19º PSO2 STATION! (Sega Fest 2018 )

[XrosBlader821]

I'm on the other side of the spectrum. Why should classes have access to all skills at the same time? Why should everyone be a 1-man army even in cutting-edge content? I believe that players should be forced/locked into being able to only perform one role when they start a quest. If someone wants to be a jack-of-all-trades, then they should suffer in being subpar in every single role. PSO2 classes however are jack-of-all trades, master of all.

You're completely missing the point. The only reason the current skil ltrees are any way tolerable is because we learned which skills work and which don't an reset passes are free anyway. That being said the Tree's don't give any real choice. Sure you can decide to focus either on Katana or Bow but a Hybrid is completely unviable while Bo has so little Skills to put stats into that you pretty much have to play it as a Hybrid. In case of Braver they need to reduce SP cost of Important skills and introduce new purely optional ones. This way you can play only Katana and get the optional Skills or Play only Bow and get the optional Skills or Play hybrid and ignore the optional skills.

Hero is perhaps the best designed Skill tree so far. You can get every important skill with ease and then spend the last remaining points into Skills you'd like but that won't significantly affect your DPS. I could say the same about Summoner and Bouncer to a lesser extend but it's no coincidence that all 3 Classes I mentioned have the lowest Total SP cost in their Skill tree while every other class has SP totals twice as high as currently available SP (braver being only short by 2 points and Hu/Fo almost tripple that amount).




Spending 10 SP into Burn Mastery isn't a option it's a mistake. Spending 10 SP into T-DEF Up is the same and you have to spend so much SP into Photon Flare that People prefer not to bother and put the SP into T-ATK Ups instead. These Skills have no real value. Fighter has to waste 20 SP on S-DEF up and Dex up while Summoner/Hero spend only 5~10SP and achieve a much better effect.

Again, I'm not suggesting they should kill options entirely but they really need overhaul the Tree's so that Essential skills and optional ones are clear and all of them present real value to the player. Fusing some of the Stat up skills not only would make them much more appealing but would also get rid of a lot of Clutter on the page, And S-ATK/R-aTK/T-ATK/Dex Up skills aren't essential so there is no point why the first 3~5 SP should be wasted on them.

[SteveCZ]

Bouncer is a support class folkss deal with eett it hurts ex fi/bo users even more.

[Dark Mits]

I actually believe that trees do give option. The issue about wrong choices is because players have calculated out the most efficient builds. For example regarding T-atk and Photon Flare, players have found out that going for T-atk is better. This makes Photon Flare a "wrong" decision. But if Sega tried to fix this and buffed Photon Flare so that it would become better than T-atk, then going T-atk would become the "wrong" decision. Mathematically there cannot be a balance between these 2 options, since content is dynamic.

Sega does have the option of entirely eliminating skill trees and making classes unlock skills / stats / etc. at specific levels. Or they can design every class to require exactly so many skills as many skill points are available. Then and only then (ie. by eliminating choice) will they be able to work towards balancing classes and builds. But we players want to feel that it's our own characters we play, and not someone else's.

[the_importer_]

You're completely missing the point. The only reason the current skil ltrees are any way tolerable is because we learned which skills work and which don't an reset passes are free anyway. That being said the Tree's don't give any real choice. Sure you can decide to focus either on Katana or Bow but a Hybrid is completely unviable while Bo has so little Skills to put stats into that you pretty much have to play it as a Hybrid. In case of Braver they need to reduce SP cost of Important skills and introduce new purely optional ones. This way you can play only Katana and get the optional Skills or Play only Bow and get the optional Skills or Play hybrid and ignore the optional skills.

Hero is perhaps the best designed Skill tree so far. You can get every important skill with ease and then spend the last remaining points into Skills you'd like but that won't significantly affect your DPS. I could say the same about Summoner and Bouncer to a lesser extend but it's no coincidence that all 3 Classes I mentioned have the lowest Total SP cost in their Skill tree while every other class has SP totals twice as high as currently available SP (braver being only short by 2 points and Hu/Fo almost tripple that amount).




Spending 10 SP into Burn Mastery isn't a option it's a mistake. Spending 10 SP into T-DEF Up is the same and you have to spend so much SP into Photon Flare that People prefer not to bother and put the SP into T-ATK Ups instead. These Skills have no real value. Fighter has to waste 20 SP on S-DEF up and Dex up while Summoner/Hero spend only 5~10SP and achieve a much better effect.

