Just my thoughts about PSO 2 vs PSO 1

[Defend]

Firstly, nearly 14 years with the same account! That's pretty neat, kudos to this website.

I played PSO 2 a bit in the beta, left it, and recently came back. Now that's it has been fleshed out more, and I'm playing more, I feel like having a little whine about things I miss from PSO 1. This post is no big deal really; I'm not majorly bothered, just feel like sharing my thoughts.

I'll try to prevent this from being a post of "It would be better if they did X", and will aim to stick to only pointing out differences that are simple and clear (to me).

Total wall of text by the way. Sorry about that.




1. Not dropping items.

Obviously if we could put items on the ground the game would be better. And obviously that would damage their freemium business model. So the reasons are understandable, but it's still a huge shame that it's gone. It's not the trading aspect that I miss; it's the tangible nature of stuff that it brought to the game. While this list isn't meant to be in any sort of order this would definitely be my number 1 thing that was lost in PSO 2.


2. Balance in fields

Wow. I'm sure some might say this is subjective, but to me it doesn't feel that way. In balancing the combat and enemies, PSO 1 was done very well. I don't say that in hindsight either; back in the day I would remark on how well PSO 1's basic game plays out from Normal to V Hard.

But PSO 2 just blows my mind. A RA with a launcher just deals so much damage from the first step on Naberius. Right from level 1 the RA can pull off multiple one-hit KOs with a crit, and this just carries on for I don't know how long. Now think of a level 1 HUcast with his strongest attack in PSO 1. The difference is huge, and remember that's the HUcast using melee, single-target combat. In PSO 1, when you get to the point of one-hitting things, you feel good. In PSO 2, that's level 1.

On top of that, your mobility is so high and the fields so large that nothing threatens you at all. It's common to go into a quest or EQ much higher than your character and just never die. Now think of the same thing in PSO 1. Or of getting past the last Hildebears in early forest runs, or trying to deal with the swarms in Ruins. Sinows... remember the Sinows.


3. Balance in bosses

The bosses go completely the other way and arrive as literal HP sinks. As a result, the jump from enemies to bosses is just hard to understand. If I was at a more appropriate strength for the normal enemies, the boss would take even longer. If my strength was more appropriate for the boss, the level itself would just be an even greater number of 1 hit KOs.

Just to clarify, I'm not saying the bosses are too hard. Actually they're not threatening enough. The problem is that they're too slow a battle. If 5 minutes of fighting have passed and neither side is on the brink of death and no players are feeling threatened, things turn dull. The same fight could be had in a less repetitive way. Several times in PSO 2 I've arrived at a boss for the first time, and killed it after a very long period of feeling not much of anything at all. Compare that to the first time you reach the Dragon at level 3 or 4, or De Rol, or basically any boss in PSO 1. If you would need 15 minutes to kill a boss in PSO 1, the fight will definitely be over in less time than that because you'd be dead.

So in short:
PSO 1: If it's hard for you to kill the boss, it's easy for the boss to kill you.
PSO 2: If it's hard for you to kill the boss, it's still hard for the boss to kill you.

This could just be a RA issue in PSO 2. Half of the problem is the freedom to totally run away from danger. Again, something PSO 1 handled well with its arenas.

And perhaps the bosses are simply designed for multiple players to be fighting them, reducing the HP issue at least. But still, no-one's worrying about dying. Moon Atomizers are so rarely necessary that I honestly wonder if people carry them.

[ All these comments about balance are referring to a RAcaseal with nothing special. I'm about to equip the standard gun that my R-ATK will allow, my mag supplies only about 7 R-ATK, and I wear whatever armour looks the coolest because defense seems to not really be a thing. ]


4. Detached reality looting.

[edit] Please repliers, stop telling me how PSO 1's looting would mean unfair rare distribution. I know. I talked about this a few lines down starting with "Admittedly...". I personally miss that looting but in this OP I did not wish it back, I said something else. [/edit]

Similar to number 1 up above, I'm a little saddened to know that we aren't all sharing the same bits of loot all over the ground. Yeah there are arguments that support it, such as focussed attacking and fairer looting, but for me the pros don't outweigh the cons (and I was even a RA). Basically, it removes a line of interaction between players... less that says we are sharing the same world.

Admittedly when it comes to rares, for most people PSO 1's approach simply will not fly. I totally understand that. But certainly a hybrid model could have been devised also that maintained the shared world nature of PSO 1, with the fairer rares distribution of PSO 2. That would have been much better, imo.


5. Party chat in lobbies.

Simply the way the Arks ship is almost always completely silent, a problem PSO 1 didn't have. I am guessing this is because everyone is talking in their party channels. I'd simply prefer it if Party chat was actually disabled on the main ship; which admittedly would mean having to find a way to explain that to the players.



