"Clans" do people take them seriously?

[RedRaz0r]

Hey, Just started playing PSU again recently on 360, and I see a bunch of so called "Clans" now on here. Does anyone take these seriously or are they a joke and full of kids?

[pikachief]

most likely full of kids or guys who take the game too seriously and are just ridiculous.

[RedRaz0r]

I notice that most of the so called "Clan leaders" Have half assed pallets full of crap, maybe a 20m pallet total

[Traize]

Hah, my pallet would be doing well to push 1mil!

I don't get the clan thing, frankly, it's just more annoying lobby spam to me...

[Recon Tactical]

To me, clans are generally just a bunch of bad gamers or stoners that bond together to create a giant aura of suck.

[Sinue_v2]

I don't take them seriously for the most part. In an FPS, or traditional MMO, or strategy where you need team-mates with good communication, skill, and are comfortable relying on each other... yeah, I see the use. But there is just no need or place for them in a game like PSU aside from lobby drama.

They seem to me to be little more than shithead aggregates where a few narcissists can get their internet ego stroke on by pretending to be more important than what they are. It's sad, really. Even many of the of the ones which were devoted to taking time out of their day to "help out" by marshaling the servers and reporting cheaters. As if they were some kind of white knight bounty hunters who are the first line of defense against the barbarian hordes. Pfft, what a crock. I really sympathize with their motives and goals, I do, but in reality they're still just deluded into thinking Sega gives half a damn about their efforts. At it's core, it's really just another self-important ego booster that's been not so cleverly disguised as trying to help out.

PSOworld, PSPUpedia, Blue Burst (nuff said), even translations and save conversions the community does for each other. That is what enriches the community and makes the game more attractive to new players. Nobody is sold on the game with the intent of joining a clan so they can get easy training wheels. Just being social and making friends provides the exact same function, without all the arbitrary structure and other shit that comes with being in a clan which has no utility, point, or purpose in the game.

[.Rusty.]

Didn't blueburst have some kind of clan system? with some kind of reward for trading items in?

[RemiusTA]

Hey, Just started playing PSU again recently on 360, and I see a bunch of so called "Clans" now on here. Does anyone take these seriously or are they a joke and full of kids?

I sure hope not. If they do, just ignore them, you probably don't want to know em anyway.

[Miyavi-sensei]

Most of the clans are just for social purpose's, they dont no life missions and worry about equipment, i used to be in {H/O/E} for a little while and they just pretty much joined xbox live partys and just chat it up.

[Sinue_v2]

Didn't blueburst have some kind of clan system? with some kind of reward for trading items in?

Yeah. I never tinkered around with it much, but there was some sort of a Clan/Group interface where you could register and manage a clan. But that's also a case where Sonic Team gave clans a purpose by accommodating new game features like the point system. Team members could donate their rare weapons for points to customize their team by buying privileges. There was also a global ranking system which listed the top then clans. Not sure if you got a monthly perk or prize for it... but at least that did introduce a competitive element.

PSU has no real competitive elements, aside from players doing their own TA runs and competing on forums for best times. Since the clan feature was dropped going into PSU and never revived, ST apparently didn't think it added very much to the experience either.

[TheAstarion]

There's not much reason for clans in small party co-op games. If it's a game with big 20-man raids or an active PVP element then I can see the use, but all clans in PSU do are charge membership to the lowbies and make the founding players richer.

Since a character can change class at will, every drop is potentially useful to every player. Need over Greed doesn't enter into it, it's always greed, all the time. Your best bet is to run with friends who'll split the profits from the most valuable drops, or buy them off the party for a fair share each.

[Proto07]

I certainly didn't take myself seriously. My "clan" was called Wolf Kouga. We named it after we saw a character in PSU called Wolf Kouga and my friend, an anime fan, started shouting it. After that, every time someone leveled, or found a rare, or even joined our party, we would we shout Wolf Kouga! The only thing we did collectively as a group was party together. We never shared weps or gear, do any PvP races with other groups, or spam that our group was better than anyone elses in the lobbies. We weren't big either, only six of us. Like most "clans" on PSU, we were just a group of friends.

[bloodflowers]

The clans who aren't a joke are one of two types:

1) Dead
2) They just keep to themselves, often formed from groups of friends, and the last thing you'll see them doing is spamming or openly recruiting in lobbies.

