31º PSO2 STATION! (From Phantasy Star Thanks Festa 2019 - Port Messe Nagoya / Nagoya)

[GHNeko]

My real frustration with PSOW is how fucking toxic it is to anyone that doesn't fit its definition of "skilled," not the existence of a new and improved Expert rank. The place acts like "wasting Triboosters" is the worst thing in existence.

i mean you're not wrong but like at the same time there have been people who come here with objectively wrong info and cause drama to happen when someone who is skilled and knowledge chimes in to correct them.

pso2 section on psow has issues on both spectrums. that being said i dont think it's fair to trivialize "wasting triboosters"

not even remotely. everyone has different priorities, so to some; having their boosters wasted is probably among the worst things in the game since that usually means their hard earned resources from their successful efforts are being wasted.

[Mega Ultra Chicken]

i mean you're not wrong but like at the same time there have been people who come here with objectively wrong info and cause drama to happen when someone who is skilled and knowledge chimes in to correct them.

pso2 section on psow has issues on both spectrums. that being said i dont think it's fair to trivialize "wasting triboosters"

not even remotely. everyone has different priorities, so to some; having their boosters wasted is probably among the worst things in the game since that usually means their hard earned resources from their successful efforts are being wasted.

True. That was a mistake on my end. Triboosters aren't quite as easy to get as, say, Rare Drop boosters.

[Dark Mits]

Suggestion about Expert requirements

Sadly this wouldn't work as easily because:
(1) The players wouldn't come to a concensus on a "logical" timeframe; it would probably take more than 6 months
(2) It would widely segregate the playerbase during the initial stages, and many players who would set the bar too high would become disgruntled that they would have to "lower" their requirements. This would come at the cost of many EQ runs, since 5-10mins would pass easily before they found out that they have to remake the EQ room with the lower reqs.
(3) Due to the above, many players would set their requirements too low so that they avoid losing time while the mpa is being formed. But that would mean that players of lower performance would also join, which would again cause them to disgruntle.


The issue I have with the Expert status is that it requires something that is 100% solo for content that is 100% multiplayer. This doesn't sit well with me. I should prove that I can work well in a group to participate in multiplayer content, not that I can play well solo. I do acknowledge that this opens pandora's box with leeching and having others do the work for you. I also acknowledge that PSO2 EQ combat is heavily antimultiplyaer, meaning that you don't really have to coordinate with others to clear content; we are really just 1 player with 11 amazing-AI NPCs in all this content.

Maybe Sega should really implement pure multiplayer content; that is content that is impossible to solo not because it would take extremely long time even after heavily outgearing it, but because it would simply lead to 100% failure. For example:
- There's an NPC in the mpa that acts as the "tank". Every 2mins the boss uses a special attack aimed at the NPC's location that needs at least 6 people to absorb and avoid killing the NPC which would lead to instant fail and kick back to lobby.
- Plant a detonation bomb on a player. Everyone else who is within 10m of that player after 5 seconds receives unmitigatable 9999 damage that also bypasses Iron Will-esque effects and puts them all on cooldown.
- Plant a darker core on a player and a photoner core on another player. These deal heavy mpa-wide damage per second unless the two players come in contact to destroy the cores.
etc.
- Have 2/3/x switches that all need to be activated within 3 seconds of each other (sort of like the Extreme quests but with time limit)
- And of course my favourite suggestion that I have made in the past: Combination attacks.

Exactly. That's my real point. There's a gray area between leecher and expert, especially since being good at soloing and being good at party content isn't the exact same thing.

Also, it depends on the group at question. Let's suppose you deal 100k dps on Persona EQ. I believe the majority would agree that this player is pulling their weight / is an expert. Now if that person is dead last with just 3% damage contribution and with everyone else at 150k+ dps, doesn't that mean that the player in question was actually leeching?

