[DreXxiN]

Originally Posted by Adelheid

Somewhat closer in that they might take more than 10min to full clear but still not the hours of dungeon crawling fun that PSO was.

PSO2 is great fun, I just wish it was more PSO and less PSU.

The bolded portion is where I think people just became better at games..

Nothing took me even remotely close to an hour in PSO BB after a lot of experience to complete outside of maybe a full ep4 desert clear. o_o

[Rock Eastwood]

Originally Posted by DreXxiN

The bolded portion is where I think people just became better at games..

Nothing took me even remotely close to an hour in PSO BB after a lot of experience to complete outside of maybe a full ep4 desert clear. o_o

This.

Also if you want... you could spend hours in there anyway.

I think the only thing that bugs me about the map design is that...

They definitely feel like randomly generated fields in the sense that after a while you realize they're just endless nothing. Besides the few uninteresting landmarks. At first I felt like I was exploring... Now I'm just more focused at looking at the map...

Also "Only beta" or not... after a week.. only having 4-5 areas is starting to feel like a legitimate complaint... Hopefully they update some more area eye candy after full release... While I still find it amusing to fight space demons in a parking lot.

[Adelheid]

A full clear of Caves with level appropriate progression on any difficulty was quite a long time, over and hour, generally. Mines and Ruins less so but they were still quite big and open roguelike designed maps. PSO has gone the PSU route of designing missions as little cul-de-sacs of the world you get thrown into.

And I have the opposite problem with the field generation, Caves/Mines/Ruins were more randomly generated than the current maps which -aren't- randomly generated they just pick from a large pool of pregenerated maps. I've seen the same maps quite a few times over already.

Yeah in PSO it was the same, just pregenerated combinations they choose from... but since the levels and even the rooms were vastly bigger and took much longer to complete you saw a lot less repetition.

And this has nothing to do with people getting better with games, as I still play the original PSO now. If you're rushing through for rares or bosses then of course it isn't going to take you close to an hour to complete but when you rush through on PSO2 it takes you about 2-3mins to complete.

For a full clear of caves1-3+boss it was generally over an hour, unless you way outgeared/leveled the place. But even if it wasn't an hour, the maps were still much larger and adhered to a roguelike design philosophy. There was a build up in how you progressed, the map would get darker in aesthetic and new enemies would pop up and eventually you'd come to that room you know has the boss teleporter in and your heart is racing because the atmosphere has built upto this moment when you fight this epic boss.

Whereas, as I said, PSO2 maps are little cul-de-sacs of boring scenery with almost nothing except the mission objective in them. Boss maps are exactly the same as any other map, there is no sense of emotional or atmospheric progression no sense of narrative told through scenery... and since the map design is basically a cul-de-sac you can pretty much skip straight to the boss, murder it then leave and repeat... I understand that it's easy for SEGA to design stuff this way, it costs so much less money... money they can put into character graphics and other things... but I'd rather have less pretty models as long as there was still an awesome RPG under it all and I got better map design for it.

That is, except for the codes, which are a great addition, though they are a seperate thing from level design and not much different to coming across a puzzle room or a dark room randomly placed in a PSO field.

[DreXxiN]

For a full clear of caves1-3+boss it was generally over an hour, unless you way outgeared/leveled the place. But even if it wasn't an hour, the maps were still much larger and adhered to a roguelike design philosophy. There was a build up in how you progressed, the map would get darker in aesthetic and new enemies would pop up and eventually you'd come to that room you know has the boss teleporter in and your heart is racing because the atmosphere has built upto this moment when you fight this epic boss.

I can see what you're saying here. The environment changing, your heart racing, and knowing what's coming due to said changes. I still remember the dark rooms and the super long epic hallway leading into the Falz fight..now THAT was some good design.

I can agree with you there...I forgot about it just because how under emphasized it is in modern game design.

[Adelheid]

Yeah that hallways before dark falz was always so insanely daunting.