I think there are more things but I'll leave it there for now, for fear that I'll get too detailed and lose track of the aim of this post, which is to only point out the large things I feel PSO 1 definitely and simply did better.

[Selphea]

Yea PSO2 is different from PSO1. I think it takes more steps forward than back. I'm actually okay with the looting after having dealt with ninja-looters and Need spammers in other MMOs. That said, I feel some things are indeed done very backwards, although they're incidentally not issues found in your list.

The game is pretty easy, but if you stick around till Level 70, the Ult Quests might give you that PSO1 feel you are looking for. Unfortunately, their drops are done very badly and the only enemy worth killing there is Anga.

As for boss balance, I think the issue is more to do with your lack of gear than anything else. Bosses shouldn't take so long, especially as a Ranger which is like, #1 solo boss killer in the game. But yea, that only makes them even easier. You can solo the MPA bosses like Falz Loser if you're into that though.

Party chat is a cultural thing. It's a Japanese game and a lot of people are afraid of sounding like baka gaijin. If this was the official English version, people will talk more. But otherwise, even the randoms that join my party don't say a single word. It's kind of creepy really. Go to Ship 2 Block 20 if you want to hear people speaking.

[Edson Drake]

Long post, I'll reply to 2 points:

4. Detached reality looting.

Similar to number 1 up above, I'm a little saddened to know that we aren't all sharing the same bits of loot all over the ground. Yeah there are arguments that support it, such as focussed attacking and fairer looting, but I think the pros don't outweigh the cons. Basically, it removes a line of interaction between players... less that says we sharing the same world.

Unlike number 1, this could have been applied to PSO 2 without breaking their business model.

Admittedly, when it comes to rares, for most people PSO 1's approach simply will not fly. I totally understand that. If forced to choose between PSO 1 and 2's style, I personally would say 1 all the way. But certainly a hybrid model could have been devised also that maintained the shared world nature of PSO 1, with the fairer rares distribution of PSO 2. That would have been much better, imo.

It's fair to every player as you mentioned and helps with envy. Rangers and Forces wouldn't get crap since the melee classes would nab everything like in PSO1.

Can you imagine how infuriating would it be if Rangers and Forces would blast the hell out of a boss so that weak HU and BR would get the loot just by being close? All the work done by the RA and FO and the HU and Br get the loot.

But note that you'll still see your friend getting that Elder Pain from Hunar and you that Alva Sword +3. :P

5. Party chat in lobbies.

Simply the way the Arks ship is almost always completely silent, a problem PSO 1 didn't have. I am guessing this is because everyone is talking in their party channels. I'd simply prefer it if Party chat was actually disabled on the main ship; which admittedly would mean having to find a way to explain that to the players.

I welcomed this actually, it's best to keep conversations in private. But note that it's Japan, a culture where it's very bad manners to speak in cellphones while on trains. While it does happen, people frown at people that do this, the Japanese don't like people that don't respect each other's space, and by using /all chat, you're disrespecting their personal space with your private messages.

As silly as it sounds, I agree with the Japanese, there are a lot of stuff I'd rather not to read around lobbies

[Defend]

Yea PSO2 is different from PSO1. I think it takes more steps forward than back.

Yeah I can agree with this in general. Actually I'm quite happy with how well PSO 2 fills the role of "sequel". It advances heaps, but holds onto its roots. Lots of throwbacks but it doesn't lean on them, and lots of stylistic similarities. They could have called PSU "PSO 2" back then, but the real PSO 2 requires no interpretation. Nice to see such that such a bona-fide sequel can still be created despite the massive hiatus.

You've both said pretty much the same points so one reply fits all.

For the chatter, mmm I didn't think of the cultural difference. I didn't know/forgot about block 20 also, so I'll check that out.

As for the looting, well we just have different tastes on that. The issue you raised, Edson, was something I often pointed out in PSO 1 as a RA. HUs got the rares first. But that's why I would be happy to see a hybrid model. Anything I suggest would take a little ironing out before sounding good to all though.

My gear is definitely not speeding up the bosses, but then mmm the huge gap between bosses and minions is only made worse. It's hard to imagine that I'm supposed to chew through enemies even faster. Meanwhile the lack of threat on the whole remains. However that bit is probably more a product of modern day gaming, than it is a PSO 2 issue.

Interested to hear the things that you notice, Selphia. Oh I thought of another one.

6. Telepipes!

Not a big deal at all. I am yet to see ANYONE use a telepipe in PSO 2 for obvious reason. Regardless, PSO 1 telepipes are superior to PSO 2 telepipes in every way.
Fun PSO pastime: knowing a friend is hammering for the rare drop and throwing a telepipe at their feet. Up they goooo...

[wefwq]

1. Not dropping items.

Storage space issue, and also it may make player get much more understanding with what kind of item they get.
Able to be solved with popup notification, but then again... storage space limit.

