Some points, Ideas, and explanations *warning, ALOT of readi

[Blackwaltz-R]

This thread isn't meant to cause any uproars, only to illustarte a point, as were posts in another thread that got locked today.. but if the mods feel that this thread may cause another ruckus then don't hesitate to lock this one but I just want peeps to hear me out. This thread may seem pointless buy only to those who don't get the message and impresisons being expressed rather than focusing on what is contrary to how they feel.

I am not trying to change anyoens minds or opinions, I only want to stimulate thought and to express some of my own Ideas in a thread I expect to be very bloated.. sorry in advance.

At first I didn't plan to come back since my point would always get drowned out by what I say rather than what I mean. I even made the point that I wasn't bashing PSU yet for some only focused on the words rather than the message. If I didn't like the game I wouldn't be here, I wouldn't still play psoeps1&2 to pacify my anxiousness to play PSU. When you have thought about all the good things about somehting you look forward to theirs pretty much nothing else to focus on that some of the more negative things(atleast for someone like me who constantly thinks).

I could only Delude myself for so long till I started thinking about how this game measures up against games I'm playing now, and what it has to offer. One thing PSU and PSO alreadyhave going for them is the style. their Isn't any other game that can match its Sci-Fantasy style. as most other online adventure games sport the same thing of more traditional fantasy which gets monotonous.

All the pros in the world have already been said about this game, so you should still consider the cons since what we choose to play determines the future of the gaming industry. why do you think their is multiple Devil May Crys or Metal Gear Solids, they play ROUGHLY the same way and use alot of the same gameplay mechanics but throw a new twist and story and over all its MORE of the SAME.

PSU is essentially PSO but with an added race and less occupational restrictions in a new universe with a new story and some new or just revised trinkets. I am in no way trying to so that these are reasons not to play the game, cuz I DEFINATLY want to play this game VERY badly. I just can't ignore some of these issues tho since I run my whole life on a value system I develeped as I gre up and some of you definatly will develope ones for yourselves when you get older.

A friend of mine(who I met on PSO as is the majority of the peeps on my list) brought this point up when just asking me about the game.

Friend: When is PSU suppsoed to come out?

Me: Should be february

Friend: Ah, its pay to play right?

*this is something neither of us thought about until this point*

Me: Hm, It hasn't been anounced yet.

Friend: I see.. well the fee will more than likely determine if I play or not, I have enough games I pay for as it is and I want to spend cash I would use for new games on one game anymore.

Me: yeah same, we were able to splurge on PSO because those were the only games available to us at the time. They were vicious but, compared to the scope of other games, Paying for PSOv2 was definatly not worth it at all.

Friend: Yeah, all they did was release a 2nd version of the game with features they didn't have time to include in v1, primarily battle mode. If BA was in v1 no one would have bothered with v2, their may not have even been a v2 unless they expected people to pay for challenge mode, lobby soccer, new weapons and mags.

Oh, and ultimate mode with the lv 200 cap. Yeah, make ME pay YOU to make the game more of a chore to level now than a minuscule tedium, thats worth 5 dollars a month!

Me: Yeah these asthetical updates for making the same types of weapons we have now look different but stronger is a poor excuse of an update, It doesn't change the game at all. People that played PSU said that the game plays alot like PSO but with more to it. I was kinda relieved about that but now I realized that that sucks lol That means the game will look pretty new but feel like im playing roughly the same game. I wonder how much they expect us to pay for it.. That kinda ruins my outlook of the game now lol

Friend: Yeah the scope of PSU can't match the scope of [insert game that gives you more to do for your dollar] since it doesn't utilize a hard drive. Updates on PSU would be marginal at best, only serving the purpose of earning a weapon or mag that we otherwise wouldn't be able to obtain thru drops.

Me: Yeah, and to think I was SO close to playing blue burst after the beta. Although in my opinion itd be more worth it than PSU prolly since they can make some major updates with PC games. I gotta know the rest of the story cuz the investigations was compelling like ****.

Friend: Meh, all those new weapons that they are sporting are just the same weapons but with new looks and ****.

Me: Nuh uhn?

