Photon Arts: This Game's Only Weakness

[pinkace]

Dammit.... I loved leveling up my PA's. I would show up with a high level PA and it would MEAN something, that I earned it, that I deserved it.

I keep forgetting that when playing this game it doesn't matter if you land a critical PA combo, it won't level up, won't make a difference.


it just.... sucks. :(

[Rehks]

I agree.I use to just spam PA's just to level them up. But since they took out the level up portion. Its now mostly based on luck to get the one you want. Sadface );

[Linka]

honestly, the new system is weird, yes, but it's not without advantages. first of all, because of the system, two-handed weapon PAs start with the first two stages available. second, you don't have to start with a level 1 PA that you need. well, except Infinite Storm, or whatever ones you end up with at the start. but then again, finish chapter one and afterwards you can just buy better versions!

however, the whole 'disk level system' can feel abit double-edged later on. for example, level 200 and still trying to get those last few level 30 disks you need to maximize your weapons' potential damage. feels almost the same for me with Linka at 76. just annoyed that i'd have to do missions i wouldn't normally run, or can't run yet safely due to enemy level, just to get stronger PAs. but the system is so much a virtue early on, as it doesnt feel as annoying earlier on. tho Force users probably hate it even more than others later on.

overall though, its a nice change of pace. its double-edged, but at least in some peoples' minds they feel they just got one less thing to grind levels on now.

[Geiz]

Leveling them sort of made more sense, but the bullets especially I found super quick to level. Having to find them hits my tech user hardest so I usually use my higher level character to find them.

[BIG OLAF]

I thought it was a lot nicer not having to worry about leveling PAs on your own. Having "low level" PAs never hindered me, and gave me some extra things to look out for when doing missions. Sometimes I would do an entire mission just to find a certain level PA disk (because some of them are kind of hard to find, such as Renzan Seidan-ga).

Honestly, I hope they keep that style of "PA finding", instead of "PA leveling" for PSO2.

[Akaimizu]

Actually, it's a little more like PSO, in that regard. I actually found I like this better. Levelling the stuff manually was tedious and often kept you avoiding the right-tech for the right-time aspect because you needed to level something up. The problem with it before was just the whole balance of it all. If you didn't tirelessly just go somewhere to spam your PAs, you often were faced with a very imbalanced collection of creatures of certain elements. So basically, you could play 1000 hours or so, and without the spamming, you'd have these certain things raised through the roof and then all these other *way less used* PAs at seriously low leves.

With this system, it actually does come to you, and still at a fairly appropriate time. Not to mention, you get everything leveled without the tedium. That is, you get your spead of arts levelled before you know it. As long as you're levelling and continuing to do stronger missions, you'll get them all. Maybe some PAs come a bit later over others, but it works out. This time, you can simply concentrate on taking monsters down in the best or coolest way you know how. (And all the other complexities this game introduces now)

[Mracless]

I concur with BIG OLAF. Keep PA finding. Levelling them up is so bloody boring.

Character level and type level are enough to grind for.
There are far too many PAs to level up.

Unless you're an ass, you can't level up low level PAs in random parties or else you're a hinderance to the team, so you have to level them up when you're alone or with friends that don't mind.
Having lots of high level PAs in PSU doesn't show that you're skilled. It just shows that you gave up a lot of your life.

I think that finding high level PAs is quite a treat, just like finding rare weapons you want.

Anyway, that's just how I feel.

[RemiusTA]

Dammit.... I loved leveling up my PA's. I would show up with a high level PA and it would MEAN something, that I earned it, that I deserved it.

I keep forgetting that when playing this game it doesn't matter if you land a critical PA combo, it won't level up, won't make a difference.


it just.... sucks. :(

Leveling method for photon arts was a huge drag for this game, honestly. They switched to the PSO method of upgrading the moves, but in truth they executed it kind of poorly.

IMO, going into a mission and spamming a single move was extremely drab, especially since i mained a Fortetecher and leveling the skills was ABSOLUTE hell and actually accounted for a decent fraction of my overall play time. They NEED to do away with all the grinding aspects of this game. It's really not good for MMOs, and there are tons of ways you can go about leveling skills other than spamming them in a group of enemies.

I refuse to ever play a game again where i have to do the equilivent of spamming Seed Express / Sleeping Warriors A while using a single spell for hours on end, just for the technique to useful at the very minimum.


Most of PSU's issues with photon art leveling is that they broke the entire combo up into 3 button presses. If each, or ever other, hit in the combo was a result of the level of the technique, then they could have broken it up into less than a 10 level gap before the gain was useful. If I was rewarded every, oh, 3 or 4 levels instead of every 10, then perhaps the PAEXP method wouldn't have been so boring. But sitting in a spam party to level my buffs to 50 when they only increase in usefulness 4 times is a COMPLETE waste of time.

[redroses]

I wonder why they just don't mix both styles together.
Like that, you can have the option to level your photon arts if there is nothing else to do, or they level up by themselves while playing, or you have the chance to find discs.
This way you can benefit from both.

[RemiusTA]

Well, the way Forces worked in PSO, finding a higher leveled spell was pretty much the equivalent of tekking a rare weapon, since 4 or 5 levels was a decent increase in both power and technique.

I think that idea would work too, but only if there was a cap that you could spam to before having to find the disk to jump over the limit. Otherwise everyone would be tempted to just spam PA's again, which is very annoying.

