pissing me off once in a while) and i actually like PSU for its story, unique gameplay, some people in community(yes some,cause like i said there are idiots out there pissing me off), and costumization of clothing,looks, etc. Im just watching how PSU will move, whether it survives this catastrophe or becomes a part of the "You must never have games" list.

[Rika-san]

the only way to save pc/ps2 is to delete everything, im talking all items people have on their storage, alts, pms, even meseta. they keep their character levels and class levels. this is done ONLY when the hacking/duping has been fixed.

[VanHalen]

-advertise this game in the school or the workplace
-sega must put more content on a week
-stop bashing this game so people will actually look at it(main one)
-get rid of all hacks

[zofia]

PSU on PS2/PC cannot be saved. It is a failure. Only the presence of cheaters and the dedication of the hardcore PS fans gives it a semblance of life.

[VanHalen]

On 2007-02-01 14:01, zofia wrote:
PSU on PS2/PC cannot be saved. It is a failure. Only the presence of cheaters and the dedication of the hardcore PS fans gives it a semblance of life.



see that statement right there is the main reason why this game is dying. by telling people this game sucks your killing off all would-be fans to the series.

[BLACKR0SE]

-Ban all hackers and everyone that has them.
-OMG ban all hackers.How many times has ryuk been reported?
-Gib a way to change characters without logging
-Stop all hackers.Reupdate gameguard.Too bad if people cant get on.
If they do this after awhile hacked money goes down.Then the game will be ok again.

[Zorafim]

I wonder, if ST deletes all weapons and meseta, how will players be able to get more meseta? You'd need a weapon to get more meseta, and you'd need meseta to get more weapons...

[VanHalen]

^we'll tackle the monsters to death http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_lol.gif

[BLACKR0SE]

I doubt they would server wipe.Would be alot smarter to just wipe all hacked items.Then roll gameguard back up.Prices are going down slowly.This way the population will go up and money will go down. >:O

[Nayte]

you get free weapons when you create a characer. You get meseta from missions. Simple.

[BLACKR0SE]

On 2007-02-01 14:25, Nayte wrote:
you get free weapons when you create a characer. You get meseta from missions. Simple.

Its dumb to do a complete server wipe.Wouldnt solve a thing for people like me who grinded hard to get all our stuff. IF they just
1. Stop all hacks.
2. Ban all hackers that get reported.
3. Put more GM(i have never seen one) to watch over the game.
4. Release content a little better.

THIS WOULD SOLVE ALL@

[ljkkjlcm9]

I honestly think it's stupid that anything is "locked" on the CD to "release" later. It's there, give it to us. Time and money should be spent actually developing new stuff, not unlocking stuff already there.

THE JACKEL

[SolomonGrundy]

On 2007-02-01 12:41, panzer_unit wrote:
I started playing Monster Hunter for PS2 a year or two after it came out... last time I logged on to have a look around the population was about the same. A couple hundred people. All new faces as far as I could tell. It's not a lot but the fact that it's staying there after like 3 years says something.

I'd expect about the same from PSU... for the people playing PS2 there aren't a lot of competing options like you have with all the PC MMO's, so they probably aren't going to all jump ship.



Monster HUnter is free.

Here's my 2 cents: hacking meseta ruins the economy, and makes people less inclined to play.

Hacking S ranks weapons ruins the uniqeness of them, which ruins part of the reason some people chase the shiny things down in the first place.

Segregating the communites (and I mean EU/US/Xbox/PS2) makes it even harder to connect with your friends.

The meseta hack fix is easy. Fix the issue, then do a logrighmic deduction of meseta from peoples banks, characters, and common storage.

Same to with the duped weapons. Make a few examples of people by banning them. And proactively seek out duped weapons on players (using a warning system everytime someone is caught cheating)

I'm not sure what the solution to the last problem is, as I play on the 360, and I don't want your terrible economy, and the PC folks to ruin my universe.

[ljkkjlcm9]

Character wipe is a horrible idea, especially for those who spent days actually grinding for their items. The best they can do is permanently stop hacks, and get an update on gameguard faster than new CEs are released, and at best, wipe all "unreleased" weapons. They can't tell which of the released weapons are hacked versions, so basically there'd be a lot of crea doubles and halarods, but it's only 2 rares of the large number.

Then they should release everything on the CD. Seriously. Start developing new stuff, and spend more time keeping the security up to date.

THE JACKEL

[zandra117]

Grant certain uberlegit players GM priveleges, (players that have been playing the game legitly since day 1, have not accepted or distributed obviously duped items or currency, and play online in the game very often) not just employees, if the player is found to be abusing the GM priveleges their special priveleges can be taken away by Sega.

[Holo]

We need to SAVE THIS WOOOOOOOORLD!

[Valius]

Well, for us to save PSU we need to:
Spread the word, I enjoy PSU because the combat is actually fun, so I always make sure to tell people that.

Bug the crap out of Sega for fixes (Probably won't work). But, if you try you may fail, if you don't you already have.

This game is far from a total loss, that's just pessimistic. But it will take some work to save.

