The Revolution is at Hand!

[BIGGIEstyle]

Okay, long story short is that people have been looking for ways to get their gripes over the shoddy maintenance and upkeep of this game to people who matter in the industry like game informer and G4 and the like, I too have been working towards this end...

A friend of mine is a DJ for a net based radio station and she has agreed that on a future show I can come on the air and let her listeners (about 120-170 gamers a show) know about how bad sega's gotten.

Now the reason for this thread is I don't want to go on her broadcast screaming "SEGAX FAILZ LAWL!" and I want to present the point informatively and maturely. I've only been around for the most recent mess-ups and what I'd like from you- the tired community- is to give me examples of how Sega's work is not being handled correctly and how you would like this to be brought up on the show.

Any an all information will be kept anonymous to protect identities and it would be REALLY appreciated because who knows, this broadcast might be the shove in the right direction.

Once I've gathered together the story I'll post the date/time of the show so everyone can tune in. Equally I believe she's got an IRC channel running during the show for comments from listeners so your support there would be great as well.

More info forthcoming as I get it.

Let's show Sega we're done just complaining and we're ready to take it to the next level!

[Seority]

Grats to getting on the radio.

Sega has failed in many ways. First it was late updates that were set at a certain time. Then some updates where held back months, with no real set date as to when they'd actually have them. Then they had big goof ups with thier billing sight not to long ago, and still working out some bugs now.

I know they now have a new team of people working for them and they are doing the best they can to clean up the big mess up they have created. I'd say the new people are doing well, but they is still to new to us, because we haven't been able to see much of them yet.

This is all just in the PSU gaming as of now. As far as their other games go, they have done well, but not as great as many people hoped for, as far as I know.

[Turb0]

Well, they had a billing problem that stopped a lot of people from playing a limited-time event. Then when they tried to come up with a 2 week extension as compensation for it, they delayed it, then delayed it again, and now it probably won't happen at all. But you said you were here for that so let's see...They released a debug mission that spawned nothing but rare enemies on public servers, then had to do a rollback to get rid of it. Ummmm....yeah I'm not one of the big complainers so I can't remember any more specific instances right now but I'm sure some people will.

EDIT: Oh and the PA rebalance update. April 11->April 25->June 6. The exact dates might be slightly off but you get the idea.

[BIGGIEstyle]

Thanks guys. Your help is appreciated. Also if anyone wants to add to this and doesn't want to seem like the complaining type they can feel free to PM me any info and I'll make sure to use it ^_^.

[ThEoRy]

Grinder glitch= mass banning, machine gun glitch= zero banning. terrible western support. lag tastic robots never got fixed, techs receiving visual nerf. etc etc Ill add more later as its very late now.

[BIGGIEstyle]

lag tastic robots never got fixed
When you post more later please explain this a bit further as I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about.

Thank you for your help though XD

[Arada]

I'll simply list the facts as I remember them:

- A debug mission has been put on production servers and people have had access to it. The update was rollbacked a few hours later.

- Some glitched items have gone available before their scheduled date. The glitch linked to these items was that when you logged off with one of them in your inventory, when you'd log back on, your inventory would be empty. The update was rollbacked a few hours later.

- Some updates have had constant delays. While the Sega team announced dates fpr some of them, most of the time, the scheduled date was not respected. While it truly shows problems with the update system, it also shows how bad communiction is at Sega.

- The billing server has had a problem during one of the scheduled events keeping a good part of the PC/PS2 community from logging on. While people were not billed due to this problem, it really kept them from playing in an event where players, for once, were competing to get a limited edition item. No need to say that people who couldn't play also didn't have a chance to get the item.

- The already slow update process has been made slower by one of the promises made the Sega team: extension of the aforementionned event. For this, basically, the update process has frozen in anticipation of this ever-delayed extension. Players aren't getting their prices as a result of the event because Sega wants to wait for the extension to happen before giving the away. So by the end of July, it will be 2 months and a half since the end of the event.

- The billing servers went down one week-end because the server room's air conditionner burnt. Sega took a few days to put players back online.

- A slowdown glitch happens on XBox360 wherever robotic enemies appear. the slowdown is so bad that the user has to reboot his system. Sega has announced they has no plan (so far) to fix this. Basically, this keeps XBox players from playing those missions.

- A glitch on an item has been discovered on XBox360. People have been abusing it and had started to ruin the economy of the game. Sega banned around 250 users for this, were they glitchers or people who simply bought the glitched items.

- A glitch on mechgun existed and made the weapon incredibly powerful. While this glitch has been dealt with, XBox360 users can still use another related glitch allowing the weapon to remain more powerful than it actually is. Sega has not announced any plan about dealing with this issue. But people were banned during the last event for using it.


----

As said before, it is the communication at Sega that is truly failing. When they announce things, people are never sure it will happen. Either you announce something that is sure to happen or you don't announce anything.

[APEXi]

DEATH TO SEGA! just make sure you have your notes organized and whatnot.

[strikershadow]

Your actually going to get on air and complain about the game and make more people not want to play it??

*sigh*

[Cracka_J]

As said before, it is the communication at Sega that is truly failing. When they announce things, people are never sure it will happen. Either you announce something that is sure to happen or you don't announce anything.

I think this is the main point that a majority of people (me included) are up in arms about. Make sure this point gets across.

What the GM's are doing, or are forced to do, is simply bad business anyway you slice it. Either it's surefire or you don't announce it. If the GM staff followed that policy I'd still be playing PSU.

[Kinako78]

You're going to G4 with this? Newsflash: That would be a BAD idea. I don't know about the other shows, but the hosts of X-Play have made it perfectly clear that they hate RPGs, online or not, in general. You'll just be playing into their hands if you announce this to them.

[Ken_Silver]

I am glad that Biggie is going to be able to get something done. While, I'm worried by Kinako's statements, If Sega doesn't care enough in the first place, something has to be done. Maybe the publicity will light a fire under their rears.

Besides, if you're really worried, note how this seems to be happening around the same time as E3, so it might not get as much cover as you may think.

And Biggie, don't forget to add that during the free period, some of the players on the PC/PS2 who had existing accounts were still billed during that time.

[JAFO22000]

You're going on a radio show with 120 listeners? Wow, this will make a difference.....More people will attend the next WNBA game than will be listening to you on the radio.

Point is, this is not a popular game by Western standards. Hell, when I tell other gamers I play Phantasy Star Universe, 3/4s of them think I'm talking about Final Fantasy. While you may enjoy being on the radio, speaking to a group of people that is about 1/4 of my high school graduating class is not going to make a difference. I doubt that you will even raise the eyebrow of national journalistic companies like G4 or IGN with this either. It just is not news. Hell, 1up sponsered one of our events and THEY don't even give two shits about this game.

[Kinako78]

I doubt that you will even raise the eyebrow of national journalistic companies like G4 or IGN with this either.

You're probably right. The only coverage G4 gave this game was to include the opening FMV of Ambitions of the Illuminus as part of their G4 On Demand lineup.

When I think about that, I no longer wonder why I hardly watch G4 anymore...

[Kismet]

You're going to G4 with this? Newsflash: That would be a BAD idea. I don't know about the other shows, but the hosts of X-Play have made it perfectly clear that they hate RPGs, online or not, in general.

Then why did The World Ends With You get a 5/5 and was dubbed by them as the best Nintendo DS game since Mario Kart DS? :rolleyes:

But you are right about PSU and Sega's issues not being significant enough for either G4 or Game Informer to care. And if they do, it'll be because they're desperate for news.



Your actually going to get on air and complain about the game and make more people not want to play it??

*sigh*

PSU was never extremely popular anyways (in comparison to that of WoW, L2, or FFXI), so there's not much to lose. It's probably better that way for some people. All the less percentage of lag and complete, utter douchebags to litter the server. Not to mention that listener count isn't much, let alone enough to heavily impact PSU's population.

[Cracka_J]

I thought G4 only had xplay left...and I hated that show anyway. All I ever see on there anymore is reruns of crap I don't care about.

It's actually pretty sad that there is no real pulication or "go to" source for videogame news or headlines these days. 10-15 years ago Gamefan and EGM were the shit. I remember some EGM monthly pubs having 300+ pages to them. Talk about getting your money's worth.

Now that the internet has pretty much taken over for all forms of news, all you're really left to is posting on forums or sending random emails that usually get discarded anyway. Man, if you sent a angry letter about a game company to a publication back in those days, and got it published, you would almost expect the pub to do some investigating and get some kind of story about it.

Now you have more of a voice through the internet, but no credibility. It's a win/lose situation I guess, so that's why I'm pushing for the OP even though it's only ~120 people he will be addressing. Ya, it's small, but he's trying to make an effort. That gets props in my book, no matter the outcome.

