Episode 5 Story Discussion

[Keilyn]

Is it because XI isn't casual friendly?

The game wasn't casual at all, but it helped me grow as a person.
Crafting and grouping were relevant; and casual-friendly updates such as Level Sync were implemented.

I actually prefer the opposite myself; I'm not too big of a fan of MMOs where you need to put in a lot of work to catch up if you take breaks and require you to play constantly to not fall behind. It just seems too demanding given how much time I have in a day.

Many F2P games are like this! Add P2W to PvP
and you have your typical Korean/Chinese Game.

[Vatallus]

Ace Online's PvP was 99.9% Pay to Win. Only reason it isn't 100% is because of that slim chance you'd somehow drop the perfect weapon and then proceed to not break it while enchanting it without premium items. I've never heard of such a story though. And you would need two of the perfect weapon, one with high accuracy and then one with high piercing for defensive targets.

I guess at least once good thing came from the game though....

Anyway, I don't really get a lot of the hate about PSO2. Sure content isn't fabulous at times but at least we get content. There are plenty of games that run of actual drip feeding. Which PSO2 isn't one of them. Plenty of games that charge for expansions. Which PSO2 isn't one of them, and plenty of games that charge you monthly on top of that. Which PSO2 isn't one of them but having premium is heavily pushed.

[Altiea]

Ace Online's PvP was 99.9% Pay to Win. Only reason it isn't 100% is because of that slim chance you'd somehow drop the perfect weapon and then proceed to not break it while enchanting it without premium items. I've never heard of such a story though. And you would need two of the perfect weapon, one with high accuracy and then one with high piercing for defensive targets.

I guess at least once good thing came from the game though....

Anyway, I don't really get a lot of the hate about PSO2. Sure content isn't fabulous at times but at least we get content. There are plenty of games that run of actual drip feeding. Which PSO2 isn't one of them.

I think people just want meaningful endgame content they can run whenever they want. Which exists (UQ Amd), but people choose not to run it anyways, which is bewildering. Also people bitching about EP5 balance problems.

[Meteor Weapon]

UQ is...pretty boring and short to even consider it as a meaningful end game. Would've been more meaningful if it was 4/4, longer and had different environment aesthetic. And the carrot on the stick(Gix CF) isn't really helping it on the long term. For me its just another quest just as Riding Quest was with the carrot on a stick Long, hard, yet satisfying end and rewarding drops is i think what most people want. . I don't feel that in any of the pso2 content, not even Solo XQ or Solo PD himself.

Most "endgame" content are just tediously repetitive and exhausting. I had to repeat grind EP1-4 LQ just to get that limited Weila Board Rear Unit that...according to sega is a limited content only(for now). Was the quest fun? Fuck no, after repeating it more than a 100 times and still not get what I want and how heavily reliance how party members play just to get through all that 40% enemy boost bullshit and still get shit drops, it burnt me out so bad to the point that I don't play PSO2 as I usually did anymore. Well I did get the unit but I was really burnt out i didnt even bother doing the quest anymore after that.

[Altiea]

So, am I like, the only person who likes UQ? Sometimes I pop into Naberius and Lillipa and run as BO/HU solo every once in a while. It's pretty fun to fight enemies that don't immediately melt as soon as you look at them.

As a monster hunter, I can't really complain about grind, since a good half of Monster Hunter consists entirely of "beat the same thing up like, fifty times until it drops the Ruby/Plate/Mantle/whatever the hell its rare loot is so you can make better gear".

[Gaylar]

Ah Ace, a gem truly as fucked over by its developer as Rakion was.

UQ is...pretty boring and short to even consider it as a meaningful end game. Would've been more meaningful if it was 4/4, longer and had different environment aesthetic. And the carrot on the stick(Gix CF) isn't really helping it on the long term. Long, hard, yet satisfying end and rewarding drops is i think what most people want. For me its just another quest just as Riding Quest was with the carrot on a stick. I don't feel that in any of the pso2 content, not even Solo XQ or Solo PD himself.

Most "endgame" content are just tediously repetitive and exhausting. I had to repeat grind EP1-4 LQ just to get that limited Weila Board Rear Unit that...according to sega is a limited content only(for now). Was the quest fun? Fuck no, after repeating it more than a 100 times and still not get what I want and how heavily reliance how party members play just to get through all that 40% enemy boost bullshit and still get shit drops, it burnt me out so bad to the point that I don't play PSO2 as I usually did anymore. Well I did get the unit but I was really burnt out i didnt even bother doing the quest anymore after that.

I've always seen endgame on here to be what you make of it, but yeah, I agree. With the current state of the game now, calling UQ "endgame" is a bit of a stretch. Mostly comes down to the ridiculous amount of power creep SEGA has been steadily throwing into the game. Don't get me wrong, 4/4 UQ would be great, but with 12 people its just same-old same-old.

And repeating content like that is kind of what I expect from "endgame" on here, but as you stated, SEGA doesn't really seem to understand how to balance difficulty vs rewards. I'd chalk this up to them not even being able to balance the power discrepancy between players without overinflating the skill floor for less geared players (Hero). If something is too difficult, the majority of the playerbase likely won't run it unless it gives guaranteed good drops, but "too difficult" for the majority is vastly different from "too difficult" for the players who have mastered the game.

Sort of reminds me about how much people complained about story content and gear being locked behind Coils on XIV back in 2.0, SE's answer to that was to add in a Normal difficulty raid tier for 3.0, which offered high-end progression gear and the story content, but not best in slot gear, that was reserved for Savage, and BiS was only made arguably "needed" IN Savage.