It's worth noting nearly every really good player I know, is or was part of a group of some kind.

[RemiusTA]

Yeah. I never tinkered around with it much, but there was some sort of a Clan/Group interface where you could register and manage a clan. But that's also a case where Sonic Team gave clans a purpose by accommodating new game features like the point system. Team members could donate their rare weapons for points to customize their team by buying privileges. There was also a global ranking system which listed the top then clans. Not sure if you got a monthly perk or prize for it... but at least that did introduce a competitive element.

PSU has no real competitive elements, aside from players doing their own TA runs and competing on forums for best times. Since the clan feature was dropped going into PSU and never revived, ST apparently didn't think it added very much to the experience either.

PSO was able to do Teams because it had more to with the game, like Battle Mode or the very extensive Challenge Mode, and alot of very unique quests (i.e. better programmed objectives than KILL ALL MOBS AT SAME TIME, GET CAPSULE), unlike what PSU ever did in its lifetime, even now. It took until PSP2 for Challenge Mode and a PvP mode.



I always figured they never put it in because they were lazy, like with alot of issues that existed in PSU for waaayyy longer than they should have.




I think it was a great idea, because....well seriously, why wouldn't you include the feature? There's no logical reason not to, and it never really held much weight anyway.

[Keilyn]

Those were the days...

I remember running a clan from 1999 - 2007 that was a combination of a Server, Modding, Mapping and Tournament Gaming. A very large group that had a decent record online. We kept to ourselves but contacted gaming groups.

In Shooters...

"He who has great skill, runs a killer server and can reprogram the hell out of a game is God"

Though we always got tired of the kids and adults who would ask us for "server administration" rights, and entire clans and communities who would try to get us to write a balance patch coded in ways to give top clans gameplay advantages.

[RemiusTA]

98% of server owners are shit at "rebalances", especially in MMORPGs.

[Keilyn]

RemiusTA,

It is more complicated than that. I will explain it for you as its a reason I went after computer sciences and music (music was video game, motion picture and popular music that got me involved.)

MMORPGs are used by companies as a mechanism to make money. Rather than make games on a regular basis, a company can create an MMORPG in a short time with a decent team and then charge $15 a month. They make more money from subscription fees than having to make so many games and launch them back to back. Also for expansions they don't have to work on so much compared to making a new game.

What happens is that MMORPG developers launch servers with rates so low that it becomes hard to play. You see some PvP game out there, but less than 5% of the population can effectively PvP well due to drop rates and the way the game is oriented. Companies then add in things to destroy the time of players like Death Penalties and other incurred things such as having to wait large amounts of time for a party or having to do very hard quests to break through a class cap, skill cap or level cap.

This is also done on the F2P side of things. When a player dies in an F2P mmorpg like Runes of Magic at a high level, the death penalty is so large that players go into the cash shop and buy the item to remove the death penalty. In short some games with cash shops get the players at endgame. The idea is to lure a player in and bite them in the ass at endgame.

Most of these games fail (there are 100s of MMORPGs, look at the list on mmorpg.com as that is a short list of 300 - 400 games that have made it stateside) because of the slow-to-a-crawl gameplay and advancement.

In short they don't really rebalance the game to help the players. They rebalance the game in a way they can maintain their profits and earn more...specially before and after expansions.

Now come the surprise...."Private Server/illegal Servers/Non-Official Servers"

Call them what you will, but entire communities exist which design patches for these servers and the funny thing is that the majority of the time they think about the player's interests. The people who ask for these patches are server owners and operators who set the EXP and Drop rate to very high levels.

Their communities are all able to PvP much more fairly and effective. This results in a gameplay experience that is close to all the advertised crap official advertisements rant about. You get a community where anyone is capable of PvPing and playing through the game without the timesink of spending large amount of times leveling.

I know this fully well because I've written a lot of documentation and have ran and patched MMORPG servers to different games I've liked. Teaching people how to maintain MMORPG databases and running servers. Improving security and countering threats is something I like doing.

I remember in my early 20s having some comp experience finding out in FPS games that most people who ran servers were children who wanted to play games and wanted good servers but could not understand "Computer terminology" and "Server terminology" and "Engine Terminology" so I spent my time translating those terms and documents into English and teaching children and teenagers how to run their servers along with some programming and mapping skills to help them prepare servers for modifications.