2. Balance in fields

Your wish are basically already granted with the recent UQ, every mob takes a ton of time required to kill, and some player hates it already...

3. Balance in bosses
So in short:
PSO 1: If it's hard for you to kill the boss, it's easy for the boss to kill you.
PSO 2: If it's hard for you to kill the boss, it's still hard for the boss to kill.

Basically the same as point 3, UQ.

4. Detached reality looting.

There's so much jerk running around, why would you want to share loots.
If it's really applied somehow, i sure as hell people will have nightmare about finding a group to play with since lots of people will prefer to lock their room and play with people they know.

5. Party chat in lobbies.

I prefer the lobby as is, you probably don't know the "old" B-020 don't you?

[Defend]

There's so much jerk running around, why would you want to share loots.
If it's really applied somehow, i sure as hell people will have nightmare about finding a group to play with since lots of people will prefer to lock their room and play with people they know.

Actually it wasn't such an issue in PSO, even with its no-mercy system of not even sharing rares fairly. Definitely some people complained about it, but there definitely weren't difficulties finding games either, right until the death of the English servers.

The why is simply because it brings many more moments of meaningful player interaction to the game. As I mentioned, a hybrid model would have been nice to offer the best of both worlds.

[Neith]

1. Not dropping items.

Obviously if we could put items on the ground the game would be better. And obviously that would damage their freemium business model. So the reasons are understandable, but it's still a huge shame that it's gone. It's not the trading aspect that I miss; it's the tangible nature of stuff that it brought to the game. While this list isn't meant to be in any sort of order this would definitely be my number 1 thing that was lost in PSO 2.

I think the sole reason for this is so you can't get around the benefits of having Premium. It is sad but in a (ugh) 'free to play' game it can only be expected.

2. Balance in fields

Wow. I'm sure some might say this is subjective, but to me it doesn't feel that way. In balancing the combat and enemies, PSO 1 was done very well. I don't say that in hindsight either; back in the day I would remark on how well PSO 1's basic game plays out from Normal to V Hard.

But PSO 2 just blows my mind. A RA with a launcher just deals so much damage from the first step on Naberius. Right from level 1 the RA can pull off multiple one-hit KOs with a crit, and this just carries on for I don't know how long. Now think of a level 1 HUcast with his strongest attack in PSO 1. The difference is huge, and remember that's the HUcast using melee, single-target combat. In PSO 1, when you get to the point of one-hitting things, you feel good. In PSO 2, that's level 1.

On top of that, your mobility is so high and the fields so large that nothing threatens you at all. It's common to go into a quest or EQ much higher than your character and just never die. Now think of the same thing in PSO 1. Or of getting past the last Hildebears in early forest runs, or trying to deal with the swarms in Ruins. Sinows... remember the Sinows.

To be honest, everything under Super Hard is an EXP farming simulator. Nothing even remotely poses a threat. Really the only purpose of lower difficulties is for something to do while you grind to Super Hard, and later Ultimate/Extra Hard.

As for the Emergency Quests being a cakewalk, this (in my opinion) is a problem with Multi Party Areas. I think MPAs should be reserved for 'super bosses' (things like Falz/Magatsu etc) and maybe Ultimate- not for anything else. 4 players wreck everything badly enough, you don't need 12 at all. I would however say that I would prefer Ultimate if it was a single-party mission and the monster health was lowered a bit to compensate. Because it's a 'collect points' mission and also because JP farm Anga Fandarge and nothing else it can be a total pain getting a party to run the mission for the other drops. I wish it was single party so you could freely run it whenever you liked, rather than hope there's a couple of people you can get a MPA with.

3. Balance in bosses

I would reserve judgement on bosses until you've tried Ultimate. In Ultimate their HP is ridiculous and they do hit hard (only the fact it's a MPA lets it down). As far as bosses taking a while, you might want to look at some videos on Youtube. Once you have the right skills you can bring down most bosses within a couple of minutes easily enough, under a minute for some. I do agree that most bosses aren't very threatening though. Even Dark Falz Luther is somewhat of a joke now that people know how to beat him.

4. Detached reality looting.

Similar to number 1 up above, I'm a little saddened to know that we aren't all sharing the same bits of loot all over the ground. Yeah there are arguments that support it, such as focussed attacking and fairer looting, but I think the pros don't outweigh the cons. Basically, it removes a line of interaction between players... less that says we sharing the same world.

Unlike number 1, this could have been applied to PSO 2 without breaking their business model.

Admittedly, when it comes to rares, for most people PSO 1's approach simply will not fly. I totally understand that. If forced to choose between PSO 1 and 2's style, I personally would say 1 all the way. But certainly a hybrid model could have been devised also that maintained the shared world nature of PSO 1, with the fairer rares distribution of PSO 2. That would have been much better, imo.

