THIS GAME BALANCE THO

[Zyrusticae]

I thought I was doing well topping the charts on most of my TD runs.

Then I finally got into a XH TD4 run aaaannnd FUCK THIS GAME.

Fo/Te is fucking disgusting. I feel completely 100% redundant next to strong Fo/Te players. Why do I exist? Am I only here to leech off of the strength of others? This is wrong. This is all wrong. It wasn't meant to be this way!

Seriously, wtf? They're doing several times as much damage as I can output in a much larger area and... and why? Why? How am I supposed to contribute shit when everything dies before I can even tap a button, and even if I do hit them I hit them for a fraction of the damage?! How did things turn out like this? WHY? WHYYY!?

Yes, sure, I can still improve my gear... by a lot. But so what? I'll still be swinging at air and getting a whole lot of nothing done. Gawd, I just... I don't like it. I like to feel useful, but now I'm just wondering if I'm better off just sitting at a tower twiddling my thumbs and feeding on the scraps that are left behind. Fuck effort. Why even put in more effort when it amounts to nothing in the end?

The worst part of it all is that, well, they're fucking ranged... which means they're far safer in any given fight. It's like Blade & Soul all over again. The safest classes should never be topping the charts... in anything! Except safety, obv. That's the bloody trade-off. NOPE! None of that here! Just gotta give the casters everything and the kitchen sink. That's how it goes in MMO-ville these days, I guess.

Sigh. I don't even know why I care. It's stupid that I care. I'm getting free carries and here I am bitching that I don't get to whack more shit. Ugh. Just... yeah. Bleh. Blehhhhh. :-?

[BIG OLAF]

It's PSO2. They don't give a hot gay fuck about game balance, my man.

[Zorafim]

It was always like this in every phantasy star. Sega just sucks at refining their games.

[Caetho]

Because the darkers are elementally weak to everything Force can do, they also have extreme consistency. The fact that they have fast cast times while their AoE still persists makes them super strong. In mobbing you aim for consistency and Fo/Te screams that. Now that the damage numbers are getting out of control, the more consistency you have the stronger you are. Which is why some people consider disregarding raw DPS in favor of extra PP. Not sure if that is a good idea or not but it's an example.

[Z-0]

FoTe is not safe when playing it "optimally", so to speak. Everything will one-shot you.

People say FoTe is easy and safe or whatever, but when taking it to its extremes it's anything but. What's most likely going on is that you're not playing it right. (i.e. using the right techs like crafted Ragrants, matching elements, using Zondeels correctly, this kind of stuff)

[Caetho]

I will let you know that my HuFo is the god of TD, if you don't respect that you're an elitist. Don't make me whop out my Ex. Lv5 unironic Weddle Park with Hu built-in and 1Lm3g1d your ass.

[BWS-1]

PSO2: where the endgame leads all to become a Space Gandalf the White.

[D-Inferno]

IMO, SEGA's mistake is letting glass canon stuff (FoTe, Limit Break) deal a ton of damage, or in BrGu's case, absurd single target damage just because it can't mob. I feel that Fo's frailness should be complemented by it's ranged aspects as opposed to raw power, but atm it gets to beat melee classes at close combat too. And while Limit Break isn't an awful idea, it should not be main-class only.

[Zeroem]

That sums up my feelings........when playing in a lagging Yamato MPA (which is......95% of the time. Thanks for the potato server, SEGA.)

That side, Fo/Te combination is really that ridiculous. Seriously, everytime I'm using male class in EQ; when I want to smack mobs, random Rafoie would melt the mobs first. Nothing wrong with that, but getting that happened over and over during the whole run almost killed my desire to contribute. Almost.

It just show the flaw of the game design, honestly. When the class meta of end-game is leaned toward certain class combos instead of total freedom (for a reminder, we got 9 classes in the game; and putting aside whether the combo was good/bad, we have 72 possible class combinations. Yup, 72), you know something is wrong.

[Nitro Vordex]

Hey, if they wanna hard carry, I let em. Let the mega geared people one shot shit, and you reap the rewards.

[BWS-1]

To allow melees to have a hit or two, maybe I'll just roll an Ice Fo/Te... or would that still be OP?

[isCasted]

Force could use a nerf. Like, at least:
- halve the damage from compounds;
- remove Charge Tech Advance 2;
- nerf Fire S Charge to 70-75% instead of 50%;

At the same time, techs like Ra/Sabarta lack good crafts, and Gi/Na/Grants feel way too weak for their extended charge time.

With those nerfs other classes should become more useful. But then, Force's damage as it is now balances out its disproportionate squishiness during solo play. So, we need to nerf something for other classes. Like, defense.

Iron Will and Automate Halfline need to go. IW+NGU are essentially an RNG-based reward for sucking.
Automate Halfline = you won the game. It used to be "balanced" in SH days when enemies could shave off big chunk of your HP gauge, but now... Lv75 Tokyo and Kuron enemies hit me with 2-digit damage. I can pop Massive Hunter + Limit Break and go full ham as if there's no consequences. Hunter has All Guard and Charge Parry, Fighter has a million of iframes and autoguards, Bouncer has Megiverse, Braver... Fuck Braver. There's no need for AH and IW when melee has so many defensive capabilities already.

