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View Full Version : How would you feel about something like this? (UQ alterations)



Gaylar
Aug 15, 2017, 06:27 AM
So I've been thinking lately about how PSO2 still has little to no truly difficult content you need to go all out on, outside of soloing raids and competing for TA rankings, and with Hero here now and SEGA's thoughts on balance I get the funny feeling that they're going to raise the skill floor for every other class rather than lower it for Hr.

Great for pugs, but I'm willing to bet such a change (if that ends up being the case) would make the game even more braindead than it already is. One thing that always stood out to me when it came to content that was supposed to be "difficult" was Ultimates, and how disregarded they've been.

And that brings us to the topic. A big what-if scenario but its something I felt would maybe add some actual difficulty in with incentives for running it for longer than just a month or two.




Essentially the idea would be to simply give UQs something similar to Risk in AQs. With a cap of maybe +100.
Revamp all 3 of the current quests to something akin to what Amduscia is right now and maybe throw in UQ Seabed or something on top of it. Why the hell not.


Every individual point of risk affects RDR (+2% per point maybe?), every 10 risk alters the drop pool slightly, every 5 risk increases the level of enemies by 1.

Effectively, +0 would be slightly easier than what we have now, something like +25 would be similar. +50 would be the cut-off point for it being "manageable" and +100 would be a nightmare of Lv.100 enemies running rampant, but with a much better chance of good drops.

Every successful clear at or above your current Risk level would increase your overall Risk level, starting at rather large increases early on and lowering down to just +1~+2 per run towards much higher Risk stages, and lowering if you fail to clear. Effectively getting the "easy, eh drops" part out of the way faster but requiring you to really put effort in to clear the higher stages of difficulty for the good drops.


Throw in some title rewards for reaching +10, +20, ..., +50 risk. +51 and up would start being ranked rather than rewarding titles. Lower UQ Risk monthly in a fashion akin to Battle Arena, rather than completely resetting it. Managing to hit +100 would then begin to rank you based on # of consecutive clears at +100, much like BA does with Legend. Your ranking for the month would reflect the highest risk you achieved, so even if you managed to hit something like +51 but lost it and dropped back down to +50, the rankings would still rank you at +51.



Obviously you would receive greater Risk increases for clearing runs that are far over your current Risk level (IE Joining a run at +0 Risk, but the run is set to +70 or something due to another player, would reward you a substantial increase if you clear). This would taper off a bit at higher difficulties but still be a factor.


Adjust enemy spawns in a fashion that things aren't a complete clusterfuck (maybe make it an 8-player quest instead? Or 4?).


Now it's not a perfect idea and there are plenty of holes in it, but I honestly didn't really care to fill in many gaps because something like this would never happen anyway. It was just fun to brainstorm something for once. Thoughts?

Lyrise
Aug 15, 2017, 06:57 AM
While I like the idea, I think Battle Chronicles gave us an idea how such an idea would pan out. When XH runs of Battle Colosseum started to hand out the +40% boost to attack and defense to the enemies, barely anyone ran it. While yes, one could argue that people were more focused on levelling their characters, even during the boost week when Heroes were about to be released the following week, you still had to wait a little bit just to have your room fill up to 4 if at all.

Here we have a boss rush that lots of people were interested in, and the drops are actually good. People were actually running it a lot prior to the offense and defense bonuses being tacked on (still had a fair number of people running it at +20%) but as soon as it hit +40%? Runs started to dry up as well.

It's a good idea on paper. But when executed? Probably not so much.

Gaylar
Aug 15, 2017, 07:40 AM
Thinking about it, yeah. It wouldn't really be up the alley of the majority of the community given most people wouldn't want to waste booster times on failed runs and such.

Unless the quest froze boosters automatically and compensated for it as such in some way, but like you said, the difficulty would likely end up stagnating it simply due to the mindset of the playerbase as it is now.


My hope here was that you'd be able to strike a balance with a high enough difficulty to receive decent rewards for something you can run constantly, with the looming option of pushing yourself the extra mile for better chances, or competing for a top spot on rankings.

But that also opens up its own can of worms when it comes to pre-made play vs pug play.

Masu
Aug 15, 2017, 07:43 AM
I personally love this idea even if I know my actual skillzzzzzz are not high enough to require such extreme revamp (+100 risk I mean). Anything which would give back incentive to regularily run any UQ would be welcome anyway.




Here we have a boss rush that lots of people were interested in, and the drops are actually good. People were actually running it a lot prior to the offense and defense bonuses being tacked on (still had a fair number of people running it at +20%) but as soon as it hit +40%? Runs started to dry up as well.

It's a good idea on paper. But when executed? Probably not so much.

My very last LQ 1-4 run finished 10minutes before maintenance and yeah we had to wait a long time to get a 4/4 :yes: I think what actually made 40% boosted lq 1-4 (and others) not getting much attention...or made people flee it to be more accurate is the fact drops were no different than unboosted one. People need incentive...and ones they get fast (with the less efforts possible it seems xD )
While I farmed LQ 1-4 since it's implementation, reward ratio was pretty meh. Got coat edge camo yeah but lol it was the stuff I wanted the least! Otherwise just got 2 Astra legs units after all the runs I did despite using donuts, rdb, timed and tri boost when I had some to burn for it :/

Loveless62
Aug 15, 2017, 09:05 AM
It is a shame that UQs are played very little. I miss the frenzied combat that would take place there often. Unfortunately, I believe that there is very little incentive for players to spend time there.

Here are some ideas I had:


When Sega introduced UQs, they stated that they intentionally made the experience rewards smaller than they would be for normal enemies of the same level. Well, they should reverse that policy and make UQ enemies reward MORE experience than normal enemies, giving more rewards for more effort.
The UQs have 13* drops, but as we have already seen play out, almost all 13* drops are doomed to become obsolete. UQs should give increased amounts of rewards that don't go obsolete, like meseta or weapons that you can cube (straight Ex-cube drops would also work).
Another incentive could be affixes that are unique to UQs (besides the soul affixes they already have), maybe like flicts or factors. They could also add another complex affix like Astral Soul or Ether Factor that would require affixes from UQ.
Here's an idea that is somewhat in line with the OP's ideas: add new AQs that take place in UQ zones. Then tune them more for 4-player parties.

isCasted
Aug 15, 2017, 10:24 AM
I haven't read too hard into it, but on a first glance your idea sounds pretty reasonable.

I personally think there have been way too many of these "points" systems, each working differently and requiring different approaches. It's just tiring, because each one has its own annoyances, pitfalls and plain bullshit. There needs to be a unified system for special types of quests.

But first and foremost I want some regular quests where I just go and kill shit in these areas, without worrying that RNG can screw me up and where I can get decent rewards while being low-manned.


While I like the idea, I think Battle Chronicles gave us an idea how such an idea would pan out. When XH runs of Battle Colosseum started to hand out the +40% boost to attack and defense to the enemies, barely anyone ran it. While yes, one could argue that people were more focused on levelling their characters, even during the boost week when Heroes were about to be released the following week, you still had to wait a little bit just to have your room fill up to 4 if at all.

You had to be organized to take on the challenge. You can get a party of friends or team members, discuss strats and whatnot. It's fun that way. Having a Techer in your party pretty much trivialized a lot of annoying parts.