Sega Tweets PSO 2 West is still coming...

[UnLucky]

1: IP ban or not, you just load up the Tweaker and hit play

2: Guess you don't want to play PSO2 then

3: You don't lose any of it. It's still there. Even once you hit lv30 in all three classes on NA/EU, you can go back every month or two and see all the cool things that will never be localized. Even if you didn't play JP one bit until you're bored of "your version" you can still catch up long before it "actually" comes out.

4: PSO2es. No surcharges. No markup. You pay dollar for dollar the same amount as any resident Japanese because it's the exact same service they use themselves. Now I won't say it 100% all goes to Sega since they obviously pay Google some sort of cut to get their app on the marketplace, but it's the same for WebMoney. Or 7-11 or any other retail stores distributing physical AC cards.

7: Proxy chat. Also why not talk to the Japanese? Many people here found fun people to play with despite the language barrier. Either broken English (machine or otherwise) or cute gestures and good intentions can go a long way. They can practice their English, and you can learn some Japanese. Or just ignore them like 90% of people playing within the same region do anyway.

8: A large portion of the game is client sided, so even experiencing lag yourself won't be very noticeable unless the server is chugging hardcore for everyone. Whatever ping issues you might feel wouldn't be any better on a "local" server, either.

9: plz no rpt me :'((

[mario2099]

Having read all the posts up to this point I will throw my useless opinion out there. I give absolute thanks to those people who make playing PSO2 on Japanese servers as easy to play as possible. You guys are fantastic for the work you have done. That being said and correct me if I am wrong, but is it not technically against the TOS for anyone outside of Japan to be playing PSO2? Now, I do not really expect anyone to drop hundreds or even thousands of hours spent on the game to move over to the version they technically should be on, especially when players have been disappointed countless times with missing content and no support in other PSO games that were released in the west. But I do find it odd how many of you seem to be jumping on those that show even the remote sign of happiness at a western version or immediately bash the person for their decision.

I myself have played games that were Japanese only and jumped through big hoops to play them. But I am an older gamer now. I have a family and a job and everything that entails. I have family and friends who enjoyed the PSO experience and were so excited for PSO2. I could try to convince them to jump through these mini hoops to play on the JP server, but why would they? They love PSO, but why go through all that when you have other options like Bless Online, Black Desert, Blade & Soul or Everquest Next being possibilities?

In my opinion, BubblyBoar, hit the nail on the head. No matter how many western players there are, I still feel like an outsider. The community is what makes PSO what it is. One of the best thing you could do on PSO Gamecube, was go over to the JP servers and see what was going on there. It is silly, but it felt like you were visiting another country as lobby interaction was so different compared to the west. I played there on occasion and even got some respect from a couple of JP players (at least those that joined me). That was great, but I always came back to the western servers because that was home. Also, with older gamers I feel it is more difficult to open new connections and friends because of work and family. The best way to accomplish that is through random encounters with people you meet in game.

At this point I am rambling but I am genuinely excited to hear something about the western release as I had given up all hope. Will it be a complete disappointment to those already in JP? Most definitely. Will it be run incompetently and be incredibly behind in updates? Probably. Will I try to show Sega there is a PSO fan base they shouldn’t ignore in the west? Most definitely. I have made a lot of assumptions, but if it ever shows up, I will give it a chance. I would suggest others do the same. Show them that we love this game just as much as JP does. Will this change anyone’s or sega’s opinion? Nah probably not.

[NoiseHERO]

Hows this thread still going.

I'm sure half the time spent making these walls of text could be time spent getting on the game.

[Chdata]

1:

General response: IP bans haven't happened over 2 years etc

That may be true, but this obviously wasn't the case 2 years ago, and how long does one have to wait before determining that this is an unlikely scenario? I would say at least until the first major patch however long that took. However, I do want to mention that when the hole ISP connection problems were new (and still relatively recent), people here were running around like chickens with their heads off crying "IP ban! IP ban!"... So I really don't want to hear about how foolish people think it is given what just happened.

How long does it take to consider the game IP ban safe?

15 days to a month and I'm sure it's unlikely people will get mass IP banned.

Where do I get this number?

This is just my opinion. I wouldn't mind starting a new game already knowing it's entirely possible that we'd be blocked out at any time and end up getting blocked within a month if I'm already content with the scenario of losing it all at this very moment where I have a leveled main with lots of in-game wealth and time spent on.

