More news about February updates (includes AQs and Vita info)

[Ezodagrom]

Thanks to Ricardo for translating the news.
http://bumped.org/psublog/pso2-jp-gameplay-adjustments-for-february/


Sakai wrote a pretty long blog post about the changes and updates coming during the month of February. Here’s a recap.

Advance quests are intended for those level 45+ with enemy levels higher than other quests. When it comes out, it will release with three quests; Forest, Caves, and Desert. Unlike other quests, it requires a currency called “Advance Capsules.” It looks like they didn’t explain this aspect very well, which seems to be causing a misunderstanding. So here goes…

There will be a client order to help cover the cost of your first advance quest. In addition, there are three types of Advance Capsules; a, b, and c. The capsules needed for Caves can appear in the Forest, and the capsules needed for Desert can appear in Caves. These are very likely to drop within the quest themselves, but if you don’t have enough for the next quest, you can purchase the remaining capsule balance with meseta.

Before the quest starts, the party can decide whether the leader pays for everyone or everyone pays for themselves. Within the quest, expect to see high level enemies and exclusive drops. As you clear the quest, your “Advance Risk” rises which increases the enemy levels and boosted enemy appearance rates.

Furthermore, there are new pyroxene stones that can appear within this quest. You can use them with a specific weapon to trade for a new 10 star weapon at the Pyroxene Shop.

On February 20th, a new interrupt event will have you passing along messages for the Lillipans through Lobby Actions. A Lillipan will perform a gesture, you must deliver that message to another Lillipan in a different location. There will also be enemies nearby that will frighten the Lillipans, so defeat them as quickly as possible. Sakai suggests that you try doing this event with the Lillipa Suit on.
Gameplay Adjustments

Adjustments to make it easier to reach level 30.


Some client orders will be adjusted so that they will give you higher rewards; some accepting conditions will be relaxed as well.

Input Assistance (Predictive Text) feature for My Shop Searches

Some item names will be easier to understand.

“Premium Space” added; revising the number Premium Blocks.


They are going to reduce the number of Premium Blocks, and add “Premium Space” to normal blocks.
Premium Set users will be allowed to enter into full blocks as long as there’s “Premium Space” available.

Aesthetics Counter Ticket will enable Premium Users to reuse it for a certain amount of time.


Previously, if you used the Aesthetics Ticket, it only allowed you to finalize the changes for your character once. If you are a premium set user, the Aesthetics Ticket will now allow you to make any number of changes over the course of an hour.

Hunter Balance changes


We touched upon this before, but more details about this will be coming along next week. But that’s not all, other classes may see some balance adjustments as well, but this will be discussed some time in the future.

Three Block Types


There will now be three types of blocks.
PC Exclusive Blocks
PC/Vita shared Blocks.
Vita Exclusive Blocks

While playing on PC/Vita and Vita Exclusive blocks, the following changes will occur:


Some areas will be smaller
Longer PSE Bursts
Two Emergency Trials at the same time.
Decreased the max amount of enemies appearing at the same time

Sakai wasn’t originally planning to do Vita exclusive blocks but he wants to accommodate as many Vita users as he can for the release date.
Chrome Dragon


After the Vita version launches, Vita players will first get a chance to fight the new Chrome Dragon who will appear in Emergency Trials. In fact, the Chrome Dragon is a special dragon that can appear wherever it wants. But you shouldn’t come to the conclusion that this Dragon would only appear on Vita blocks. After a Vita player encounters the Chrome Dragon, that person may lead to PC players encountering him as well. Maybe eventually, the Chrome Dragon could appear on the PC exclusive blocks.

New Story Quests


The Vita version will first receive the story quest for chapter 9 titled, “The First Farewell.” If you’ve already completed chapter 8 in the PC version, you should have no problem accepting this quest.
Even if you are playing the game from the beginning, you can expect to see Kuna appear in some event tablets.
As for PC players, they’ll first get to play the new “Arks Battle Tourney” side story quest where you’ll see NPCs who don’t normally appear in the story.


Vita Version Adjustments

The following changes will be applied as an update when the Vita version launches. Please keep in mind that the offline character creator in the special package version does not have the skin color adjustments applied yet.
3G Support


3G connections are supported but you will need Wi-Fi to perform any updates.

Sleep Deactivated


In the closed beta test, it would go into sleep mode after 10 minutes, but this will be deactivated.