It was impressive what I saw from these children.

They were willing to learn. They were also open to accepting the responsibility of running these servers and becoming decent server administrators too. Some of them asked me to teach them how to run their servers in Linux too, because they wanted something more secure.

Remius, the reason people run the servers in Linux is not just because of less chances for viruses to hit them. They do so because Linux has better processor scheduling and resource management. It was built from the ground up directly for networking, so running servers is right up its alley. A game server doesn't need a video card. It just needs a computer with a good processor, resource management and network management.

There are clans out there in online video games. Not all of them are direct competition clans. I've ran clans of all types out there and my favorite have always been hybrid clans between Mapping/Modding and tournament play while also working on server management. I am also a big fan of playing shooters in Low-Gravity with full Air-Control and double movement speed.

[PSW4L]

No offense to anyone in a clan but I think they are pointless and ridiculous. Just make friends with people you enjoy doing runs with.

[bloodflowers]

No offense to anyone in a clan but I think they are pointless and ridiculous. Just make friends with people you enjoy doing runs with.

Some 'clans' are just groups of friends, you can't apply to join, it's just a name a group of friends picked for fun.

The ones that do make me laugh are the ones with ranks and sub-squads. I've rarely met anyone from a clan of that type who was even competant at running missions, most of them just sit on the 4th floor looking darkly powerful (or spamming).

[Keilyn]

I had a small group of friends in PC/PS2. The idea was to always keep to 4 - 6 players during events and not get so bored with the game. You only need 8 members at most since its easy for people to be absent or play at different times of the day.

My format was four main players and eight fillers.

However, back then there are several divisions for the group I ran for other games.

We had the following:

~Modding Division - Small group to modify games and help them learn programming
~Mapping Division - Small group designed to create game levels.
~Server Division - Small group designed to run and operate servers together and apply a universal set of standards for clan servers, as well as deal with the original site pages.

~Tournament Division - Two major groups, one for mod game tournaments and one for official gametypes.

~Auxillary Group - A medium sized group that went together to other games to see if they are worth playing. Usually two players from each group along with six from the tournament division.

A large group is nice only if a game warrants it, but as I stated for PSU....You don't need a large group to do well. One of the reasons I've always stated that PSU is not an MMORPG regardless what anyone says is due to the group size.

I don't know a SINGLE mmorpg out there where the point doesnt come where you will need anywhere from 10 - 50 players to play together with, specially endgame. Even Final Fantasy XIs Dynamis had 64 open slots.

There were also battles design for Alliances (three parties of six for 18 players) and if a group got their ass kicked, the other two will die too.

This compared to PSU where even a single person with top equipment can destroy an S4 map....There is nothing "Massive" about PSU outside of people sitting down in lobbies, just so when you get 500 - 1000 players you see universes crash....

[RemiusTA]

RemiusTA,

It is more complicated than that. I will explain it for you as its a reason I went after computer sciences and music (music was video game, motion picture and popular music that got me involved.)

MMORPGs are used by companies as a mechanism to make money. Rather than make games on a regular basis, a company can create an MMORPG in a short time with a decent team and then charge $15 a month. They make more money from subscription fees than having to make so many games and launch them back to back. Also for expansions they don't have to work on so much compared to making a new game.

What happens is that MMORPG developers launch servers with rates so low that it becomes hard to play. You see some PvP game out there, but less than 5% of the population can effectively PvP well due to drop rates and the way the game is oriented. Companies then add in things to destroy the time of players like Death Penalties and other incurred things such as having to wait large amounts of time for a party or having to do very hard quests to break through a class cap, skill cap or level cap.

This is also done on the F2P side of things. When a player dies in an F2P mmorpg like Runes of Magic at a high level, the death penalty is so large that players go into the cash shop and buy the item to remove the death penalty. In short some games with cash shops get the players at endgame. The idea is to lure a player in and bite them in the ass at endgame.

Most of these games fail (there are 100s of MMORPGs, look at the list on mmorpg.com as that is a short list of 300 - 400 games that have made it stateside) because of the slow-to-a-crawl gameplay and advancement.