[Kinako78]

Then why did The World Ends With You get a 5/5 and was dubbed by them as the best Nintendo DS game since Mario Kart DS? :rolleyes:

Well, I had not seen that episode, but that and Final Fantasy XII were the exceptions, not the rule.

And they hated WoW and FFXI, also.

[xRedd206x]

Sega can always just stop making Phantasy star games. Then everyones problem will be solved, by sega having crappy online services.

[Kinako78]

Well, I can't speak for everyone else, Redd, but that wouldn't make me happy.

[xRedd206x]

Maybe offline type, but you can bring a friend over online?

[Bael]

Oh, It's very good you want to do something about it. but it's not going to do much.
I used to own an Anime/videogame station, The first of it's kind 10 years ago.
We were totally against Anime going main stream. No matter how we fought, no matter what we did, All they saw was money and how to get Large sums on a constant flow. It still happened and now we have A total change in anime fandom and not only that, but a change in Quality of Anime released in US.

The point here is, no matter how you fight, no matter what you do, You'll never get the result you want. Protest, Stage a boycott from PSU for a month, Whatever...
If things get worse for Sega and Nobody plays on PSU they'll just shut the servers down forever. then we get the opposite of what we wanted.
broadcasting to people on the radio who haven't played or even know what PSU is won't care and will probly not get people curious about PSU.

I have faith SEGA will Get thier stuff straight, but not for at least 6 months.
Till that time Psu is sooo not gonna be my main game.

[Kinako78]

Maybe offline type, but you can bring a friend over online?

If you mean tell friends about it, I did tell one. May not be much, but it's a start, no?

[xRedd206x]

I mean like, next Phantasy Star game not a mmorpg, just story mode with friends?

[Cracka_J]

I believe I remember hearing ST or SEGA is already working on another MMO, although the title slips my mind at this time. Perhaps they are already attempting to cannibalize their own market before the product even has a recognizable name.

[CelestialBlade]

A commendable effort, actually trying to take action instead of just whining about it here, but, I too doubt this will make any difference. Good to see that my fellow Phantasy Star fans do still care, though.

[Danny_Dark]

I DON'T have faith SEGAC will get their stuff straight, but not for at least 6 months.

SEGAC: Because Good Business is an Oximoron for Us.

[DAMASCUS]

I believe I remember hearing ST or SEGA is already working on another MMO, although the title slips my mind at this time. Perhaps they are already attempting to cannibalize their own market before the product even has a recognizable name.

It better be something like Sonic Island where everyone is just a different color of sonic the hedgehog. Segac could manage that easy...or so I would think.

[BIGGIEstyle]

Your actually going to get on air and complain about the game and make more people not want to play it??
No. I am going to present our situation in an informative manner and let everyone know that there is a good game- one worth fighting for- that we all play that is being held back by the constant screw ups of the company running it.


You're going to G4 with this? Newsflash: That would be a BAD idea. I don't know about the other shows, but the hosts of X-Play have made it perfectly clear that they hate RPGs, online or not, in general. You'll just be playing into their hands if you announce this to them.
I never said that I was going to G4 and if you got that impression I apologize. I meant that other people have sent them e-mails about it.


You're going on a radio show with 120 listeners? Wow, this will make a difference.....More people will attend the next WNBA game than will be listening to you on the radio.
Thank you for your pessimism. Your view on the matter has been heard and processed.
On a side note: I'm sure this is along the same exact lines as what was said all those years back when a civil rights activist refused to get out of her seat on a bus.

Come on people, this thread here is for support, not bashing my idea. If you don't like it or don't want to help out, don't post.

As for those of you who are helping thank you very much!

[Dragwind]

Keep in mind this is a discussion for brainstorming of ideas and the such, keep it meaningful.

Do not flame others for their ideas or opinions on the matter, this is not intended to become a flame war session.

Consider this a warning.

[Kinako78]

I never said that I was going to G4 and if you got that impression I apologize. I meant that other people have sent them e-mails about it.

Oh ok. My apologies for misunderstanding. I wish I had some advice, but I don't. I wish you luck, though. :)

[BrandonHeat]

Biggie I guess it is a notable thing you are gonna do you got my support, old chinese proverb say

"cast a small stone into the water and its small ripple can become a wave" yeah who says you cant

learn anything from fortune cookies LOL seriously as I read this post that is what my fortune cookie

said ^^. Good luck man

[JAFO22000]

Thank you for your pessimism. Your view on the matter has been heard and processed.
On a side note: I'm sure this is along the same exact lines as what was said all those years back when a civil rights activist refused to get out of her seat on a bus.

Come on people, this thread here is for support, not bashing my idea. If you don't like it or don't want to help out, don't post.

As for those of you who are helping thank you very much!

You aren't seriously comparing yourself to Rosa Parks, are you? This has to be the worst analogy I've heard in a while....

I did not intend to come off pessimistic, I feel I am being more of a realist. I just wanted to let you know that talking on a very small radio show with a very small audience about a game with a very small following is not going to start some sort of revolution, with people storming Sega of America weilding pitchforks and torches.

Even if you managed to get a letter outlining Sega's problems in a publication with a very large subscriber base (such as Game Pro), how many people do you think would actually take note and get upset?!?!!?

I mean, there may be problems with Maple Story, but I couldn't care less about them! I'm not playing that game nor am I paying the company who owns that game a single penny. It's none of my concern. Which is what PSU is to a majority of gamers: none of their concern.

[Ken_Silver]

You aren't seriously comparing yourself to Rosa Parks, are you? This has to be the worst analogy I've heard in a while....

I did not intend to come off pessimistic, I feel I am being more of a realist. I just wanted to let you know that talking on a very small radio show with a very small audience about a game with a very small following is not going to start some sort of revolution, with people storming Sega of America weilding pitchforks and torches.

Even if you managed to get a letter outlining Sega's problems in a publication with a very large subscriber base (such as Game Pro), how many people do you think would actually take note and get upset?!?!!?

I mean, there may be problems with Maple Story, but I couldn't care less about them! I'm not playing that game nor am I paying the company who owns that game a single penny. It's none of my concern. Which is what PSU is to a majority of gamers: none of their concern.

Well, the analogy may be off... his intentions beat out most of the people on the forum who don't do anything but BAAAWWW. That includes me. (A sad truth, but not as much baawww as others.) At least there are people who have written letters and are doing something about it. And something is better than nothing. Even if it doesn't mean anything, its better than doing absolutely doing nothing.

And if a lot of people are doing nothing big, then it becomes something big. So yeah, maybe alone it means nothing, but if enough people were to do something, SEGA would have to recognize this. After all, in the long run, Consumers control the market. Either Sega gets their act together, or somewhere down the road, they get driven from the International Market.

[JAFO22000]

GOOD IDEA!!

You know, there is a pothole in my neighborhood that has been there for-EVER! I'm sick of having to drive around it, or even worse, forgetting about it and driving into it! The City is doing nothing about it, no matter how many times I call or complain.

Therefore, I am going to write a letter to Road & Track magazine about this pothole. People who read that magazine are drivers, just like me. I'm sure it will cause a huge stir in the driving community and the City will HAVE to do something about that pothole....yay me!!!!!

[BIGGIEstyle]

You aren't seriously comparing yourself to Rosa Parks, are you?
No. I'm just mentioning that most people think that little ideas can't cause Big changes. They are sometimes proven wrong.



You know, there is a pothole in my neighborhood that has been there for-EVER! I'm sick of having to drive around it, or even worse, forgetting about it and driving into it! The City is doing nothing about it, no matter how many times I call or complain.

Therefore, I am going to write a letter to Road & Track magazine about this pothole. People who read that magazine are drivers, just like me. I'm sure it will cause a huge stir in the driving community and the City will HAVE to do something about that pothole....yay me!!!!!
Nah, that won't work, but I'm sure if the other people in your community are sick of it as well if all of youpitch in and raise a pothole fund you could raise the cash to get it fixed. All you'd have to do is let the city know at a town meeting.

Again, you don't like it or think it'll do anything? Keep your negativity off my thread please.

[JAFO22000]

I take offense to you calling your thread a "Revolution". You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

[Kismet]

No. I'm just mentioning that most people think that little ideas can't cause Big changes. They are sometimes proven wrong.

And Sega's going to turn on a mediocre American radio show with less listeners than a Sunday morning parental advice program, and magically change all of its evil ways... Okay.

And if you yourself agree with the fact that it's such a little idea that can (supposedly) possibly make a big change, then why do you keep babbling on about a "revolution"? Somebody getting a little bit of airtime to just to complain about the inevitable to practically NO ONE (see the first sentence of this reply) doesn't qualify as a revolution.



I take offense to you calling your thread a "Revolution". You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I obviously agree.