Friend: Yeah, youd be paying to play a game with a new area and some Sabers with different colors and **** lol

Me: hm.. Then I'll prolly just stick with Monster Hunter 2 then. Man.. If PSO had play mechanics like MH that obliterates grinding at the cost of making it quest based and give you more of a sense of occupational duty, that would ****ing own. Man PSU would fit well with that type of game mechanic, making doing missions alot more meaningful then doing them for the sake of doing them for a reward and to progress thru a less compelling story to give these quests depth.

Friend: When is MH2 coming out?

Me: prolly spring, I doubt it'll be as deep as PSU but the gameplay will be WAY better anyway. Hopefully that won't end up pay to play.. the JP versions were but not the US versions. AFter playing MH tho I don't think I can stand PSUs character animations, they look too.. artificial.. MH used motion capture for their character animations so the game felt more organic and your character felt alive. When I look at the PSU vids.. the characters only move their legs while they move forward.. looks nasty as ****.

Friend: Ah, so they will prolyl be out around the sme time I see.

I know I would play PSU alot longer, but thats only because of level grinding, not because I find the game so fun I can't put it down. Rather they put a goal to get to 200, therefore I can't stop playing till then, since playing the story mode alone will not make this game worth it at only 40 hours. I would rather have an offline only version where I can do all the repetative dungeon runs at my leisure and not feeling obligated to gain 20 levels a month to get my moneys worth. Not that playing the game online for that much means I am actually getting my moneys worth since I can only have 2 choices--pay or don't.

Friend: Yeah I work all day and only get home around midnight every night, I wouldn't really get my moneys worth. Its bad enough I bother to play [insert an MMO name here] since I only play from midnight-5am then I sleep so I can get up for work. >.<

Me: Yeah same with my classes, its funny how the path to designing my own games gets in the way of my gaming. >.<

Anyways I hope they will give you the option to have a limited account where you can play all you want, but are not allowed to recieve quest updates which would justify their payment scheme. or they should release an offline only version with no network access for some offline level grinding at my leisure, or atleast throw in a LAN option or somethn for the console version since anyone who gets the PC version will deffinatly go online.

If an Idea like that doesn't get utilized before I finally head a project I may implement them myself. XD Then again .hack//fragment is utilizing something like that, it pretty much relys on it. You host your server on your PC and you and 2 other peeps connect thru your PS2s. I think its only 3 players do do bandwidth constraints but playing with more players isn't a big deal, I'm sure itll work for this game since I think you can host your own events and such.

Friend: Oh yeah? sounds intriguing, I guess its free since you host on your own machine?

Me: Yeah basiclly, this'll be 2 online games worth getting over PSU as long as MH2 doesn't end up having a fee but I don't really see how it would since the first MH had a a scope no bigger than PSO. Granted MH Only lets players play with peeps from their own country unlike PSO but having that option isn't that big a deal since a game like MH can't afford lag.

So yeah if PSU doesn't meet our criteria we can just settle for other games since Sega doesn't take into account that the players have choices and don't have to settle for bull****. They are suppsoed to do what they can to get us to play their game, making them pay for a game they already own is just ludacrist. The least they could do is pass on the savings buy retailing it for like 20 dollars lol

My ass only bought FFXI because it dropped to 20 dollars, and that was worth it. Guldwars tho.. It was ok.. but not worth 58 dollars.. even if it is free, I quit that game after 2 weeks lol

Friend: I enjoyed it for a while, it was a good execution but, the over all game was just.. meh.

Me: Yeah they have the right idea, their is no reason why a game should be completely server side. Letting the towns serve as the lobbies to meet up with other players to start a party and then going on your personal adventures OFF the central server and just between the players clients. This way ****ers don't have to charge you for bandwidth constraints. We do NOT need to be able to see every other player in the zone for the sake of giving us the sense of a massive world.

Friend: When I beat all the missions on GW I was just like, "hm, now what?" their was no way I was gonna do that PvP ****.

Me: lol cooze, I told you it woudnlt be worth it

Anyways you basiclly you hook up with 5 other players from the hub town out of hundreds of peeps. embark on your quests with your peeps in your own instance off the central server. No extra processing power for characters that aren't in your party. Everyone wins.

