Letter has been sent to SonicTeam,Ltd.

[Jkid]

After many months of preperation,and considering I've finally sent my letter to SonicTeam. Let's see if Sonic Team does really listen to their customers...

[IceBlink]

For some odd reason, it would help if you actually made a copy of your letter and pasted it in with your post, hmm? o_O

[Dime]

So, it took you months to send a single letter?

Were you hittin the ganja pipe all this time or just lazy?

Also, did you get your S/N after Jason Kidd?

[Getintothegame]

Pfft... I send them emails weekly... I've gotten a reply for all of them.

Here's the secret to have them listen to you:
- Be polite, say please, thank you etc.
- Use correct punctuation
- Usually say, 'You may have gotten this before, but please listen...'
- NEVER CUSS
- NEVER complain about FSOD, FSOD can't be fixed. FSOD-X can...

Yeah, post your message here. We wanna see!

[Jkid]

My name is [Name Redacted], an American Veteran Dreamcast PSO Hunter (Both ver.1 and ver.2). And I’ve enjoyed your games well and they should be commended on their success. But there are concerns as myself, and the American PSO community should be known.
Customer Discrimination:
Even though your games have great success in Japan, in other countries; even in my country have success but the most important point is this: Sonic Team (Your Development Team), but it’s not your fault however, your ‘team’ excluding you have a lack of concern about American players. Think about it, The Japanese PSO servers were patched of all cheat codes by the time PSO Ver.2 was released in America. When the US (United States) version of PSO Ver.2 finally arrived to American shores, they took several weeks to apply the same patches to the US servers. And before then to my knowledge whenever new cheat codes were released (by the way of “Action Replay” or “Code Breaker”) the Japanese servers we’re given a server downtime period while the patches were applied immediately, the American severs have to wait until they get around to it. And by that time comes it would already be too late.
And the Quests, sure the GC version has gotten better, but during the Dreamcast days (When PSO Ver.1 was here in the US before Ver.2) the Japanese gotten every quest while only a one of the Download Quests we’re released in the US: “Letter from Lionel”. After a few weeks, Sonic Team decided to release another Download Quest to the US: Soul of a Blacksmith”. Sure they thought that things were getting better, wrong. For some shocking reason Sonic Team removed the three rare weapons that were supposed to be there as the same ones in the Japanese version but instead we get Level 4 (red) weapons.
Naka-san, the fact of your development group would deliberately remove the weapons from the American version of PSO (and PSO Ver.2) is simply mind-boggling.
No tech support:
When the US version of PSO and PSO Ver.2 has released in America there was no support website about the game, while the Japanese version got a full support website with the versions of PSO being supported (DC, PC, GC, and Xbox versions). While we get, well nothing. Except recently a FAQ about Ver.2, that’s all.
Over-charged:
Another concern is that were paying twice the money the Japanese players are paying for their “Hunters License”. The Japanese pay 400 yen (4 US Dollars) per month and 900 yen (9 US Dollars) every three months. We Americans players have to pay as twice as much as the Japanese pay for their charge if they pay for the monthly payment plan for their “Hunters license”. To tell you the truth, it’s like we’re being over charged twice as a monthly fee in Japan.
In conclusion to quote on the document a fellow player wrote, “…On the surface, it does not look good, not at all.” And your Team [Sonic Team] should recognize the bad PR (Press Relations) these concerns gives them. As a customer and a fan of the Phantasy Star Online Series: It’s time as the head of the ‘Team’ is to “…. either act to correct the discrimination or at the very least, offer an explanation for it.”
This game was your dream, you wanted every gamer in the world to enjoy it, no matter what country where they were born. But with the lack of technical support available in America and Europe. Add to that with complaints in the game for PSO customers, it’s a shame.
And this the first time that I’ve written a letter to an international country. But it won’t be the last.

P.S. This document is English only. Even though I’m learning Japanese, my skills are not enough to write a letter in Japanese. Also the concerns also apply to the European PSO community, too.

For some reason I can't copy and paste the rest of the letter.

And about the e-mails,I've tried to send them e-mails two years ago, and even with those tips,they didn't reply to them.

[Jkid]

So I've decided after a while to write a snail-mail letter to them.
And directly to Yuji Naka.But when I used the same tips in my e-mails,and you also did that too.Your letters work but mines didn't,why?

[Getintothegame]

The Japanese pay 400 yen (4 US Dollars) per month and 900 yen (9 US Dollars) every three months.
...Version 1 was free for us and they had to pay....

Anyhoo, is this concerning v.2? Did they even have support for v.2?

I have contacted them only about ep.1 and 2. The DC's support sucked.

[Jkid]

The charges had to do with PSO Episode I&II,the North American version. We were supposed to pay $4 per month instead we're being overcharged twice in the US ($9 in the NA version).

If sommeone in SOA noticed,we were supposed to pay $8.99 for a three month subcription,but since SOA doesn't care,we're being overcharged for the same amount of money Japanese players pay for a three month subscription.

In short
Japanese=$4 per month
$9 per three months
NA=======$9 per month
and to make matters worse if we had to pay nine dollars,we should get three months wroth of gameplay.If anyone in SOA were smart,we should had payed $4 per month if they only planned for the month sub fee,NOT $9!

[Gray4]

If your writing it directly to Yuji Naka, i hope your Japanese is good.

[Spellbinder]

Maybe the economy of Japan might have something to do with their pricing. *scratches head* The worth of American currency is subject to change from country to country ya know. http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime2.gif



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Spellbinder on 2003-05-14 22:05 ]</font>

[rena-ko]

talk about discrimination... hm... i'd just want a snap shot upload option ingame... its easy... just a link on their hunters licence page... -_-;

and i hoped the english minhiro-page would have changed this...

...
its no use to adress naka-san directly, since i dont think he'd take time to read an letter written in english. that means if it would ever reach his hands...
but well, good luck. ^_^

[Jkid]

On 2003-05-14 19:53, Gray4 wrote:
If your writing it directly to Yuji Naka, i hope your Japanese is good.



I also stated that I'm currently learning Japanese in school,but my skills in the language is not enough to write a letter in Japanese.

[MisoSoup]

Yes, accuse him of discrimination. That will get the ball rolling. When he reads it he'll probably think a 13 year-old wrote it, which probably isn't too far off.

[Jkid]

I'm not accusing hin of discrimination,I'm just saying that he needs to tell us a good explaination SonicTeam had little care for North American customers in the DC days.

[MisoSoup]

You should really look into replacing your question marks with apostrophes. I would also suggest perfecting English as your first language before you try tackling Japanese.

[LamerPanda]

" might show up as a question mark in the program he's using, or on the board.

Is it even possible to perfect English? It's one of the most confusing languages. His letter's legible.

[Jkid]

It's not that,everytime I copy and paste from Microsoft Word,the words just come like that. It's not from the original,I swear.

[dj_dan]

You say you are learning Japanese?

Take that letter into your teacher/professor and politely beg them to take it home and hand-write a copy in Japanese for you.

Though,whether in Japanese or English, this letter will have little impact. Still, good luck.

[Jkid]

Too late,the letter has already been sent.