[Colonel Mustard]

My idea, while not novel, perhaps, is, for us, to give Sega $10, every month. With that money, we might hope, cautiously, that Sega will, with that money, realize that we, who are paying, are interested in the game, PSU, and we wish, since our interest is there, for them, with our money, to take care, upkeep and update, as they do in JP, where, I understand, the players also pay, in funny money, Sega, of it.

[Darsh]

LOL OMG, you guys.... im ganna let you in on a little secret. Sega....... yeah, THEY DONT GIVE A CRAP ! They think they are doing a good job w/ keeping up psu, and they have your MONEY! I am not trying to be a jerk, i just wanna let you know the end result is going to be the same as it has been the last 2 or 3 years this games been out. So i suggest venting on forums like normal , but dont go doing any work outside of that. Its just going to land on deaf ears ;D

[Broodstar1337]

The fact of the matter is that it doesn't take an appearance on a radio show to tell gamers how bad Sega has gotten. Look at the recent Sonic games on current and last gen consoles. Anyone who isn't a Sonic fanboy will admit to the game having piss poor control, laughable story, terrible character development, and most importantly bad gameplay.

Anyone who was remotely interested in the anticipated sequel to Phantasy Star Online had their hopes blown to bits since many of them had an opportunity to play the 360 open beta. When the game launched, we were treated to the exact same fucking content we got in what was essentially a bare bones demo. Full games should not have that little amount of content and the lack of a hard drive on the PS2 is a piss poor way of justifying how this game was launched.

So you're really not gonna convince any PSU players to stop putting up with Sega's shit because odds are your audience doesn't care about PSU and knows that Sega can't do business to save their skin.

[Ken_Silver]

So, let me get this straight? Do you feel better with him doing him doing nothing at all?

Even if it is "useless" and you all make good arguments, SOMETHING is always better than NOTHING.

That's what it boils down to.

P.S As for that pothole, there is a proper procedure for that. Too bad the video game indusrty doesn't have that "place" to report this kind of stuff. :D

[XGalvatronX]

You see something like this is a double edged sword.

On one hand you have people who will hear about Sega's completely idiotic and lousy "businness" practices and will want to do something.

On the other, you'll drive people away once they hear how lousy their products are. Well, they'll just be more aware of how much Sega's quality has bottomed out in the past decade and drive them away from this and any other Sega branded game.

And as commendable as this effort is, it's not going to matter. Sega of America or Japan doesn't give a shit about the NA/EU servers. Their bread and butter is Japan. The two idiot mods don't give a shit either. They'll still have a job once NA/EU PSU goes away. They'll just mod another game.

What kills me is that people are actually jumping ship to the JP servers and encouraging it. Actually pumping money to the douchebags who are 95% to blame for the state that NA/EU is in. I put the other 5% on Sega of America for not having any balls and allowing their mods to say things they have zero information on.

Sega and ST are completely devoid of any sort of business sense, and just don't give a shit about the NA/EU players or their own products. Anyone who's bought a Sega game in the past 10 years can see that.

This is just my opinion, so please don't take it as a flame against the OP. What you're doing is great, but I just don't think it's going to do anything against people who already decided long ago they were going to ignore us no matter what we did.

[Sidney]

People need to can the negativity; of course one radio show won't make all the difference, but it's a start. And sometimes, all the little actions taken can really add up. You guys need to stop criticizing this guy who is actually doing something, while you just sit at your PC and baw. Instead of wasting your time in this thread, go write a letter or do something. Or do what you think will help get ST's attention.

This thread reminds me of people who are too lazy to vote, but sit down and complain about how much they hate the president all day. Stop criticizing people trying to help your common cause of trying to get ST to be more competent. You should be happy someone is trying to do something other than sitting on their asses and bawwing at a message board all day.

[BIGGIEstyle]

Ken and Soubrette: THank you for your support

Galvatron: You don't think that this will do anything, but at least you were mature about disagreeing. Thank you for that.

I beleive I have all the useful information I'll be getting out of this thread since it's degenerated into a bunch of nonsense, so feel free to continue on whatever ends you choose to.

Oh, and I'm sorry my usage of the word "Revolution" offended you, but I feel like terms like "Sitting on my ass complaining" and "Nothing is gonna change" are too cliche' nowadays.

[Bael]

I'm with ya Biggie! Eventhough I think it's totally pointless, This might be one of those times where It just takes the right person to make a change, maybe your the only one to do it.
...maybe not... but input like JAFO22000 posts who claims to be a realist are unwanted and way to negative to be a realist stand. I know. I'm a realist.
So you know I thought the rosa parks thing was a nice touch, while trying to convey the whole one person can make a difference....But, I would have gone more with Paul Revere.
If you don't know who these people are step away from your game and read a fraking history book.
Go for it Biggie!

[BIGGIEstyle]

Paul Revere, eh?

Does that mean I should run through the streets screaming "The updates aren't coming!"? LoL

Thanks for the support though.

[Kismet]

So, let me get this straight? Do you feel better with him doing him doing nothing at all?


What he's GOING to do and doing nothing at all, in THIS case, are equal to one another. That's our point.

The only way you can do ANYTHING is if you either blow up Sega, the illegal route, or somehow acquire a mass amount of wealth and buy Sega. And we all know THAT isn't happenin'. <_<

[EtherForce]

Ooooh I have to listen to this broadcast. When is it taking place and how do I connect to the radio channel?

Oh and some things to add: I remember reading a post a while ago which explained how SEGA had always done a horrible job maintaining their servers, so it wasn't just limited to PSU, PSO also had a ton of problems(and thinking back to it I remember these things). PSO Dreamcast could apparently ruin an entire memory card somehow. PSO Gamecube had a lot of hackers who would often FSOD (freezing screen of doom) other players and a lot of people would have to start their chars over because of the double save thing which would often corrupt the PSO files on it. Xbox PSO had the thing where they had the neverending Christmas lobby, and the English Blue Burst servers suffered from a lack of updates. Also, despite SEGA announcing the date and time the servers would be shut down, they were all shut down before they were supposed to be and without any word from SEGA.

[BIGGIEstyle]

The only way you can do ANYTHING is if you either blow up Sega, the illegal route, or somehow acquire a mass amount of wealth and buy Sega. And we all know THAT isn't happenin'.
Leave it to the mob to suggest the only ways to get things done are money or violence.

Thank you much Etherforce, I'll be sure to add that!

[Bael]

LOL, Not unless you are that passionate about it.
More along the lines of....

If that idiot didn't run through town the story wouldn't exist because they'd all be dead.
That idiot saved their asses. Much like your trying to save your PSU.
Save all of our PSU and do it BIGGIEstyle right? :)

[BIGGIEstyle]

Hell, if it fixes the game I'll do it whatever style I need to 0.0

And as a side note to the nay-sayers: Do I think one show will fix this? NO

But I think that if enough of this starts popping up people are gonna complain, and things will get changed.

The reason the Tech nerf is coming is because ppl bitched about spells lagging them.
The reason the PA rebalance happened is because ppl bitched about lvling them.
The reason MAG happened AT ALL is because ppl bitched about PSO being shut down.

Bitching isn't working anymore, so I'm looking for another route.

Maybe you're right and I'm wasting time, but y'know what? AT LEAST MY COMPLAINTS ARE BEING HEARD BY SOMEONE

More than you can say.

[McLaughlin]

I'll simply list the facts as I remember them:

- A debug mission has been put on production servers and people have had access to it. The update was rollbacked a few hours later.

- Some glitched items have gone available before their scheduled date. The glitch linked to these items was that when you logged off with one of them in your inventory, when you'd log back on, your inventory would be empty. The update was rollbacked a few hours later.

- Some updates have had constant delays. While the Sega team announced dates fpr some of them, most of the time, the scheduled date was not respected. While it truly shows problems with the update system, it also shows how bad communiction is at Sega.

- The billing server has had a problem during one of the scheduled events keeping a good part of the PC/PS2 community from logging on. While people were not billed due to this problem, it really kept them from playing in an event where players, for once, were competing to get a limited edition item. No need to say that people who couldn't play also didn't have a chance to get the item.

- The already slow update process has been made slower by one of the promises made the Sega team: extension of the aforementionned event. For this, basically, the update process has frozen in anticipation of this ever-delayed extension. Players aren't getting their prices as a result of the event because Sega wants to wait for the extension to happen before giving the away. So by the end of July, it will be 2 months and a half since the end of the event.

- The billing servers went down one week-end because the server room's air conditionner burnt. Sega took a few days to put players back online.

- A slowdown glitch happens on XBox360 wherever robotic enemies appear. the slowdown is so bad that the user has to reboot his system. Sega has announced they has no plan (so far) to fix this. Basically, this keeps XBox players from playing those missions.

- A glitch on an item has been discovered on XBox360. People have been abusing it and had started to ruin the economy of the game. Sega banned around 250 users for this, were they glitchers or people who simply bought the glitched items.