In short they don't really rebalance the game to help the players. They rebalance the game in a way they can maintain their profits and earn more...specially before and after expansions.

Now come the surprise...."Private Server/illegal Servers/Non-Official Servers"

Call them what you will, but entire communities exist which design patches for these servers and the funny thing is that the majority of the time they think about the player's interests. The people who ask for these patches are server owners and operators who set the EXP and Drop rate to very high levels.

Their communities are all able to PvP much more fairly and effective. This results in a gameplay experience that is close to all the advertised crap official advertisements rant about. You get a community where anyone is capable of PvPing and playing through the game without the timesink of spending large amount of times leveling.

I know this fully well because I've written a lot of documentation and have ran and patched MMORPG servers to different games I've liked. Teaching people how to maintain MMORPG databases and running servers. Improving security and countering threats is something I like doing.

I remember in my early 20s having some comp experience finding out in FPS games that most people who ran servers were children who wanted to play games and wanted good servers but could not understand "Computer terminology" and "Server terminology" and "Engine Terminology" so I spent my time translating those terms and documents into English and teaching children and teenagers how to run their servers along with some programming and mapping skills to help them prepare servers for modifications.

It was impressive what I saw from these children.

They were willing to learn. They were also open to accepting the responsibility of running these servers and becoming decent server administrators too. Some of them asked me to teach them how to run their servers in Linux too, because they wanted something more secure.

Remius, the reason people run the servers in Linux is not just because of less chances for viruses to hit them. They do so because Linux has better processor scheduling and resource management. It was built from the ground up directly for networking, so running servers is right up its alley. A game server doesn't need a video card. It just needs a computer with a good processor, resource management and network management.

There are clans out there in online video games. Not all of them are direct competition clans. I've ran clans of all types out there and my favorite have always been hybrid clans between Mapping/Modding and tournament play while also working on server management. I am also a big fan of playing shooters in Low-Gravity with full Air-Control and double movement speed.


yeah yeah yeah, im fully aware of why online games suck.

Sad truth is that most Pservers only make the game a little bit better, but do the same things without actually IMPROVING the game any. Usually to utilize the cash shop still. They just call it a "donation" shop.


Im almost done with Pservers entirely. The truth is that at their core, many of these games just are not very good games. They weren't designed with fun gameplay in mind. They were designed with addictive gameplay in mind. When you actually allow the players freedom to have fun with the game without being tied down by every system in the game working against you, at ridiculous odds, the players slowly start to find out there was really nothing fun about the game to begin with.







I played FlyFF for years until i slowly realized the only reason i would play is to jump on the PK server after a few levels and go on a massive noob killing spree. It was the MOST fun you could POSSIBLY have on that game. It was the only time cooperation and strategy was ever needed to kill something, or steal loot from someone. But the game penalized you so incredibly severely for PKing that it discouraged most people from doing it. Not to mention, later updates made the penalty even steeper, pretty much forcing you to Cash Shop your way our or spend 5 hours trying to attone for pissing off a single fucking player.



You dont level up in MMOs because its fun. You're leveling up to HAVE fun. So when it got to the point where I was non-stop AoE grinding enemies much higher than me for an hour only to gain 10% exp and 3 stat points, i simply quit. The time : advancement ratio was just asinine. This is just about every MMORPG on the planet, because it's the most cost effective and simple way to get constant money, without actually doing work to maintain it.




Phantasy Star Online was the opposite of this. The game didn't try to bar your character with tedious advancement barriers. In fact, it consistently gave you ways to improve WITHOUT having to grind yourself to death. You could raise your stats with mere meseta/dropped items thanks to your mag. You could on occasion find Materials to also permanently increase stats. Grinding weapons was easy and free. You were rewarded greatly for the time you put into the game. For every level there were more items to find, more ways to become powerful or combat enemies. It definitely slowed down at higher levels, but unlike most other games, the game was not DESIGNED to hold you down and FORCE you to play longer.


Phantasy Star Universe either did away with, or omitted completely these systems that were present in PSO that allowed the game to be perpetually fun for me, my friends, and many people here. It opted to drip-feed content, bar your weapon advancement with EXCESSIVE random chance (Element %, Grind rate, Synth rate, Drop rate on synth materials, random element% even on synthed weapons, blah blah)...it's no wonder the game is not as popular as PSO was.

