Pre-Open Beta starts June 15th/16th ; 1¥ = 1AC

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Originally Posted by SELENNA

The rising costs are only due to one thing ; graphics. And I blame Call of Duty fans for that, or even Uncharted ones. These games have exceptional visuals and it seems this is all what counts nowadays.

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Wait...you're saying that Call of Duty has exceptional graphics? lol

Anyway, the premium pricing may seem high, but don't forget that the main parts of the game are free. Do you guys really need to play as premium players every single month? Just alternate between premium and free, play like 1 or 2 months for free and then play 1 month as premium.

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Originally Posted by BIG OLAF

$16 a month for premium? That's more expensive than just about any other MMO on the market. Blame the yen --> dollar exchange rate, I guess. Either way, not sure if I approve...

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That's not that abnormal for JP MMOs. I play Monster Hunter Frontier, and it's 1400yen/mo just to be able to play, and another 600yen/mo for "Extra Course" which is basically a load of practically necessary extras (More necessary than the extras you get from this game's Premium).

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Originally Posted by SELENNA

Not giving them a dime. I'm sorry but this is not how PSO2 should have been marketed. Microtransctions are killing the industry, not helping it. The rising costs are only due to one thing ; graphics. And I blame Call of Duty fans for that, or even Uncharted ones. These games have exceptional visuals and it seems this is all what counts nowadays. So the Japanese devs are all struggling because that wasn't a priority for them. Their philosophy? Content > appearance. But it seems nobody wants games that have actual content anymore. Most games I've played recently could be finished in a rental and if I wanted to get more, DLCs were everywhere. Content that should have been on the disk in the first place, and developers always try to defend this practice while most of us gamers agree it's bad practice.

PSO2 suffers from the fact its developers wanted to create a game with nice graphics rather than focus on content. Seriously the game just lacks content and you WILL be bored after a week. If it's anything like the closed beta, you'll end up grinding the same missions over and over just to complete boring client orders or complete an urgent mission. Unfortunately the game feels a lot more like PSU to me and it sucks. Gacha system and the like are poison to the industry, I hope you'll enjoy spending dozens of dollars to get worthless virtual items.

You know the game will tank outside Japan, in fact I'd go as far as to say SEGA has no faith in the game since they did not bother showing it at the world's largest videogames event, E3. What a bunch of fools. I still can't wrap my head around the fact PSO EP 1 & II is a game with better content than what I'had the chance to play a couple of weeks ago. It's like they learned nothing in the past decade. There will be FOUR areas only then we'll have to wait weeks if not months for other zones, maybe even buy an expansion pack using gacha who knows. Would have been 10x better to have the levels end up as in PSO with locked rooms now all you have to do is rush and maybe kill a few monsters doing so.

I just feel the game is nowhere near its potential, but this is how gaming is in 2012. Games try too much to be the next Crysis in terms of graphics and forget about stuff that really matters, like the story, the number of items at your disposal, the CONTENT. F2P was an error and still is. That's why we will get an inferior product, why couldn't this be at least like the PSP Infinite?

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Which is funny, as Crytek announced it's going to focus on F2P games instead.

Anyway, you mentioned Call of Duty and Uncharted(what?) as the front runners for this change of direction but you're definitely not seeing the big picture here. The world of gaming has been transitioning from small-scale developer titles to big showcase titles since the late nineties. Now while it's fun to blame other games for that, the simple fact is that this is happening because developers got bigger and therefore got more production power they can use. Shaders and polygons became more complex, software became more expensive and gamers on a whole expect to see something graphically appealing. Now while you might say that makes games focus on graphics instead of content. That's bull. People don't play JUST for graphics despite what you think, however they fill out and add atmosphere to a game which is what a lot of gamers seek.

PSO2 decided to go this route and it was probably the best decision for them to get their game out there, I just don't see how this would subtract focus since they're obviously compeltely different things.


To get on topic. I won't be spending any money, or maybe just a character slot. Not that I would mind because I can easily afford it and it's probably a lot cheaper than your standard MMO model but I'm simply not planning to stay on the Japanese server if there's even a glimmer of hope for an NA release.

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Originally Posted by SELENNA

E3.

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Apparently you haven't noticed they didn't show a good thing this year because the investors matter more than the consumers, but, y'know, you can keep consuming all that flouride or whatever. It doesn't really matter to me that you think E3 is still worth anything.

Investors being the same sort of people who indirectly cause all of your terrible health problems. Just saying.

I wonder if you'll still need to recycle 12 Arks outfits to get 1 recolour ticket. £50 just for recolouring the primary colour of an outfit. That'd be insane. DX Surely it won't still work like that, right guys? Right? D:

Prices make me sad. Customisation is one of my favourite things about games that allow me to make my own characters! Such a high price and luck barrier keeping the good stuff away from me. :(

I guess you could potentially take 1 ¥500 scratch, be lucky to get exactly what you want or do FUN scratch until you get the 3 day my shop ticket, sell the junky outfit/part you got for meseta, then hopefully someone else will have what you want for sale at a similar amount of meseta.
But considering how worthless meseta is already since everything decent needs to be paid for with arks cash, I'm not sure people would be willing to sell cash items for meseta.
In that case, you'd be forced to pay for premium to be able to trade items directly with other people.
All this assuming Arks scratch items will still be tradable in the final release.

Ugh... this game is going to take so much money away from me. P2P, I miss you so much! :-(

But at least character slots are only ¥500. :D Quite surprised about that. But then again, it's another character people might spend outrageous sums to get looking the way they want them to.

YES! Finally! Is there a way to find out that you were accepted to play the pre-open beta, or is it okay if you signed up?

Today we are announcing the pricing plans for Phantasy Star Online 2:

Game: Free to Download
Billing: The Basic Game is Free (supported by Cash Items)
Premium Set: 1300AC
AC Scratch: 1 Scratch is 200 AC
Other Cash Items: 150 AC ~

PSO2 will be Free 2 Play and Free to Download. You can play quests and story missions for free. Free players will not have limits imposed on their class levels nor playing time. They will not allow the direct sales of highly over powerful weapons that could affect game balancing. Through updates you can enjoy new bosses, new fields, and new quests for free!
Through communication, you can gain FUN points for use with the Free Gacha “FUN Scratch.” In this scratch, you can obtain room items, music disks, and additional lobby actions. Through here, you can get some exclusive features for free, for example, you may receive a ticket that lets you open up your My Room and My Shop for Free for 3 Days!
For paying users, you can enjoy additional features through Arks Cash. The items included under Arks Cash are not required for playing. There are no direct sales of highly over powerful weapons nor cash quests. 1 AC = 1 Yen!

http://bumped.org/psublog/phantasy-s...rough-6162012/

Might I ask where this information would be coming from?

I have no current reason to believe that would be true.

There's no physical copies. Its free direct download from PSO2's website like many free to play MMOs.

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Originally Posted by Vashyron

Yet it's more people "whining" about the high prices than not being able to afford them.

It's better for 5 People paying $8 than 1 paying $16.

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This is foolishness on more than one level.

First, they are pricing for Japanese customers, not foreign customers. It is not their fault, and indeed, not something they can control, that foreign currency continues to devalue while their own currency has remained largely static (and, in fact, actually deflated for a number of years since the turn of the century). For their Japanese customers, these are actually very low prices, especially compared to other MMO prices in the nation (with games like Tera taking top dollar with a price of 2700 yen).

Secondly, there is no guarantee that they would actually gain such a large number of customers if they just cut the pricing in half. Obviously, if they do cut the price in half, they have to gain twice as many customers to make up for the loss in revenue. I'll leave you to figure out just how infeasible that is.