Generally if the game company didn't right off the bat IP block, it's very unlikely that they actually will do so for no good reason at all. When SEA was released they finally had a reason to do so.

EN hackers is not a reason to do so and has never really made me worry about the possibility of myself or all EN being IP blocked. Why? Because there's no game company out there I know of that is so bad at managing their own game that they don't know how to ban single offending players and resort to banning an entire continent instead.

And even if we get IP banned, as mentioned, we can just proxy. Given, if I were completely new to PSO2, I wouldn't want to join if I had to bother with a proxy just to experience it for the first time. My already existent attachment brings me to resort to that effort to login again. Similarly, I have a lot of SEA region friends that starting proxying/VPNing before the DDoS because of their IP ban.

I'm fairly sure that there's not going to be a scenario where you cannot connect.

2 years is a long time! What is to say that a west server wouldn't shut down to "natural causes" in the same length of time? Even if it lived longer how is 2 years of potential fun not worth considering?

This is a very good answer, but the reason why it isn't applicable to me personally is because I'm a very hardcore gamer in terms of variety and experimentation. I already am EXTRA scrutinous about playing new MMOs because they are so time demanding, and I don't like spending so much time in one game because there are already countless others I REALLY want to try but simply lack the time to try.


Yes 2 years, or 4, or however long it takes (forever) for pso2 west to come out, is a long period of time that can be spent enjoying jpn. But I HAVE played mmos with servers outside of NA/EU, that are not intended for me, WITH English-speaking communities. And the fact is I simply do not enjoy them as much. So for that reason, I just know it'll bug me to play on a server that I know isn't the one I should enjoy the most (provided na ever came out), because while doing so I'll be thinking "I REALLY should be playing these other games that ARE intended for my region (or whatever)".

So far this is the most sensible opinion I've seen, having too many games to play.

I'll just quote a response directly:
I guess your desire to talk in public chat without bothering people is so strong that you don't want to consider alternatives (teams/private/party chat) or something and that you persist in not playing at all...?

I imagine this is a seemingly valid point for someone who plays videogames during normal hours, or who have a lot of gamer friends, or anything like that. I honestly have more free time between midnight and 4am than otherwise, so even on western servers for games that are more appealing to the general western market, it is quite common for me to have a hard time finding people to play with, who want to do the same content as me, etc. On PSO2 JPN where you'd be fooling yourself to think that it has as many western players as say Tera or something, I seriously doubt that I can go on block 20, talk in public chat, ask to join a chatroom, and actually have 4 people or whatever willing to do the same dungeon/farm content/whatever as I am on a regular basis.

Most of the time when I play an mmo, it is during late hours where even on the proper servers I can't be picky about what I do, I just go "join game", and look for pretty much ANYTHING that is remotely interesting to me.

That said, when I DO bump into random people in these online games, I DO actually make a positive impression (I really should try not to...it's annoying accepting friend requests one day and having the same people not respond intelligibly the next). That said by joining "randoms" I do occasionally make friends like that. And quite frankly, most of my longest lasting friends I meet on mmo's were made simply by joining them randomly in a queue or whatever rather than planning to play with them in advance via forum or community.

You just get to know people better by meeting them without any prior experience, and actually playing with them, you find out if they are game-compatible better that way.

You quoted me so I'll give a response to this one.

1. I don't play video games at normal hours, relative to when most of my friends are awake or people in my time zone are awake, and I play solo quite often unless someone invites me to something or I'm doing a quest that really isn't as beneficial while solo.

Generally I play the most a midnight to 4-6am as well basically.

2. As for a lot of gamer friends, I suppose I have a lot of random people added to friends lists but I otherwise only really talk to 1 or 2 people often. And they don't play PSO2.

3. When I want to do specific things, it's hard for me to find "friends wanting to do the same thing". But it's not hard at all to find other players who want to do the same thing. AQs? Join the AQ block. Time attacks? Join the TA block. SH quests? Join SH block. Want to advertise for something less common like XQs? You literally can walk in to b20 and often times find 3 other people who are willing to do it. You could also advertise for AQ/TA there if you don't care about having a high chance of ending up with weak/undergeared players.