[Keilyn]

Yeah you're right there is no grind in PSU...

Things like the following do not exist:

~PA Experience Levels
~Character Experience Levels
~Job/Type Levels
~Partner Machine Levels
~Grinding weapons to 10/10 hoping they don't break.
~Constantly running the same map 100 - 1000 times hoping that one killer weapon or armor you want drops between 41% - 50%
~Earning 300 - 350 AP to max GAS tech characters...

I tend to measure popularity by the people who actually know of the game. A testbed is simply asking how many people in a gaming club I've been part of for years know of the games and seeing what they are actually playing. Even alumni can remain members to clubs so its interesting.

Very few people know about Phantasy Star as a franchise, and the ones who know about the Franchise aren't really playing the games, but know about it.

What I remember about PSO was everyone trying to grind up using TTF in order to reach high enough levels. The game had a really nasty EXP grind, not to mention the fact your drops got tied to your Section ID in rooms that you make.

[AnonymousHat00]

I notice that most of the so called "Clan leaders" Have half assed pallets full of crap, maybe a 20m pallet total

You dont have to have a god pallet to be a clan leader, or even have fun in this game. Honestly i hate the people that think like that.

also most of the people (and I'm saying most) dont even work to get their pallets, some just buy the meseta.

[Alex305!]

I played FlyFF for years until i slowly realized the only reason i would play is to jump on the PK server after a few levels and go on a massive noob killing spree. It was the MOST fun you could POSSIBLY have on that game. It was the only time cooperation and strategy was ever needed to kill something, or steal loot from someone. But the game penalized you so incredibly severely for PKing that it discouraged most people from doing it. Not to mention, later updates made the penalty even steeper, pretty much forcing you to Cash Shop your way our or spend 5 hours trying to attone for pissing off a single fucking player.



My condolences....

Although I was in the same situation. I NEVER in my life till this day found a more cash shop dependent game. Christ.


Flyff died when they removed pxp (not saying this killed it but it was part of that huge update that overhauled everything). The years weren't good for us for online MMO's I can say that. ^^;

[RedRaz0r]

You dont have to have a god pallet to be a clan leader, or even have fun in this game.

Okay, that's not quite what I meant...
I understand having a group of people to play with. However, when people advertise and go "my clan is recruiting blahblahblah" or "LOOKING FOR CLAN MSG ME", it seems extremely childish to me. The point of a "clan" is too compete. A group of friends playing a game is NOT a clan.


Honestly I hate the people that think like that.
I hate people who are passive aggressive like that.

[Keilyn]

This has to do with something sensitive

Clan Leaders in Online Games have to be players too and be able to take part in the action. They are both....Leaders and Members.

Problem is that most clan leaders are better members than they are leaders so to make up for a lack of leadership they come in with God-Pallets.

They are more like a Military Sargent. They earn the favor of those below them and lead those below them, but they aren't trained leaders like Commissioned Personnel are, but they have the favor of the people.

Believe it or not when I say this:

"I tend to not accept a leadership role out there. I found it to be intrusive at times. Eventually I get into groups and one thing leads to another and parties turn me into a leader. Is it my action? My resolve or the way I push myself or the way I am? I don't really know....but eventually after taking the leadership role and people get used to me, I tend to stick to it. The only time I've challenged someone for leadership openly and directly is when I knew their existing methods would tear a group apart...However if I create a group from the ground up myself I do all possible to lead it or find a suitable leader."

I am not qualified for every single leadership position. I am better in the real world with military-like leadership over civil-leadership. I am not much of a politician, but more of a doer. I know diplomacy and languages but I prefer cutting the crap and dealing with a more biblical approach to some things.

I like some of the clan mentality out there, but its all about how you approach and talk to these people. Its a great exercise in negotiation and appealing. Clan Leaders want to feel powerful and strong, but there is always an obstacle or something holding entire groups back. Everyone out there wants something. Its just a matter of finding out what it is.

[AnonymousHat00]

Okay, that's not quite what I meant...
I understand having a group of people to play with. However, when people advertise and go "my clan is recruiting blahblahblah" or "LOOKING FOR CLAN MSG ME", it seems extremely childish to me. The point of a "clan" is too compete. A group of friends playing a game is NOT a clan.