Now, Ranger and Gunner... Obviously, nerf CT and WB and rework Dive Roll to actually be safe. WB can be 120% (minimal multiplier to make Weak Hit skills proc), but Bullet Keep should work with all weapons and not be main-only. Even better if firing a special bullet becomes its own weapon action instead of replacing normal attacks.

[Touka]

It was always like this in every phantasy star. Sega just sucks at refining their games.

This really.Sega can't balance for shit which is why the other greater evil braver is still fucking op as shit.

[Nilkemios]

When was the last time Sega got anything truly right?...

[Touka]

Infinity was pretty good actually but it had it's fair share of problems.

[Zyrusticae]

Well, I've been playing with my Force lately, got her geared up and everything, and I've learned quite a bit.

I've been using dark techs exclusively for awhile now and they have a shockingly high skill ceiling in comparison to other schools. Megid moves like a snail, Ilmegid does *nothing* if you don't have an active target when you release it, Ramegid is point-blank and very random, Gimegid is slow as fuck and hits only a single tiny point, and Namegid requires uninterrupted charging for 5 seconds.

Meanwhile, there's Rafoie. Oh, Rafoie. Why does something as effortless as Rafoie do as much damage as it does? It is truly a mystery to me. Near-instant cast times with no projectile travel time and an AoE on top of that? I'm shocked that it hasn't been nerfed to the ground, really. I'm just sitting here watching people spam this one single technique non-stop because why bother putting in effort when you're rewarded for this shit? At least Gifoie requires you use a talis or position yourself properly, and Ragrants is a completely immobile line AoE. Rafoie has nothing to justify the amount of damage it does. N-o-t-h-i-n-g!

I mean, look at fuckin' Grants in comparison - completely single target, LONG cast time, and does fuck-all for damage. How is this balanced? Who the hell looked at these two techs and thought "yeah, that's fine"? I mean this is AFTER several massive balance passes that were specifically supposed to fix cases like this, and yet here we are! Fuckin' good job there, m8s. Yep. Good fuckin' job.

I don't even mind compound techs so much anymore. At least you're completely immobile while channeling them (which makes you fodder against big bosses), and Fo/Te is still one of the squishiest class combos in the game. I feel so much safer playing Hu/Br or Gu/Ra that I feel they can be justified at least a bit on that front. Compound techs should still be doing like half as much damage as they do, but eh. I can live with it.

But Rafoie has got to go. Effort-reward is a thing, and that damn tech's effort-reward ratio is completely fucked. Really, that's the only thing that completely pisses me off when I'm playing TD. Just the ridiculous absurdity of people sitting in one place just clicking on things repeatedly 'til dead. Never repositioning. Never thinking. No timing. Just spam spam spam spam spam.

Every tech school should be like dark. Lots of skill to pull off big things. Not this no-effort bullshit.

[Zorafim]

I think I quadrupled my performance when I went from an ice mage to a fire mage. And yeah, Rafoie spam was all I did.

Sega has always had terrible balance. Hell, take the original games.
Odin was way better than the other characters, and Noah was near useless. Guns hit every enemy on screen, always did fixed damage so that defense didn't matter, and did high damage. Against weak enemies, it effectively two shotted the entire group. Against strong enemies, it did more damage than melee strikes. The final storebought gun always outdid the ultimate melee weapon you got by doing a tough dungeon.
Noah? His MP was greatly limited, so he could rarely contribute. You wanted to save his magic for tough fights, while Odin was always at his peak. And even in those tough fights, he only did 50% more damage than Odin... until he ran out of magic.

PSII? You get eight characters, and have space for four. One dies, leaving you three characters to leave behind. One has pathetic stats and can hardly equip anything, so it's not worth using her. The other two cast magic which is only effective against half the enemies in the game (one does one half, the other does the other), so half the game they're useless. And the other half, they aren't even better than your other choices.
So that effectively leaves you with four characters to use anyway. Luckily those are good.

PSIV? You have a fixed party of four characters (who, luckily, all get their moments to shine. But let's not kid ourselves, Wren's the best one.), with a fifth member you can bring along in the final dungeon. Gryz has no skills or magic, isn't much stronger than the characters you already have, and is a melee when you have three other melee. Demi is just a weaker Wren with less skills, with one healing tech that isn't that strong and runs out too quickly. Hans can do everything, badly. Your only real choices are, what's her name... Kira? And Raja. Kira's good overall, but Raja's a healer in a damage and defense heavy team He has amazing synergy. And if you're worried about his damage choices, he can refill everyone's MP, allowing them to spam techs harder.

That's just the Phantasy Star series. You can see their poor balance in other games too. Even in Sonic, Tails is basically Sonic with an added ability. Panzer Dragoon Saga, there's almost no reason to pick the defense form since the speed form allows you to evade any attack that the defense form would soak (except for the rare times you're forced to take heavy damage, which you don't know ahead of time). And because you can't spam spells, there's no reason to go spiritual form when you can just power up your lasers with the attack form... until you get the gun that makes lasers obsolete, so there's no reason not to go spiritual form since you won't be using lasers anyway.


Yeah, Sega sucks with balance. Always have, always will.

Also, yes, this is a rant. It doesn't have to be coherent. Why? Because fuck you and fuck Sega that's why.