PSO2 Veterans who were there at the 2012 launch, please compare the NGS launch.

[Kondibon]

I personally feel like most of the individual weapons have more going on than they ever did in the original personally. I'm not really sure how things being conditional is bad for player agency though, especially with how easy most of the conditions are to fulfill.
There were so many redundant or weak PAs that were hyper specific in their usage. If anything I think having less PAs ADDS depth because you get to be more nuanced about how they're used.
Aslo, if charging a tech is a condition, then every tech in the original was conditional, there was only a handful you'd regularly use uncharged, and those were either with niche builds that became outdated, nerfed, or were support techs you only needed for yourself.

[oratank]

shift is the base button for guard and i don't have 5 button mouse so i hate 3 button at least let us change it to Ctrl button

[silo1991]

i started in the beginning of EP2 right when it became F2P

the EQs were basically free fields with OP enemies and the funny part was people wasnt playing them as it should , everybody rushed to the second room and then start killing stuff until 3 to 5 mins remain.

the most wanted EQs back then was vardha and Elder .

hell i even made gameplay retrospects from EP1 to EP5 , not sure when to do EP6 retrospect BTW :/
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...OJ3Sheo2yYPumm

remember active subs and checkout other random and curious stuff

[Dimate]

The advantage of PAs is that they're largely unconditional. Sure you have a sprint and a fall attack in NGS. Gotta be sprinting or in the air, though. Sure you have two more combo attacks on some weapons. Gotta do the three previous ones first, though, or get a counter or something

Right, but you wouldn't want to use a sprint or plunge attack outside of those specific situations anyway because it's not optimal. Many PAs can be used out of the blue, but there's almost always only one best thing to do for a given situation, and usually some action you need to take before using a PA to its fullest potential. What NGS did was just putting these actions where they're most sensibly used in the first place.
The additional combo attacks are strong, so if they came as photon arts you bet they would still occur at the end of a long animation anyway. In their current state they're actually more flexible since there are multiple ways to reach them.
Also you CAN plunge attack on the ground by putting that action on any of your palettes. It's basically a zero cost PA.

[Cyclon]

I personally feel like most of the individual weapons have more going on than they ever did in the original personally. I'm not really sure how things being conditional is bad for player agency though, especially with how easy most of the conditions are to fulfill.
There were so many redundant or weak PAs that were hyper specific in their usage. If anything I think having less PAs ADDS depth because you get to be more nuanced about how they're used.
Aslo, if charging a tech is a condition, then every tech in the original was conditional, there was only a handful you'd regularly use uncharged, and those were either with niche builds that became outdated, nerfed, or were support techs you only needed for yourself.

I honestly can't agree with that first statement at all; the removal of gear on its own is a big deal as far as I'm concerned, and many new actions in NGS are common to all weapons. What I will say is that clearly, most of the gameplay variety potential of PSO2 was left untapped by players, which is likely how we got here. But I wouldn't say that's on the game... play. Monster design didn't help, among other things.

Conditional is "bad"(in quotes because it's more a matter of preference) because it makes the game less about player agency and more about going through the motions, which are the same for everyone. You and I would not do a Sword 5 normal combos any differently from each other, but if each of these 5 actions were individual options, that'd obviously be a different story.

And indeed, I did not like techs in PSO2 much until the introduction of Phantom and its drastic casting time reduction skills. I'm not saying everything in PSO2 was perfect, and in fact I only compare the two because it's easy and convenient, not because I'm picking a side or something.

EDIT----------

Right, but you wouldn't want to use a sprint or plunge attack outside of those specific situations anyway because it's not optimal. Many PAs can be used out of the blue, but there's almost always only one best thing to do for a given situation, and usually some action you need to take before using a PA to its fullest potential. What NGS did was just putting these actions where they're most sensibly used in the first place.
The additional combo attacks are strong, so if they came as photon arts you bet they would still occur at the end of a long animation anyway. In their current state they're actually more flexible since there are multiple ways to reach them.
Also you CAN plunge attack on the ground by putting that action on any of your palettes. It's basically a zero cost PA.