Mini Chat log / Faster Keyboard Pop-Up / Chat while accessing Objects


It appears that some players didn’t understand that you were supposed to hold down the chat icon to launch the keyboard. So now the keyboard will activate by double clicking on it.

Added a Character Information Screen shortcut
Corrected the character skin color / Made the breasts Jiggle


They applied these changes because they received lots of feedback over the character skin color and breast physics.

Camera position settings added
Vita Version Future Adjustments


These adjustments will be applied sometime in the future.

Customize any key / Switch Locked-On Targets / Right Stick Camera Operation Speed adjusmtents


In options, the point was to have “Type 1″ settings to be familiar with Phantasy Star Portable players while “Type 2″ was intended for PC players. However it seems these settings did not accommodate the wide variety of needs for the player-base. Give them some time and they will address this issue in the future.

Copy and Paste Chat / Symbol Shortcuts / No UI in Screenshots


It will take some time to address these changes.


You look familiar?

http://bumped.org/psublog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Emilia-Outfit.jpg

Hmm is that?

[blace]

Whoever that is, she certainly has a huge head.

Edit: Was she involved in some human/newman cross species hybrid testing or something? Or did her trip through subspace change her species?

[UnLucky]

Made the breasts Jiggle

YES!!

[Cyron Tanryoku]

While you're making the breast jiggle why not do something useful and improve the hair, SEGA?

[Xaeris]

The reedit window for the Salon ticket is an hour? I guess it's an improvement, but it's just so meager that they should really just apply it to the ticket itself and not just premium users.

This Advance Quest thing might turn out to be tolerable depending on how the people over there define "very likely."

[UnLucky]

Yeah it should either be an hour or so normally, or a day pass for premo

[Kion]

Sakai said about 70-80% of what you need should drop each mission. Except that 70-80% with Sega RNG so....

And I think that make over should be an hour for normal use and a free perk for using premium.

[gigawuts]

Each next area's capsules only dropping in the field: Called it as soon as I saw you could only buy the forest capsules in the shops.

edit:

but if you don’t have enough for the next quest, you can purchase the remaining capsule balance with meseta.
So, wait, we can buy them too or what?

[redroses]

1 hour reuse time for the make over ticket is a joke.
I mean, better than nothing, especially when changing hair color and skin color. However, I think 1 hour is too little of time. A day or three would have been great. But using the make over shop for one hour extra isn't really a selling point to get yourself a premium ticket, as you still have to pay 500 AC to even use the make over shop in the first place.

They might as well have given premium users one free make over shop change per month. It's basically the same thing, but sounds much more attractive.

[EvilMag]

Since there's a gate you have to go though to play the advance quest I wonder...can you possibly get abducted in these quests? It would suck if you did.

[Kion]

Each next area's capsules only dropping in the field: Called it as soon as I saw you could only buy the forest capsules in the shops.

edit:

So, wait, we can buy them too or what?

Each Advance quest requires 10 capsules to take the mission. In each mission about 5-8 capsules should drop for the next mission. So in order to do another mission you have to pay the remaining balance to get 10 capsules to take the next mission. Or I think that's how it works.

[NoiseHERO]

so basically you still have to pay for 10 stones if you can only get stones for ANOTHER mission while doing the mission you actually wanted...?


...



...



Tell me I'm missing a beat there I mean I AM kinda sleepy as hell-WHY DO I STILL GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THIS GAM-FUCKIT I JUST WANT MY NEW SCRATCH OUTFITS!

[gigawuts]

Well, "next" isn't specific. It might mean a repeat of the current quest, but it probably means the successive AQ (so forest -> caves -> desert).

Even still, players seriously disliked the fee when everybody thought you could buy them outright and do them whenever you want. Now it's looking like you HAVE to do a forest run to get access to caves at all, possibly for every run. For desert you HAVE to do forest, then buy the ones for caves and then you HAVE to do caves on top of it.

I certainly hope it doesn't work that way, because that is ridiculous.

[Enforcer MKV]

I certainly hope it doesn't work that way, because that is ridiculous.

We've already reached, nay, PASSED that point.

[Ezodagrom]

I think it's possibly a circle.
Do forest -> get caves capsules.
Do caves -> get desert capsules.
Do desert -> get forest capsules?

[Xaeris]

I was thinking the same, but the bumped summary didn't say that Forest capsules drop in Desert.

[Kion]

I think it's possibly a circle.
Do forest -> get caves capsules.
Do caves -> get desert capsules.
Do desert -> get forest capsules?