Hopefully if their is a PSU v2 they will utilize such features for the sake of taking hosted games off the central server so they won't have to charge us to enjoy the product we purchased. Cuz they basiclly ruined the replay value by putting a story mode which I doubt anyone would want to play over and over again if they don't have an ISP or don't want to pay the fee. Tho as far as I know their could be more to the story mode than I think, All I can think of is after you beat the game offline, you can continue to go around and kill ****.

I think I'll cut it here since I know this seems like just a giant rant or nonsense topic. This shows that I have alot on my mind and I look at things and take alot of considerations of various aspects of whatever I am thinking about. I put an equal amount of deliberation into my feelings towards PSU and alot of it is relative to info I don't even have yet, but I am awaiting answers for.

I expect most peeps to only consider:

graphics & visual style

gameplay

features

track record if it is't the first of the franchise as a template of what to expect from the new release.


Many of you can make your decisions about a game with these aspects, I used to when I was younger.

SOme of you, and more of you will later start to also consider:

if its a sequel, how much of it is the same, how much of it is new.

does it offer more of the same.

What other games of the same type I would I be able to choose over this one.

Is it betetr than other games of the same type I can choose from?

Do various aspects of the game justify themselves? or are they their just to add empty features that are easily ignorable and don't serve any real merit to add anything substancial to the game?

What kind of depth does it offer? does it offer you fruitless distractions to give you the illusion that the time you take to go through the game actually takes that long? (like level grinding )

Is it challenging? does it challenge your gameplay skills? (intelectual challenges are a plus) Does the game rely on sending a swarm of baddies to overwhelm you since they can't make the A.I. complex enough to actually beat you if they were to come alone? (like a bunch of one player action games do )

These are only a few things that someone like me and some of you may take into consideration. I especially have to think about stuff like this If I want to have a chance in the gaming industry. You have to know what to offer, what can be offered, what is already offered, what isn't offered. This doesn't apply to just this topic it can be applyed to anything.

I can pretty much only share my Ideas with those who share a similiar outlook as me, hense why I haven't posted here in like 2 years lol I would get frustrated at peeps who wouldn't pay attention to the point I was making rather than the things I was saying.

PSU will definatly be a good game but will it be great? WIll it be "gooder" or "greater" than other games of the same type?

[silentbell]

I can't believe I read all that...

This is difficult for me since I can't really relate to what you're saying...PSU will be my first online gaming experience, so I will not have any online games to compare it to...besides PSO which I only played offline on my Gamecube...

In terms of...

Fees
It won't matter to me...I can't wait to go online and play and to meet new people...I heard the Phantasy Star community is very friendly...this site is proof of that...I will gladly drop $20 a month since money isn't a matter to me...however, I understand if you are hesistant to pay if you think you will just get the same re-used gameplay with little improvements...for me though, it will be a new experience, so it makes sense that I'm excited...

Pros vs. Cons/New vs. Old
People who have played the demo say that it holds true to what PSO was in terms of fighting monsters and such...but with new weapons classes, a new race (beasts), adding status/element effects to weapons, more customizing options (including choice of voice type), dual wielding weapons, first person shooting, larger dungeons that change in enemy spawns, 15 bosses, more fluid animation, better graphics, an offline RPG experience with on online mode that is based on what the offline story had to offer, personal rooms for your characters, 3 large worlds with unique landscapes in each, ability to ride vehicles, Partner Machinery that can actually create items for you, and probably a lot more stuff we don't know about yet outweighs the same gameplay that is the core of the game...however, you never know if these new additions will actually impact the game positively...I'm predicting they will bring the overall game experience to a new level...

Depth
With the changes in the weapons and a new class, I think ST introduced a new level of strategy to the game...exploiting a monster's weakness by adding an attribute to a weapon is an example (which can certainly help in boss fights)...the offline mode with its traditional RPG story will also add to depth to the effect that it presents a solar system and actually tells the player what is happening in it...PSO just took the player and threw him/her into repeating the same dungeon layouts over and over again with an incredibly shallow story and explanation as to why you're even in the dungeon in the first place...at least now when you're killing monsters on a certain planet, you know what has happened there and I think that knowledge itself will make the player more involved with the game...