Again, I'm not suggesting they should kill options entirely but they really need overhaul the Tree's so that Essential skills and optional ones are clear and all of them present real value to the player. Fusing some of the Stat up skills not only would make them much more appealing but would also get rid of a lot of Clutter on the page, And S-ATK/R-aTK/T-ATK/Dex Up skills aren't essential so there is no point why the first 3~5 SP should be wasted on them.

I think it's obvious that SEGA will cap the final level at 100 for every class and unless they give us more extra SP, 114 will be the maximum. I think the best thing to do, after 6 years (out of 10 for support) would be to keep every skill to either 1 or 5 points. This would allow players to max out most of the essentials on a tree, especially for dual classes once we hit those 114 SP.

[GHNeko]

it just occured to me that bouncer's main support skills EPPR and Crit Field; and fuck it lets throw HEAL SHARE in there
are all fucking RINGS

that are no less effective than the real skill themselves, while only have -20s less active time, but -10s CD time, so the net loss is -10s. Which isn't bad considering that

1. you dont have to waste SP for these skills
2. you dont have to waste time playing Bo

the unique aspect about Bo's support isnt even unique to Bo anymore and there is no advantage Bo has vs people just using the rings outside of being able to run these skills simultaneously and with longer uptimes (the rings has lower cooldowns)

so you can be Bo support to a degree without being Bo support.

and in the same breath

they still call bo a support class

what a joke

[XrosBlader821]

I actually believe that trees do give option. The issue about wrong choices is because players have calculated out the most efficient builds.

So basically you're saying that the choice in this game boils down whenever or not you want to play optimaly or unoptimally. This is absolutely terrible and the reason why I said these Trees are only being tolerated because we already know how to play optimally.

Or they can design every class to require exactly so many skills as many skill points are available. Then and only then (ie. by eliminating choice) will they be able to work towards balancing classes and builds.

Or instead of doing that they can make each essential and optional skill clearly identifiable and reduce cost of essential skills so that you have actually some SP left to choose the optional ones. Something I've tried to explain with previous posts but you seem to think that making the Trees less shit will make everyone OP somehow. They already proved themselves being capable of doing a great skill tree where Essentials and Optionals are clearly identifiable and affordable with Hero. The only way to play Hero unoptimally is to literally ignore the Tree and only go for the Optionals which you'd never do unironically.

But we players want to feel that it's our own characters we play, and not someone else's.

This issue doesn't really exist in Phasion Star Online 2 and we would still have flexibility with the subclass system.

[ArcaneTechs]

it just occured to me that bouncer's main support skills EPPR and Crit Field; and fuck it lets throw HEAL SHARE in there
are all fucking RINGS

that are no less effective than the real skill themselves, while only have -20s less active time, but -10s CD time, so the net loss is -10s. Which isn't bad considering that

1. you dont have to waste SP for these skills
2. you dont have to waste time playing Bo

the unique aspect about Bo's support isnt even unique to Bo anymore and there is no advantage Bo has vs people just using the rings outside of being able to run these skills simultaneously and with longer uptimes (the rings has lower cooldowns)

so you can be Bo support to a degree without being Bo support.

and in the same breath

they still call bo a support class

what a joke

you remember WarTecher? i remember it, its basically what BO is now man

[GHNeko]

you remember WarTecher? i remember it, its basically what BO is now man

wartecher sucked didnt it?

[Dark Mits]

So basically you're saying that the choice in this game boils down whenever or not you want to play optimaly or unoptimally. This is absolutely terrible and the reason why I said these Trees are only being tolerated because we already know how to play optimally.

Not what I mean, but what you say actually applies for every single game of this genre in existance. There will always be explicitly only 1 optimal solution. Even 1 single skill point placed differently is by definition suboptimal, even if it's a non-dps skill point. The best thing a developer can do is simply reduce the difference between the absolute worst and the absolute best option a player can make. Some games have done a good job (and every example I can think of doesn't have more than 5-10 choices for the player to make), and in other games the difference is enormous.

Or instead of doing that they can make each essential and optional skill clearly identifiable and reduce cost of essential skills so that you have actually some SP left to choose the optional ones. Something I've tried to explain with previous posts but you seem to think that making the Trees less shit will make everyone OP somehow. They already proved themselves being capable of doing a great skill tree where Essentials and Optionals are clearly identifiable and affordable with Hero. The only way to play Hero unoptimally is to literally ignore the Tree and only go for the Optionals which you'd never do unironically.