Yup, and all three types can be bought. Basically they're trying to get players to play different missions rather than just spamming the same thing over again. So do forest, get 6 caves capsules. You then can either buy 4 caves capsules to keep it going, or buy 10 forest capsules and do forest again.

[Xaeris]

So it's like a Boost Road type thing they're trying to encourage, by heavily subsidizing the cost of missions by running them in a circuit. That's...acceptable.

[gigawuts]

Ah, so it goes full circle? I figured it would stop at desert, since it would be followed by tundra later on.

I could like that, but it would make coordinating a bitch sometimes. I hope it lets you bank these things so you don't consume all of them*

*Potential workaround - Do a run, find 5 capsules. Bank all but 1 capsule, buy 9. You can still do 4 more of this area without having to start at forest.

[Ezodagrom]

Ah, so it goes full circle? I figured it would stop at desert, since it would be followed by tundra later on.

I could like that, but it would make coordinating a bitch sometimes. I hope it lets you bank these things so you don't consume all of them*

*Potential workaround - Do a run, find 5 capsules. Bank all but 1 capsule, buy 9. You can still do 4 more of this area without having to start at forest.
Well, I guess when they add more AQs in the future, the future EQs could be different circles, like Tundra -> Mines -> Skyland -> Tundra -> ...

[gigawuts]

That's a definite possibility. It may also be a level-based thing, with the intended theme being Forest-Caves-Desert for 45+ (released at 55 cap, so 45-55), Tundra-Mines-Skylands for 50+ (released at 60 cap, maybe? for 50-60), and Ruins-Whatever-Whatever some time later.

I like the idea of this, at least partially. This is similar to that boost road thing, then? I haven't played anything like that, was that also segmented like this? Was there any issue with synchronizing runs with friends at different levels of the run? Would you all have to just start at forest if one was in caves but everybody else was in forest or desert, even if you just wanted to do caves? Would doing forest-caves and buying 10 more capsules for forest-caves again be an ordinary thing?

These are the main flaws I can see with it, but if they're handled well then it sounds solid.

edit: It sounds like they're almost penalizing wanting to get one single area's stuff, especially if you want items from desert (hi :[ )

[NoiseHERO]

If these things are sellable/tradeable (even if you can buy em from a shop)

that'd add some convenience to getting them.... for like 10k less or something while selling the ones you don't want that you'll inevitably get....... e_e

(That's not happening.)

[Ezodagrom]

That's a definite possibility. It may also be a level-based thing, with the intended theme being Forest-Caves-Desert for 45+ (released at 55 cap, so 45-55), Tundra-Mines-Skylands for 50+ (released at 60 cap, maybe? for 50-60), and Ruins-Whatever-Whatever some time later.

I like the idea of this, at least partially. This is similar to that boost road thing, then? I haven't played anything like that, was that also segmented like this? Was there any issue with synchronizing runs with friends at different levels of the run? Would you all have to just start at forest if one was in caves but everybody else was in forest or desert, even if you just wanted to do caves? Would doing forest-caves and buying 10 more capsules for forest-caves again be an ordinary thing?

These are the main flaws I can see with it, but if they're handled well then it sounds solid.
The GBR thing in PSU was different, it had no cost to do the missions.

PSU's GBR, as you do a specific mission, you gain points. Each mission has its own points, and the points that count are the ones for the mission you have the least amount of points. Using PSO2 areas as examples, let's say you had 20 points in forest, 25 points in caves and 30 points in desert, overall it's the 20 points that would count torwards the % boost, even if you increased the points in caves and desert more, it wouldn't matter because it's the area that has less points that counts.

Also, the points of all party members were counted together. Let's say that 20 points gave 5% boost and 30 points gave 7% boost, if 2 players were playing together, one of them had 20 points and the other 30 points, the total boost for the mission would be 12%.

[gigawuts]

They aren't tradable, already checked the trailer. They have the untradable blue cross circle thing.

[Xaeris]

That's a definite possibility. It may also be a level-based thing, with the intended theme being Forest-Caves-Desert for 45+ (released at 55 cap, so 45-55), Tundra-Mines-Skylands for 50+ (released at 60 cap, maybe? for 50-60), and Ruins-Whatever-Whatever some time later.

I like the idea of this, at least partially. This is similar to that boost road thing, then? I haven't played anything like that, was that also segmented like this? Was there any issue with synchronizing runs with friends at different levels of the run? Would you all have to just start at forest if one was in caves but everybody else was in forest or desert, even if you just wanted to do caves? Would doing forest-caves and buying 10 more capsules for forest-caves again be an ordinary thing?