Comparison
I haven't played any other online RPGs so I can't really say which games offer the best for your investment in time and money...all I can say is that I hope the game does offer enough significant new things that it will truly be a different game from PSO...when I played Grand Theft Auto 3, I was amazed...then Vice City came out and it just felt like the same game just in a new setting...I certainly hope that isn't the case...from all the things ST added...I think the chances of that are low......but you never know...

Maybe in the future, I will see you online and we could trade items...then we can talk about how great the game is and we can laugh at all the things we typed here in this thread...that will be the best case scenario...but since so many things are unclear right now, I guess all we can do is just wait until we experience the game for ourselves...

[Rion772]

On 2005-11-12 04:27, Blackwaltz-R wrote:
*snip long post*

I'm going to start at the bottom and go up, if you said what you meant then you wouldn't have those problems. MH wasn't even close to being as good as PSO, MH actual monster patterns were WAY TOO EASY to figure out, most people on there who played 200hours + like I did almost never take a hit from a Rathalos or Monoblos or what I was fighting. MH was way too short too, all you had to do was beat the quests and get some new armor and weapons. Some of that game was incredibly ridiculous too, like getting Rathalos plates...all I have to say is "WHAT THE F**K!". They were way to hard to get.

Also hackers/cheaters never admitted it. I found 2 guys once who had all of the Fatalis armor and the Eternal Annihilator. All of us MH player know that was impossible to have when online your level was only 17 (that's what Lv both of them were at). Of course PSU will give you a PSO feeling, it'll just have way more stuff and be way more fun. I got bored of MH after about 400 hours, I've played PSO for over 600 and still going on and off. I don't really understand what you were getting at with this post, whether or not it's to proove that you like PSU from our last little arguement between a lot of us against you in the "Monthly Fees" topic. Or you're trying to get everyone pumped for the game at the same time as bringing out the bad in PSU while explaining what to look for in the game.

I look for the same things when I'm looking at a game that comes out in a few months, if not, if I'm just going down the street to get something new that I havn't played yet then I get whatever looks good graphicly. Even with seeing the cons you brought up here I'm sure all of us are getting the game still, as am I. The cons to PSU aren't bad at all, it's a fairly large game that looks really good but has some silly, small cons that I deffinetly don't care about. It's hard to understand the point of this thread though, I don't quite understand it.

And yes I read your WHOLE post this time.

EDIT: When you are replying to a long post like this, quote only the parts that you wish to discuss. Otherwise, it causes unnecessary scrolling.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Ryna on 2005-11-12 09:27 ]</font>

[silentbell]

^I think it was a bad idea to quote him...it took me a while to scroll down to where you posted...lol...

I haven't read the argument that took place in the "monthly fee" thread...but I do feel he makes legitimate points...when a game you want so badly is about to come out...you eventually start worrying about the bad things in the game...that's why I posted a lot of positive aspects but only bringing up the negatives briefly...

[Rion772]

On 2005-11-12 05:58, silentbell wrote:
^I think it was a bad idea to quote him...it took me a while to scroll down to where you posted...lol...

I haven't read the argument that took place in the "monthly fee" thread...but I do feel he makes legitimate points...when a game you want so badly is about to come out...you eventually start worrying about the bad things in the game...that's why I posted a lot of positive aspects but only bringing up the negatives briefly...

Maybe I shouldn't have qouted the whole thing haha. He does bring up good points, the first time I came here and started posting in PSU General and since the first time I heard of it coming I was concerned about a lot of things, I still am. I really don't care about the negatives because there's so many positives that we know for sure that it makes any possible negative not even matter.

[silentbell]

^Exactly...there have been so many good things added to the game that it will be fantastic...I think Blackwaltz is just worrying about whether or not it will be worth the money to play...but right now...I feel there's no point in worrying when the game hasn't even come out yet...

PSU will be one amazing game...the proof will come when the game is released...