[isCasted]

I think people just want meaningful endgame content they can run whenever they want. Which exists (UQ Amd), but people choose not to run it anyways, which is bewildering

Ultimate Amduscia is not meaningful, because Gix CF is GONE and it was the only thing that made it viable. People won't run it for sake of miserable drop chance, especially even seasonal EQs give higher chance for that. Gix is also worse than Qliphad, which gives more damage unconditionally.

So, am I like, the only person who likes UQ? Sometimes I pop into Naberius and Lillipa and run as BO/HU solo every once in a while. It's pretty fun to fight enemies that don't immediately melt as soon as you look at them.

No, you aren't. I run UQs solo sometimes, but ultimately it's pointless. The goal of the game is progression, and old UQs give no progress on anything. They are completely outdated. I'm sure 95% of the people (including myself) find those enemies and areas way better than anything else, but when they are nowhere near the road to the game's goal they might as well not exist. People are complaining because they know the game could be way more, but SEGA just doesn't care about fun. Instead of truly challenging endgame quests we get our rewards from either only the newest stuff or insanely outdated and repetitive stuff (DOs in areas that don't even have XH, VH TAs, XQs, VH abduction, VH AQs... fucking VH! The difficulty that was there since what, 2012? When we were 50 times as weak!).

I could do UQs for sake of doing them, or I could do that boring old-ass stuff that actually gives me money so I could actually upgrade my shit and buy new clothes. The fact that I have to make this choice in the first place is stupid. This is why it's righteous to complain.

[Zephyrion]

I've always seen endgame on here to be what you make of it, but yeah, I agree. With the current state of the game now, calling UQ "endgame" is a bit of a stretch. Mostly comes down to the ridiculous amount of power creep SEGA has been steadily throwing into the game. Don't get me wrong, 4/4 UQ would be great, but with 12 people its just same-old same-old.

And repeating content like that is kind of what I expect from "endgame" on here, but as you stated, SEGA doesn't really seem to understand how to balance difficulty vs rewards. I'd chalk this up to them not even being able to balance the power discrepancy between players without overinflating the skill floor for less geared players (Hero). If something is too difficult, the majority of the playerbase likely won't run it unless it gives guaranteed good drops, but "too difficult" for the majority is vastly different from "too difficult" for the players who have mastered the game.

Sort of reminds me about how much people complained about story content and gear being locked behind Coils on XIV back in 2.0, SE's answer to that was to add in a Normal difficulty raid tier for 3.0, which offered high-end progression gear and the story content, but not best in slot gear, that was reserved for Savage, and BiS was only made arguably "needed" IN Savage.

Pretty much agree to that. I can live with that though, the only thing that bugs me is the obvious and unchanging policy of completely ditching everything linked to previous episodes. I mean it took years just to start adding missing AQs, which is a bit flabbergasting ( ARKS Rally is still a pretty neat concept, although farmy).

And we have tons of quests that could get a few runs in by playing a bit on the rewards. (No need to even do a drop table revolution, stuff like rotation boosts similar to CM missions, along with tying both RQ and UQ to Stamina system, since being forced to do BQ to get more BQ is to me the thing that kills it)

Really, doing a decent endgame for PSO2 wouldn't be that hard. Just slap a Extra Hard+ mode where everything get vastly more beefy and stronger, and slap a 200% RDR Boost on those or whatever. Sure it's half-assed but it could work well enough because the game already has all the needed assets to be fun and challenging. It's up to SEGA to take that one step though

[blkbox11]

Anyway, I don't really get a lot of the hate about PSO2. Sure content isn't fabulous at times but at least we get content. There are plenty of games that run of actual drip feeding. Which PSO2 isn't one of them. Plenty of games that charge for expansions. Which PSO2 isn't one of them, and plenty of games that charge you monthly on top of that. Which PSO2 isn't one of them but having premium is heavily pushed.

Agreed. And even premium's benefits are a lot lesser now than before.

Let's not forget that the story actually looks like a story with decently defined terminology and such despite people's differing opinions on it (especially regarding EP4). And, we have voiced cutscenes by well known voice actors and actresses as well. Other games opt for a more Dark Souls approach - which while not inherently bad, can get pretty confusing because a lot of it is up to player interpretation.

I think people just want meaningful endgame content they can run whenever they want. Which exists (UQ Amd), but people choose not to run it anyways, which is bewildering. Also people bitching about EP5 balance problems.

I personally don't think UQ counts as meaningful after the removal of the Gix CFs, but on the other hand, meaningful content that can be run at any time without any sort of stamina system like BQs seems to be against the design direction that SEGA has chosen. For some time now this has been a game you log into to play an EQ or two, dress up your character a bit, and then you log out. I don't see that changing too much because it works for the Japanese players.

And to be fair: the balance problems are a real dealbreaker for some because they are loyal to their older classes which they have put a lot of time and effort into. If Hero's introduction did not come with a bunch of nerfs to other classes like FO (which required significant investment), and/or included the introduction of at least two other Advanced Classes alongside it, that particular situation would probably not be as bad as it is now.

[Meteor Weapon]

Let's not forget that the story actually looks like a story with decently defined terminology and such despite people's differing opinions on it (especially regarding EP4). And, we have voiced cutscenes by well known voice actors and actresses as well. Other games opt for a more Dark Souls approach - which while not inherently bad, can get pretty confusing because a lot of it is up to player interpretation.

The thing I dont like with EP4 is that its way to linear and focus on one setting only, the only thing that happened for the past 2 year time skip was Ultimate Amduscia manifested(and that was when Mama showed up in orcleverse).Hell there isnt even an EX Chapter that explains or conclude whatever is going on in Ultimate Amduscia. I'm afraid EP5 is heading to that direction as well.

I liked EP1-3 because we get to know a lot of things are happening and not just focus on one particular thing. Sure Matterboard is tedious to do. But one thing i can say for sure is that doing story quest is more satisfying than what they were doing in EP4-5 which is constant cutscene one aftrr another.