Perfecting the Game

[Pillan]

As time progresses, the illusions of blatant fandom fades and the flaws in Phantasy Star Portable 2 become more noticeable. However, there is a consensus that this is still the best that has been done in terms of a Phantasy Star Online game. But "the best" isn't the same as "good enough," much less "perfect." So, I want to hear your ideas on how to reach the next level within the game. What would you do to make it better and fix the things that you don't like?

I don't want simple ideas of what should be changed, but exactly how you would change them. You know, if you think Rising Crush is too weak compared to Blade Destruction, how much closer to Blade Destruction would you raise Rising Crush's damage and accuracy? If you think Force is too weak compared to Hunter, how high would you raise Force's stats? I want you to throw out as close as you can get to exact numbers rather than simply saying "raise this" or "lower that."

I created this thread for a general discussion on these ideas as well as a discussion on the expected results of the suggested changes. So, expect a long-winded response from me on exactly what I expect will happen if those changes were made. For the course of this discussion, I'll be supporting the following hypothesis: Any changes you make will either break the "proper balance" or not go far enough to change the way the player's respond to the distribution.

I look forward to hearing your ideas.

[Deragonite]

Ugh I can't sleep. Been thinking too much about life. I need to write this post to take my mind off of it.

There are too many things that need fixing for this game to truly be a masterpiece. I actually wanted to make a topic called "The Pros and Cons of PSP2", however I suppose this will do. I'm happier to focus on the cons anyway :p

Here are the things I would change about the game itself:

1. Port it to PC/PS3/360. If this game has top of the line graphics and 60 FPS it will be amazing.
2. Fix all the random annoying glitches. They make the game seemed rushed (which imo it was, but all for the better). For example, when you die, sometimes when you revive you magically switched weapons. Also, the camera is weird, gets stuck more than it should, provides many bad angles which often lead to a jumpy camera, and then there's the camera glitch against certain bosses when you use SUV/Mirage Blast. I don't know how to be more specific than this since I don't know the programming code for the game.
3. Do something about the sloppiness! The skateboard SUV teleports you all over the place. Certain PA's don't make sense. For example, chucking your spear with Skadd which has a tiny hitbox right in front of you and also magically reappears in your hands. Sometimes random things get stuck in your inventory or you can still see them in your inventory after discarding/delivery them. Sloppysloppysloppy!
4. Add savable setups for classes. For example, have an armor palette "saved" so when you switch you can just equip that palette. Also, have different sets of abilities saved. This way you can quickly switch between missions. For example, you'll want to equip the EXP boost for Magashi mission but not for others. If we could save 3-4 templates of ability set ups it would save a lot of time.

Gamebreaking Crap

As far as mechanics are concerned, I've voiced my opinion pretty clearly in the other topics, but I'll be more specific.

1. Nerf Death to roughly 75% of its current effectiveness on things vulnerable to death (small monsters, robots, mages). Nerf Death to roughly 25% of its current effectiveness on things moderately susceptible to death (mid sized monsters like Deljabans, Pigs, Wolfs, etc).

2. EX Traps. Nerf their damage by 30%. No joke.

PA's

Almost every PA needs to be changed. To list them all will take forever. However, here are a few ones off the top of my head:

Skadd -> Nerf its Damage by 20% and its ATA by 40%.
Daggas -> Boost its ATA by 30%. This way it can be useful on things with high EVP.
Rabado -> Its fine. However a 10-20% nerf of the new Axe PA will put Rabado more on par. Making it a bit faster wouldn't hurt.
Majarra -> Make it a bit faster. It is slow to the point of uselessness right now.
Knuckles -> Fairly well balanced. Just lower Rampa's damage by 15% or so. I guess give Dunga 20% more ATA since it is pretty useless. Also boost Ikk Hikk's damage by 30% or so.
New Slicer PA (the one that fires 8 shots randomly) -> Boost its ATA to 85% and don't let it gain ATA from lvls 20-30. This way Br has a good single handed single target PA and HU won't have such a large advantage over Br with it. It's a single handed weapon after all.
Whips -> I don't really know cause they really suck. Speed up the normal attack speed to AT's in PSU. I guess boost all PA's by 20% or so.
Sword -> Honestly I think all the PA's need to be boosted by 20% or so. Also, make the last part of Tornado Break hit twice. It has been so damn useless ever since its existence.

