Why is level grinding and progressing more fun in the original?

[Alisha]

ive commented on this in my team as well but in pso and even in psp2 you could just log on look at the party list join a game and have fun killing shit. its a lot more complicated to do that in pso2 due to the focus on CO's.

[SquashDemon]

Hm...tough thing to say, it might have something to do with the fact that all the development on PSO was done when they released it, console release, no patching, limited rebalancing could be done. PSO2 on the other hand has had no less than three different experience tables, and I'm willing to bet more'll be coming out soon.

Also, playing as an 'Every Hunters' (can not BELIEVE they never got around to fixing those translation errors for the GCN release) of the guild felt more...eh, mercenary-ish. With Arkz, it's more implied that you have a certain quota of missions you have to go on to continue living, it's like...a job.

and jobs suck.

also PSO had a hojillion weapons, several of which were exclusive categories. There was no 3 star katana, no 2 star doublesaber, no 4 star launcher/bazooka. You wanted spiffy new looking weapons unobtainable in the shops, you find them your damn self!

oh and trading. I miss trading with anyone. If anyone here actually remembers me, that was kinda my thing.

Oh how I miss buying Photon drops en masse. *snif*

[UnLucky]

ive commented on this in my team as well but in pso and even in psp2 you could just log on look at the party list join a game and have fun killing shit. its a lot more complicated to do that in pso2 due to the focus on CO's.

This is very true. You would show up, look at what people are doing, and join in.

Or you would start something yourself and people would join in.

Entirely voluntarily.

It was like some kind of online experience, it was very strange.

[gravityvx]

Whether you agree or not. What do you guys think?

Was it really more fun in pso or not?

I feel like it still is but i jus cant put my finger on what it exactly is. Maybe its a lot of things

Going through the maps was actually fun(minus caves until De Rol Le), the weapons, armor & barriers were faaaaaaar more fun to use, enjoyed the much darker story, so far more attached to the world since I know I'm not just going on a genocide spree, the enemies could actually kill you even with a full party on several occasions until you're pretty geared & above level so that challeng stepping into these areas, especially as a HU-anything.

Then there was the ability to play offline and still progress your character to bring online, oh and of course...trading with others, grinding without any frustration involved, the game jst felt a hell of a lot more rewarding for my time. And then there was the fact I could log in and play on any freaking difficulty without having trouble finding a party, in PSO2 all people do is level low classes through COs leaving the majority of N & H barren, I hate it. I could list more but all these is what made leveling in that game far more fun for me.

[Z-0]

So basically what goes on in AQ blocks. I like playing in the AQ blocks, because you make a game, people see what you're doing and join in because they decide to do it too. Language barrier is non-existent because nobody talks and just plays the game.

Or you look at the game list and decide to join that game too.

AQ is pretty much what I'd say PSO2 should be.

[Laxedrane]

They need to make it so you can set the difficulty of hans, revelle, and frankas COs for proportional EXP. I think a huge chunk of PSO2 problem is the pigeon holing of exp. Yes ruins and sanctum should offer the best exp options however the gap simply caused by COs in staggering.

The lack of being able to go back to forest, caves or desert unless you get a few decent Daileys going is just cutting off you own content. This is also why I think ruins is more popular(Other then friendlier maps) is becuase it offers a shit ton more COs to clear thusly better exp.

I think people would enjoy leveling more if they could pick any area and get roughly the same exp per hour with only minor differences based on areas.

To me talking about rares is kind of eh for the topic at hand. For how I played doing a certain area was an excuse to do it. Wasn't the sole purpose or left me wanting more if I didn't get said rare.

Legitmently I never had more then a comparable 9* rare in this game or a red weapon. All the super rares I never got and that was ok. I was fine with it. Just like I was fine with the premium glass ceiling until I got that. It's something I personally have a hard time relating to. So beyond what I already said, I don't have much input there.

[UnLucky]

So basically what goes on in AQ blocks. I like playing in the AQ blocks, because you make a game, people see what you're doing and join in because they decide to do it too. Language barrier is non-existent because nobody talks and just plays the game.

Or you look at the game list and decide to join that game too.

AQ is pretty much what I'd say PSO2 should be.

Not exactly, but as close as you can really get due to the nature of the game. You can join a TA/AQ block and have randoms join you. People actually do want to do those areas (well, maybe not every AQ). But most other progress is all solo.

In PSO you would see people in the middle of nowhere, and join their games. They'll be in like Mines 2, but who cares, that's a good area to run. Once the "quest" was over, you kept going. On to the next area. That's a good area to run, too. People will join on the way, people will leave. That's cool. More people is always good, but having less wasn't so bad as to make your time seem wasted. It wasn't universally better to sit in the lobby and wait for your party to form so that you might run some content. You just started running it.

And disconnecting from the server didn't make you lose all current progress, except maybe those timed quest things, unless you could rejoin those I forget.

[Z-0]

When it came to questing in PSO, you could never rejoin quests, and people could not join you in the middle of them. People could only drop in and out if you were running the free fields. Most of the time I was running quests so it's pretty much the same thing to me here.

Although I do admit the whole "you are punished are playing solo" thing is really annoying.

[Sinue_v2]

It wasn't.

Pacing? Getting to 100 in v.1 was piss easy. v.2 introduced lvl 200, but only gave you one difficulty level to keep you engaged from lvl 80 to cap. This meant that exp did not scale with character level, making the grind from the half-way point (186, thereabouts?) a major chore. I never made it past 135, but by then, Sega had folded out of the console business and preview materials for Ep I & II were already trickling out and... what's the point if I can't bring my save file with me?

Ep I & II helped matters substantially by giving you twice the amount of areas to level up in. Though at the same time, they nerfed Ultimate mode so that you could actually hit stuff sub-lvl 100 and scaled it a bit more evenly. Still, by lvl 160 you were fully capable of doing Forest to Seabed with little problems, so before you were even to the half-way point - you really had nowhere left to go. At that point, it was best to not really worry about levels, and just focus on repeated runs to hunt rares... and let the levels come as they will. Also, abuse the shit out of Towards the Future.


Personally, I think the best leveling system so far is PSP2i's. Getting to level 200 is easy enough if you abuse Gurhal Heroes and Magashi Plan, and you never loose that sense of progress since even just spamming missions for rare drops provide an appreciable EXP gain. However, if you really want to run Infinity missions efficiently, you have to rebirth your character. Rebirthing allows you to break the level cap (effectively up to 250) and raises your class level caps by 20. Rebirthing resets your character level back to to 1 (with a stat boost), and to fully max out your character, you have to rebirth something like 5 1/2 times. This makes it much less tedious to hunt for rares that drop exclusively in lower-level areas since you'll be revisiting them often. And if you find one you really like, using extend codes on them can bring those shitty B Class noob weapons up to S-Rank quality.

The whole system was just a hell of a lot more rewarding all around.

[Xaeris]

I'd say it was because levels didn't matter as much in PSO as they do in PSO2. Aside from how worthless level up became around 140 or so (whee, +2 ATP), the game wasn't gated like PSO2 is. Offline, you could do whatever the hell you pleased at any level so long as you could clear the necessary content. Online, the threshold for Episode 1 Ultimate was 80 which, in Ep 1&2, was a laughable joke. So instead of restricting you, levels in PSO were just something that happened as a consequence of playing.