4/18 Official Blog: Tomorrow is the CB!

[Mike]

The official blog was updated today with some more info about the beta starting tomorrow. A huge list of what is actually going on in the closed beta was posted and is more or less as follows:


Arks Cash

• All Arks Cash (AC) items are set at 10 AC for the closed beta
• Each tester will recieve 1000 AC to use.
• You can't purchase more AC during the testing period
• The items in the store and scratches (gatcha) will be limited during the beta and will change for the official launch

FUN

• FUN can be gained by logging in, using AC, using certain aspects of the game (Good Job!), and as a reward for being in the top three for the weeks ranking
• FUN can be used in a FUN scratch
• The contents of the FUN scratch will change for the official launch

Races

• Human, casts, and newmen will be available, just like the official launch

Character Creation

• Only a limited amount of costume items will be available in the closed beta
• Players will only have one character to begin with.
• New character slots can be purchased with AC
• New costumes, accessories, and character voices
• The "Cat Ears" accessory will now match your hair color
• Characters can be saved and loaded as files on your computer
• New facial variations for male and female characters
• The Beauty Shop will allow you to change your character in game
• You can now get parts and clothing in game (you couldn't do this in the alphas.)
• Parts and clothing can be equipped from the equipment menu

Classes

• The max level for the closed beta is 20
• Classes can be changed at the class counter
• Raising a character to level 10 in any class will mean that account will recieve a "Weapon Hologram" room decoration in the open beta

Skill Trees

• Skill trees for all classes have been completely changed
• New skill trees can be added by spending AC allowing you to take you character in a different direction

Play Records

• Titles are now available from the title counter
• Item collections and player records are visible from a visi-phone

Player Related Battle

• Partisans, launchers, and talis weapons are now usable
• On death, you can choose to return to the camp ship or use a scape doll if you have one
• You can now switch between different subpalletes like you could with your main pallete

Enemy Related Battle

• Several new enemies including the new boss Dark Ragne
• Boxes appear after defeating bosses instead of bosses dropping items
• Destroying parts of boss enemies increases the number of boss boxes
• Boost enemies will appear
• Starting enemies are weaker because they were found to be too strong
• Some enemies have been tweaked graphically to better fit the PSO2 world
• Some dragon-type enemies now have voices

Mags

• By rasing any class level to 10 and completing a specific client order allows you to obtain a mag license. This lets you own and use a mag
• Mags evolve in to their second stage at level 50
• Mag levels are capped at 99 in the closed beta

Lobby

• New lobbies have been implemented in the closed beta

Quests

• 2 new quest types: Story and Emergency
• You can invite NPCs and friend characters from the new Partner Terminal in the camp ship
• It is now easier to join other parties in an MPA than it was in the second alpha
• You can see more information about quests at the quest counter, including 7 days worth of data on drops, special effects, and enemies
• The Medical Center will sell temporary (1 mission) stat boosting drinks
• Certain missions now feature smaller maps than before

Interupt Events

• There are new and different types of Emergency Trials
• A bug where enemies spawned indefinetly has been fixed

PSE

• New PSE variations exist
• The various PSEs have been renamed
• An "omen" system has been added to predict PSEs
• PSE effects, chances, and PSE bursts have been rebalanced

Story

• The prolouge and first chapter of the story will be available
• Starting a new game starts a tutorial story quest
• The matter board will be available
• Story events can happen anywhere

Client Orders

• The client order system will be available.
• Rewards for completing client orders include things like items, exp, and expansions to your palletes
• Accessed by completing parts of the matter board

User Interface

• The main menu has been made easier to navigate
• PAs now say what weapon they are used for on the first line of the item description
• Disks for PAs and techs already learned will appear greyed out in your inventory and storage
• Units can now be customized while equipped
• Chat shortcuts will now show the first line of their settings when displayed with the quick menu
• An icon in the middle of the main pallete will show what mode weapons like gunslashes are in
• The "message recieved" icon was made larger
• A tab for system messages has been added to the message system
• A message will appear in the chat box when after a screenshot has been taken to assure you it actually happened

Controls

• More compatible game pads
• You can now switch between normal and direct chat with the scroll-lock key
• Holding control and pressing a number key will let you use your sub-pallete while in direct chat mode
• Camera speed can be changed in the options menu
• Sped up the switch to character front function
• Added the option to change zoom setting for the mouse wheel
• Removed auto-run as a default for game pads
• Added a "switch targets" option for game pads
• No more virtual full screen
• Increased the number of player models that can be displayed on-screen to 160
• Added several formats for screenshots
• Added the option to not use auto-words or show auto-words in the log

Communication

• Arcs Cards
• Ability to create teams added
• Can send "Good Jobs" to players with comments
• Symbol Art system
• Whispering added
• Friend Partners, the ability to take friend's characters on missions
• Item trading is now possible for those who spend purchase a Premium Set with AC
• Items that you equip are bound to your character and can not be traded or sold in player stores
• The ability to immitate another player's lobby actions has been added
• New emoticons have been added
• Added new rule variations for auto-words
• New lobby animations
• When word bubble combine, they now use the last person's word bubble
• A party history function has been added to let you see who you played with before
• You can now recieve notifications when specific friends log on

My Shop

• Must rent the ability to open a shop with AC
• You don't need a room to open a shop
• The lowest price you can set on an item is 1000 meseta
• You can search by special ability when searching player shops

My Room

• My Rooms need to be rented with AC
• 3 Day room tickets are available in the FUN scratch
• Player rooms now have locks where groups of players can be prevented from entering
• New Scenery Passes allow you to change the view from your appartment
• Weapon Hologram items allow you to display a weapon you have as a decoration in your room
• A juke box room decoration will allow you to change the background music in your room
• Some decorations now have special actions when you use them
• You can now place small decorations on tables or desks
• The Shop Counter decoration allow players to access the shop of the owner of the room it is placed in

