now that the beta is almost over...general thoughts

[galaxy]

Hey guys, i just wanted to hear everyone's response to the beta now that its just about done.

part of me is really hopeful that far more will be opened in the actual release than was available in the beta, to re-instill that sparkle of playing a new game (and when i started the beta). It was nice to have gone through and realized my mistakes, so that i wont make them again during release, but im afraid that i will have already seen a lot of what is to be seen simply from a demo.

also, the ONE thing that im having trouble with the game is that the online mode doesn't seem quite cohesive. you can go pretty much wherever, whenever you want, and the only thing changing with level is the level of the mobs. what i liked about PSO was that you couldnt access the ruins until you got through all the other levels, but here, access doesn't seem restricted. I want there to be higher lvl areas that you only see past a certain point, not right from or near the start. also, while there are a bunch of little goals to complete with your character (gain meseta, gain levels, lvl up PA's), there does not seem to be any dynamic or different missions to spice up the play. the missions in PSO, even in their self-containment, still had a story to drive them, and missions often had more enemies, or mini little puzzles and such. while i don't mind the new setup, things just seem very...not repetitive, but flat. don't get me wrong, the game itself is LOADS of fun, but im hoping for some variation in the mission setup and such when the actual game is released. hopefully online story missions will spice this up.

[watashiwa]

22 more minutes left of the Beta!!

[SpishackCola]

They left the cohesion and such for offline. At least until the online story missions come out later.

[watashiwa]

12 more minutes!

[watashiwa]

-8 minutes!! (Looks like they're running late with the shut down ToT)

[Blenjar]

zzz

[Flamingo99]

I was generally pleased with it. One thing I hope they can change is the time it takes for the damage to register on enemies. I'd find myself hitting an enemy and a second later, which although the delay sounds insignificant, it does make the game feel less responsive and slower. The lag was pretty bad at times too. Today I was in a group of 6 and they where jumping everywhere. These things didn't ruin the game for me, but I really do hope they can fix them. And one more thing (I'm not 360 bashing) but I did experience some 360 slowdown while i was with those 6 people. It wasn't really anything ridiculous nor unplayable (I wouldn't even worry about it), but it definately was slowdown.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Flamingo99 on 2006-10-21 00:18 ]</font>

[Ezekiel06]

I was very pleased with it. I finally got a chance to fight a boss (the dragon). It was cool.

[NeuroNomad]

My general thoughts on beta..... I wish they had done a PC beta so I could have actually listed some thoughts. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wink.gif

[HAYABUSA-FMW-]

On 2006-10-20 23:37, watashiwa wrote:
22 more minutes left of the Beta!!


The lobbies were like that. Crazy kids.


-8 minutes!! (Looks like they're running late with the shut down ToT)

-68 minutes now!

-
I've got a better understanding of spending my scarce funds at the start of the game on the things I have a preference for now.

I've got my first bunch of hours planned out a bit.

Glad to have been able to play the beta and learn some basic ins and outs of the game. And run around looking at other players' inventories to see what level they were compared to what junk they spent their money on. Hehe. 8000 meseta back wings instead of a good stable of weaponry eh Mr. Uglybot?!

[Kent]

Well, I got in enough time to test out the various weapons for Hunter, Ranger, and Force, to see how well to my liking they worked.

When I first saw that they changed Partisans to Spears, thus changing them from the Hunter uberweapon of choice to something everyone can use pretty well, I was a little concerned at first. But now, of course, they're really great weapons, still. Knuckles are a little disappointing, so I can pretty much not go with either buying those, or spending money on their skills.

I really like using longbows as my Force, too. Despite the low ATP of a Newman Force, I happened to do some pretty mean damage with that thing - Especially with Reisei-sou on enemies weak to ice (19% elemental damage, at level 4, I believe), which there were more ice-weak enemies in the beta, than there were of any other element, including both bosses.

I really like the Saber PA - much moreso than the Dagger PA, which disappoints me in that Wartecher gets S-rank in Dagger, but not Saber. Rising Strike is very, very handy for managing enemies, because it knocks them into the air, making them land in a knockdown state (or, at 11+, knocks them away from you as well). Enemy management like this, is so useful to me, that it feels almost essential to a part operating at maximum efficiency. Not only that, but the second part of the combo (especially) will do a lot of damage, to up to two targets... Seemingly twice as much ATP goes into the second part of the combo, than does the first.

I'm really addicted to one-handed weapons, for some reason. On my Force character, I used mainly wands, because it allowed me to have a handgun in the other hand, which is much, much easier to both use and aim. Not only that, but you can have two weapons charging at once - if your handgun's empty, melee/cast with the other weapon while it charges, and vice versa. Not to mention, I don't have to switch weapons to keep doing damage while closing the distance to the enemy, after a Rising Strike combo. It'll be interesting to see how well Cards work with this.