It's that we disagree on what is essential and what isn't. Taking FO as an example again, is 245 T-atk from the 3 skills essential? If it is essential for the class to "work", then why give players the option of selecting it instead of giving it as passive level-up bonuses, or as a hard requirement before unlocking other skills (like the first 3 points in T-atk 1)? Is Photon Flare essential? If it is not then why include it as an option? And if a player decides to take it for "flavor", what should they have to give up to make it a balanced flavor choice?

Let's take TE for example: I count 128 skillpoints that translate to direct damage increase. Some of them are global (T-atk 2 for example), some are situational (Wind Mastery for example, which only works on enemies with Wind weakness). With 99 total skillpoints I have to give up 29 skillpoints. What should I give up? Wind/Dark mastery and Poison Ignition because not many hard enemies are weak to wind and dark? That's a choice I have to make, which means that I will remain at my max theoretical performance for Light, but I will be weaker for Wind and Dark.

And it doesn't stop here. In the 128 figure above, I have not included the Deband skills, Long-time Assist, Reverser Field, PP Restorate, Tech Charge JA Addition, PP Conversion, Territory Burst, Wide Support, Super Treatment, Territory PP Save. I guess I SHOULD get PP Conversion and PP Restorate, because I don't want to spend most of the time where I am not in melee distance waiting for my PP to recover. So I should give up some other direct damage increase skillpoints. Ok, I remove all DEX, that's 10 more. I'll split them like this: 9 in PP Conversion and 1 in PP Restorate.

But wait, Super Treatment is amazing because it increases the PP of others too. I should definitely get that too! But I have to give up something else! Maybe reduce points in S-atk.

But Deband buffs are also amazing! 15% damage reduction and 25% extra hp means that this thing that now deals 120% of my current max hp as damage will only deal 83% of my then max hp. This is the difference between dying and surviving! Oh no, I have to give up even more direct damage for it!

See, as a TE player, I have choices to make: Do I try to be a useful mpa member with great Deband, Super Treatment, the new Party Assist, Reverser Field that also has auto-Shifta/Deband etc? Or do I play as pure damage dealer? Let's take subclasses into account as well. Do I get HU for extra melee damage and good tankiness? Do I get FO to be able to spam from afar and be able to rez the useless bow user quicklier? Do I get BO so that I have additionally more utility through Fields?

Hero's design doesn't really give you an option. You are statically one single thing, and every Hero playes exactly that same as every other Hero. Choosing between 50 more Def or 50 more HP isn't flavor choice. And even this can be mathematically worked out to be an optimal or suboptimal choice.

This issue doesn't really exist in Phasion Star Online 2 and we would still have flexibility with the subclass system.

But again, some class/subclass combinations work better than others. This isn't different than having optimal vs suboptimal skill selection in a single class. Going Fo/Hu is not as effective as Fo/Te, therefore Fo/Hu is not optimal. Now if the difference was so small that RNG blurred it, then we could talk about flexibility, but even in that case there would still be only a single build that had mathematical average peak performance.

[XrosBlader821]

Not what I mean, but what you say actually applies for every single game of this genre in existance. There will always be explicitly only 1 optimal solution. Even 1 single skill point placed differently is by definition suboptimal, even if it's a non-dps skill point. The best thing a developer can do is simply reduce the difference between the absolute worst and the absolute best option a player can make. Some games have done a good job (and every example I can think of doesn't have more than 5-10 choices for the player to make), and in other games the difference is enormous.

Again Hero already proved that you can make a well designed tree. If you don't think that Hero has a well designed Tree then I won't take your comments about what should and shouldn't be made with the skill trees seriously anymore. Besides a issue being present in other games doesn't make it excusable to be present in all of them.

It's that we disagree on what is essential and what isn't. Taking FO as an example again, is 245 T-atk from the 3 skills essential? If it is essential for the class to "work", then why give players the option of selecting it instead of giving it as passive level-up bonuses, or as a hard requirement before unlocking other skills (like the first 3 points in T-atk 1)? Is Photon Flare essential? If it is not then why include it as an option? And if a player decides to take it for "flavor", what should they have to give up to make it a balanced flavor choice?

Okay? Are Gear Skills essential? If yes why isn't it built into the weapon? Is Limit Break essential? I mean it's the only way to reliably trigger half of the skill tree. Is Weak bullet essential? Weak Hit Advance 1 and 2 would make you believe that is the case but we can choose to ignore it so it must be totally optional.