I'd hate PSO2 with the shared drop system. I wouldn't trust people enough to share out rares The current system I think is good as it tailors drops towards your class a bit more (Tech discs seem to drop more often when you play a Force/Techer etc). The other problem with PSO1's system if you applied it to PSO2 is what happens when there's a PSE Burst. I cannot imagine the chaos that would happen trying to get rare drops in the middle of a PSE Burst knowing that anyone else could swipe it from under your nose.

The caveat is that I WOULD like to see a return of Section IDs. I loved how each ID had its own drop pool. If you could apply that to PSO2's system (so in effect everyone would have a different 'Section ID' active each game, providing each player with a different drop pool) I'd love it.

5. Party chat in lobbies.

Simply the way the Arks ship is almost always completely silent, a problem PSO 1 didn't have. I am guessing this is because everyone is talking in their party channels. I'd simply prefer it if Party chat was actually disabled on the main ship; which admittedly would mean having to find a way to explain that to the players.

As mentioned, I think the only reason that no-one talks in lobbies is because of Japanese culture. It's extremely rare to see Japanese players talk in public chat. Add to that the fact that we're not even meant to be on their servers and I can understand why people would be quiet (aside from some blocks where people seemingly don't give a shit)

I want to point out that I played PSO GC and PSOBB for years and loved it. It did many things brilliantly and it's quite nostalgic. I know I'll never feel the same about PSO2 as it feels too 'clinical' but it is a relatively enjoyable game. PSO is very dated now; I find it hard to go back to and although it had some great ideas, some are best left in PSO and simply wouldn't work in the context of PSO2.

[Defend]

I agree with pretty much all you said. But, and no disrespect to you or anyone, it seems that even though I acknowledged that PSO 1's system wouldn't fly in the OP and every reply since, I keep getting that explained to me anyway. I've mentioned three times that a hybrid model could bring the good from both worlds, but it's as if that writing is invisible. We wouldn't need shared rares to enjoy generally shared loot.

[isCasted]

1. Not dropping items.

You can actually drop recovery items, so that's something. Not that it's actually useful in most of the game. It still helps in quests like XQ, Abduction or DF Loser (at least used to, before he became too easy).

2. Balance in fields

Before EP3 update lv1 characters actually took a while to kill things with standard gear. After that there came skill tree changes, ultimately buffing nearly all PAs in order to balance endgame. I made a new character after that update and I felt that there's not much difference between normally geared lv1 playing on Normal and properly geared lv65 playing on Super Hard. I guess game just shows you right away what you should be aiming for?

And, as mentioned, Ultimate enemies are much more buffed, but one important fact - that quest (second one isn't coming for a loooong while) are simply not designed for solo/single-party play. There's also EQ-only XH quest, where regular mobs have really large HP pools (too large, IMO) but it's actually playable for a single person.

3. Balance in bosses

PSO 1: If it's hard for you to kill the boss, it's easy for the boss to kill you.
PSO 2: If it's hard for you to kill the boss, it's still hard for the boss to kill you.

Says the Ranger, lol. Well, you don't have Weak Bullet yet...

On Super Hard boss can easily OHKO you if you don't have HP affixes on your gear, especially rare infected ones. I remember fully-infected titled lv70 Crys Draal dealing 1110 damage to me with his diving attack (it's not even a killer move, just a basic one). RABRcaesal won't even reach 700 base HP at that level, I believe.

However, Ranger's Weak Bullet...


Actually, most class combos deal with SH bosses fast enough with proper setup. Bosses become a great HP sink again in XH, and in Ultimate it's just a whole new level.

4. Detached reality looting.

If I was given a dollar when my party member gets something I wanted...While I don't like concept of loot rushing, ability to share rare loot on pickup would be really neat.

5. Party chat in lobbies.

B20. You'll realise how wrong you are.

[Punisher106]

Hate to break it to you, but a lot of what you said I welcome with open arms. Being able to loot what I see, having a nice, quiet lobby, and the high mobility making it easier to avoid attacks, is all wonderful. Also, in PSO2, there are takes on the PSO1 Episode 1 bosses, but made even more epic.

Dragon - Vol Dragon
De Rol Le - Bal Rodos
Vol Opt - Big Varder
Dark Falz - Dark Falz Elder

And in a way...

Olga Flow - Dark Falz Loser.

The high mobility, the story really fleshing out your character's destiny, unlike PSU, and the rather diverse styles of combat, compared to before, are all awesome. I love this game. And in the past, the PS series has been notorious for monster reskins, where in PSO2, they're minimal. The reskins that DO exist are for good reason, and some that seem to be reskins sort of just have similar animations, but have very different attacks. I also love the Darker's Den. Being abducted during TAs, and trying to fight your way out of your little imprisonment, getting cloned at the end, is always a thrill.