It's similar in that they're both systems to encourage running in a circuit. The methods by which they do that are pretty different. There is one potential problem I see that they have in common though. The problem with GBR in PSU was that after a few days, people wouldn't want you in their party if your personal boost contribution wasn't maxed out. So, that makes me ask; how does the quest handle it if the party members have varying levels of Advance Risk?

[gigawuts]

I see, thanks for the explanations.

The combined bonus is something to consider, too. Hopefully it takes the highest and uses that. This would start letting people charge for access to their runs, but I don't really see anything wrong with that because it also lets more active players give less active players a direct boost WITHOUT suffering themselves.

Also, just double checked tradability of the capsules. It wasn't in the trailer, but it was in a screen on bumped. They're indeed untradable, which isn't too big of a surprise really.

My current hope is that capsules work like TACO's do - you need to do one TA run to permanently unlock the respective TACOs (also the other required CO's, but yeah). It'd be nice if doing one AQ permanently unlocked the respective capsule in the shops, for people who want to spam one mission - leaving the full cycle as much more cost effective (spamming just 1 advanced quest will get you lots of capsules for a different quest, after all).

[NoiseHERO]

I still don't like being "forced" to cycle through all thee...

But I always had this theory where... drop rates were secretly higher if you were doing a variety of missions compared to spamming the same mission.

Which is why 95% of any rare ever found on this game was probably found without the intention of looking for it while doing a random mission... >_>

So maybe that's part of the trick when they imply people will be getting more rares from this, then design in it way where it's easier to do these missions AT ALL when you cycle through them...

[UnLucky]

Is the "Advance Risk" thing tied to your character? I thought it just ramped up the longer you were in the one quest, and resets when you leave.

[gigawuts]

It's either on the character or account level, and resets every 7 days. I don't think it's known if that would be a scheduled thing (probably weekly downtime, I find this likely), or if that would be a reset from 7 days after you first did an AQ.

[Xaeris]

Advance Risk increases per quest completed and resets after seven days, so it seems like it'd be tied to the character.

[WBMike]

Each next area's capsules only dropping in the field: Called it as soon as I saw you could only buy the forest capsules in the shops.

So, wait, we can buy them too or what?

Hm you brought a new angle to this Advance Quest thing but no article so far has ever mentioned that you could only purchase Advance Capsule a.

Every time it's brought up they just say you can buy Advance Capsules with meseta.

[gigawuts]

Hm you brought a new angle to this Advance Quest thing but no article so far has ever mentioned that you could only purchase Advance Capsule a.

Every time it's brought up they just say you can buy Advance Capsules with meseta.

http://bumped.org/psublog/page/2/

Second picture shows only the forest's advance capsule. Someone mentioned this might be because it's the forest AQ they're in, but I find that unlikely. It might be the case, it might not be.

[WBMike]

http://bumped.org/psublog/page/2/

Second picture shows only the forest's advance capsule. Someone mentioned this might be because it's the forest AQ they're in, but I find that unlikely. It might be the case, it might not be.


I also believe it's due to which advance quest you're in, but it does seem weird they'd only just have one in the shop list.


http://pso2.swiki.jp/index.php?%E3%82%A2%E3%83%89%E3%83%90%E3%83%B3%E3% 82%B9%E3%82%AF%E3%82%A8%E3%82%B9%E3%83%88



Wiki table says
Forest Advance Quest


Requires: 10 Advance Capsule a
Advance Capsule a: Drops within Desert ADV Quest / Shop Purchase

Caves Advance Quest


Requires: 10 Advance Capsule b
Advance Capsule b: Drops within Forest ADV Quest / Shop Purchase

Desert Advance Quest


Requires: 10 Advance Capsule c
Advance Capsule c: Drops within Caves ADV Quest / Shop Purchase

[Zyrusticae]

I like it. Finally, they give you reason to not just run the same area ad nauseum (though you will still run the same areas ad nauseum, it remains an improvement) and have another money sink to counterbalance the increasing TACO faucet. Also hunter balance changes yay, predictive item search yay (seriously, that's a basic search engine feature and should have been in since the beginning!), faster leveling to 30 yay, premium space YAY (I hope it's a substantial number of slots...).

I still want them to touch up MPAs, though...

[Syklo]

To go P/V for chrome dragon or not...

[Akaimizu]

Thanks for the heads up, Ezo.