Things you like / dislike in NGS

[ArcaneTechs]

It was announced that YSOK had departed SEGA and is working now for MyDearest Inc. on their game; "Brazen Blaze". He was no longer mentioned as the lead Item Director as of the June 2023 credits (roboarks' blog post on it. https://pso2roboarks.jp/ngs/ysok)

Now that you mention the credits, I wasn't sure how true that was when I first heard about it which is why I said he still had to be apart of the team. I haven't been to roboarks site in a long time either. sucks though since the current director is in charge forever at this point.

My biggest complain was moving away from dungeon crawling which even if it got repetitive, having the tile set randomize at the very least forced you to be thinking where exits were and find layouts to best ぐるぐる in. PS was rooted in it and moving away from it I think was a big gamble that I personally don't think paid off. I believe they could do something like intermission areas between dungeons like PSU and use that to keep aspects of the open world, gather specific items or resupply and continue forwards or head back. Although I think I'd be the only one who thinks that'd be neat.

You sort of still have this but with Luciel but I agree with you, the rooted game cycle was what made the older games fun, same with PSO2 and those should have remained while having the open world being an option. I don't feel like talking semantics about LQs if someone brings it up, they're not fun to run lol

NGS is also in desperate need for new weapon categories. Can you believe the last time we had new weapons to go hunt and find out drop tables from pre-existing enemies was 3,430 days ago? In my opinion moving away from individual weapons to everything being a series kinda made things stale. No more getting a weapon and doing something stupid because of the potential it has creating a unique playstyle. Yes I know most of those were sub-optimal play but I literally made characters to play in unique ways for the fun of it.

This choice as done to simplify the work flow, thats why none of the weapon series have any kind of unique flavor text per weapon or (at least from what I remember) the description of the series itself. We're forever stuck with generic text like "A weapon that's part of the Double Saber Category". idk when or if we'll ever get single weapons based off monster parts or unique weapons with different effects like we did in the old games again, just seems dead at this point for keep everything a part of a series which kinda sucks still. As much as I hate those because they're not optimal, I want those back because of designs they can have.

Also NGS' marketing team is really lackluster. There's not much excitement for even big updates because of them just streamline showing everything like a generic update. It's always just "This is what's coming" or something like a short form video on a certain aspect of the update. While being great at just getting to the point, It loses a lot of personality. I miss how often they'd rise hype during early broadcasts, we don't really get stuff like the cinematic preview of major updates. Something like the preview of the last chapter of Ep3 and showing off Double and teasing we would be fighting the Profound Darkness or even the teaser for Mining Base Defense: Demise.

I'm just riding the wave at this point, I'm just going to keep my optimism for the devs to improve the game and make it something worth spending time on.

Do you not remember that stream when Sakai basically called the playerbase a bunch of whiners? (something very similar to that at least) ya, ever since that happened back in like I think 2019? 2020? before NGS, they stuck to this stream format of no more Dev appearances and hosts to talk about the content. and well, this leads back to my complaint (or everyones), whats there to be excited for? another amazing seasonal LQ? more recolors for the SG scratch? re-runs of past scratches? dude we heckin added another Dread/Starless enemy/mob!! Heres a new 10* that you won't get!! New PA/Techs? Nope, you got enough. New Class skills? ya here you go but it won't really change up the class much. New roadmap with nothing exciting to keep you coming back? here you go! all so tiring man

[Pelayo]

Here goes my takes, if anyone is interested.

Pros:
The world looks amazing, characters, map, all looks very good to me. As a small con, I miss original PSO more serious tone in looks, everything is so "anime cute girls", we are very far from the space adventure we departed from many years ago.

Combat feels responsive and fast, I like how the engine manages things, feels confortable most of the time.

Most people say "to few tech", looking in base, most of the time we used the same ones anyway and most of them just bloated your tech list. Sure, there are situations when a very specific tech was useful but it was not that common, so this simplification if they expand tech customization for me is the way (and SEGA sure feels that way, watching what they keep doing).

Cons:
Drops suck, there is no benefit to grind something, because rewards will not drop, and if they drop you need a shitton of them, I don't feel like grind anything, cause it will ask too much time anyway.