Guns:
I don't know much about them so I won't comment on them. Although, Pillan I agree with what you said about cards and xbows in the other topic. I don't feel like rewriting it though.

Techs:
Don't have them cost more PP at higher levels. The point is for FO's to be able to use MORE techs. Not less. Increase all tech PAs' damage by about 20%. Speed up casting speed. Make Debuffs stick more than they do now. Get rid of element based increased tech speed. All this does is waste our time switching between every mission. Instead just have 2 tech speeds boosts each costing 2 points; "Attack Tech Speed Boost" and "Support Tech Speed Boost". Add range boost (2 points) and range reduction (1 point) as abilities.

Blast Gauge:

Nanoblast:
Have an ability exclusive to beasts that costs 1 point once they hit level 15 of any class. This ability increases nanoblast duration by 50% of whatever nano you're using.

Mirage Blast:
Have the Light Mirage Blast clearly do something and make its effect(s) obvious. I don't care what it does, as long as it does something fairly useful.
Dark Mirage blast should have unlimited PP. Running out of PP immediately when you use a full PA kills the point of having increased attack speed.
Make the damage load before the animation. It is very stupid when you use your mirage blast and it takes 5 seconds to load and the enemies move away from your very linear Mirage Blasts. This should be applied to SUV's as well.

Tweaking numbers is only one aspect. The roots of the flaws in the gameplay run much deeper but that takes a lot more effort to explain. There are too many more things that could be improved, but I think I can sleep now. G'nite.

[kongajinken]

Forces:
Force's need to be buffed through the roof. I tried in the begining and even though I kept trying to tell myself that I wasn't bad I stopped being one after my level 20 RAcast was doing more damage then my level 75 FOhuman.

Spells damage isn't too bad. A fireball is about hte same as a single hit combo on a hunter. The problems occur when:
the spell takes 1-2sec to reach the target and the target has already moved
(since takes time to reach the target the farther away the more time enemy has to move)
the spell takes 1-2sec to cast
spells are bad combo builders
spells are bad finishers (easily do 2x damage with a hunter)
running out of mana
having to melee to get mana back(which is weaker then the other classes)

The forces old strength of AoE damage and stuns doesn't apply much anymore with:
traps for everyone that AoE/stun
more weapons being AoE
large % of PA's that are AoE
weapons with elemental effects being automated so you just keep attack and stuns occur

The forces old strength of having superior healing being lost with:
monomates being instanteous anytime/anywhere
resta taking so long to cast in addition to having to be standing still and be standing
removal of the invulnerability grace period after standing up

The forces only strength left in this game is buffing.

Who wants to be a buff bot? Just remove buffs entirely from the game and make forces a viable class if having buffs means having to give up so much.

[Akaimizu]

Some of the issues do likely come with lag. For one, it's nice that they did make an effort to try to balance in Twin Handguns with the new format. However, lag can take away the advantage of prepping a combo with it. They lose a good bit of the idea of a medium ranged gun that builds combos faster, that way. The rifle, particularly online, feels more powerful when used in nearly the same aspect as the Twins. Though to be fair, they do seem to have more dangerous folks for those who can't sidestep and fire at the same time. Also to be fair, the game is set so that you need a lot more ATA before Twins hit their stride. They are definitely lacking, at the beginning, with lots of misses.

Still, the issue is, are they worth after all the extra effort if the server can't keep up with their hits for a nice safe combo builder? Of course, I wanted to pinpoint some tests here because from previous PSU experiences, many folks probably never decided to test and compare these guns anymore. Going for the very limited (best) stuff found in PSU.

[Pillan]

On Deragonite:

System Changes:
- I wouldn’t worry too much about a next-gen consol release as Sonic Team likes money. They’re probably already working on a version that will become something along the lines of PSU2.
- The Cluster SUV series actually doesn’t teleport you around if you watch someone else use it. It’s just that you can’t see the entire animation of that (or any wide-range SUV) with your camera.
- The template thing does sound like a nice idea though.

Death:
- The easiest solution to me would be just to disable drops when the effect kills the enemy. After all, you’ll still end up complaining because death will still average out being faster and thus still remain as common.

EX Traps:
- Just up them to A rank so no one can drop them, effectively limiting the Braver to the 8. Problem solved.