[XrosBlader821]

i mean you're not wrong but like at the same time there have been people who come here with objectively wrong info and cause drama to happen when someone who is skilled and knowledge chimes in to correct them.

pso2 section on psow has issues on both spectrums. that being said i dont think it's fair to trivialize "wasting triboosters"

not even remotely. everyone has different priorities, so to some; having their boosters wasted is probably among the worst things in the game since that usually means their hard earned resources from their successful efforts are being wasted.

Which is why i think sega should stop doing timed boosters and instead make them based on charges. Instead of 30 min duration turn it into 3 charges, boosting 3 quests regardless of clear speed. There would still be a niche group of ppl who want fast kills due to multi-ship figts but in general most people who arent time attacking would stop care if they got a slower run

[Zephyrion]

To bring a tangential but important point, while SEGA does dumb decisions I think this one is warranted
After all, after years and years of buffing XH they actually bring a new difficulty, and they bring with it a new, much harder expert requirement. I put my ball on UH being actually at least decently hard, hard enough to need semi -competent parties and mpas, especially if they were to revive things such as death limits and time constraints. And we all know how Dragon and Deus tilted everyone to heavens with old requirements, So they're probably looking to up the expert floor level for that.

I'm very curious about UH, hopefully it ends up being an actual new difficulty setting !

[Dark Mits]

Which is why i think sega should stop doing timed boosters and instead make them based on charges. Instead of 30 min duration turn it into 3 charges, boosting 3 quests regardless of clear speed. There would still be a niche group of ppl who want fast kills due to multi-ship figts but in general most people who arent time attacking would stop care if they got a slower run

While this sounds amazingly well, it would also need to take into account the fact that people would take advantage of it to afk in a Free Field or something when not playing. For example, when Enchanted Forest was a campaign, people would spend hours there. People would simply stay in campship to maintain their "charge" without having to reuse a boost, and risk losing all earned exp for Dark Blast / Rings and Collection File contribution if they got disconnected. Which would bring a new type of problem.

I like this charge idea, but if they decide to implement that, maybe they should go for a hybrid idea: Boost has 30mins and 5 charges. Boost consumes a charge in EQs and time in all other content. When a charge is consumed, 6mins are reduced from the timer. When time is consumed, the boost expires

I'm very curious about UH, hopefully it ends up being an actual new difficulty setting !

Didn't we already have a discussion that XH Forest/Caves/Coast is too hard / long for current equipment when wanting to solo? If UH is another level upwards, those areas will become real dungeon crawls. Maybe even see an increase in Moon Atomizer usage. I can't say I would dislike that, in fact I genuinely look forward to that. XH Forest is currently my second favourite content next to Rank+50 Advance Quests.

[Mega Ultra Chicken]

Also, it depends on the group at question. Let's suppose you deal 100k dps on Persona EQ. I believe the majority would agree that this player is pulling their weight / is an expert. Now if that person is dead last with just 3% damage contribution and with everyone else at 150k+ dps, doesn't that mean that the player in question was actually leeching?

Not if they were actually trying. It's a matter of effort, not DPS. The person should improve but I'm not going to accuse them of malicious intent solely based on their numbers.

[Dark Mits]

Not if they were actually trying. It's a matter of effort, not DPS. The person should improve but I'm not going to accuse them of malicious intent solely based on their numbers.

But how can you measure effort? What if the lowest dps in the group pulls double the effort of the top dps, but is limited by equipment, build and unlucky boss teleportations? We then have to add some gear requirements as well. What if you have 2 TEchers and one just uses Zanverse and afks to get 3rd spot, while the other TEcher uses 100+ keys/min just to come in 12th spot anyway with less than 30% of the first TEcher's contribution?

In the eyes of the "elitists", the result is that matters, not the effort. It's obvious when people say "it's easy, just cheese it" to unlock Expert.