Even if I enjoy things like tech slow numbers, combat feels to simple. You just either block or push one button. That will not improve if they add more techs, they need to add more mechanics to do stuff other than block/attack. I can do all combat braindead, even the "ultra hardcore endgame bosses".

Speaking of which, ultra bosses are not "hard", just require best augs in game, they are like a DPS check, that's all, it's still block/attack. I would like more lots of mechanics and stuff to learn for each boss and less strict timing to do the quest.

Enemies are copy paste, we have been fighiting the same enemies copy pasted since the begining of the game, they all do the same, and a big chunk of them is are just things to hit, almost no attacks to you, bad aiming, etc.

Content is always the same, every patch is like LTQ/event points/new weapon armors cycle. Special mention to weapons, in PSO, weapons felt like unique things, even on lower rarities they had their own thing that make them fun to use. Here all weapons feel almost the same, just more powerful or not. They could play with potentials a lot more to make weapons more unique to get, and that will make gear hunting a lot more fun, cause you can have them multiple weapons in the same current "gear level" to hunt and use.

Game is losing players at a rate, you can't even do a leciel anymore in group, it' just faster to go alone and do it if you want the quest. They should also remove that as a daily task and add it as a daily quest if you want to take it. But that also is a problems for things like LTQ.

Urgent quests freeze the game totally, even more if there is concert. If concert + quest happens, all matchmaking will be frozen for like 1h, because from the moment the concert is announced, people stop doing things and gather to make groups with alliances and just stay AFK until all the UQ starts.

You can't even move while matchmaking. You are forced to stay there while waiting, can't go do stuff while waiting. Can't use shop or ali menu while doing that too. Honestly I can't think of no other online game that is so inconvinient, there probably is but i don't know it.

And the list of minor inconvience is very large, I can't even think of all of them, there are things like small bugs not fixed since origin (like friend list in PQ, if you switch fast enough, you will see the list of rooms from other friends instead of the ones of the selected friend, but if you go to the room, you end up in the room of the selected one... almost always, but not always). Shop search still sucks and doesn't show all things and it's still a mess to search some things.

[Jujusonic0]

Only thing I don't like the most is that they let stuff like this happen. https://youtu.be/eONML3KmBrM?si=Lh6yxG7adbJhDb95

[Bojji]

Only thing I don't like the most is that they let stuff like this happen. https://youtu.be/eONML3KmBrM?si=Lh6yxG7adbJhDb95

My god... there are really people who should be locked up for their own good.
The shills ain't what it used to be lmao

But wait, isn't the same person who created several controversies on discord ?

[Cyclon]

Most people say "to few tech", looking in base, most of the time we used the same ones anyway and most of them just bloated your tech list. Sure, there are situations when a very specific tech was useful but it was not that common, so this simplification if they expand tech customization for me is the way (and SEGA sure feels that way, watching what they keep doing).

Problem here is that we're not game designers, and the community is barely big enough to have discussions anymore so things get circular fast, but, yes, most of the playerbase would be doing the same things in the end regardless, no question. That doesn't mean it's not important, though. When everyone else that's successful on the market is doing a thing, there's generally a good reason for it. Like in practice, Monster Hunter could remove half of the weapons to only leave the ones 90% of the playerbase uses. Fighting games like Street Fighter V could remove half of ther roster to only keep the ones most people play, making characters takes resources after all. Shooters could remove lesser used weapons, etc, etc.
They don't, though.


... but maybe that's my big mistake here, I'm comparing NGS to retail games, while SEGA is really doing high budget mobile instead. This and a good portion of PSO2 are so basic likely because it's been established to be what makes money in the long run for F2P economies, so they'll just stick to that. And I mean, somehow they still consider NGS as one of their biggest moneymakers it seems (even though I think that's windowdressing), so...

[Kozumi]

Not too much activity on these forums nowadays, guess all of the "PSO2 is dying" videos that YouTube has been recommended must be not too far off. Just curious, have any of the cons I posted back in 2021 been fixed?

NGS killed this franchise
Open world is a trap meme Sega fell for.