Current State of The Game -- thread discussion

[Dark Mits]

snipped to save space

I really like this post. But as an armchair developer, I have to reply!

1) Affix gap: I think the current affix situation is good. There are stock affixes for 5s/6s which cost a couple million or less and provide a solid 100+ ATK and some other stuff. 8s with great affixes is not the norm, and the vast majority of players either doesn't have one, or has exactly one because of budget issues and bad RNG. The players who run around with S1: <type> Boost, S2, S3 AND 200+ attack are less than 1 in 100. Similarily, 6s units with 200+ atk are also very rare.

The issue with affixes is that an external sim tool is absolutely required for anything that is considered good, because players need to create at least 2 intermediate "waves" of fodder before affixing their actual equipment. I think Sega should try to simplify the process by allowing an infinite amount of fodders instead of just 5 (or at least allow up to 20), and just keep increasing affixing costs per added piece, even if it reaches 1.000.000.000.000 meseta cost for having 20 fodders.

-=EDIT=- A way to also bypass upgrade paths could be helpful, for example getting <Affix> IV or V from many copies of <Affix> I


2) That a lot of stuff is going on is not (for me) an issue, the problem is that content is designed so that:
- Everything is either a 1-shot or 2-shot.
- Everything is an interrupt or knockdown.
- -=EDIT=- "Meta" PAs have baked in Interrupt or Knockdown immunity.
- Evasive/Defensive actions reduce incoming damage by 100% and incoming status effects by 100%
- If for any reason a player's HP is not currently at its max value, the opportunity cost to get it to max is so close to 0 that it is practically non-existent.

Because of the above, the current game design for UH and cutting-edge content is to just push it all to 100% damage and press evade on absolutely everything, which also makes it monotonous and uninteresting. There is 0 relevant content (going as lvl90 in daily FQ does not count) where you can try a strategy of facetanking and recuperating during downtime. Affixing for HP or DEF should only happen because an affix has it baked in (for example Mana Reverie). S-abilities that have any defensive factor (for example Guardian Armor) have absolute 0 use.


3) Indeed it is daunting for new players to see how long it takes to reach the highest level and be able to play the relevant content. Maybe Sega should backload exp requirements, by making for example lvl85 reachable with just 10-15 hours of regular play for a new player (this means no keys, no EXP grinding, just flowersniffing), then make the last 5 levels require the same 10-15 hours or extreme EXP grinding (Tokyo Gold keys etc), and then add the 14 extra skill points all purchaseable after lvl90 by grinding level caps (so that a player feels progress even after they reach the level cap).


4) The amount of inventory management in-between EQs / UH FF runs is also getting out of hand as you say. Right now we get over 70 items after any EQ session (and even worse for a 20min UH farming), that we have to untek or check if we'll vendor, or if we sell to other players. Maybe it's time to reduce number of drops as weapons and increase as materials, even if it means that fodder prices will increase in the market.


5) Regarding Skill Trees: I think the issue is that people will either follow the meta, or they are wrong. But this is not a PSO2 problem, this is a community problem and exists in 100% of online games with skill trees. In my opinion Sega should do a bit of cleaning and streamlining of the trees. Skills that provide multiple bonuses should be broken up to different skills. Skills that provide the same bonus should just become one skill (why is there Light Mastery 1 and 2? Just make it Light Mastery with 15/15 providing the 144% modifier).
Phantom and Summoner should get more skills, even if they're just generic stat buffs, so that 104 points are not enough to fill all non-Main Class skills.
Non-Main Class skills should not be locked behind Main Class skills (I'm looking at you Summoner).

rhetorical question? but wind and rain, if you're joking I did catch it

I am not joking, I didn't know we refer to these EQs like that. I have always seen people refer to them as Easter EQ and Raining EQ