PSO2: Anyone else disappointed with "Hard Mode?"

[Arande]

Well, you have to consider the area you are in.hard forest is still, well, forest. A thought is maybe they don't want to overshadow new areas, such as the ice planet coming up next, with higher difficulties of the old ones.

IE they dont want "why go to the new area, hard old area is better xp/drops"

[Zyrusticae]

In terms of difficulty, one the MAJOR changes in PSO 2 is that you don't MISS. I was playing PSO BB few months back and the thing I found most difficult and causing most of my injuries was missing key parts of my combo on Evil Sharks and what have you. Since in PSO 2 you don't miss (unless mobs dodge, and even then FO and RA don't really deal with that non-sense) that whole hurdle of building enough HIT to stop missing was removed. That could be what you're.... MISSING.... pun intended

I think that's pretty much it.

It's not something I'll miss either, heh.

[LatinWolf]

PSO's hard mode had a noticeable difficulty increase, though. PSO 2's hard mode is absolutely pathetic compared to the original.

In terms of AI, hard mode and it's subsidiaries didn't really change much, they were still derp mobs that just walked towards you and attacked. The challenge came from HP increase, DMG increase, and Dodge increase. If you didn't kill mobs with your combo, you had to start wearing them down with shorter attacks (which may MISS).

In PSO 2, due to the reworked gameplay (for which i'm grateful for btw), I can just dodge and dart around the battle as I continue my assault. The cool combat system we got now came at a price.

[Dragwind]

Hard mode should be fitting the formula for PSO's hard mode, and similar to PSU's "B rank" version of missions. It shouldn't be a huge jump, but just as was mentioned- just enemy level progression. It's only the first step up thus far, so it shouldn't be too drastic of a difference. Once vhard + ultimate (or whatever they decide to call it) rolls around, perhaps there will be bigger jumps in preferably AI + enemy lvl.

[Porkmaster]

hmm, well i can agree the monsters are not very aggressive, I am sure sega can easily fix this and make it more challenging. Feedback to sega! lol

Sega won't fix shit. They can't even fix the lag issues that the past 2 maintenance updates were "supposed" to fix.

I'm starting to think (especially recently) that the players know the game better than the developers do. Put me in charge of decision making for Sega for one day. I might not fix the lag issues, but I'd sure as hell make the game more enjoyable.

Hard mode should be fitting the formula for PSO's hard mode, and similar to PSU's "B rank" version of missions. It shouldn't be a huge jump, but just as was mentioned- just enemy level progression. It's only the first step up thus far, so it shouldn't be too drastic of a difference. Once vhard + ultimate (or whatever they decide to call it) rolls around, perhaps there will be bigger jumps in preferably AI + enemy lvl.

I hope so. I really do, because right now I'm already finding it hard to justify spending any more time grinding on this game.

[Zyrusticae]

Sega won't fix shit. They can't even fix the lag issues that the past 2 maintenance updates were "supposed" to fix.

Okay, this is just horse shit.

LATENCY ISSUES ARE NOT EASY TO FIX.

No matter what fantasy land you are coming from, you can't just pretend these issues are easy to fix just because you have some ridiculous superiority complex that refuses to even understand the basic fundamentals of the issue at hand. I mean, unless you want to look completely delusional or something. You'll obviously succeed at that pretty handily.

The latency issue is something every online games developer on the planet has to wrestle with, and the bigger the game, the more difficult it is to tackle. With PSO2 having some 100 players (probably more, I don't know the limit) per block, obviously the problem is going to crop up. When throwing more hardware at it doesn't work, you have to go back and look at the code to try to find where the problem is occurring and optimize it here, which is not easy.

Even CCP, developers of EVE Online which has only a single server to deal with, have had to do some major research and development to be able to support a thousand players within a single star system (which uses a single, dedicated node - but ONLY WHEN THEY ARE WARNED IN ADVANCE), and the only reason they are able to do that is because these kinds of battles only happen occasionally and in that single star system. SEGA is having to deal with a chronic problem, and I daresay I cannot be surprised that the problem is still occurring despite their efforts because it is freakin' difficult to fix!



Furthermore, the issue of Hard Mode is obviously one that is going to be balanced on the opinions of others. Just because you feel it's too easy or too pointless doesn't mean others will feel the same way, so cut the crap.

[Memorex]

People...this is still a beta lol. Just go and complain to sega and maybe they'll listen.