Let's take TE for example: I count 128 skillpoints that translate to direct damage increase. Some of them are global (T-atk 2 for example), some are situational (Wind Mastery for example, which only works on enemies with Wind weakness). With 99 total skillpoints I have to give up 29 skillpoints. What should I give up? Wind/Dark mastery and Poison Ignition because not many hard enemies are weak to wind and dark? That's a choice I have to make, which means that I will remain at my max theoretical performance for Light, but I will be weaker for Wind and Dark.

And it doesn't stop here. In the 128 figure above, I have not included the Deband skills, Long-time Assist, Reverser Field, PP Restorate, Tech Charge JA Addition, PP Conversion, Territory Burst, Wide Support, Super Treatment, Territory PP Save. I guess I SHOULD get PP Conversion and PP Restorate, because I don't want to spend most of the time where I am not in melee distance waiting for my PP to recover. So I should give up some other direct damage increase skillpoints. Ok, I remove all DEX, that's 10 more. I'll split them like this: 9 in PP Conversion and 1 in PP Restorate.

But wait, Super Treatment is amazing because it increases the PP of others too. I should definitely get that too! But I have to give up something else! Maybe reduce points in S-atk.

But Deband buffs are also amazing! 15% damage reduction and 25% extra hp means that this thing that now deals 120% of my current max hp as damage will only deal 83% of my then max hp. This is the difference between dying and surviving! Oh no, I have to give up even more direct damage for it!

See, as a TE player, I have choices to make: Do I try to be a useful mpa member with great Deband, Super Treatment, the new Party Assist, Reverser Field that also has auto-Shifta/Deband etc? Or do I play as pure damage dealer? Let's take subclasses into account as well. Do I get HU for extra melee damage and good tankiness? Do I get FO to be able to spam from afar and be able to rez the useless bow user quicklier? Do I get BO so that I have additionally more utility through Fields?

Te/Hu literally has no options to choose from. Every Te/Hu build nowadays is pretty identical thanks to Techniques being taken out of the equation.
Playing Tech focused Te you're basically playing shitty Fo. Te players have some amazing choices to make indeed.

Hero's design doesn't really give you an option. You are statically one single thing, and every Hero playes exactly that same as every other Hero. Choosing between 50 more Def or 50 more HP isn't flavor choice. And even this can be mathematically worked out to be an optimal or suboptimal choice.

That's where I have to stop you and ask how differently are other classes playing with their "Choices".
A Hunter will try to parry with Chargable PA regardless of Fury or Guard Stance.
A Fighter will skill pretty much identically because the stances are just awful and don't change gameplay at all.
A Ranger wont play radically different if you choose to ignore Weak Bullet and go for a different Bullet, except of the lost DPS to the entire MPA.
A Gunner suffers from a similar issue as Fighter, there is only one way to play that class and Players seem to complain about lack of SP on that one too.
Force doesn't play radically different if you choose Mastery C instead of Mastery A.
Te does have the choice of going Full Wand Bonk or actually use Techs regardless of what you pick you're playing a shit Bo or shit Fo and you only do so because of better Shifta/Deband.
Braver can only choose to go Katana or Bow as hybrids aren't viable.
Bouncer can play Solo DB, Solo JB or Hybrid but like I said it's one of the better skill trees with optional skills you can pick if you'd like to have them.
Summoners play exactly the same and even subclasses don't change that. But they still have a lot of choices to make on the less important skills. Again, one of the better skill trees because there are a lot of skills that you don't have to take but you do because you want to. Stuff like Easy Symphathy or Reserve recovery or Photon Blast Advance won't break your neck if you don't have them and the amount of SP is ideal to take all the essentials andmake decisions about the remaining ones.

And if you're going to answer with "Well Class X can play with Weapon A instead of Weapon B" then im gonna counter and say that you don't have to play Hero with Swords or TMG or Talis or all 3 weapons combined. You make the decision to do or not do so, which makes the optional Hero skills even more optional.

But that's beside the point because we're discussing insignificant options here. I never said the choices on Hero make the class play radically different but they're choices players make depending on what they feel like is important to them personally and won't affect the performance too much. You don't have to level up Hero Will or Hero Flash guard if you're confident about dodging but you won't lose out on much by taking these skills over something else. That's what optional skills should be like, not deciding if I want essential skill A or essential Skill B because the SP costs are too bloody high. you can only take Photon Flare if you go mono Element in which case 2 out of 3 coumpounds are weakened because you wanted a 10% Damage buff every 45 sec.