Even more new AOTI supplemental update details (March 11)

[Gen2000]

There were other factors too on top of the weaker player stats that made v.1 enemies harder than AoTI's too such as attacks not flinching them as easily as they do now. i.e. only the last part of normal combos flinched, only certain parts of melee PAs flinch, and all bullets besides Rifle's didn't flinch at all which lead to less blitzing/harder solo ability than seen today. Also some enemies like v.1 Go Vahras moved noticeably much faster than they do today.

I kind of agree just boosting ATP + HP of enemies doesn't change much but it would still make for more interesting missions as the case seen with Winter Carnival's bonus missiosn (though a boost like that would be a little extreme for your everyday normal mission it gives you a good idea still) and seems like the easiest/laziest way for them to improve the difficulty of the game without actually putting effort into making actual interesting enemies or A.I. patterns like mentioned above.

[hewitt]

"Hey guys! To make the game more challenging, this is what we decided to do! We are going to allow you to play missions which take away all of the levels you worked so hard for!! Don't you see how cool this is?!?!?! Instead of us making new creatures to fight or making the existing creatures stronger, we'll just have you fight the same old crap only we'll take away a lot of your strengths in the mission by dropping your level and putting restrictions on the items/PA's/classes you can use!!! Also, did we mention that you'll be able to CUSTOMIZE your character for these levels?!?!? Some might say we are gimping you, but we feel that we're allowing you to level your character AGAIN...it's like you're starting the game all over!!!! It's awesome!! Wouldn't the NBA be more challenging and fun if the team with the better record had to have it's players tie one hand behind their back?!?!?!"

I don't see why people are so pissy about this. So what? It's only temporary
and it makes the things more challenging/you can play easier with your
low-level friends.


Oh, and levels aren't even that hard to obtain. -_-

[Garou]

restricted levels sound too much like CoP missions on FFXI and NOBODY liked those. meh this whole update is sounding like a bad FFXI rip off, but i'll keep an open mind (or try at least...)

Uhh, capped missions. I never got past the Promyvions. But this is like merits in FFXI pretty much?

[Palle]

Hm, I don't play much anyway, but if this goes live in NA and PSU is still pay-to-play, I am pretty much done with SEGA forever. We shall see.

[cheapgunner]

They should just increase all the creatures damage by like 5x and thier HP by 3x. Then I would happy over this update. It seems like they are out of ideas for making the game challenging.>.<

[Swiftstrike]

They should just increase all the creatures damage by like 5x and thier HP by 3x. Then I would happy over this update. It seems like they are out of ideas for making the game challenging.>.<

Thats not a very unique way to change it up ...

[Calsetes]

Why is it most times when I see people say "This game is too easy," they always say about how quickly they kill everything with a fighmaster? I understand the whole "play a class you like" thing, and if they like fighmaster, then more power to them. If they want a challenge though, then why don't they use another class?

I'm sorry, maybe it's just me. If I decide I want a challenge, I go out and use another class. I have yet to use any force-related class for more than a mission or three, I kind of can't wait until I eventually get to level any of those jobs - a 150 guy with level 1 techs. Tell me that's not a challenge on some level...

Anyway, my two cents - again. Feel free to disagree with me (which most people probably will anyway).

[rayner]

Stronger + more HP doesn't make the monsters more challenging IMO.
In v.1, players were weaker so mobs were kinda like if they had more HP and attack power.
But were they more challenging? No. Just longer to kill.

I think they'd make the game more challenging if monsters actually required specific strategies in order to be killed.
I'd like to avoid the PSO analogy, because those are two totally different games (especially gameplay-wise), but truth is PSO had some inventive way of dealing with some monsters and they didn't even rip one single concept in PSU.

To name a few :
-Dark Gunners: they were completely invincible for a set period of time, then when they were ready to fire at you and vulnerables, your best bet was to shoot at the 'leader' in order to temporarily paralyze the others.
-Dubchics: those guys were invincible and could only be disabled by destroying their 'mother brain'. Sometimes it was quite a pain when soloing and had to deal with an army of them while trying to destroy the device.
-Garanz: the more they were damaged, the less armored they were, and the more missiles they were shooting. Best strategy was to run in circles around them so thy would destroy themselves with their own missiles.
-Nano Dragons: they were constantly avoiding being engaged into melee, had good resistance to ranged physical attacks, and could become stronger each time they were killing another monster.
-Satellite Lizards: just a pain to kill with a ranger. You had to force them to attack you beforehand because they were immune to all the ranged attacks that were coming from the front.
-Girtablulus: do I even need to bring back those painful memories? <_<

In PSU, the only 'smart' idea they found was to buff mobs, make flying mobs, and also some resistant to a certain type of damage (melee, ranged or tech). Which in the end doesn't matter, because melee types are so broken that you don't even care about dealing half damage to a mob, it just dies as fast.
Then there was the leader mobs who had some interesting moves when placed with regular mobs of their kind. Thanks to AFK levelers and constant increase of lvl cap and broken abilities, most of them are just completely obsolete now.