Or you could join a team that fits your active time and have it even easier. The team I own is pretty much a ghost town and I don't really do any quests with anyone in it because of that or that they're just lower leveled and can't even play the same content as me.

Yet despite all that, I never have an issue making a party of 4 to do whatever quests I want at almost any time of day. The difference between you and me is that I don't care about idle conversation very much and just play the game to play. My 1-2 other friends I met in Runescape and TF2 randomly in much the same way as you though, but 1-2 close friends is good enough for me. Rather, as the owner of a TF2 gaming community I try not to accept random adds because I don't want to read random messages from a ton of people.

8:
I Knew someone would think if not say something like this:
Lag only would cause problems for the person lagging

And your answer to this was "it could be a problem". Not "it definitely is a common problem".

The fact is that in PSO2 the type of game-freezing lag problem you describe does not happen at all. The only lag problems come from people weapon switching with Nishiki (it has a very detailed texture which upon loading can cause people with low specced computers to freeze for a second each weapon switch) which is fps lag and not connection lag, or the global connection lag that everyone, even japanese players on ships that are not infested with english players, have to deal with from time to time because SEGA hasn't upgraded their servers. Generally during scheduled emergency quests when the servers are all busy and full.

Now, the super fast thing does happen in PSO2 sometimes, but it doesn't cause any of that "I got killed while lagging" nonsense because hit detection is client side and you can still move and dodge during lag. There is no such thing as lag freezing you in place in this game. Monsters will still attack, and if you do still let them hit you, your death will catch up to you (unless you also heal during the lag which works).

But this kind of thing is pretty rare. It's only happened to me like twice in the past 3 months (of active gameplay).

[Ghalion]

Well you seem to acknowledge that too many games is a fairly valid reason in of itself. I just want to end this with stating that I'm not saying that each and every one of the reasons I've listed is a definitive reason to not play pso2jpn...It's a combination of many reasons such as those that I listed. Added all together, I think it's very reasonable to decide to not play it if someone so chooses, without making the person a moron or foolish or lazy or unable to read a simple help file, etc.

Again I never said people playing on JPN chose the wrong path or anything like that, but this mentality that some of the people have on there towards people who decided to wait for west is just inappropriate IMO.

[Chdata]

Having many reasons is also a reasonable opinion I'd say.

[UnLucky]

Only reasons I can really see to avoid JP PSO2 are:

1. You don't care enough to play the game in the first place.

2. You think SoA would actually respond to your support tickets.

Sorry, but SoJ is going to do a much better job at fixing bugs and banning hackers than SoA ever would, with or without your input.

[Ghalion]

First, I'll admit I have not played any of the online phantasy star games, so truth be told I have absolutely no evidence or experience saying otherwise. However, I have played numerous other MMOs, and the fact is the customers for it are constantly whining and complaining about virtually everything. Including how helpful customer support is. It's basically like youtube comments, it doesn't matter how good a job an uploader does, as long as they have any fame whatsoever their comments are going to be full of insults, complaints, etc.

Anyway, I've seen that in every mmo I've played "this region is perfect, ours is useless, blah blah". And every single time I bother to see for myself with an objective and helpful attitude, lo and behold, the customer support actually effing helps me with what I ticketed them about.

Now given the fact that PSO2West hasn't so much has got a single effing announcement other than "it's been delayed" like an effing half a year after the original release date (no @#%# it's delayed!), I can say you have a very compelling argument and are most likely correct. But again, that isn't made apparent until after like a year of fruitless waiting, and I've already gone into that topic.

Before you say you could have told us before the year long wait that they are awful or whatever, just note that again, I hear nothing but complaints about every online gaming company, so no offense, but I wasn't really ready to just believe in everything I heard from the community without giving it a chance for myself first.

[Lumpen Thingy]

Only reasons I can really see to avoid JP PSO2 are:

1. You don't care enough to play the game in the first place.

2. You think SoA would actually respond to your support tickets.

Sorry, but SoJ is going to do a much better job at fixing bugs and banning hackers than SoA ever would, with or without your input.

anyone who thinks otherwise needs to just look back at any PS game online wise ;3

[IndignationSWF]

Sorry, but SoJ is going to do a much better job at fixing bugs and banning hackers than SoA ever would, with or without your input.

Not to mention content updates sadly.