- A glitch on mechgun existed and made the weapon incredibly powerful. While this glitch has been dealt with, XBox360 users can still use another related glitch allowing the weapon to remain more powerful than it actually is. Sega has not announced any plan about dealing with this issue. But people were banned during the last event for using it.


----

As said before, it is the communication at Sega that is truly failing. When they announce things, people are never sure it will happen. Either you announce something that is sure to happen or you don't announce anything.

- In order to quell the rampant cheating online, a "legit list" was compiled of S Rank weapons that currently dropped in the game. The Deva-zashi (10* Single Dagger) was released, but not put on the list of legitimate S Ranks. When synthesized, the weapon would simply disappear into nothingness. For compensation, instead of receiving another board and the materials to make it, victims of the error were given a 10% Deva-zashi of the element they attempted to make.

- A server rollback was conducted on the day of the Ambition of the Illuminus expansion pack's release day. All players were locked out of the game for several hours, and players who didn't download the new expansion were locked out even longer because Sonic Team was incapable of fixing the error.

- The Mechgun weapon class was subject to a glitch where the user could fire the weapon indefinitely, several times faster than normal. This glitch was (very slowly) addressed by simply adding a delay to the player's ability to put on/take off their Goggles. This did not fix the glitch, as another method was discovered. This time, again instead of just fixing the glitch, a delay was added to the player's Weapon Palette, making it difficult to quickly switch weapons in the heat of battle.

- Prior to the expansion pack, 360 players had a very difficult time logging onto the game server due to an ambiguous "Server Interrupt Request Error." This issue was never acknowledged or fixed by Sonic Team. The error, to a lesser extent, still exists.

- Maximum Attack G in its entirety was mishandled. A week into the event PS2 and PC players were locked out of the game en masse when the billing server (for the second or third time) fell apart and failed to rebill recurring subscriptions. This issue was not addressed until the tail-end of the event. As compensation, players were promised an extension for the event. This extension was then delayed indefinitely, and it is currently unknown whether we will receive the extension at all. In the event we do not, it is likely we will not be credited with the points we would have earned. The rewards have been delayed indefinitely as well.

- Recently, Sonic Team announced it would be addressing the visual slowdown players experience when in close proximity to TECHNIC visual effects. Sonic Team will be "fixing" this by capping the visual effects so that only the caster sees the full effect. This doesn't even directly fix the problem, as several TECHNICs slow down the game more at lower levels than they do at higher levels.

I'm sure there are a few more I'm forgetting, but I'm sleepy.

[BIGGIEstyle]

wow.

thank you so much!

[Turb0]

The thing I find kind of funny is how before MAG started, ST was all hyping it up to be the best event we've had yet and...yeah, that didn't quite work out.

[Seority]

I just hope you add in that all that was stated was the old Sonic Team. There is a new one that is doing as much as they can to fix things correctly and make it the game it should be. They are going to move next week so we know that things are going to change soon.
I hope you display your speech as more an informational bit then just a rant. Information is good, rants are not. Just hope you add that in somewhere so that there is a shread of hope left for PSU.

[CelestialBlade]

I can only hope Sonic Team is indeed re-staffing and that the old staff was the actual cause of all the problems, and not the influence of some half-ass higher-ups within Sega. I would certainly love to see the Sonic Team back in the PSO Ep. 1 days, but I try not to be too much of an idealist. But some change, even the smallest thing, would be uplifting right now.

If nothing else I really hope that Sega is at least seeing attempts by fans to right the PSU ship like this radio broadcast. We, as the American fanbase, do have to show that we do give a shit whether or not it will actually make a difference in the grand scheme of things. Still better than sitting here doing nothing.

[BIGGIEstyle]

I hope you display your speech as more an informational bit then just a rant. Information is good, rants are not. Just hope you add that in somewhere so that there is a shread of hope left for PSU.
If I didn't intend on doing just this there'd be no reason to do this at all.

Given the rest of the mentality here Seo I know why you made this point but I assure you this will be both informative and hopefully get some people interested in the game as well. I don't know how much of a time slot I'll need to fill yet but I'll make it as useful as I can however long it is.

And as always: thanks for the support! ^_^

[Turb0]

When you get together everything you're going to say on the show, can you post it here? I know you said you'd give us the date/time but no matter what time it is, some people won't be able to listen so a thread on it would be nice.^^;

[Seority]

Thank you Biggie!

I really disliked the way they ran things also, but I still love this game and REEEEEALLY don't want it to die out when it still has a fighting chance.
:jpsmile:

[BIGGIEstyle]

When you get together everything you're going to say on the show, can you post it here? I know you said you'd give us the date/time but no matter what time it is, some people won't be able to listen so a thread on it would be nice.

Yes. Once I talk with the DJ and get my time slot and even WHEN the broadcast is going on I will make my rough draft of it and post it up so everyone and tear it apart (some of you usefully I hope) before I make a final draft.

I may only be one person, but I'm gonna be the only person these listeners have to base their idea of our game off of and I certainly want to make a good impression.


Thank you Biggie!

I really disliked the way they ran things also, but I still love this game and REEEEEALLY don't want it to die out when it still has a fighting chance.
I agree. My ideal would be if they fixed what was wrong and we got our updates like normal pay per play games run. It's unheard of to pay for service you're not getting and that's one of the big points to make: This game is good enough that we are willing to pay our money to play it even WITH the faults. PSU could be an amazing game if only the support was better.

I'll definitely keep all you helpful people in the know as to what's going on. This is everyone's "argument" I'm just the person who knew someone.

[Yunfa]

There will always be people who are not satisfied with something. You'd think people would appreciate MAG, but no, they think MAG made the game too easy. Well shit i told my friend you didn't have to play MAG, but he said he wanted to be competitive with his other online friends he knew who were power lvling like flies on crap, I highly regret wasting 5mill into his pallete now that he doesn't even play PSU, his on the computer playing some crap called Flyf or something.

/rant

[RemiusTA]

I'll simply list the facts as I remember them:

- A debug mission has been put on production servers and people have had access to it. The update was rollbacked a few hours later.

- Some glitched items have gone available before their scheduled date. The glitch linked to these items was that when you logged off with one of them in your inventory, when you'd log back on, your inventory would be empty. The update was rollbacked a few hours later.

- Some updates have had constant delays. While the Sega team announced dates fpr some of them, most of the time, the scheduled date was not respected. While it truly shows problems with the update system, it also shows how bad communiction is at Sega.

- The billing server has had a problem during one of the scheduled events keeping a good part of the PC/PS2 community from logging on. While people were not billed due to this problem, it really kept them from playing in an event where players, for once, were competing to get a limited edition item. No need to say that people who couldn't play also didn't have a chance to get the item.

- The already slow update process has been made slower by one of the promises made the Sega team: extension of the aforementionned event. For this, basically, the update process has frozen in anticipation of this ever-delayed extension. Players aren't getting their prices as a result of the event because Sega wants to wait for the extension to happen before giving the away. So by the end of July, it will be 2 months and a half since the end of the event.

- The billing servers went down one week-end because the server room's air conditionner burnt. Sega took a few days to put players back online.

- A slowdown glitch happens on XBox360 wherever robotic enemies appear. the slowdown is so bad that the user has to reboot his system. Sega has announced they has no plan (so far) to fix this. Basically, this keeps XBox players from playing those missions.

- A glitch on an item has been discovered on XBox360. People have been abusing it and had started to ruin the economy of the game. Sega banned around 250 users for this, were they glitchers or people who simply bought the glitched items.

- A glitch on mechgun existed and made the weapon incredibly powerful. While this glitch has been dealt with, XBox360 users can still use another related glitch allowing the weapon to remain more powerful than it actually is. Sega has not announced any plan about dealing with this issue. But people were banned during the last event for using it.


----

As said before, it is the communication at Sega that is truly failing. When they announce things, people are never sure it will happen. Either you announce something that is sure to happen or you don't announce anything. - In order to quell the rampant cheating online, a "legit list" was compiled of S Rank weapons that currently dropped in the game. The Deva-zashi (10* Single Dagger) was released, but not put on the list of legitimate S Ranks. When synthesized, the weapon would simply disappear into nothingness. For compensation, instead of receiving another board and the materials to make it, victims of the error were given a 10% Deva-zashi of the element they attempted to make.

- A server rollback was conducted on the day of the Ambition of the Illuminus expansion pack's release day. All players were locked out of the game for several hours, and players who didn't download the new expansion were locked out even longer because Sonic Team was incapable of fixing the error.

- The Mechgun weapon class was subject to a glitch where the user could fire the weapon indefinitely, several times faster than normal. This glitch was (very slowly) addressed by simply adding a delay to the player's ability to put on/take off their Goggles. This did not fix the glitch, as another method was discovered. This time, again instead of just fixing the glitch, a delay was added to the player's Weapon Palette, making it difficult to quickly switch weapons in the heat of battle.

