Article: Expert Mode and Online Gameplay News
In today's interview on the official PSU blog, the developers went over some details about the battle system. Probably the most exciting thing to come out of this interview was some new information about Expert Mode. According to the screenshots, you will be able to choose from a number of advanced jobs. These advanced job combinations will provide you with unique combinations of stat boosts and weapon-handling capabilities. If you decided to take your class to its extreme, you will be able to handle S-Rank weapons in most of the categories that are associated with a specific class. For example, a character that completely specializes in the Hunter category will probably be able to handle all S-Rank melee equipment. However, you will still be free to change your Advanced Job at any time by visiting the appropriate counter on the Guardian Colony. Please keep in mind that in addition to having stat requirements, weapons also have grade requirements. If you want to use a S-Rank Sword and your character only has an A-Rank proficiency with his/her current job, you will be unable to use it.
In other recent developer interviews, they talked about the online gaming experience. One of the biggest changes from PSO will be the communcations system. It has been designed to be more realistic. For example, if you far away from someone, their text bubble will be small. If a large group of people say the same thing, a massive text bubble will appear instead of the screen being flooded with smaller ones. In addition, people will be able to use team chat and only the people in your team will be able to read what you type. This was implemented to replace using simple mail for private conversations.
Finally, some new PSU T-Shirts were highlighted. One of these t-shirts features a herd of Koltova and Karam from the Green Green Farms (Karam helps to raise Koltova). Unfortunately, these shirts are currently not for sale. If you would like to see them produced, please contact SegaDirect.
Credit goes to Velocity_7 for spotting the Expert Mode news update and EspioKaos for translating and summarizing the rest. You can discuss this update in our Phantasy Star Universe forum.