Daggas/Scad Swap:
- I’d say you went too far on that one. Essentially, you’re just making the two arts switch places with the suggested nerf. The only difference is Scad gets 1 extra hit on the weakest part of the combo while Daggas has more power, more accuracy, a lower cost, and knockback to get rid of anything that somehow survived the combo.
- The real problem here seems to emanate from the fact that Daggas, Majarra, and Scad are the same skill with exactly the same utility. Regardless of what you do, only one of the three will ever be useful as only one of the three has been useful since we’ve had options.

Dus Robado/Anga Grudda Swap:
- Robado is 10% stronger and 10% less accurate as is. And I’d say the speed/power difference is fair because Grudda is on an axe (low accuracy, slow basic attack) and costs more to use.

Knuckles:
- The suggested changes don’t really affect the balance, so it will still be “spam Rampa.”

Slicers:
- It really couldn’t hurt. I’ve always been annoyed with the use of slicers in PSU in general since it’s a one-hand laser cannon with all the advantages of melee. I’d probably advocate a more drastic change which gives them the ATA damage multiplier and PP drain of a gun rather than changing the skills.

Whips/Swords:
- Same response on both: speeding them up and raising their skill damage won’t hurt.

Cards/Crossbows:
- If you didn’t read my previous comment, I said all the bullets on both should have 3 shots by 11. Some crossbow bullets (save and status effect) fire 2 shots at all levels and card bullets gain it at 21. However, I’d go as far to advocate just giving them all 3 at level 1 (as was done with most crossbow bullets…).

Techs:
- I’ll agree with the no cost increase thing, all else being held constant. I’d even agree with an effective 20% increase on everything. However, at that point, I wouldn’t agree with a general speed boost. Also, as said before, I’d fix the damage by adjusting the tech weapon effect system so that every elemental weapon you found automatically had the same element boost on it.
- Debuff sticking would be nice. Just change it to trap style so they always hit.
- If there was a general attack speed boost, it would need to cost more like 4-6 slots than 2. Those things are worth a lot more than say Professional. I agree that there should be one, but I’d disagree on pricing.
- On adding more abilities in general, I’m always for it. However, it’s unlikely to be done in the context of this game. A slight range increase doesn’t sound like it’s worth more than a slot. And a slight range reduction for more power or large range reduction for more speed would be along the same thing. They’ve done both before; I’m sort of surprised they didn’t make the list.

Nano Blasts:
- Wild Blast effectively does the same thing for everyone.

Mirage Blasts:
- Yeah, I think everyone wants something obvious and Newman-efficient done to the Light Mirage Blast.
- In a game designed to stop skill spam, I can’t say infinite PP should really be added to the human-only blast. But I can’t say that they shouldn’t have some form of enhanced recovery during the period. I’d say the best strategy would be to balance it so the average output with Scad looked the same as the average output as a Nano Blast. Until then, Just Attack with twin daggers is chain +7 and PP +100.
- I wouldn’t really change the way damage is played out, but making it load faster and not have a period of being frozen in place with no attack would be great. Then maybe we’d see people branch out from the AoE and wide range attacks.


On kongajinken:

As mentioned in my initial post, this is a thread on suggested changes, not complaints about the system. If you’d like to continue your train of thought with improvements to fix the problems you see with Force, feel free to add them.


On Akaimizu:

System Updates (i.e., Lag):
- Can’t really suggest changes for that here, for obvious reasons. That’s all on the hardware and network contract constraints. That’s more along the lines of Deragonite’s suggestion for Sonic Team to just release another PSU with all of PSP2’s updates.

Twin Handguns/Rifles:
- Twin handguns are designed to be better damage dealers than rifles in the medium-long run, especially when dealing with a single enemy target. Don’t ask me why Sonic Team just decided to completely overpower rifles in a later AoI update. Notice that rifles lack their primary advantages over twin handguns that they had in AoI: knockback on all bullets, higher element, and higher ATP modifiers.

[kongajinken]

Increase force damage for finishers
Increase casting speed of spells
Increase spell projectile speed by at least 3x
Have one spell equal at least 2 in a combo not 1
Increase AoE range of spells
Increase chance spells will put elemental effect on enemies
Decrease spell mana cost
Remove buffs

The force class is so underpowered I can't help but to wonder who in sega thought they were balanced.
Underpowered doesn't even do them justice they are so weak they are broken.