AC not selling as well as before?

[Zyrusticae]

Layered wear was a mistake, after all.

Layered wear is fine as an idea, but in practice the AC scratches need to become less expensive, not more. It's obvious that a big part of why they worked for so long was because they actually had something resembling a decent value for the money (at least in the minds of the ones who bought them). Having the value get cut down so much is just asking for trouble.

[Xaeris]

Layerwear was a fine idea, and reintroduced the mix and match aspect to clothing from PSU that many of us loved. The stupid part was making basewear into tickets and as a result, limiting their circulation through the economy. The thing I loved about PSO2's F2P model from pre-Episode 4 is that the typical free player's income was enough to accommodate some participation in the AC item economy. The way they implemented layerwear makes the typical free player's buck go much less further than it used to, which is the absolutely dumbest thing they could do for the game's long term health.

[Selphea]

There are any number of contributing factors to lower AC sales:

One more:

- Not enough midriff!

[Hysteria1987]

From the last livestream:

Spoiler!

Basically scratches are selling less so they are branching out into new models such as stamina systems.

Cheers yo, appreciate it. And best of luck to Sega's new mining enterprise... :P

[Tenlade]

Hate saying this but can we please have Suganuma back? The Ep4 directors clearly have no idea what the fuck they're doing.

Who are the ep4 directors, did they hire the most generic F2P directors ever or something? bonuses for buying scratch tickets in bulk, stamina for gathering, AND a gem system. All they need to do is reward people for watching commercials on the video screens in the lobby and we'll hit peak freemium gameplay.

[Sizustar]

Who are the ep4 directors, did they hire the most generic F2P directors ever or something? bonuses for buying scratch tickets in bulk, stamina for gathering, AND a gem system. All they need to do is reward people for watching commercials on the video screens in the lobby and we'll hit peak freemium gameplay.

PSO2 episode 4 is being done by Nakamura (EP2) and Hamasaki's (Zero / Po2 / EP3 (balance adjustment))

[wefwq]

Who are the ep4 directors, did they hire the most generic F2P directors ever or something? bonuses for buying scratch tickets in bulk, stamina for gathering, AND a gem system. All they need to do is reward people for watching commercials on the video screens in the lobby and we'll hit peak freemium gameplay.

Don't give them ideas.

[D-Inferno]

Remember that much "bullshit" might not be coming from the directors, but rather from Sega of Japan's marketing and "higher ups". Not to mention the game's budget probably being too low to add the content we truly want.

Sometimes I wonder if PSO2 would have been more successful if the franchise was a thing in the Americas and Europe. That is, the game wasn't just simply a "niche" Japanese game where it's money comes from shitty sex-appeal outfits and people buying premium when they don't really need to. Come on now, during what points throughout this game lifetime do you feel getting prem was worth it besides shop (made irrelevant by cubes), and that time where you converted weps/units into passes (not as important thanks to 13* and red wep focus).

[NephyrisX]

Honestly we just need more varieties of Layer Wear which will come in due time, as well as having more actual costumes that fit the overdesigned futuristic anime look that Phantasy Star Online and onwards always had.

We don't need another bazillion Yukatas/Swimsuits/etc etc.

[Z-0]

I'm pretty sure that Layered Wear would increase AC Scratch sales, not decrease it...

AC Scratches being worth more meseta = incentive to scratch. The majority of people never actually scratch for an outfit, it's for meseta to get outfits and LAs. That being said though, the "better" the items, the more people will want to scratch because "it's bound to be worth a lot of meseta". While Layered Wear is expensive, it's expensive because people are buying it.

Furthermore, scratch sales have been on the decline since before Episode 4, it's not a recent thing. All the changes to scratches since Episode 4 are responses to the lowering sales to try and get people to scratch more (layered wear ticket system, bonus scratch items, etc).