Plus, I like the idea of having alt accounts and not having to pay a monthly fee for all of them.
Or some of my old old old old account I've left to rot (like my 1st 1st PSO2 account I left to die years ago), I can go back to it if I ever wanted to.. no problem without paying a fee.
This is another thing I like for my "PSO" games. The ability to solo things. Some of the stuff takes longer than playing with others.. like PSO Ultimate or PSO2 Ultimate and PSU S3 and other crap but yeah... still doable.
I've seen many other games that's not in the PS series where when you die you're penalized whether it's in drops or exp or losing exp or something. I rather let's say die in a mission I need to S/A rank and either hope someone is around or I just go back to ship and try again.
TAs and XQs are the only things I can think of that if you die and no one around that you're fucked... and even then only in XQ as you lose the ticket... which you can get back with excubes which isn't hard to get either as you can get those in abundance in EQs or simply finding 10+* weps you don't want/need and recycling them.
You can keep a room up almost constantly if you once again have cubes which is easy to get as I mentioned above. There's a 3 day room pass in the excube shop that cost only like 3 cubes I think (not near the shop to confirm) which is... really not hard.
Mag: Weren't you only getting one mag per character on PSO too? I mean yeah you could've made a new character and take that mag off them, but still you had one mag per char.
Mags aren't necessary either if you like a specific class. Like while I play all class
with one character, then yeah I'll have 3 mags on her, but I personally like/main range class as I've been a "RA" since PSO1 so my 1st mag was the range mag.
Sega has now given everyong 3 free character slots.. and you know what that mean. If means, that if you want to play all 3 class styles, you can make 1 Strike, 1 Range, and 1 Tech.
Extra characters: Like I said, you got 3 free ones you can make. More is good, but don't forget that PSO and PSU mainly you only had 4 (or 8 on a certain server of PSU) so you're just off by one. One day I'm sure they would make a 4th free but still...
Skilltrees: Once again the same as the mag situation. Not needed and you can have 3 free characters.
Back to my main as an example before she got 3 mags... I've been range most of my Phantasy life so I had range trees. I did later went like let's say Ra/Gu and then Gu/Hu. Being Gu/Hu, I won't have a hunter main tree because I wouldn't main hunter so I would have a skill tree to use it as a sub. If I want to main hunter, I would have another character in those free 3 slots to make the main hunter tree.
While I've been playing for a while, I only have one character that has more than one tree on her. My main got 2 braver trees (one for bow and one for katana), and other than that I don't have more than one tree. This yes mean that while she plays all clases, she uses her main hunter tree when I play Gu/Hu now. It's not perfect and not the "OMG BEST!" it can be, but it's manageable and not crippling to the point that I notice. I only can notice if I go on one of my other characters who would always ONLY be range so she only has a hunter sub tree. She's stronger than my main but my main isn't having trouble pulling her weight or soloing many high level things in the game.
The only feature PSU had that's behind premium in PSO2 is the shop and trading.
And trading is somewhat very shitty anyway. You could not trade anything above 9* so... what's really the point of it? The only benefit in trading in this game is trading meseta which you can transfer between each other through shop.
Which brings me to shop which yes it's nice to have, but you can get one if you're one of the golden prophets of Falz and luckily get one through the FUN scratch. Not as viable as with AC, but it's still possible to get without paying a single dime.
I'll let you in on a little secret that no one knows about me... okay maybe a lot know about me.
I don't AC scratch. I only AC scratched once... and that was in the beta to get that rappy suit and that was the AC Sega gave us to mess around with in the beta.
I have never AC scratched and will NEVER AC scratch. I see it as a gamble and I hate gambling to see if I maybe get something I fucking want.
So... where do I get my outfits and accesories and such?
Player shops.
Yup, I use money I get from wherever (like TA and XQ) and buy my shit right from people.
Also you said you would like to look like a HUcast, you do know... Sega every so often do a campaign thing where you don't have to spend a dime and get free Ragol Memories which you use to get PSO styled things, right?
They don't always do it, but it's still there.
You also make 500k sound like a lot. I used to say the same when I 1st started PSO2. I would praise myself when I get 2mil. You do know you can get 500k almost a day from just doing some of the daily orders? If you have 3 free characters and do those same orders on all 3 and if they gave EXACTLY 500k then you make 1.5mil right there? The only thing I can see you can complain about would be lobby actions and certain ugly looking hair (OPINION! OPINION! MY OPINION!) for like 20+mil or 30+mil which I say isn't needed at all (okay maybe the hair if you want it).
And if we put TA and XQ in the mix you can do weekly per character (that mean you can do 3 TA/XQs a week if you want to) they can give around 2.5mil per set... that's 7.5mil a week you can get on those 3 characters while excluding the daily orders which you can maybe make like 12 to 15mil (or more) a week from doing those things.
I don't see it being more costly than a paid subscription honestly. People can go months without spending AC again (and I know a lot that do that). They get AC for premium of one month and do all they got to do they've been stocking and storing until that day, get a shit ton done, and then when premium expire they're set for a good long time until they need to do so again.
Not bringing up the AC Scratch talk again.
"I still think the ACScratch/GoldScratch gambling bit sucks balls though."
I agree, and that's why I never scratched (unless I got an itch on my body HAHAHAHAHAHAHA shitty joke... shut up).
You know the whole "ship" thing of PSO and PSU are what are considered blocks in this game right?
If you had everyone from every ship of PSO2 in one gigantic ship, there would be stability problems. Sega isn't the 1st to do this so I wouldn't complain here. I even saw from a few of those nexon games I tried in the past too having things to lock/log onto and unable to change unless you make another character.
As for the whole moving all over the many ships, I'm kind of fine without having to move over randomly like that as I can see that causing problems as I'm sure all of those ships are on their own servers/drives which can get very messy.
OH I remembered another game like that... FFXI.