I hate people who are passive aggressive like that.

Why cant a group of friends not be a clan. Isnt that what a clan is about. Sure there also must be some kind of motive behind them making the clan, but who says that it cant be a group of friends?

Although it may seem this way but I'm not looking to start any kind serious fight here.
:D:-?

[Slidikins]

Why cant a group of friends not be a clan. Isnt that what a clan is about. Sure there also must be some kind of motive behind them making the clan, but who says that it cant be a group of friends?When I first joined PSU it was right as the game released. I ran into a bunch of people just like me: people who loved PSO to death and were waiting to sink their teeth into PSU. We all played during mostly similar hours, and had fun together. We ended up doing everything together, so we made a "clan" just for the sake of camaraderie.

We had a name so we could make a forum, made emotes to spam after taking down a boss, and just hung out. We didn't exclude anyone, nor did we bog things down with a list of rules. We were just a group of good friends who now talk outside the game despite moving past PSU.

[RedRaz0r]

When I first joined PSU it was right as the game released. I ran into a bunch of people just like me: people who loved PSO to death and were waiting to sink their teeth into PSU. We all played during mostly similar hours, and had fun together. We ended up doing everything together, so we made a "clan" just for the sake of camaraderie.

We had a name so we could make a forum, made emotes to spam after taking down a boss, and just hung out. We didn't exclude anyone, nor did we bog things down with a list of rules. We were just a group of good friends who now talk outside the game despite moving past PSU.

See, this is the type of thing that is 100% acceptable to me. Although I disagree with the term "clan". To me, maybe not to others, but to me, clan means a group of people that are competitive with other groups of people. That's why I disagree with "clans" in PSU. I totally understand groups of people that run with each other regularly...I just disagree with the term "clan" I guess.


Why cant a group of friends not be a clan. Isnt that what a clan is about. Sure there also must be some kind of motive behind them making the clan, but who says that it cant be a group of friends?

Although it may seem this way but I'm not looking to start any kind serious fight here.
See that's where we disagree. I wouldn't call a group of friends having fun and playing together a clan. So my answer would be, to me at least, no that is not what a clan is about.

And of course, no fight intended. We can have friendly debates =]

[RemiusTA]

Yeah you're right there is no grind in PSU...

Things like the following do not exist:

~PA Experience Levels
~Character Experience Levels
~Job/Type Levels
~Partner Machine Levels
~Grinding weapons to 10/10 hoping they don't break.
~Constantly running the same map 100 - 1000 times hoping that one killer weapon or armor you want drops between 41% - 50%
~Earning 300 - 350 AP to max GAS tech characters...


Did i say Phantasy Star Universe?


Remius said,

"Phantasy Star Universe either did away with, or omitted completely these systems that were present in PSO that allowed the game to blah blah blah"


No sir, i did not. I was talking about Phantasy Star Online. That sentence should probably read "altered OR omitted completely". Did away with / Omitted is the same thing. Auto-grammar nazi ftw




My condolences....

Although I was in the same situation. I NEVER in my life till this day found a more cash shop dependent game. Christ.


Flyff died when they removed pxp (not saying this killed it but it was part of that huge update that overhauled everything). The years weren't good for us for online MMO's I can say that. ^^;


FlyFF died when...I honestly can't remember. I always just say "the moment they changed the PvP system". But you're right, i've seriously watched that game evolve from early versions to newer ones, and EACH and EVERY one increases cash-shop dependence on the players. The game has gotten to the point where it's almost impossible to get past the 60s without either the cash shop or terrible devotion. Upgrading, leveling, PvP, EVERYTHING is a cash-shop grind.


I started on like Version 5/6, quit around 7, but i see it now on version seventeen and almost NOTHING has changed gameplay wise. They do nothing but add new monster areas and dungeons, but not a single update is not without dependence on the Cash Shop, and every update moves you farther and farther away from not relying on it to have fun. It's absolutely sickening. I watched that game go from something with immense potential for fun to a scam machine. Absolutely nothing has been improved since Version 6 when i played.




