Buster Quest Discussion: "We Need A New Gameplay Mode", SEGA Said

Welcome to Buster Quests, which are basically EQs, but not EQs!

Buster Quests are the "revolutionary" new gameplay mode for Episode 5! In Buster Quests, players must defend their Buster Towers from enemy attacks, then when the time is right, strike back with the powerful Buster Pile (that definitely wasn't stolen from another Phantasy Star game that has "Busters" and "Piles") and face down the demon boss.

Matching

Buster Quests will be sorted into three gameplay modes:

• Main Match: Standard Buster Quest. Main Match has a limit as to how many times it can be played per day; this limit resets at 5 AM JST. In Main Match, player stats are capped according to your Grade. Winning a Main Match will increase your Buster Points, while losing will decrease your Buster Points.
• Main Match Advanced: Standard Buster Quest for Grade 3+. Shares a play limit with Main Match. Unlike Main Match, stats aren't capped in Advanced. Requires 3000 Buster Points to participate. Requires 80/80 or Hero 80 to play. Advanced has the same drop pool as Main Match, but has a higher rate of dropping good loot. Winning an Advanced Match will not increase BP, but losing will decrease BP.
• Free Match: Buster Quest with unlimited play time. Playing Free Match will restore some up to 3 play points to Main Match and Main Match Advanced. Winning a Free Match will not raise your BP, but losing will decrease BP.

In addition, Buster Quests will support Cross-Block Matching. However, the Expert match option will not function for Free Match.


Grade System

Unlike regular Quests, Buster Quests run on the Grade System. There are three levels of Grade; Grade determines enemy level, enemy spawns, and player stats, all of which scale to the Grade Level. Grade 3 is identical to XH difficulty.

• Grade 1: Enemies are Lv. 20. Players whose stats are higher than the limit have their stats capped accordingly.
• Grade 2: Enemies are Lv. 50. Players whose stats are higher than the limit have their stats capped accordingly.
• Grade 3: Enemies are Lv. 75. No upper limit on stats.
• Grade 3+: Main Match Advanced. Enemies are Lv. 80. No upper limit on stats.

Towers

At the start of a Buster Quest, each player is assigned to a Buster Tower which they must protect. Unlike a Mining Base, Buster Towers are armed with several types of defense weapons. You can select one of four types of Defense Weapon loadouts at the start of the Quest:

• Balance
• Defense
• Attack
• Special

Each type of loadout contains a variety of weapons, which include armaments such as:

• Photon Punisher: Obliterate your foes with a satellite cannon!
• Telepipe Cannon: Deploy Telepipes from your Tower.
• Barriers: Various types of Barriers are available; Buster Towers can use the Freeze Barrier as well, and new Barrier types are included.
• Turrets: Deploy ranged armaments such as Shotguns and Gatling Guns for some last minute defense
• And More!

Phases

Buster Quests are split into five Phases.

• Defense Phase: Protect your Buster Towers while collecting Mana scattered on the field. Mana can be consumed to power your Defense Weapons and restore HP to your Buster Towers.
• Buster Phase: Consume your Mana reserves to summon the Buster Pile, a giant spear that can be used to destroy the Demonic Barriers protecting the boss. You'll need to protect your Buster Pile while it's charging up; if it's destroyed, you must return to Defense Phase and collect more Mana to summon another Buster Pile.
• Attack Phase: Engage the Demonic Castle in direct combat. Defeating it in this phase will transition to the Final Defense Phase.
• Final Defense: Stay alive while surviving the onslaught of vicious attacks. If you can make it, the party will transition to the Final Attack Phase.
• Final Attack: Destroy the Demonic Castle within the time limit to clear the Buster Quest. If you can make it this far, you can still receive clear rewards even if you fail. However, better rewards are dispensed for clearing, and the higher your Clear Rank, the better the drops.