- Prior to the expansion pack, 360 players had a very difficult time logging onto the game server due to an ambiguous "Server Interrupt Request Error." This issue was never acknowledged or fixed by Sonic Team. The error, to a lesser extent, still exists.

- Maximum Attack G in its entirety was mishandled. A week into the event PS2 and PC players were locked out of the game en masse when the billing server (for the second or third time) fell apart and failed to rebill recurring subscriptions. This issue was not addressed until the tail-end of the event. As compensation, players were promised an extension for the event. This extension was then delayed indefinitely, and it is currently unknown whether we will receive the extension at all. In the event we do not, it is likely we will not be credited with the points we would have earned. The rewards have been delayed indefinitely as well.

- Recently, Sonic Team announced it would be addressing the visual slowdown players experience when in close proximity to TECHNIC visual effects. Sonic Team will be "fixing" this by capping the visual effects so that only the caster sees the full effect. This doesn't even directly fix the problem, as several TECHNICs slow down the game more at lower levels than they do at higher levels.

I'm sure there are a few more I'm forgetting, but I'm sleepy.

- They constantly show their lackadaisical nature by doing increasingly stupid and careless things, such as releasing Server Test Missions on the public servers that test the drop rates of certain Rare Enemies, only being able to fix the horrible problem by rolling back an entire day.

-They pretend to care about the problems of the games, yet only address the problems that can be easily mended by cheep development methods, like Delaying the action pallete for the said machinegun glitch.

- They now plan on taking this lackadacial nature to the next level by nerfing and pissing off the ENTIRE Non-Hybrid Force userbase by basically taking away the only real reason of using them. Although other class users see this as "Elitists whining because they cant show off", any retard could tell you "showing off" is point of ANY endgame content on a MMORPG, and High-level technics are just about the only kind of visual content Forces get (due to only having 3 REAL force weapons), versus the weapons Hunters and Gunners obtain.

I stressed this point because everyone who says "lol u cant show off anymore we dont care" obviously has never raised a force before. Its no different from us saying "lol they took away ur S-rank on my screen and replaced them with 9* models who cares."

- Sega of America has completely dropped the ball with this game. Unless they were able to INSTANTLY catch up with the japanese servers to the point where we were only but a month behind, there is no godly way to save the US/EU servers of this game. At this point, PSU will last only a fraction of the time PSO did, as this game is technically already in the hole PSOBB was a few months before it was shut down.

And dont think it wont happen. PSOBB wasnt shut down because of PSU, PSOBB was shut down because Sega of America can no longer obtain profit anymore -- PSOBB JP still obtains updates and events.

So at this point, we already risk the Death Drain. There is no US/EU release scheduled or even announced for US/EU, which only foreshadows the emminent doom and further distance we have from the japanese servers.

- For reasons mentioned above, it is becoming quite obvious that SoA is starting to lose intrest in the well-being of this game. We are still having billing problems, system glitches, delayed content, and poor filler-events like "MISSION SPOTLIGHT" that are nothing but sad attempts at trying to build an illusion that they care about this game and calm down the riot they are inciting themselves.






And at this point i would like to point out that the internal communication error plaguing SEGA, confusing our playerbase, and destroying our game is most likely (90%) intentional. They dont tell us their plans because if they did, all of their internal errors and medicore planning would be exposed to the public, which would symmetrically counter whatever lies they spat at us. This is 100% confirmed with how they handeled the MAG billing server errors. Lies, Lies, more lies, confusion, and false comforting only arise when they are asked what they are doing. I dont know HOW anyone could defend the bullshit that is mission spotlight.

[McLaughlin]

- They constantly show their lackadaisical nature by doing increasingly stupid and careless things, such as releasing Server Test Missions on the public servers that test the drop rates of certain Rare Enemies, only being able to fix the horrible problem by rolling back an entire day.

-They pretend to care about the problems of the games, yet only address the problems that can be easily mended by cheep development methods, like Delaying the action pallete for the said machinegun glitch.

- They now plan on taking this lackadacial nature to the next level by nerfing and pissing off the ENTIRE Non-Hybrid Force userbase by basically taking away the only real reason of using them. Although other class users see this as "Elitists whining because they cant show off", any retard could tell you "showing off" is point of ANY endgame content on a MMORPG, and High-level technics are just about the only kind of visual content Forces get (due to only having 3 REAL force weapons), versus the weapons Hunters and Gunners obtain.

I stressed this point because everyone who says "lol u cant show off anymore we dont care" obviously has never raised a force before. Its no different from us saying "lol they took away ur S-rank on my screen and replaced them with 9* models who cares."

- Sega of America has completely dropped the ball with this game. Unless they were able to INSTANTLY catch up with the japanese servers to the point where we were only but a month behind, there is no godly way to save the US/EU servers of this game. At this point, PSU will last only a fraction of the time PSO did, as this game is technically already in the hole PSOBB was a few months before it was shut down.

And dont think it wont happen. PSOBB wasnt shut down because of PSU, PSOBB was shut down because Sega of America can no longer obtain profit anymore -- PSOBB JP still obtains updates and events.

So at this point, we already risk the Death Drain. There is no US/EU release scheduled or even announced for US/EU, which only foreshadows the emminent doom and further distance we have from the japanese servers.

- For reasons mentioned above, it is becoming quite obvious that SoA is starting to lose intrest in the well-being of this game. We are still having billing problems, system glitches, delayed content, and poor filler-events like "MISSION SPOTLIGHT" that are nothing but sad attempts at trying to build an illusion that they care about this game and calm down the riot they are inciting themselves.






And at this point i would like to point out that the internal communication error plaguing SEGA, confusing our playerbase, and destroying our game is most likely (90%) intentional. They dont tell us their plans because if they did, all of their internal errors and medicore planning would be exposed to the public, which would symmetrically counter whatever lies they spat at us. This is 100% confirmed with how they handeled the MAG billing server errors. Lies, Lies, more lies, confusion, and false comforting only arise when they are asked what they are doing. I dont know HOW anyone could defend the bullshit that is mission spotlight.

- During the hacking outbreak the game experienced in the winter of its release, Sonic Team's painfully slow response resulted in many PS2/PC players falling victim to Room Hacking, where the hacker would be able to use that person's room as if it where their own. They would take all the valuables from the PM/Shop and then "Bomb" (reset all PM stats to 0 via an ingame item) the player's PM. The hackers also introduced a massive amount of meseta to the economy. Sonic Team eventually compensated players by allowing them to pick "packages" (the number they could pick depended on the severity of their suffering) offered by Sonic Team. This only served to introduce MORE meseta and rare items to the game's economy. The items offered were almost all worth more than the meseta offering.

[JAFO22000]

The reason the Tech nerf is coming is because JAPANESE ppl bitched about spells lagging them.
The reason the PA rebalance happened is because JAPANESEppl bitched about lvling them.
The reason MAG happened AT ALL is because JAPANESEppl bitched about PSO being shut down.



fix'd

[Colonel Mustard]

I just hope you add in that all that was stated was the old Sonic Team. There is a new one that is doing as much as they can to fix things correctly and make it the game it should be. They are going to move next week so we know that things are going to change soon.

As they say, link? Until then, it seems, to me, at least, that you are, to put it kindly, confused.

[Ezodagrom]

fix'd
Except Japanese PSOBB servers are still up and running...

[Kizeragi]

As they say, link? Until then, it seems, to me, at least, that you are, to put it kindly, confused.

Ugh, commas, I hated, learning them, in English, never again, please. <_<;

Seriously, why so many commas? :/

[Seority]

I do believe that there was a new Sonic Team hired to help PSU. -Note: That is why they are moving next week.-

;)

[beatrixkiddo]

Sonic Team doesn't run the game. They created the game. Sega of America (supposedly) runs the game, and Sega of America is moving its offices.

[Colonel Mustard]

I do believe that there was a new Sonic Team hired to help PSU. -Note: That is why they are moving next week.-

;)Ah, you are making, what has to be, a joke.

[BahnKnakyu]

I do believe that there was a new Sonic Team hired to help PSU. -Note: That is why they are moving next week.-

;)

So are you trying to be funny, or is there a source for what you just said?

If they did a complete re-staffing of Sega of America/Sonic Team of America it would be a step in the right direction. I would suggest keeping the two billing support guys (Edward and someone else, forgot his name) and also keeping ChillAura as a GM.

By the way, Biggie, there has been fairly solid evidence of the miscommunication within the ranks of SoA. When they failed to bring the PA leveing update, ChillAura said something to gist of "Trust me, I'm just as surprised as you are that the PA update wasn't properly delivered". This indicates to me that they DID tell ChillAura that the PA update would come in time for MAG, but at the last second, for whatever reason it was pulled back. This pulled the rug out from under ChillAura - he probably woke up the next day to a sea of BAAAWs flooding his PM box.