I didn't play long (got to level 67 and realized i'd never go farther, especially since PK was no longer practical or fun), but FlyFF is probably the sole reason i hate F2P MMOs. Every F2P MMO i've touched is a REPLICA of FlyFF with a different cover. The same tactics are used, and the same patterns are followed -- tons of updates, no real gameplay improvement, everything focused completely on Cash Shop.


Every. Single. One.

[Slidikins]

No sir, i did not. I was talking about Phantasy Star Online.To play a little Devil's Advocate, this was also said in that post:

What I remember about PSO was everyone trying to grind up using TTF in order to reach high enough levels. The game had a really nasty EXP grind, not to mention the fact your drops got tied to your Section ID in rooms that you make.

So, though it's not PSU, in that original list I'd say:
~Character Experience Levels
~MAG Levels
~Constantly running the same map 100 - 1000 times hoping that one killer weapon or armor you want drops between 41% - 50%

Still exists. MAGs are questionable, but in most cases I have reached periods where I have to feed something 800+ Dimates just to finish it off. PSO wasn't without its own grind, but it definitely had something special that kept me coming back.

(Also, I'm not really picking a side here, just noting that Keilyn's point wasn't 100% irrelevant due to the mistake.)

[AnonymousHat00]

See, this is the type of thing that is 100% acceptable to me. Although I disagree with the term "clan". To me, maybe not to others, but to me, clan means a group of people that are competitive with other groups of people. That's why I disagree with "clans" in PSU. I totally understand groups of people that run with each other regularly...I just disagree with the term "clan" I guess.


See that's where we disagree. I wouldn't call a group of friends having fun and playing together a clan. So my answer would be, to me at least, no that is not what a clan is about.

And of course, no fight intended. We can have friendly debates =]

I see where your coming from now. PSU isnt really a game were you can be completely competitive. I guess the only thing you can be competitive about is each others pallets, and that's not to fun. Your Thinking along the lines of a clan like one you can have in MW3 where its completely competitive and you can have clan matches, and crap like that.

[RemiusTA]

To play a little Devil's Advocate, this was also said in that post:


So, though it's not PSU, in that original list I'd say:
~Character Experience Levels
~MAG Levels
~Constantly running the same map 100 - 1000 times hoping that one killer weapon or armor you want drops between 41% - 50%

Still exists. MAGs are questionable, but in most cases I have reached periods where I have to feed something 800+ Dimates just to finish it off. PSO wasn't without its own grind, but it definitely had something special that kept me coming back.

(Also, I'm not really picking a side here, just noting that Keilyn's point wasn't 100% irrelevant due to the mistake.)

Well, here's the way I saw it.


Mags:
~PSO has them, PSU does not
~PSO never once forces you to make one -- you can also trade them, or use Units
~Stat improvement does not rely on them; you can find mats (also PSO only) or you can just level (PSU)
~People who grinded their mags...i never did it, i have no clue how people could stomach such a thing. Just feed them inbetween rooms and during pitstops on the pioneer. Some people brought Mag Grinding on themselves.
~Mags also REDUCED grinding. You could equip them on lower alts and make the lower levels far quicker to stomach.



As for mission runs:

~ Yeah, weapons had terrible drop rates, but PSO's rare weapons, on average, were FAR more useful.
~ Instead of having to run random missions nobody plays in lobbies most people dont even know about to find specific items, you just ran within an episode
~ You dont have to find boards and ingredients to synth a weapon
~ You can't "fail" to synth a weapon you would have found ingredients for
~ No element system to degrade your weapon (like neutral or shit precent)



But yeah, PSO did have its own grind. The game was just significantly less built around one. It didn't rely on grinding to increase playtime or encourage you to get something like PSU obviously does in areas, sometimes very obsessively. (PA exp, Class EXP, Failure rates)




But yeah, of course it's got its own grind. For an MMORPG it's simply a case of "Choose Your Poison" in terms of grind content.

[RedRaz0r]

I see where your coming from now. PSU isnt really a game were you can be completely competitive. I guess the only thing you can be competitive about is each others pallets, and that's not to fun. Your Thinking along the lines of a clan like one you can have in MW3 where its completely competitive and you can have clan matches, and crap like that.