Optimal has little to do with all this though. Player choice can and will be incorrect or suboptimal yet still satisfying, because there's not a huge red FAIL message on the screen whenever that happens(wait, is that why people disliked JAs? Uh.), and these are fast games. Again the balancing was so bad at first that it kinda was that obvious, but yeah. Most PAs can be used out of the blue if you choose to; it's also not as bad as you say, some of them are setup dependent but it's definitely not the majority. And arguably, yes, NGS does the optimization for you, I agree. I disagree that it's a good thing.

You're going to have a really hard time to make me agree that something like Sword 5 is even close to versatile, and hypotheticals can only accomplish so much. Didn't know about the plunge on palette thing though! That's neat, I'm likely using that from now on.

[Kondibon]

I honestly can't agree with that first statement at all; the removal of gear on its own is a big deal as far as I'm concerned, and many new actions in NGS are common to all weapons. What I will say is that clearly, most of the gameplay variety potential of PSO2 was left untapped by players, which is likely how we got here. But I wouldn't say that's on the game... play. Monster design didn't help, among other things.

I'm not sure why you're stuck on gears. Most of them were non-mehcanics that you only interacted with if you messed up anyway.

Conditional is "bad"(in quotes because it's more a matter of preference) because it makes the game less about player agency and more about going through the motions, which are the same for everyone. You and I would not do a Sword 5 normal combos any differently from each other, but if each of these 5 actions were individual options, that'd obviously be a different story.

Deciding to commit to the 5 hit normal sword combo over doing something else is in and of itself a choice. Like, I'm not sure what player agency you're talking about. If the idea of something being optimal isn't the issue it's not like you can't play partisan without trying to aim for counters, and it's not like you don't have the choice of whether to only do the first half of a PA or not. You have choices and agency, I don't understand why tying it to mechanics other than gears (which, again, most of which were non-mechanics), and PAs is taking player agency away, it just means you have to push a different combination of buttons.

[SolRiver]

Don't forget about the mag.

Everyone kept "playing" pso2 when it came out just to feed their mag (chat in lobby and wait for mag to get hungry). Testing and figuring out mag progression was a different fun in itself. Unfortunately it eventually lead to locking ur class as ppl find optimal way to use it.

pso2 also started with no just atk, i cant remember when they finally put it in though.

for techs, there were... 3 ele with base, gi, ra. which give us 9 offensive techs (resta, anti). U could buy the lv1 disk from shop, i think i remember that u cant buy them all at once as they rotate after u come back from quest.

i think 7* was the first rare grade? i cant remember if they appear on launch though. I was prbly just not lucky enough to get a rare drop. There was no weapon potential at this point neither. Max +10, thats it. Armor unit... i think everyone just use basic stuffs, I dont think rare armor was a thing till a few updates later. I am pretty sure there was no drop boosters, but i cant remember if premium had something. Pretty sure premium back then was super basic too.

Speaking of premium... My room. Player room was in on launch (no companion npc thing though). It honestly felt pretty awkward in ngs story that we walk to "player room" area, then just continue on with the story. It triggered my memory of pso2 story on launch, story lead us to player room, then show us player room tutorial (ngs just jump over it).

[Kondibon]

pso2 also started with no just atk, i cant remember when they finally put it in though.

It had always been in the game for as long as I played. Maybe it wasn't in some pre-beta stuff, but it was definitely there since the beta.

for techs, there were... 3 ele with base, gi, ra. which give us 9 offensive techs (resta, anti).

There was also grants and gi-grants from Marlu, though they were stuck at level 1 until light techs actually came out proper.

[TehCubey]

Honestly I have more fun and feel there's more to do in NGS right now then there was in PSO2 not just on release, but until Falz Arms/Elder was released. And that was almost half a year after the game launched.

And I know some people go "but they should have learnt better by now!", acting as if 2012 is some ancient history. But by that time WoW was already on its what, 3rd expansion? Basics of modern MMO design were already established, if Sega does a dripfeed content update style it's not because they don't know any better, but on purpose.

[Ezodagrom]

It had always been in the game for as long as I played. Maybe it wasn't in some pre-beta stuff, but it was definitely there since the beta.

Only the very first alpha didn't have just attack for ranged and tech weapons, the 2nd alpha added them for those, while melee weapons always had JA.