Poor guy - I hope he gets paid well.

[AlphaDragoon]

Sonic Team doesn't run the game. They created the game. Sega of Japan runs the game, and screws Sega of America over ridiculously, making our version suck.

Fixed for the truth.

[Indica]

If they did a complete re-staffing of Sega of America/Sonic Team of America it would be a step in the right direction. I would suggest keeping the two billing support guys (Edward and someone else, forgot his name) and also keeping ChillAura as a GM.


Seriously, fuck ChillAura. What the hell does he do all day aside from barely posting once a day. In my eyes he does nothing for us and as it seems what ChillAura stated "no solid updates are scheduled" means Sega is doing jack fucking shit for PSU.

[CelestialBlade]

Chill is public relations, what else is he supposed to do? Magically fix the game for us?

[Larusu]

Personally, I agree with the flamers that this won't do a thing and PSU is still screwed, but I like that you're actually trying.

[Indica]

Chill is public relations, what else is he supposed to do? Magically fix the game for us?

Is that his exact job title and does he work for Sega? Im pretty certain any kind of public relations with customers is long lost down the toilet. Hell, the toilet water already got recycled at the sewer plant.

The main web site never gets updated and we have to resort to 2nd hand information or the Japan Xbox web page for updates, so all their asses should be canned since it's a waste of money paying them and put it to use that will actually be on top of things for us paying customers.

[McLaughlin]

They're just moving to a different office. They're are not restaffing.

I believe, as Colonel Mustard said, so expertly, and with great tact, that you are, in your thinking, mistaken.

[Seority]

Sonic Team doesn't run the game. They created the game. Sega of America (supposedly) runs the game, and Sega of America is moving its offices.

You got me there! XD
Why did I ever say Sonic Team?
Oh yeah, it was four in the morning. Good catch, thank you! ;)

[Brainwrecked]

Attempt at putting things in chronological order. Fixed, added, and combined some things. Additions and corrections put in bold to point out changes, not to emphasize correctness. This list has easily become a wall of text, so apologies go out for that, any oversights/omission due to cut-copy-paste errors, and where my memory has failed to serve me concerning the time line.


Prior to the expansion pack, 360 players had a very difficult time logging onto the game server due to an ambiguous "Server Interrupt Request Error." This issue was never acknowledged or fixed by Sonic Team. The error, to a lesser extent, still exists.


The Mechgun weapon class was subject to a glitch where the user could fire the weapon indefinitely, several times faster than normal. This glitch was (very slowly) addressed by simply adding a delay to the player's ability to put on/take off their Goggles. This did not fix the glitch, as another method was discovered. This time, again instead of just fixing the glitch, a delay was added to the player's Weapon Palette, making it difficult to quickly switch weapons in the heat of battle. XBox360 users can still use another related glitch allowing the weapon to remain more powerful than it actually is. Sega has not announced any plan about dealing with this issue. But people were banned during the last event for using it.


A server rollback was conducted on the day of the Ambition of the Illuminus expansion pack's release day due to extremely good drop rates and rarity levels. All players were locked out of the game for several hours, and players who didn't download the new expansion were locked out even longer because Sonic Team was incapable of fixing the error.


A slowdown glitch was introduced with the release of AotI. The glitch happens on XBox360 wherever robotic enemies appear. The slowdown gradually gets so bad that the user has to exit to the dashboard and restart the game. Sega has made slow progress thus far, but it still exists. Basically, this keeps XBox players from playing certain missions.


A debug mission was put on production servers. The debug mission was easy to take out, but everyone got a rollback because of it.


In order to quell the rampant cheating online, a "legit list" was compiled of S Rank weapons that currently dropped in the game. (Note: I believe this list has existed for some time, and popped it's ugly head once, maybe twice, in the v1 days.) The Deva-zashi (10* Single Dagger) was released, but not put on the list of legitimate S Ranks. When synthesized, the weapon would simply disappear into nothingness. For compensation, instead of receiving another board and the materials to make it, victims of the error were given a 10% Deva-zashi of the element they attempted to make.


At the end of the Winter Event (a make-up event?), we were supposed to receive a title update for the 360. However, the update was rejected by Microsoft due to a bug, and the Winter Event ended up being extended until Sega figured out a workaround. In Sega's defense, Sega claims the title update worked on the dev Live servers that only game producers have access to. However, what became apparent was the fact that Sega was announcing and scheduling title updates before Microsoft had given approval. Sega also made a faux pas in blaming "Microsoft politics and bureaucracy" for the snafu. The comment was posted in a link near the top of the web site announcing the title update. The comment was completely removed at an unknown date.


Some glitched items have gone available before their scheduled date. The glitch linked to these items was that when you logged off with one of them in your inventory, when you'd log back on, your inventory would be empty. The update was rollbacked a few hours later.


The S-Grinder glitch broke out on the 360. Turned out this glitch had existed for some time, with Sega trying to keep things quiet until a patch could be released. People have been abusing it and had started to ruin the economy of the game. Sega banned around 250 users for this, were they glitchers or people who simply bought the glitched items. (IIRC, only the glitchers got the ban. IIRC, the stink raised was because some people started testing the glitch for themselves, and claimed that they dumped the glitched grinders in a mission and abandoned. Sega banned all glitchers, but not the unwitting recipient of glitched items.)


Maximum Attack G in its entirety was mishandled. A week into the event PS2 and PC players were locked out of the game en masse when the billing server (for the second or third time) fell apart and failed to rebill recurring subscriptions. This issue was not addressed until the tail-end of the event. As compensation, players were promised an extension for the event while the event was going on. This caused quite a few people to ease up on the goals. This extension was then delayed indefinitely, and it is currently unknown whether we will receive the extension at all. In the event we do not, it is likely we will not be credited with the points we would have earned. The rewards have been delayed indefinitely as well.


Recently, Sonic Team announced it would be addressing the visual slowdown players experience when in close proximity to TECHNIC visual effects. Sonic Team will be "fixing" this by capping the visual effects so that only the caster sees the full effect. This doesn't even directly fix the problem, as several TECHNICs slow down the game more at lower levels than they do at higher levels.


(Dupe included for perspective) They now plan on taking this lackadacial nature to the next level by nerfing and pissing off the ENTIRE Non-Hybrid Force userbase by basically taking away the only real reason of using them. Although other class users see this as "Elitists whining because they cant show off", any retard could tell you "showing off" is point of ANY endgame content on a MMORPG, and High-level technics are just about the only kind of visual content Forces get (due to only having 3 REAL force weapons), versus the weapons Hunters and Gunners obtain.


Some updates have had constant delays. While the Sega team announced dates for some of them, most of the time, the scheduled date was not respected. While it truly shows problems with the update system, it also shows how bad communiction is at Sega.


The billing servers went down one week-end because the server room's air conditionner burnt. Sega took a few days to put players back online.


The already slow update process has been made slower by one of the promises made the Sega team: extension of the aforementioned event. For this, basically, the update process has frozen in anticipation of this ever-delayed extension. Players aren't getting their prices as a result of the event because Sega wants to wait for the extension to happen before giving the away. So by the end of July, it will be 2 months and a half since the end of the event.


hey pretend to care about the problems of the games, yet only address the problems that can be easily mended by cheep development methods, like Delaying the action pallete for the said machinegun glitch.


Sega of America has completely dropped the ball with this game. Unless they were able to INSTANTLY catch up with the japanese servers to the point where we were only but a month behind, there is no godly way to save the US/EU servers of this game. At this point, PSU will last only a fraction of the time PSO did, as this game is technically already in the hole PSOBB was a few months before it was shut down. And dont think it wont happen. PSOBB wasnt shut down because of PSU, PSOBB was shut down because Sega of America can no longer obtain profit anymore -- PSOBB JP still obtains updates and events. So at this point, we already risk the Death Drain. There is no US/EU release scheduled or even announced for US/EU, which only foreshadows the emminent doom and further distance we have from the japanese servers.


For reasons mentioned above, it is becoming quite obvious that SoA is starting to lose intrest in the well-being of this game. We are still having billing problems, system glitches, delayed content, and poor filler-events like "MISSION SPOTLIGHT" that are nothing but sad attempts at trying to build an illusion that they care about this game and calm down the riot they are inciting themselves.

[Seority]

Yay for the third time all of this has been posted! ^^
:wacko:

[Kei1]

It's nice to at least see someone trying to do something about this. Good luck on getting on the show.

Points I'd like to add.
Sega of America has always had a bad track record with me. Their lack of releases for the Saturn led to it's eventual death. Their lack of support for PSU hasn't surprised me, but the fact that the higher ups in the company don't seem to care really hurts. In Japan at least, SEGA seems to care especially considering that they supported the Dreamcast for a long time after discontinuing the system.
POINT: SEGA of America needs a wake-up call in general to get off their butts and look and the industry instead of just the money.