[Silver_Wyrm]

I vastly prefer finding PA's to leveling them. Leveling them always made me feel like I had to spam PA's and focus only on certain ones. Some pa's are very situational but they would be drastically lower level as a result and not worth using even in those situations. Also when switching types it made it painful when your type rank was low as well as your pa's very poor so you had to go spam them on weak enemies or something while ignoring the majority of them as it was so much work to try and keep them all up. The chain system would also hamper the spamming nature of leveling them.

95% of PA discs are very easy to find since they drop in specific areas, with only a few coming as annoying boss drops or sort.

I can also use my high lv character to hunt out pa's my lower lv needs giving them a good advantage and making alt leveling easier.

edit: in old style I would say "Oh I would like to use this pa....its low lv....time to spam for hours"

Now I get to say "oh I guess I should run X mission to get a better one quick" I have never had to run a mission more than three time and thats if Im unlucky (aside form some like say.... save bullets which is boss drop). That certainly beats hours of spamming, for each PA.

[Alucard V]

Yes I do miss the PSU level system but it did take forever to level up Arts. The PSU Photon Arts would also go against the chain system. The PSO disk system may have safer call been the but it's not the best one.

If you ask me somthing like the final fantasy 7 "weapon effects growth" system or a "chain EXP mutiplier" may have worked better.

[Seth Astra]

IMO, the PSU leveling system wouldn't work for this because of the chain system... Well, it'd work, it'd just redefine "an absolute pain".

[OldCoot]

I am glad I found this topic. I just got the game and was wondering how to upgrade my pa's. I noticed some were level 1, 2 and 5.

I take it then that when you find a disc you should enable it to see what level the PA is?

[Silver_Wyrm]

I am glad I found this topic. I just got the game and was wondering how to upgrade my pa's. I noticed some were level 1, 2 and 5.

I take it then that when you find a disc you should enable it to see what level the PA is?

cant "learn" a lower lv pa will give an error if you try so cant mess it up, infinity has a nifty new feature that has your current pa lv displayed in parenthesis.

Wiki has a list of where every pa drops and at what lv's so if your looking to upgrade specifics, psupedia will tell you were to go.

[Gibdozer]

I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! I think the disc system and photon pool are a huge step backwards for PA's. Honestly whats more realistic than a skill advancing with usage. Love all the other improvements, but the new pa/pp system sucked a lot of the fun out of this for me.

[Jorry]

If people leveled them up by using them, I am sure that online play would be even worse than it already is, with the chain system and all. PA spammers are so annoying already...

[Wayu]

^

@Gib: Obviously a PA spammer.

Anyways, the point of the new PA and PP system was to reduce the drag known as PA spamming. It makes the game more challenging and less repetitive than simply pressing the exact same button the entire time.

Which I personally like.

-Wayu

[Silver_Wyrm]

It also lets me have an extra slot on my item bar since I dont need pp restores and makes force and ranger not totally borked by the system. It also gives incentive to use the regular combos >.>

Honestly, I liked the entire new system in psp2 so much more and I still do. A much better job at keeping the action going without it being a repetitive button spam or being forced to favor only certain pa's.

[Dragwind]

For anyone who had to level up PAs in PSU in order to catch up to a type's standard (take Masterforce/Gunmaster, for instance) quickly realized that leveling PAs as opposed to finding discs in PSO quickly became a curse. There was also the nasty added side effect of the infamous PA spammers (Tornado Dance anyone?) causing a mess with knocking enemies all over the place in your group, just for the sake of leveling a PA. I agree that leveling them manually does seem to make more sense, and in a few circumstances, was less of a headache. Overall though, it caused more frustration and was less fun overall.

Capping PAs by finding discs has overall become faster and easier compared to spending hours to hundreds of hours, just to level PAs. It was not fun, it wasn't practical, and I strongly feel the new system is better.

[Akaimizu]

Levelling up to get to a type's standard for Gunmaster wasn't a chore. At least they level the stuff they have faster. Guntecher, which pretty much *lives* on high PA levels otherwise they suffer greatly, had the non-speed-increased standard of levelling their PAs for a much longer time and for a greater variety of PA arts. The release of Gunmaster was actually a godsend for some of the guns, which would've taken a whole lot longer sticking with Fortegunner or Guntecher for. They have it bad like techers if only because of the number of elementals alone for each gun levelled separately and none of them had the (one size fits most) like some of the techs did. So in teching, you could at least go for the great ones first, then the not so great ones later.

Still, forces, in general, also had it pretty hard, though Acrotecher did help in speeding up the tech levelling, to a point. The only people with the tolerable climb to PA levelling were the hunters. They had less of them to deal with, and none of them were element-fixed, so you could always have good proper elements while raising the PAs.

[funkyskunk]

spam PA's just to level them up

Awesome, sounds like a right barrel of laughs [/sarcasm]

Glad I didn't touch PSU

[Blizz3112]

Awesome, sounds like a right barrel of laughs [/sarcasm]

Glad I didn't touch PSU

I loled at this post and have to agree to it, although I did play PSU for a little while on offline mode...
The leveling of PA's was very annoying. The advantage of finding high level PA's in PSPo2, you can store them and later use them for other characters without you ever needing to keep leveling up those char's PA level... Also, the shop gives off some effective PA's for you to use and carry a level that will likely be enough to deal acceptable damage...

[Kaziel]

I'm glad they brought back the PSO-style of acquiring disks. I wasn't too fond of the PA leveling system in PSU, but I grew up loving the PSO style, not the PSU style. Don't get me wrong, PSU had lots of great features, but the PA system wasn't one of them.