Item Lab

• The option to use an item to reduce the failure penalty when grinding items has been added
• An item to change the element of a weapon to whatever you'd like when strengthening elements has been added
• An item to add an additional special effect has been when moving special effects has been added

Tekkers

• Weapons that drop during a mission have a chance to show up as "SPECIAL WEAPON"s
• Tekking these weapons allows you to pick the element and a special effect for it. An additional special effect will also be added to the weapon at random

Rankings

• Only a portion of the ranking system will be available in the closed beta
• Players are ranked against other members of the ship they play on
• Two rating types exist: "Interupt Ranking" and "Weekly Ranking"
• Interupt Rankings are rankings announced randomly several times a day. In the beta, these will be who can defeat the most of a certain enemy in an hour.
• Weekly Rankings include things like number of room visits and numberof rare containers destroyed
• The top three players in any ranking recieve FUN as a reward

Specs

• The game has been optimized to run better on PCs that meet PSO2's minimum specs

Balance

• The balance in the closed beta represents what will likely be the balance for the launch version of PSO2 but this is subject to change

Character Data

• Character data from the closed beta will not be carried over in to any upcoming version.

Spoiler!

But before I get to that monster of a list, here's some information that was in the blog. Some of it has been talked about before but since I know people tend to not really read things have short memories when they do, I'll just list them again.

• There will only be 5 ships (servers) in the closed beta. Ships 6 - 10 will also show up but these ships are not online so you won't be able to log in to them.
• A "premium set" will be available in 30 day periods. This includes the use of your room, the ability to open a shop, expanded storage, and the ability to trade.
• Buying items via a player owned shop is free (as in you don't need to buy access to it)
• Players who purchase the premium set can join a block especially for those members and get bonus FUN from activites that provide it (kinda sounds like PSU)
• The game has bee tuned so you don't gain levels as quickly as you did in the second alpha.
• A menu option has been added for cash shop and FUN related purchases.
• Scratch terminals have also been placed around the lobby
• Since the AC cost of cash shop items has been set to 10 AC, the amount of AC given to testers has been reduced from 10,000 to 1000.

[RocSage]

• A "premium set" will be available in 30 day periods. This includes the use of your room, the ability to open a shop, expanded storage, and the ability to trade.

ie. We lied about it being Free to play. What we meant is that it is free to demo and drool over things that should be part of the free experience to begin with.

[Dinosaur]

ie. We lied about it being Free to play. What we meant is that it is free to demo and drool over things that should be part of the free experience to begin with.

I love it.

brb not paying a cent and playing the full game

[Wayu]

Wait, so closed beta users will still have to pay to get access to the My Room stuff?

-Wayu

[•Col•]

Wait, so closed beta users will still have to pay to get access to the My Room stuff?

-Wayu

You have to pay Arkz cash for items/services in the Beta... However, like Mike mentioned in the opening post, all Beta players will be given 1000 Arkz cash to test out the system(of course I'm sure this won't transfer over to the actual game).

I love it.

brb not paying a cent and playing the full game

I hope to god you're just joking around.... If you're being serious, then I despise you...

[Mike]

Wait, so closed beta users will still have to pay to get access to the My Room stuff?

Technically, no. For testing purposes we'll be given 1000 AC for free. We'll have to buy access to our rooms with this AC but the AC is free.

[MelancholyWitch]

Nice, Thanks for the info hopefully we get to try out all the features that are up to date for the game so far.

[Blackheart521]

I seriously hope people who participated in the beta/alphas get some sort of bonus when the full game is released, such as a special mag or some free AC, would be very nice.

[Dinosaur]

I seriously hope people who participated in the beta/alphas get some sort of bonus when the full game is released, such as a special mag or some free AC, would be very nice.

If you hit level 10, you get a weapon hologram for "my room" in open beta. FYI open beta data will transfer over to the official release.

[RocSage]

Wait, so closed beta users will still have to pay to get access to the My Room stuff?

-Wayu

That is stuff that will be in the shop, obviously. the beta doesn't run 30 days.

There is probably also a pack that has various components and they are likely going the route of the Freemium, which I don't really like, because it allows companies to lie and say a game is free to play when it isn't.

If they follow the Freemium Model you'll have something like

"Free" = You get access to the game with a very limited amount of space for anything which will make it quite a challenge to actually play or be part of the community or hold anything of value. If for example you would expect 3 character slots, 60 storage slots, 9,999,999 max meseta, the ability to trade, access your personal space, and communicate normally what you'll actually get with this model is something like 1 character slot, 30 storage slots, 99,999 max meseta, no ability to trade, no access to personal space, and some limitation on your communication (it varies with different games).

"Tier 2" = You get permanently upgraded after you spend a small amount of money to give you a few more character slots, a bit more meseta, the ability to trade, and normal communication.

"Premium" = you get more slots, more storage, more... etc. Generally more than you need due to the restrictions of the other groups.

This tiering often has a "can make party" and "can make guild" restriction on them as well

This what is usually the case with this type of stuff. This always causes problems and separates communities because people who don't want to spend money have limited actions they can take.

It's understandable, but I don't like the lie that is "freemium"

If there happens to be a lifetime option I suggest getting it, While PS games are often shut down more than other games they last a few years, long enough to account for the whole of the lifetime sub and you don't have to worry about renewing every month and you usually start getting "free" cash stipend to buy more things and anyone here will likely benefit from it...if not just for the don't have to worry about the $15/month payment to keep all your stuff the way you want it.

Also considering there is a 3day room access thing i'd bet there are different intervals you can get on this stuff, we've seen 3 and 30, i wouldn't doubt there being a 6 month and 12 month one as well.