Precisely. For instance, I have a group of people that I've been playing with since PSO, and we're still playing together on PSU and are prepared to continue running together on PSO2 and whatever else comes next. However, we use the term "guild", because we stay out of people's way, other than to make new friends

[AnonymousHat00]

Precisely. For instance, I have a group of people that I've been playing with since PSO, and we're still playing together on PSU and are prepared to continue running together on PSO2 and whatever else comes next. However, we use the term "guild", because we stay out of people's way, other than to make new friends

I havent been playing PSU for that long. Only about 4 years now, but those years i have been playing i havent once joined a "clan". well i guess there has been a few, but htey never lasted to long cuz for some reason once i get in the clan they just split up and i dont know why

[RemiusTA]

I see where your coming from now. PSU isnt really a game were you can be completely competitive. I guess the only thing you can be competitive about is each others pallets, and that's not to fun. Your Thinking along the lines of a clan like one you can have in MW3 where its completely competitive and you can have clan matches, and crap like that.

Be careful, some people around here take this game quite seriously. You may be offending them.

[Vintasticvinn]

Be careful, some people around here take this game quite seriously. You may be offending them.

Hehe they fun to joke around with specialy when they go all elite and stuff xD I should stop by psu and poke at a few of them "hardcore" clanners/ players.

[Keilyn]

Did i say Phantasy Star Universe?



No sir, i did not. I was talking about Phantasy Star Online. That sentence should probably read "altered OR omitted completely". Did away with / Omitted is the same thing. Auto-grammar nazi ftw






FlyFF died when...I honestly can't remember. I always just say "the moment they changed the PvP system". But you're right, i've seriously watched that game evolve from early versions to newer ones, and EACH and EVERY one increases cash-shop dependence on the players. The game has gotten to the point where it's almost impossible to get past the 60s without either the cash shop or terrible devotion. Upgrading, leveling, PvP, EVERYTHING is a cash-shop grind.


I started on like Version 5/6, quit around 7, but i see it now on version seventeen and almost NOTHING has changed gameplay wise. They do nothing but add new monster areas and dungeons, but not a single update is not without dependence on the Cash Shop, and every update moves you farther and farther away from not relying on it to have fun. It's absolutely sickening. I watched that game go from something with immense potential for fun to a scam machine. Absolutely nothing has been improved since Version 6 when i played.




I didn't play long (got to level 67 and realized i'd never go farther, especially since PK was no longer practical or fun), but FlyFF is probably the sole reason i hate F2P MMOs. Every F2P MMO i've touched is a REPLICA of FlyFF with a different cover. The same tactics are used, and the same patterns are followed -- tons of updates, no real gameplay improvement, everything focused completely on Cash Shop.


Every. Single. One.

Look at the top of the page where it reads "PSU General ----> Xbox 360 "Clans" do people take them seriously."

In other words, you wish to talk about Phantasy Star Online, then you are in the wrong section of the forumboard. I am done entertaining your mind on matters unrelated to the topic.

The focus of the thread itself was on Clans, not on a comparison between PSO and PSU, nor their gameplay. The thread itself isn't also about F2P vs P2P as interestingly enough Xbox 360 is a P2P while PSUJP is F2P with Sub for premium course, with its own cash shop.

I will end this with a quotation I like

"Humans by their very nature are violent and competitive. Any entity void of this will find itself transformed and corrupted by these aforementioned traits, for they are human traits....."

[Four Suited Jack]

[snip]
but all clans in PSU do are charge membership to the lowbies and make the founding players richer.

They do that?
I didn't realize people were stupid enough to pay to be a part of the PSU clans.



[snip]

The ones that do make me laugh are the ones with ranks and sub-squads. I've rarely met anyone from a clan of that type who was even competant at running missions, most of them just sit on the 4th floor looking darkly powerful (or spamming).

I think the people who run and organize those clans are megalomaniacs.
If they can't have power in real life they'll sure as hell get it in some MMORPG.

[AnonymousHat00]

They do that?
I didn't realize people were stupid enough to pay to be a part of the PSU clans.



I think the people who run and organize those clans are megalomaniacs.
If they can't have power in real life they'll sure as hell get it in some MMORPG.

You would be surprised about some of the stupid things that ppl do in this game.

[Four Suited Jack]

You would be surprised about some of the stupid things that ppl do in this game.

I remember once, on the demo, a friend of mine spammed "Selling spam blocker: 1K" and someone actually bought it.