Full open world or RPG-on-rails like FF13?

[Zelendria_Ru]

I'm an ex-FFXI addict and would love to see a more open-world experience, but it would have to be balanced with instanced fields such as Guild-Wars when "zoning" brings you to a field where you and your party have exclusive rights...

No one likes to get KS'ed on rare monsters, and with PSO that's a pretty important part. Map waypoints for instant travel would be nice, and would solve the annoyance of the lobbies that in my opinion plagued PSU's game flow.

[Benzu]

I think it would be for the best if Phantasy Star Online 2 took the FinalFantasyXII approach:

You are able to form a "party" and you still start from a center city. You don't have to speak to some woman on the counter, rather, you just run to a teleporter and do it yourself. Counterladies should be for missions only, not free-roam. When you go to the teleporter, you pick what area you'd like to access (Swamp, Desert, Grasslands, etc.). You would be transported to that area, but the catch is this: IT IS HUGE. But from you'd start there would be many options.. Take for instance you are in the Desert. You could wander aimlessly until you found a path or an underground cave. From that point you would follow the path and to its end: A boss. In essence, imagine a bigger playing field than the original PSO, and just expand it to fit for limitless possibilities of route, leading to one of a handful of bosses to finale the thing.

I also think that up to 16 people could occupy a zone, but only 4 to a party. When you are in a party, you cannot venture too far from the party leader, who determines the route, if you stray too far away, you teleport by his side. Multiple parties could all come and join to make the hunting easier, or to take on one of the much more powerful areas in the form of a raid, which would mean an uber tough spot that would require at least 8 players to ravage through and take on the boss.

This form of online play would allow a tight-knit group of friends to enjoy playing together, but interaction for more players to further show off your rare items, power, MAG, etc. and to take on bigger and badder areas and missions. It could still follow the typical PSO formula, just, with more options than alternate spawns. Who's with me??

[Jinketsu]

That sounds almost exactly like FFXIV, which has done terribly.

[Perfect Troll]

I think I'd like an open world with various places to go. There would be monsters here and there, but there there would be Instance-based dungeons (Forest, Caves, Mines, Ruins.) that you can travel to to do various missions available there like a mission counter. The one thing about PSO and PSU I didn't like was that you just teleported to where you needed to go. Click Ruins, there you were. I think actually traveling across different areas and surviving to get to dungeons would seem more fun then just loading up a mission from a menu and going. It adds more adventure and depth to the setting.

[TheBlackMage]

Open world.

Instanced dungeons with no cooldown.

Final Destination.

[Kent]

That sounds almost exactly like FFXIV, which has done terribly.

What's funny is that it sounds nothing at all like Final Fantasy XIV. More like Guild Wars, except you're leashed to your party leader and people outside of your party can inhabit the same zone.

[Skye-Fox713]

Choice #1 for me, maybe for the first 30 min. to an hour you would have your hand held to learn the basics of the game, but from there its open world and up to you.

[Akaimizu]

I would agree. FFXII, while people compared it to FFXI, felt a lot more like Guild Wars as a single player game. Quite a bit of it was because the instanced rolling landmass was filled with monsters for which you did not have to be in contention for with other parties. You had all those monsters to yourselves without having to wait for awful long respawns.

However the lobbies will be filled with a number of folks. Except these would look a bit more like towns. I could imagine some of these to almost look like 3D representations of actual cities seen in games like Phantasy Star 1-3. They could keep it simple by pulling city ideas from Phantasy Star 1 and 2. (I think there's some software for which I could make an easy mockup of such an approach)

[Tetsaru]

The lobby system in PSU was quite pointless, imo. It tried to emulate being able to "explore" different areas, but only served as a mission counter and NPC shop where you could run around and say, "ooh, that looks cool/pretty" the first 5 minutes. There was hardly any point in using it to invite party members, seeing how you could already do that with Partner Cards, and people could join you mid-mission. Other than that, they basically just served as chat rooms where people could just spam random nonsense during events...

I would personally love to see a large overworld system in PSO2 with instanced dungeons, cities, and other areas, seeing how there would possibly be multiple planets that you could actually EXPLORE, and not consist of one fucking town, but any good game that implements this MUST have a teleportation system that is easy to use and can be accessed at any time. Something like in Fallout 3, where after you discover a certain area, you can simply warp to it at any time when you're outside, instead of having to retrace your steps halfway across the globe every time. Vehicles and mounts could also be implemented for quick "exploration" travel. You could have a huge map to roam around freely in, but upon finding a dungeon or similar area of some sort, it would act just like an area from PSO, like "Ruins 1," and any party members with you at the time would help you out. Quests would NOT be taken up at a counter (unless its an area like the Hunters' Guild or something specifically designed for that), but would have to be accepted from NPC's that you would have to meet through exploration. And at any time, if you wanted, you could use something like a Telepipe to warp out of the area you're in, and go back to your own living quarters area like in PSU, or possibly to another major area. And if you didn't want to go dungeon-crawling, you could roam around the overworld area and fight random monsters, complete other quests, level up, find items, etc.

[GCoffee]

Pioneer 2 should be the spawning point of everyone once logging on. So instead of a lobby, you got a huge city to explore, with all the players being in it.
(There could be multiple 'city universes'.)
In this city all community-based actions take place, like a casino to name one.
Of course there are also mere shops.

Once you met up with your friends and formed a party, the team leader selects the mission at one of the numerous guild counters (that are all the same) and then can choose to get warped into an area exclusive to the formed team, unlike the city they were in before. This so called 'rest and shop area' also reflects the area of the mission itself, and offers shops and everything that would make a hunter happy.
Once every team member warped into this area, the main mission can begin via a warp that now is activated, PSO style.
Using a telepipe in the mission area will warp yourself to the 'rest and shop area', instead of the main city.
After the mission ended you get warped to the 'rest and shop area' and the team is free to warp back to the main city again, while the team leader can already select a whole other mission, and so a whole other area to be in if he wants to and of course he can also warp back to the main city.