[gigawuts]

Exactly. Back when PSO came out they had to work with what they had, so they used various storytelling tools and effects to do it. I don't mean to bring up a cliche, but it really did seem better back then. Now developers seem to favor graphics and appearance over level design and subtle details.

[Outrider]

Originally Posted by gigawuts

Exactly. Back when PSO came out they had to work with what they had, so they used various storytelling tools and effects to do it. I don't mean to bring up a cliche, but it really did seem better back then. Now developers seem to favor graphics and appearance over level design and subtle details.

The thing is, people were saying this when the Playstation and N64 came out.

People are almost always going to have nostalgic love for the good things they remember when they were younger. So while you might think the new generation is all about flash and appearance, people who are growing up with this generation probably think it's fine. Of course, ten years from now, those people are going to have the same complaints about the new generation.

So it goes.

[gigawuts]

Originally Posted by Outrider

The thing is, people were saying this when the Playstation and N64 came out.

People are almost always going to have nostalgic love for the good things they remember when they were younger. So while you might think the new generation is all about flash and appearance, people who are growing up with this generation probably think it's fine. Of course, ten years from now, those people are going to have the same complaints about the new generation.

So it goes.

Yeah, and to an extent it was true then too. Then the issue is less that games are getting bad, and more that the absolutely top quality games are exactly as rare as they've always been - it's just we can see them all if we look back.

Only very carefully can a sequel surpass its predecessor. In staying the same you risk stagnation. In changing you risk alienating your fans. The tricky part is finding just the right combination of innovation and retention, enough to clearly step up the game, but not enough to turn it into a different game. I think that games like Zelda carefully (And arguably masterfully, although I wasn't fond of Skyward Sword) tread this line.

Then there's another route altogether: Intentionally changing. For example, Portal was a puzzle game with a story on the side - a great story, yes, but the primary focus was the puzzle in front of you. Portal 2 was a story game with a puzzle on the side. I loved Portal 1 to bits, I can't count how many times I've played through it. Many hardcore Portal 1 fans said Portal 2 had bad puzzles. I say it wasn't meant to be as challenging as the original, but instead it was meant to be a logical step forward with a quality story and the framework for the fans themselves to create the challenging puzzles with a whole slew of tools for themselves as well as the players. I think Portal 2 was the perfect sequel to Portal 1.

So PSO2 has changed up its combat. There's no more missing (good riddance, dice roll misses blow in games like PSO), both players and enemies have a wide variety of attacks (a big plus), and weapons have been condensed and rebalanced. So far so good, it's all pretty logical and none of it is unfun. The core gameplay has been upped. It's simply the actual levels themselves that need spicing up. I would say that for the most part Sega's done a good job at this point, what matters is what they do moving forward. It's been confirmed that the mines will be on the desert planet and the tundra will be on the forest planet. That's exactly what I was hoping to hear. With some luck there will be some crossover and something to dehomogenize the levels, if not in every level then missions that sport broader elements of randomness and a sense of location, if not purpose. "Go here, kill rockbear" is not a good purpose if you killed a rockbear and got a change over then killed another rockbear on the way there. It's fun, no doubts, but not really a purpose.

[Tetsaru]

I've been rather aloof about PSO2 lately as well - didn't even play the open beta. And now, I hear it's being released in Japan with no word of being localized elsewhere, or having an English patch, and I can't help but wonder if we'll be starting down the PSU road again where, IF an English version comes out, it won't share the same servers, and we'll start lagging behind Japan again in updates...

Also, I've been noticing a trend lately with online RPG's: there's always some sort of major problem that arises shortly after release, or people immediately start to lose interest because of a lack of content, and then start comparing it to another game that's been out for years and has time to develop. FF14, Diablo 3, SW:TOR, and Tera, to my knowledge, have all had something along these lines happen, in some form or another.

Other than that, I've been very disappointed in the lack of character outfits and accessories (though I think they added a few recently), as well as the lack of weapon types. I saw no need in one gun being able to function as a rifle, AND a shotgun, AND a rocket launcher depending on what moves you had.

I think I'm just going to sit back and watch for now, and see how this progresses...