Photon Arts: This Game's Only Weakness

[Silver_Wyrm]

I vastly prefer finding PA's to leveling them. Leveling them always made me feel like I had to spam PA's and focus only on certain ones. Some pa's are very situational but they would be drastically lower level as a result and not worth using even in those situations. Also when switching types it made it painful when your type rank was low as well as your pa's very poor so you had to go spam them on weak enemies or something while ignoring the majority of them as it was so much work to try and keep them all up. The chain system would also hamper the spamming nature of leveling them.

95% of PA discs are very easy to find since they drop in specific areas, with only a few coming as annoying boss drops or sort.

I can also use my high lv character to hunt out pa's my lower lv needs giving them a good advantage and making alt leveling easier.

edit: in old style I would say "Oh I would like to use this pa....its low lv....time to spam for hours"

Now I get to say "oh I guess I should run X mission to get a better one quick" I have never had to run a mission more than three time and thats if Im unlucky (aside form some like say.... save bullets which is boss drop). That certainly beats hours of spamming, for each PA.

[Alucard V]

Yes I do miss the PSU level system but it did take forever to level up Arts. The PSU Photon Arts would also go against the chain system. The PSO disk system may have safer call been the but it's not the best one.

If you ask me somthing like the final fantasy 7 "weapon effects growth" system or a "chain EXP mutiplier" may have worked better.

[Seth Astra]

IMO, the PSU leveling system wouldn't work for this because of the chain system... Well, it'd work, it'd just redefine "an absolute pain".

[OldCoot]

I am glad I found this topic. I just got the game and was wondering how to upgrade my pa's. I noticed some were level 1, 2 and 5.

I take it then that when you find a disc you should enable it to see what level the PA is?

[Silver_Wyrm]

I am glad I found this topic. I just got the game and was wondering how to upgrade my pa's. I noticed some were level 1, 2 and 5.

I take it then that when you find a disc you should enable it to see what level the PA is?

cant "learn" a lower lv pa will give an error if you try so cant mess it up, infinity has a nifty new feature that has your current pa lv displayed in parenthesis.

Wiki has a list of where every pa drops and at what lv's so if your looking to upgrade specifics, psupedia will tell you were to go.

[Gibdozer]

I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! I think the disc system and photon pool are a huge step backwards for PA's. Honestly whats more realistic than a skill advancing with usage. Love all the other improvements, but the new pa/pp system sucked a lot of the fun out of this for me.

[Jorry]

If people leveled them up by using them, I am sure that online play would be even worse than it already is, with the chain system and all. PA spammers are so annoying already...

[Wayu]

^

@Gib: Obviously a PA spammer.

Anyways, the point of the new PA and PP system was to reduce the drag known as PA spamming. It makes the game more challenging and less repetitive than simply pressing the exact same button the entire time.

Which I personally like.

-Wayu

[Silver_Wyrm]

It also lets me have an extra slot on my item bar since I dont need pp restores and makes force and ranger not totally borked by the system. It also gives incentive to use the regular combos >.>

Honestly, I liked the entire new system in psp2 so much more and I still do. A much better job at keeping the action going without it being a repetitive button spam or being forced to favor only certain pa's.

[Dragwind]

For anyone who had to level up PAs in PSU in order to catch up to a type's standard (take Masterforce/Gunmaster, for instance) quickly realized that leveling PAs as opposed to finding discs in PSO quickly became a curse. There was also the nasty added side effect of the infamous PA spammers (Tornado Dance anyone?) causing a mess with knocking enemies all over the place in your group, just for the sake of leveling a PA. I agree that leveling them manually does seem to make more sense, and in a few circumstances, was less of a headache. Overall though, it caused more frustration and was less fun overall.

Capping PAs by finding discs has overall become faster and easier compared to spending hours to hundreds of hours, just to level PAs. It was not fun, it wasn't practical, and I strongly feel the new system is better.