When comparing PSU's updates to most other MMOs out there (including free ones), there seems to be a marked lack of technical staff. With the constant glitches and bugs that keep rearing their ugly heads, it seems to point to the fact that they don't have enough testers or programmers. The GMs are doing the best they can, but these updates seem to have their core problem in debugging.
POINT: PSU or SoA should hire more programmers/debuggers to make sure the updates WORK.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

Added note: In the past, Sonic Team seemed to mean something to me. The group which made games such as Samba de Amigo, Phantasy Star Online, and Puyo Puyo. However, looking at their more recent games (Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sega Superstars) it would seem that the name is nothing more then an old standby Sega uses to sell things instead of make things. One would hope they would buck the trend, but so far no dice.

[DreXxiN]

Wait, so let me get this right. Everyone wants change and improvement. Sega takes time to improve via moving buildings. Everyone cries. "NO EYE WANT IT NAOOOO"

(Sorry I just skimmed, work soon >_>)

[Dragon_Knight]

DreXxiN- Just because they are moving to a new building doesn't mean they are improving anything other then their own comfort. Just read my coming list of running problems PSO had that I remember

I've always seen Sega do well in releasing games that don't need additional support...so I have no complaints in that department.

Of course most of my issues stem from stupid decitions they made in the past and while this is what I recall I don't know if its an all inclusive list:

1) When PSO was first relased they made ALL data handled client side for no discernable reason. Of course with the large scale use of Gameshark/Codebreaker/insert other cheat device here and the lack of anyway to effectivly negate the use of such devices made PSO unplayable online in many cases...as you could never carry you're best gear. Many times people resta killed you so you would drop it...other simply NOL'ed you and reguardless of what you were before, you were there after a HUnewarl named NOL at lv 5 with basic starting equipment. The worst though was the lack of a way to counter character kill which set your characters max HP to 0 there by you die...respawn...and die instantly again.

2) PSO ver 2 made NO attempt to improve on this and still handled ALL data client side...despite better encryption Barubary wiped the floor with Sega again.

3) PSO ep 1+2 still handled data client side but to a far less extent then previous editions...However to compensate for the fact that they had an easier time detecting people who go online with a cheat device in use, they made a double save patch...which as ANY GC player could tell you was a bad move. The double save got around cheat devices tendency to delay the actual saving of data so the player could avoid the ban, but it came at a cost of frequently corrupting the PSO files on your memory card. I knew many players who started over numerous times due to this...and to make things worse even AFTER the double save was beaten Sega decided to leave it up and running. Lv 200 was NOT an easy goal to obtain.

4) PSO C.A.R.D. revolution didn't have as many issues due to fewer people playing it....it was hosted on the same servers as PSO GC though so the double save could hit you just as hard.

5) PSO Xbox had one glaring isusse that I'm not actualy sure of Sega's involvment. The last year the servers stayed open Sega/Microsoft never gave it an update. The last update before hand had been the Xmas lobby....so Santa ruled over the citizens of Pioneer 2 with an iron fist till the day the servers fell.

6) PSO Blue Burst had defeated most of the previous isusses...it was on PC and there for ALL data was handled server side...this destroyed offline mode as you needed to be on the servers to play it, but I don't recall many cried over that. There was little need of the double save and that was finaly removed. However the updates were few and far between...many of the later updates made in JP serves never came over to the US/EU area. We skipped new weapons and entire events...to be fair though many of us were looking to jump ship to PSU anyway and with it being "only" six months to a year away Sega felt no need to put real effort into something that would die shortly after a new games relase. Also BB tended to have lag issues due to the fact that they copy/pasted EVERYTHING from the Xbox version and fixed nothing in the process, so it would load entire areas at once...not a whole lot good end computers could handle it easily if the camera was facing the wrong way. I know many people with said comps that were still struggling.

7) Though out PSO GC/Xbox/BB we had items that had full data and were in fact going to "be released in the future" that never were. Those two items were the Red Ring and Gene Flow we were given hints that they would update the drop chart with them...but in the end it never came true.

8) PSU neat game...trusted Game Guard, which as anti cheat programs ranks up there is a kid losing his candy to a stranger. Numerous glitches that I'm sure are mentioned here as well as the lack of updates or misinformation about said updates.

As you can see I've had a bitter love/hate relationship with sega thats gone on for a long time.

[Colonel Mustard]

Wait, so let me get this right. Everyone wants change and improvement. Sega takes time to improve via moving buildings. Everyone cries. "NO EYE WANT IT NAOOOO"

(Sorry I just skimmed, work soon >_>)Indeed, either you, as you say, just skimmed, or I hope, or pray, your job doesn't involve judgment.

[Magician4]

Just wanna say good luck Biggie, but everyone here knows it's gonna take more than just one person to make a change here. We all need to do something... but how do you get the attention of ppl who just don't truly care?

[McLaughlin]

Attempt at putting things in chronological order. Fixed, added, and combined some things. Additions and corrections put in bold to point out changes, not to emphasize correctness. This list has easily become a wall of text, so apologies go out for that, any oversights/omission due to cut-copy-paste errors, and where my memory has failed to serve me concerning the time line.


Prior to the expansion pack, 360 players had a very difficult time logging onto the game server due to an ambiguous "Server Interrupt Request Error." This issue was never acknowledged or fixed by Sonic Team. The error, to a lesser extent, still exists.


The Mechgun weapon class was subject to a glitch where the user could fire the weapon indefinitely, several times faster than normal. This glitch was (very slowly) addressed by simply adding a delay to the player's ability to put on/take off their Goggles. This did not fix the glitch, as another method was discovered. This time, again instead of just fixing the glitch, a delay was added to the player's Weapon Palette, making it difficult to quickly switch weapons in the heat of battle. XBox360 users can still use another related glitch allowing the weapon to remain more powerful than it actually is. Sega has not announced any plan about dealing with this issue. But people were banned during the last event for using it.


A server rollback was conducted on the day of the Ambition of the Illuminus expansion pack's release day due to an error which prevented AotI players and Vanilla players from playing together. All players were locked out of the game for several hours, and players who didn't download the new expansion were locked out even longer because Sonic Team was incapable of fixing the error.


A slowdown glitch was introduced with the release of AotI. The glitch happens on XBox360 wherever robotic enemies appear. The slowdown gradually gets so bad that the user has to exit to the dashboard and restart the game. Sega has made slow progress thus far, but it still exists. Basically, this keeps XBox players from playing certain missions.


A debug mission was put on production servers. The debug mission was easy to take out, but everyone got a rollback because of it.


In order to quell the rampant cheating online, a "legit list" was compiled of S Rank weapons that currently dropped in the game. (Note: I believe this list has existed for some time, and popped it's ugly head once, maybe twice, in the v1 days.) The Deva-zashi (10* Single Dagger) was released, but not put on the list of legitimate S Ranks. When synthesized, the weapon would simply disappear into nothingness. For compensation, instead of receiving another board and the materials to make it, victims of the error were given a 10% Deva-zashi of the element they attempted to make.


At the end of the Winter Event (a make-up event?), we were supposed to receive a title update for the 360. However, the update was rejected by Microsoft due to a bug, and the Winter Event ended up being extended until Sega figured out a workaround. In Sega's defense, Sega claims the title update worked on the dev Live servers that only game producers have access to. However, what became apparent was the fact that Sega was announcing and scheduling title updates before Microsoft had given approval. Sega also made a faux pas in blaming "Microsoft politics and bureaucracy" for the snafu. The comment was posted in a link near the top of the web site announcing the title update. The comment was completely removed at an unknown date.


After an unexpected update (read: ST only meant to do maintenance, but we wound up with new content), new items at "The Collector" meant for raising a PM had an adverse affect on a player's character, should they log out with the item in their inventory. The item would erase your inventory, and PA levels, and essentially render you incapable of using that character. Later that day, a server rollback was conducted. (Note: I just rewrote this bulletin because it would have been more work to reword it.


The S-Grinder glitch broke out on the 360. Turned out this glitch had existed for some time, with Sega trying to keep things quiet until a patch could be released. People have been abusing it and had started to ruin the economy of the game. Sega banned around 250 users for this, were they glitchers or people who simply bought the glitched items. (IIRC, only the glitchers got the ban. IIRC, the stink raised was because some people started testing the glitch for themselves, and claimed that they dumped the glitched grinders in a mission and abandoned. Sega banned all glitchers, but not the unwitting recipient of glitched items.)