[Vylera]

Sega won't fix shit. They can't even fix the lag issues that the past 2 maintenance updates were "supposed" to fix.

I'm starting to think (especially recently) that the players know the game better than the developers do. Put me in charge of decision making for Sega for one day. I might not fix the lag issues, but I'd sure as hell make the game more enjoyable.



I hope so. I really do, because right now I'm already finding it hard to justify spending any more time grinding on this game.

I'm going to be absolutely blunt and say that I hate it when players think they hold the instant remedy to making a game better.

Got complaints about the game? Sure, that's fine. Tired of it and want to quit? Sure, that's fine.

Thinking you know what it takes to change a whole MMO in one day just because you're being fueled by gamer rage?

Try again.

Sure is easy to make general statements like "make the mobs more aggressive" or "give them better AI."

Show it to me in coding on PSO2's programing language before you talk shit.

[Porkmaster]

Okay, this is just horse shit.

LATENCY ISSUES ARE NOT EASY TO FIX.

No matter what fantasy land you are coming from, you can't just pretend these issues are easy to fix just because you have some ridiculous superiority complex that refuses to even understand the basic fundamentals of the issue at hand. I mean, unless you want to look completely delusional or something. You'll obviously succeed at that pretty handily.

The latency issue is something every online games developer on the planet has to wrestle with, and the bigger the game, the more difficult it is to tackle. With PSO2 having some 100 players (probably more, I don't know the limit) per block, obviously the problem is going to crop up. When throwing more hardware at it doesn't work, you have to go back and look at the code to try to find where the problem is occurring and optimize it here, which is not easy.

Even CCP, developers of EVE Online which has only a single server to deal with, have had to do some major research and development to be able to support a thousand players within a single star system (which uses a single, dedicated node - but ONLY WHEN THEY ARE WARNED IN ADVANCE), and the only reason they are able to do that is because these kinds of battles only happen occasionally and in that single star system. SEGA is having to deal with a chronic problem, and I daresay I cannot be surprised that the problem is still occurring despite their efforts because it is freakin' difficult to fix!

Furthermore, the issue of Hard Mode is obviously one that is going to be balanced on the opinions of others. Just because you feel it's too easy or too pointless doesn't mean others will feel the same way, so cut the crap.

I realize that latency issues aren't easy to fix. I probably wouldn't be acting this way if they didn't have PSO V1, V2, Blue Burst, PSU, AotI, and all of PSO 2's testing phases to figure out their limits.

As much as I dislike Blizzard, there's one thing that I'll give them. It's that they know their limits. Diablo 3's launch was less than stellar in terms of latency issues, but they fixed those issues in less than a week by adding an extra step to the login process to reduce server load, because they KNEW what the problem was. It seems to me like SEGA doesn't know what is causing the issues, that's all. I'm not trying to start a fight with you, but it just seems to me like you're fanboying (or fangirling) pretty damn hard right now. I adore SEGA and by no means want to see them fail, but they're fuckin' up hard.

And yeah, everyone who has been to hard mode and posted in this thread has agreed with my points. As it stands right now, it's too easy and there's not enough incentive for me to grind these boring ass missions for hours or days.

I'm going to be absolutely blunt and say that I hate it when players think they hold the instant remedy to making a game better.

Got complaints about the game? Sure, that's fine. Tired of it and want to quit? Sure, that's fine.

Thinking you know what it takes to change a whole MMO in one day just because you're being fueled by gamer rage?

Try again.

Sure is easy to make general statements like "make the mobs more aggressive" or "give them better AI."

Show it to me in coding on PSO2's programing language before you talk shit.

Feel free to be as blunt as you want, I can take it. Also, please note that I said "decision making" and not "programming". I'm not going to pretend like I know the first thing about programming a video game, because I don't. That's not my thing, composing music is my thing. Tell me honestly though whether or not you think adding individual rares to individual enemies and getting rid of the level requirement on missions once you reach hard mode is a good idea. It's fucking HARD mode, let ME find my limits, Sega doesn't have to put limits there FOR me.

[HFlowen]

PSO hard mode had better enemy stats and things moved slightly faster.

That was pretty much it, same thing with vhard. Things didn't get "interesting" until ultimate with re-skins and some new attacks, but that was in v2. It would be nice, since it's 2012 and we aren't on the dreamcast anymore, if we could see some bigger changes. Like new blocks placed in the random dungeon rotation and maybe a new enemy or two.