[Rion772]

On 2005-11-12 06:24, silentbell wrote:
^Exactly...there have been so many good things added to the game that it will be fantastic...I think Blackwaltz is just worrying about whether or not it will be worth the money to play...but right now...I feel there's no point in worrying when the game hasn't even come out yet...

PSU will be one amazing game...the proof will come when the game is released...

Except the proof is already here, the movies, the pictures, the ideas, the discussions, and the arguements. I know he's probably worrying about fees, I get that feeling because of the "Monthly Fees" topic. $15 isn't a lot for a game like this, it has quite a bit to offer already and we're still getting weekly updates to add onto our opinion of the game.

[vox3om]

Honestly...I've been considering paying again to play PSO. The best thing about PSO is its online community (communities like those on Guild Wars really suck). So for me, playing a game that is just like PSO but with more stuff and better graphics, thats fine. The only reason I haven't come back online with PSO is because of the lack of people still playing.

I believe that the only thing that any of us need to worry about right now is hacking. I imagine that for the first 6months or so you won't see ANY signs of hacking. Therefore who is bothered by the monthly fee until then. And even so, in a game like PSU, you join up with whoever you want. So we don't have to play with the hackers if we don't want to. Playing legit is a style to ones self. Just because it gets hacked doesn't mean that those who want to play legit can't! We don't have to trade for crazy hacked weapons. The majority of us know what those look like anyways...

Honestly I don't think there is anything to worry about right now. The graphics for this game look pretty sweet, we have appartments, we have new looking weapons, more places to cover, more monsters, more people, and you know what? more fun than any of the other online communities ever have.

[F-o-x]

I was going to post something like this in the monthly fees thread but then it was locked up so I couldn't.

PSU is definatly going to be worth the monthly fee, for me at least. Even if this game was $20 per month, based on how much I will play the game per month I would get many MANY more hours out of it than any other game I would use my money on. I worked out how much money I spent on PSO with fees and actual game purchases (I'm not going to post it all here I'll just give you the quick version) and even if I would have used my PSO fee money from v2 onwards on other games (for the sake of argument I made them all RPGs and assumed that I'd get around 70 hours out of each) I would NOT have gotten nearly as much playtime as I did with PSO v2-Ep1&2.

When I read your post I also saw that gameplay was an issue and you were saying PSU would be the same as PSO just with a graphic overhaul and some other additions.

I think if the gameplay isn't broken why fix it? Why do you say that the combat playing out similaly to PSO is a bad thing? They have added dual weilding and strafing as well as first person shooting, so while the combat will be inherently the same there are enough new things there to spice it up.

The gameplay is what makes a lot of gamers come back for more of the game. If a developer were to totally rework the gameplay in a sequal for instance, they would be alienating thier audience.

[Zarcon]

Well, if you don't want to pay for the online portion you can only rate the game as a stand alone offline RPG.
Is the 40 hour offline RPG worth the initial cost compared to other offline RPGs?
Maybe, if it costs about the same as other RPGs and plays well.

It isn't fair to say they're forcing you to pay to play. They're not, you can buy the game as if you were buying any other RPG. Since this is action based 40 hours is a good chunk of time. You KNOW that turn-based RPGs only have long play times because it takes forever to go through battles especially ones with random battles.

You can think of it this way, the game is a standalone RPG with (hopefully) about the same cost as other RPGs out there with the OPTION of paying to go online with others.

You can't compare this with Guildwars since that game doesn't give you a standalone 40 hour RPG on top of the online game. You might be able to compare it to Diablo but honestly, that game didn't provide much on the story end of things.

What it all comes down to is how you choose to percieve the game. If you think you're buying an ORPG then yea, it'll seem like you're getting ripped off. If you think you're buying an RPG with extras that you can choose to pay monthly for then you'll see the game in a much better light.

[EDIT]

And consider this, even if it's [insert price of average RPG] a month and you choose to play for fun online for 40 hours a month (1.5 hours a day) it's already worth your money. How many RPG games can you say you play more then 2 or 3 times?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Zarcon on 2005-11-12 09:24 ]</font>