EDIT: Now updated with a video trailer!
https://youtu.be/_ZRPlUq4Ud0

So help me Jesus, if they implement cross-block matching on the main ship and only do it for these Buster Quests and not for EQs...

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Originally Posted by Mattykins

So help me Jesus, if they implement cross-block matching on the main ship and only do it for these Buster Quests and not for EQs...

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I thought the EP5 trailer showed off cross-block matching for Deus?

Can you really steal ideas from yourself?

No, that's called recycling.

Anyway I doubt we will ever see EQ block matching. At the moment the sole purpose of the premium set that probably is an important source of revenue for Sega is getting into blocks that are full for free players in order to get a better EQ party. If cross block matching would be used, there was no point to use it anymore.

Then, wouldn't be the first time Sega did something in PSO2 that was bad for business, though it probably would be the first time they'd do something that's bad for business but also good for players.

Cross block EQ matching (I pray this and buster quests distinguish between general XH and expert blocks) would hugely improve the game because it's no longer a huge rush to get into a good block and no more a big problem if you are a bit late. Usually if you start late you see a lot of different low number mpas on the ship who could already start doing the eq if they weren't separated by block. Ad changing block can take up to 2 minutes with lag so it's also a huge problem by itself, not to mention that if you join a party on another block and the mpa changes you don't join the quest, even if the mpa still has space for you once you arrive in the new block.

Also, this would be a disaster if shared vita blocks would be added and wouldn't have their own separate pool. I assume that's inevitable because they are shared with vita but it's not guaranteed with sega's track record of terribad coding and stupid decisions. This would cause problems in a number of quests and for some reason ship 2 vita players are utter crap. Consistently I get the worst runs ever there and not even when I got into a B1 mpa before expert blocks were introduced.

Then again, maybe Sega wants to transition away from premium sets cause they aren't selling well anyway and so we won't get new gear passes either, but Sega will just extend current profit generating features or add new ones.
I really hope this is the case.
While expected, I assume jps will be annoyed and might complain if we need passes again to trade 13* weapons and 12* units.

they said cross block matching will be able to still restrict your matches to expert blocks. also yeah the ep5 reveal trailer explicitly showed cross-block matching working for deus too.

anyway, for the last few months I was saying to myself that I wished that EQs did exactly this; always up and repeatable but with a cap on quest-clears for getting the good drops, but with some form of incentive to help out people who haven't reached their limit. The main/free system sounds close enough though. The existing EQ triggers would be the only outlier, but I guess they could be recycled to just refresh your personal clear-limit instead. Baby step for now I suppose. Though I do hope we see some kind of revisal to the current EQ setup, we just got too many to care about right now. Granted; Deus, Mother, and Yamato are the ones on top, but even that feels like too much between wanting file progress, fuse progress, and collecting factors to try to make Factor Catalysts, the schedule is getting really crowded! Onion, Eldser, Demise, and VR all got their own incentives to run, but even those feel like they are just getting in the way more than not. Wind and Rain is in between those groups in my opnion but now I am getting off track, this thread's about Busted Quests not Ennui Quests.

This sounds pretty interesting, the more I hear the more I kinda like it, but really I will need to play it for myself a bit to see if it really manages to work

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Originally Posted by Zorak000

they said cross block matching will be able to still restrict your matches to expert blocks. also yeah the ep5 reveal trailer explicitly showed cross-block matching working for deus too.

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It's actually nice feature , i hope they add more expert blocks, because in prime time for JP they always full.

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Originally Posted by LancerFate

It's actually nice feature , i hope they add more expert blocks, because in prime time for JP they always full.

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I've never seen it fully fills up during Japan prime time on ship 2.

I think I'll wait and see how the quest pans out... I find the TDs kind of irritating to run generally speaking (at least in non team groups) so I hope its different enough from those eqs.

Nononononononononononononononono! I dun wanna play with those XH block peasants! They always ruinning my MPA! Let the weak be with the weak!