Maximum Attack G in its entirety was mishandled. A week into the event PS2 and PC players were locked out of the game en masse when the billing server (for the second or third time) fell apart and failed to rebill recurring subscriptions. This issue was not addressed until the tail-end of the event. As compensation, players were promised an extension for the event while the event was going on. This caused quite a few people to ease up on the goals. This extension was then delayed indefinitely, and it is currently unknown whether we will receive the extension at all. In the event we do not, it is likely we will not be credited with the points we would have earned. The rewards have been delayed indefinitely as well.


Recently, Sonic Team announced it would be addressing the visual slowdown players experience when in close proximity to TECHNIC visual effects. Sonic Team will be "fixing" this by capping the visual effects so that only the caster sees the full effect. This doesn't even directly fix the problem, as several TECHNICs slow down the game more at lower levels than they do at higher levels.


(Dupe included for perspective) They now plan on taking this lackadacial nature to the next level by nerfing and pissing off the ENTIRE Non-Hybrid Force userbase by basically taking away the only real reason of using them. Although other class users see this as "Elitists whining because they cant show off", any retard could tell you "showing off" is point of ANY endgame content on a MMORPG, and High-level technics are just about the only kind of visual content Forces get (due to only having 3 REAL force weapons), versus the weapons Hunters and Gunners obtain.


Some updates have had constant delays. While the Sega team announced dates for some of them, most of the time, the scheduled date was not respected. While it truly shows problems with the update system, it also shows how bad communiction is at Sega.


The billing servers went down one week-end because the server room's air conditionner burnt. Sega took a few days to put players back online.


The already slow update process has been made slower by one of the promises made the Sega team: extension of the aforementioned event. For this, basically, the update process has frozen in anticipation of this ever-delayed extension. Players aren't getting their prices as a result of the event because Sega wants to wait for the extension to happen before giving the away. So by the end of July, it will be 2 months and a half since the end of the event.


hey pretend to care about the problems of the games, yet only address the problems that can be easily mended by cheep development methods, like Delaying the action pallete for the said machinegun glitch.


Sega of America has completely dropped the ball with this game. Unless they were able to INSTANTLY catch up with the japanese servers to the point where we were only but a month behind, there is no godly way to save the US/EU servers of this game. At this point, PSU will last only a fraction of the time PSO did, as this game is technically already in the hole PSOBB was a few months before it was shut down. And dont think it wont happen. PSOBB wasnt shut down because of PSU, PSOBB was shut down because Sega of America can no longer obtain profit anymore -- PSOBB JP still obtains updates and events. So at this point, we already risk the Death Drain. There is no US/EU release scheduled or even announced for US/EU, which only foreshadows the emminent doom and further distance we have from the japanese servers.


For reasons mentioned above, it is becoming quite obvious that SoA is starting to lose intrest in the well-being of this game. We are still having billing problems, system glitches, delayed content, and poor filler-events like "MISSION SPOTLIGHT" that are nothing but sad attempts at trying to build an illusion that they care about this game and calm down the riot they are inciting themselves.


I edited a couple points, denoted with bold and italicized text. I think there might be some time-line issues concerning the stuff prior to Ambition of the Illuminus, but I'm too lazy (and forgetful) to fix it.

[ChaosAngel92]

Just wanna say good luck Biggie, but everyone here knows it's gonna take more than just one person to make a change here. We all need to do something... but how do you get the attention of ppl who just don't truly care?

I would wish someone calls for a conspiracy againts Sonic Team and let the servers completly empty. What I mean is that no one, not a single person play PSU online for a month maybe. I know its satiric, and fictional. Plus there is always the one who wont do what others suggest, and that would ruin the plan.
Anyway if this ever surges, I would join gladly.

[Sekani]

If you really want to do something that will make a difference, I suggest learning Japanese and then starting up some shit on the Japanese PSU forums, and then maybe to Sega's Tokyo office (I had their number written down somewhere, search for it).

I'm not gonna say NOT to do your show, but I have to agree with the naysayers in that you shouldn't delude yourself in thinking it's going to start any kind of movement. This forum itself is the largest concentration of PSO/U fans you're likely to find anywhere, and if you can't get support from them....

[AlphaDragoon]

Seriously, fuck ChillAura. What the hell does he do all day aside from barely posting once a day. In my eyes he does nothing for us and as it seems what ChillAura stated "no solid updates are scheduled" means Sega is doing jack fucking shit for PSU.

Too bad the GMs have nothing to do with Sega of Japan fucking us over. They shouldn't say stuff when it's not guaranteed, but other than that they're the scapegoats of SoJ saying "go to hell America/Europe".

SoJ is who you should have the problem with.

[RemiusTA]

It is not entirely Sega of Japan's fault that this game has died. Alot of the blame comes from them, but at the same time you would EXPECT that Sega of Japan and Sega of America would have enough coordination to simply release locked content off a disc by changing server code. The event delays and Fuckups are entirely 100% the fault of Sega of America however, and the lack of effort on their end is also the reason we have fallen so behind the japanese servers.

There is no one branch to blame. Sega / Sonic Team (whatever the fuck you call them now, the old and trueSonic Team disbanded and died years ago) in general is garbage. Both the japanese AND american developers of Sonic Team suck ass at what they do. About the only respect i have in these companies are the people who do the artwork and the composers they hold on to. (And once they drop Jun Senoue, i wont like anything about them anymore.)

And yes, FUCK Chillaura. He's just a messenger, just as oblivious and shunned from the truthful inner workings of the company as we are. Nobody gives what he says. Hell, its actually sad how we can predict what hes going to announce before its even made official

[JAFO22000]

I would wish someone calls for a conspiracy againts Sonic Team and let the servers completly empty. What I mean is that no one, not a single person play PSU online for a month maybe. I know its satiric, and fictional. Plus there is always the one who wont do what others suggest, and that would ruin the plan.
Anyway if this ever surges, I would join gladly.


Yes, then all they would have to do is shut down the servers for good due to a lack of interest in the game. Face it, they have already made money off of this game in the US/EU. For example, there are 80,000+unique IDs on just the 360 alone. If every one of these only paid the minimum of $10 for one month of service, they have made $800,000 just off of that. Keep in mind that this does not include profit from the PC/PS2 servers, profit from those who have paid for more than one month, profit from people paying for the original game nor profit from the sale of the expansion. Adding these costs in easily puts them in the black for this game already. Everything they are doing now is just to make more bread. They could shut down now with a succesful profit.

[AlphaDragoon]

I would wish someone calls for a conspiracy againts Sonic Team and let the servers completly empty. What I mean is that no one, not a single person play PSU online for a month maybe. I know its satiric, and fictional. Plus there is always the one who wont do what others suggest, and that would ruin the plan.
Anyway if this ever surges, I would join gladly.

This would only work if Japan did it, unfortunately. If we did it they'd just shut us down and walk away without a care in the world. Matter of fact they'd probably be happier that they didn't have to deal with us anymore, since apparently getting updates to SoA is nothing but a big hassle for them.

[McLaughlin]

Yes, then all they would have to do is shut down the servers for good due to a lack of interest in the game. Face it, they have already made money off of this game in the US/EU. For example, there are 80,000+unique IDs on just the 360 alone. If every one of these only paid the minimum of $10 for one month of service, they have made $800,000 just off of that. Keep in mind that this does not include profit from the PC/PS2 servers, profit from those who have paid for more than one month, profit from people paying for the original game nor profit from the sale of the expansion. Adding these costs in easily puts them in the black for this game already. Everything they are doing now is just to make more bread. They could shut down now with a succesful profit.

Bandwidth costs money. That fee is not 100% profit. Then you need to include the cost of the salaries for every who is involved in maintaining the server/running the game.

[Cathbar]

Good luck Biggie, give it your best.

As for boycotting PSU for a month, I'm affraid to admit, it wouldn't work. Within the 2nd week of having no one, or very nearly no one, playing, they would shut us down for good. After all, Sega is just like any other buisness, and when their "project" shows no sign of producing money, they'll dump it and start a new one.

[BIGGIEstyle]

As for boycotting PSU for a month, I'm affraid to admit, it wouldn't work. Within the 2nd week of having no one, or very nearly no one, playing, they would shut us down for good. After all, Sega is just like any other buisness, and when their "project" shows no sign of producing money, they'll dump it and start a new one.
I agree with this. Making people quit playing is the WORST thing we can do to try and provoke results.

[Magitek_X]

Why should we tell other people to quit? Sega are doing an excellent job of doing that themselves.

[Cathbar]

Why should we tell other people to quit? Sega are doing an excellent job of doing that themselves.

Buh Duh- TSHHH!

[RemiusTA]

i personally pray with all my might that the downtime equates to all our characters being deleted. That would just put the icing on the cake, so Sega of America can finally get the fucking they deserve.

Granted i really dont care anymore. The way Sega has managed this game this summer has made me lose almost any kind of fondness i had for this game. Ive gotten to the point where i cant play it anymore without finding so many things wrong that i just have to turn off my playstation and play something better.