[Shinzakura]

Well, I think it's a bit early to start singing PSU's eulogy. That being said, I do wish Sega would fix a few things:

- Being able to have a choice of switching characters or logging out
- Either separate or join the worlds (PS2/PC/360). My preference - separate, as it would benefit the PC platform better
- Advertise the game. People aren't here because no one's heard of it. Hell, MMOs by companies only a quarter of Sega's size do a better job of getting the word out on their works
- Get some American/European GMs to do something with the club or specific things. Japanese only events on a regular basis with the other regions getting no love = several people voting with their wallets to go elsewhere.
- Innovate. Find a use for that extra store in the corner over on Guardians 3rd floor. Sony tried selling pizza in their game for a while; why not open up a Papa John's/Pizza Hut/Domino's/insert name here and allow people to real-time order pizza there and charge to their account. Would help with marathon game sessions. If not that, then why not have an S-rank store there, or an arcade to play minigames or something. Or maybe even an online store where we can order PSU T-shirts, the soundtrack, etc.
- Have someone other than ST take this game over. No offense to them, but they're overworked. Badly. What about AM2? Take some American MMO designers and have them go insane creating content.
- Get rid of GameGuard. Hire a security group like PunkBuster, for example. Or if you're going to be lazy, write it as an in-house project so then you can pimp it to other companies. But don't expect a half-ass Korean antivirus company to be able to do the job...they're already proving they can't.

Well, that's the short list. Aside from that, I still think we aren't going to be seeing the fat lady singing anytime soon, nor is she warming up her tonsils. But it is fair to say you know she's on the program.




<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Shinzakura on 2007-02-01 18:01 ]</font>

[Shinzakura]

On 2007-02-01 06:36, Dhylec wrote:

On 2007-02-01 06:26, trust_kill wrote:
NA community destroyed it per usual.
Yeah, some messed up this game pretty bad, but not all are from here. Many are doing it from the other side of the pond too.

Agreed. For example, Ragnarok Online was well and truly ruined long before it ever made it to US shores. Don't count out Russians/Thais/Filipinos/Dutch/Romanians/insert nationality here to ruin a game. Being a complete asshat knows no boundaries.

[R2D6battlebot]

You people need to understand that Sega DOES NOT read these forums, and they hardly read their own for that matter. Complianing about all your problems in a forum doesnt do anything, if you want recognition then send complaints to the source instead of whining upon idle ears in forums. So if you want to actually help the situation, take 5 minutes out of you busy forum-reading schedule and send your complaints here: http://www.phantasystaruniverse.com/support_contact.php
If they get enough complaints about the same thing, theyre bound to do something. Be specific in your complaints, and make some threats to quit playing if nothing is done.
And they wont release all the unlocked info on the disk for a couple reasons.
1. Theyre in this business for money, nothing else. The longer they keep unreleased content, the longer we pay them to wait for it.
2. It would leave a problem for the PS2 users, who have no hard drive to store actual new information on. Those memory cards are not that big.

[DrEngrish]

"You people need to understand that Sega DOES NOT read these forums, and they hardly read their own for that matter..."

Many of us already realize this, but the goal of this thread wasn't to get some SEGA head honcho to take the time to read it, but IS to collectively discuss the issue and brainstorm methods of eliminating it. Our goal is very realistic, and as someone said before, this shouldn't be something the fans have to ask for; being that we support SEGA financially through our monthly fees.

Simply saying the game is a failure by design is a pretty lame excuse. The Xbox servers and Japanese servers are doing quite well, if i must say. If the issues were something global, then the game itself could be put up for question.

What confuses many of us is how the Japanese PC servers aren't phased by some of the same plagues that strike us overseas players. Please don't get me wrong, I know this game may have a bigger niche in the Japanese market, causing it to have more users, but whats keeping players over there from wanting to dupe meseta, and jack up prices for photons.

...

The answer to that question is the answer to a lot of the issues that are taking place over here. PSU is a great game, the game itself is not up for question.



On a side note for the previous commenter. Thank you for posting that link. I encourage everyone to send SEGA a little of your mind, if you can spare 5 minutes or so.

[VanHalen]

i say we try to encourage people to look at this game instead of bashing it. you never know you can probably make a new fan of the series by installing the game on their computer and or lending them the CD and then thats +1 person to the community. if we can all get one person theres like over 1000 people on this fourm then thats 1000 more people joining this game if they decide to go online. if for some crazy reason they spread the word bong thats more people joining. this game is far from dead in my eyes its gonna take the fans of this game to spread the word to other people.

[Sekani]

It may be too late to "save" this game, as you put it. First off all, there was NO advertising; I found out about PSU from Gamefly of all places. The lack of updates near release drove off a ton of players (myself included, though obviously I came back). Also let's be realistic, PSU is a pretty shallow game; even if we find it to be a lot of fun, players wanting a little more depth as opposed to just grinding and rare hunting will get bored and bail pretty quickly. The cheating issues on PC are just the icing on the moldy cake.

Sonic Team and Sega are to blame for this game's lack of success, so it's difficult to believe that they'll be the ones to even try and fix up what they messed up.

[VanHalen]

On 2007-02-01 19:58, Sekani wrote:
It may be too late to "save" this game, as you put it. First off all, there was NO advertising; I found out about PSU from Gamefly of all places. The lack of updates near release drove off a ton of players (myself included, though obviously I came back). Also let's be realistic, PSU is a pretty shallow game; even if we find it to be a lot of fun, players wanting a little more depth as opposed to just grinding and rare hunting will get bored and bail pretty quickly. The cheating issues on PC are just the icing on the moldy cake.

Sonic Team and Sega are to blame for this game's lack of success, so it's difficult to believe that they'll be the ones to even try and fix up what they messed up.



i thought this topic was trying to save PSU not drive it down farther

[Killuminati]

They should have left the console and PC users seperate and combined PS2/360 players. Sucks us legit players have to deal with hackers who use the PC version. I honestly don't think I will renew my subscription once my 6 months is up, and I wish I had not have chosen the 6 month subscription to begin with.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Killuminati on 2007-02-02 00:20 ]</font>