I didn't really get to trying out synthesis. I tried to try it out, but either I was doing something wrong, or the weapon boards would only accept a very specific combination of photons - all having "???" marked for the photon, which I assumed was a variable, meaning, you could use any element photon in that spot, as long as you had enough. Apparently, that's not it (though I didn't ask anyone, just looked through the synthesis tips and such).

Overall, I'm rather impressed with how well they did the balance of the game. Forces are definitely powerful characters now, even if just using techniques - As I'm sure most of us know, their elemental damage drifted into the "pitiful to mediocre" range, at some points in PSO. Now, they're elemental damage powerhouses. The reasoning behind limiting Ra- techniques to only affecting three targets kind of baffles me, though. Especially since enemies like to come in groups of four... The exclusion of the abilities for Hunters and Rangers to use techniques was a little disconcerting at first, but now after seeing how everything plays out in the real game setting, I'm not too worried about it. People exclaiming "OH THANK GOD, A FORCE" when I enter a game, and "THANK YOU!!" (over voice chat, no less) every time I healed and removed status effects, certainly made me feel welcome.

Rangers are better-balanced now, too. Now that they have a reason to exist in the game, they're actually very handy to have around - freezing and shocking enemies is really handy to a party. Especially when you do your job well, and fire at enemies about to attack party members, thus making the enemy flinch. Definitely nice to have around.

Everyone and their grandmother is has or actively played a Hunter in the beta. They're like the zerg - just freaking everywhere. Of course, I can't blame them - playing as a Hunter is probably the most fun I've had during the beta. Just how the game is much more intuitive in how everything works together, including melee combat, makes Hunters that much more fun, and effective, to play as. It's also really nice to be able to still use a weapon, when its PP pool has run dry. Not to mention, it's significantly less expensive to play than the other two classes are, unless you count needing better armor into that...

[Kers]

I enjoyed it as much as I was hyped about it! I'm very happy http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif

[NeuroNomad]

Thanks Kent for the nice reply in regards to your thoughts. Very informative.

[HAYABUSA-FMW-]

On 2006-10-21 02:00, Kent wrote:
Knuckles are a little disappointing, so I can pretty much not go with either buying those, or spending money on their skills.


I agree with most of your points but actually found the Knuckle series to be the best suited for melee outside of my saber photon art (after lv 10 was it for the extra attacks?), at least for most normal enemies. They're not soo hot with bosses.

I ended up with a Brass Knuckle board that I used to make both Dark series(great for the yellow Light based jumping guys in the Overlord Relics ruins stage) and Light series knuckles(for the Linear line area Dark enemies). The photons in boards with a ??? mark can be any type, but the non standard/elemental series photons bring down the success % rate of the synthesis. The El and Im photons were they? I didn't mess with trying that too much outside of one or two failed synthesis tries.

The knuckle combo starts looking bad early on, but I eventually learned to just use the first 3 hits of the combo then move, or tack on the (one button press)3 hit photon art afterwards when I had an opening in enemy attacks or enemies were lined up nicely to hit more than one in a row. Enemy attacks that didn't knock me back or down didn't interrupt the photon art which was nice.

I was doing 150-200 or so damage for every few seconds for one 3 hit combo rather than just a 70-90 one hit by a saber in nearly the same amount of time. Tack on the photon art for the 1 1/4 damage or so extra, and things went down fast.

I'm not trying to denounce you or anything, but maybe you might want to give it another try. Either way its no skin off my back. Glad you enjoyed it as well.

[Kent]

Well, it's not that they were bad, just that they weren't as good as I was expecting them to be, for a two-handed weapon. I was using the B-rank Spear, Saber, and Knuckle weapons from GRM for comparing them. A full combo from the knuckles (not including PA), did just slightly less damage than the Saber combo. With PAs, the two steps of Rising Strike at 11+, do quite a bit of damage, just the two steps of Bogga Danga do slightly less (just as with the normal combo), and don't move the enemy any, until the last hit of the second step of the combo, making it less useful for management, as well as damage (second step is kind of slow, too).

Don't get me wrong, though. They're good weapons, and if I didn't have a Saber with me, I'd most likely go with Knuckles for handling a single target, just... I always have my Saber on me (not to mention, the Spear is pretty handy against both single enemies, and groups).

[Typhoeus]

Wait, you could buy the back wings for 8000 meseta in the Beta....where?

Pssst, Hayabusa, this was probably directed at you. <.<

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Typhoeus on 2006-10-21 03:21 ]</font>