/unrelatedrant

Just to expand on this a little... in PSO on Ultimate with a level 120 or so character I could 3-hit combo-kill all the common-enemies in the first 2 areas... like Bartle and such. Normal-normal-hard and they all went down... but it was still fun-as hell!!! The enemies hit HARD and they could knock you down if the damage was beyond a certain percentage... Jellen and Zalure were necessary... untill you get really high level.

In PSU instead of MOAR HP why don't they throw more enemies at you?? That way even with the PA's that hit massive amounts of enemies, it won't necessarily save you because there are others to do the damage. Now come to think of it, I think melee PA's that hit multiple targets is the real crime of PSU... in PSO that was basically the job of a Sword-weilder... which was slow, or a Force... and if you were lucky a RA-type with a Spread Needle.

[JAFO22000]

I don't see why people are so pissy about this. So what? It's only temporary
and it makes the things more challenging/you can play easier with your
low-level friends.


Oh, and levels aren't even that hard to obtain. -_-

We're "pissy" because this is not new content. All they are doing is nerfing the player's stats so they are not as strong, therefore creating a challenging environment.

Isn't the point of all RPGs to start out weak and level your way up so that you become stronger? Thusly, you become able to run higher ranked missions with better drops which will allow you to get to the next set of levels and run even higher ranked missions with even better drops, etc. I thought they are pretty much about character development.

These new missions which drop your level and put restrictions upon which items/weapons/PAs/slot units/etc. one can use is really indicitive of the lack of motivation by the designers/programmers of this game. What they are basically saying is "We let you have all these levels and all these cool weapons but now we can't make the game challenging so what we are going to do is take all of your levels and weapons away and the game will be challenging again".

My argument is that it's another lazy alternative to giving the player base what they really want.

Oh and levels USED to be relatively hard to obtain, until they made it so easy with events and missions with 5000% exp bonuses that anyone can get to level 80 in a few days. Again, another bad decision (IMO).

[Rust]

Why is it most times when I see people say "This game is too easy," they always say about how quickly they kill everything with a fighmaster? I understand the whole "play a class you like" thing, and if they like fighmaster, then more power to them. If they want a challenge though, then why don't they use another class?

I'm sorry, maybe it's just me. If I decide I want a challenge, I go out and use another class. I have yet to use any force-related class for more than a mission or three, I kind of can't wait until I eventually get to level any of those jobs - a 150 guy with level 1 techs. Tell me that's not a challenge on some level...

Anyway, my two cents - again. Feel free to disagree with me (which most people probably will anyway).

I actually done that.
I went from WT 20 to FT 1 on my lvl 100ish beast with most of my techs ('cept Nosdiga, Diga, Foie, Rafoie, Shifta and Resta) under lvl 10, or even at level 1.
I personally didn't find that challenging at all ; I always do my best not getting hit with whatever type, so playing as a low-end FT just increased the time I was taking to finish missions, not how difficult it was. I even wrapped up the 10 last levels of FT in Charged Puzzle S runs (not soloing, mind you) and it wasn't even hard.

That sure changed the time I was taking to kill mobs, but not how poor the strategy or "skills" required to kill them were.
I think that game's too easy, and that's coming from someone who mainly plays as beast WT/AT, CAST GT and newman FI/AF, with almost no S-rank gear, PAs leveled as they're used during missions, higher character being lvl 113, and who have yet to play as a FF or a Masterclass.
Yet I have almost no problem dealing with AotI S2 missions. I already think stuff is too easy to kill in those. So I'm not really surprised that capped Brokenmasters are finding the game too easy.

What would be really needed to make the game challenging will never be implemented anyways ; it'd imply reworking the whole A.I. and stuff, which SEGA won't do.
Sure the bonus mission in Carnival was challenging (espescially as a lvl 113 WT), but let's be honest, the way they found to make it challenging was pretty cheap (ololol rehashed overkill traps and double damage monsters).