[TehCubey]

Maybe Sega should really implement pure multiplayer content; that is content that is impossible to solo not because it would take extremely long time even after heavily outgearing it, but because it would simply lead to 100% failure. For example:
- There's an NPC in the mpa that acts as the "tank". Every 2mins the boss uses a special attack aimed at the NPC's location that needs at least 6 people to absorb and avoid killing the NPC which would lead to instant fail and kick back to lobby.
- Plant a detonation bomb on a player. Everyone else who is within 10m of that player after 5 seconds receives unmitigatable 9999 damage that also bypasses Iron Will-esque effects and puts them all on cooldown.
- Plant a darker core on a player and a photoner core on another player. These deal heavy mpa-wide damage per second unless the two players come in contact to destroy the cores.
etc.
- Have 2/3/x switches that all need to be activated within 3 seconds of each other (sort of like the Extreme quests but with time limit)

FFXIV style fight mechanics (and yes, I can tell all of your examples are inspired by FFXIV boss fights) belong in a tank/healer/dps style MMO, not an action MMO like PSO2.

Also, it depends on the group at question. Let's suppose you deal 100k dps on Persona EQ. I believe the majority would agree that this player is pulling their weight / is an expert. Now if that person is dead last with just 3% damage contribution and with everyone else at 150k+ dps, doesn't that mean that the player in question was actually leeching?

No.

In the eyes of the "elitists", the result is that matters, not the effort.

No. That's just your persecution complex speaking. There will still be loud assholes who act like you're a leech if you're not literally top 1% best players, but: 1. they are easy to identify and ignore, 2. they are a vast minority, just a loud one, and 3. often (not always but often) they're trolling and their own performance isn't even close to what they say is a standard for a passable player. Visit pso2g for examples of such.

It's obvious when people say "it's easy, just cheese it" to unlock Expert.

They're saying it to help you. If you can't clear XQ normally, you can cheese it. It will be significantly easier and nobody will judge you for clearing it that way. Would you rather if the playerbase played gatekeeper and went "you don't really deserve Expert unless you clear the solo XQ legit without cheese" instead?

Also, if only results matter then why are people attempting challenge clears, 1* ungrinded weapons, no units, etc? Surely the result is much worse than attempting a clear normally.

[Dark Mits]

FFXIV style fight mechanics (and yes, I can tell all of your examples are inspired by FFXIV boss fights) belong in a tank/healer/dps style MMO, not an action MMO like PSO2.

I have never played FFXIV. In fact I have not even seen any gameplay outside of early trailers. The mechanics are inspired by other online MMOs I have played (mainly Dungeons and Dragons Online, which is also MMOARPG, but active evading isn't really usable there).

No. That's just your persecution complex speaking. There will still be loud assholes who act like you're a leech if you're not literally top 1% best players, but: 1. they are easy to identify and ignore, 2. they are a vast minority, just a loud one, and 3. often (not always but often) they're trolling and their own performance isn't even close to what they say is a standard for a passable player. Visit pso2g for examples of such.

There is no persecution complex. I have been on both ends of the spectrum. I have been a no-lifer full-out-elitist before, and I am now on the casual end. I know how these people think because I have done it myself before. And yes, it's always the loud ones that make everyone else look bad.

They're saying it to help you. If you can't clear XQ normally, you can cheese it. It will be significantly easier and nobody will judge you for clearing it that way. Would you rather if the playerbase played gatekeeper and went "you don't really deserve Expert unless you clear the solo XQ legit without cheese" instead?

Except this isn't really help. You can't on one hand tell people to cheese it, and then complain that you need new Expert requirements because many have cheesed and it shows. I would in fact prefer a gatekeeping situation as you describe it, but from Sega; preferably one that does not give advantage to a class. The idea of Advanced Training stages per class as someone else suggested is actually a great idea.

Also, if only results matter then why are people attempting challenge clears, 1* ungrinded weapons, no units, etc? Surely the result is much worse than attempting a clear normally.

The videos where you see people do such challenges are in either solo-content, or in premade groups. If someone joined a Persona Trigger with 1* weapon or no-units without the consent of the rest of the group, I don't think the leader would accept to start it.