Phantasy Star Fan Blog

It’s time for the Alpha Test 2 Players Report! But first, Sakai updated his blog, he took a break last week from updating because he wanted to blog about the Alpha 2 report when it was finished.

He was also on a talk show discussing the Racaseal model he previously mentioned a long time ago! Here’s how his came out.

He also mentioned he’s recording voices for PSO2′s story and player characters!

As for the future, he will push production at a faster pace now so you won’t have to wait too long between tests. In March he’s going to announce some details about the Closed Beta test!

Our next porori image is the RAnewearl, you’ve been waiting such a long time to see it, so here she is!

RaNewearl Concept

The top of her outfit is lightweight, but the bottom is solidly protected. You should expect to see the in game model later on.

Players Report

There was a total of 50,811 logged in users during the duration of the alpha test. 40,245 people reached level 10. 23,097 simultaneous connections.

It seems the number of people simultaneously connected dropped off during the last days.

Hunters were the most chosen class. Newman females were the most chosen gender/race, and yet again Newman males were the least chosen. Why no love for the Newms? Humans overall were the most chosen race. Females were the most chosen sex. I was hoping us foreigners would have impacted the scale a bit but I guess not.

Average Height

• Male Humans 176.2cm
• Female Humans 163.9cm
• Male Newmans 174.1cm
• Female Newmans 156.8cm
• Cast Males 185.1 cm
• Cast Females 159.3 cm
• Overall Males 172.0cm
• Overall Females 167.5 cm

It seems evident that people make shorter female characters and taller males, no surprise here.

Each of the 4 boxes represent the most popular costume and hairstyles for their race and gender. Human Males chose the default Humar costume “Close Water” and hairstyle “Short Wolf”

Human Males

• Close Water Costume
• Short Wolf Hairstyle

Newman Males

• Casual Layer Hairstyle
• Sensius Coat Costume

Human Females

• Casual Layer Hairstyle
• NaverQuartz Costume

Newman Females

• WioraMagika Costume
• Casual layer Hairstyle

Cast Males

• Ronia Head
• Dista Body
• Dista Leg
• Dista Arm

Cast Females

• Casual Layer Hairstyle
• Deal Body
• Deal Leg
• Deal Arm

This chart shows the level distribution among races. It also includes the fastest time to reach level 20. About 120,000 characters were made, the average user made 2.3 characters. The fastest time to reach level 20 took less than 5 hours. It seems the development staff was surprised by this. (Alpha Test 2 spanned for 56 hours.)

This quest chart shows the quest name on the left side, the first column shows the number of times the quest was played, the second column shows the percentage it was completed, and the last column shows the death rate.

A very difficult quest seems to be “ダーカー調査：森林” Darker Investigation: Forest with its low 29.19 success rate. The Volcano Cavern quest seems to have a high mortality rate. Is the boss killing the players so easily?

This chart shows the rare item drop rates. Each item and unit featured on characters dropped the least amount.

• Rod: Pyra dropped 909 times
• Sword: Tarnada dropped 960 times
• Sword: Coat Edge dropped 3229 times
• Unit: Rear / Calveria wing dropped 4735 times
• Unit: Sub/ Blow Resist dropped 5304 times
• Rod: Clarita visas dropped 5842 times
• Unit: Leg  / Heragrind dropped 6476 times
• Unit: Arm / Calbariatol dropped 8083 times
• Unit: Leg / Herasutra dropped 8484 times

The most popular items purchased at the My Room Shop

• Mystery Egg
• Planter
• Sen Tak Ki (washing machine)

On Planet Naberius, Dynal will randomly pop up in an Interrupt Event / Emergency Trial. Here’s the stats for each trial.

• Dynal Emergency Landed 60,0620 times. (Doesn’t include re-emergencies)
• 35.75% of the time, his aircraft was safely protected by players
• 51.66% of the time he had to do a re-emergency landing.
• 49.01% of time, players successfully protected him during his re-emergency landing

Feedback sent in.

Bug Reports sent in.

Most of the bug reports and feedback were mainly about the GamePad since on the first day it didn’t work properly. There were also lots of reports about lagging. Some people had issues with My Room which may have been caused by server load.

Forum topics

Compared to the amount of people who played, not many participated in the forums. But even so, there were lots of topics regarding player controls and the battle system.

So these three boxes represent the answers given in the questionnaire. The first one shows the percentage of people who participated in the previous alpha test. The second question shows if people were able to play the game successfully. The majority of people had no problem playing but 12% were only able to play solo. 65% of people played with the gamepad.

PSO2 Questionnaire Grading

Compared to the last test, User Interface, Character Creation, and Communication ratings increased the most. However, BGM lost a few points. I’m sure it has something to do with the music that plays over and over when you finish a mission. Get back to work Kobayashi!

People voted on which features should be improved upon in this game. This time people wanted more weapon categories which now we unofficially know is coming.

Well that’s all for now, in mid March, just like last time, Sakai will respond to user feedback informing us of what changes shall occur.

PSO2 Calandar March

Hello! Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity will be having a 1 Year Anniversary Campaign that begins February 29th, 2012, to March 28th, 2012.

• Special Discount Sale on Cash Items.
• Free Collaboration Items.
• Anniversary commemorative art featured in the lobbies.

During the campaign period, there will be a 100 yen discount on certain items in the Playstation Store. This discount will not apply to all items, especially Visual Units, and Room Items. Please note that PSP2 items are already sold at a 100 yen discount. Please check beforehand before purchasing.

Steel Gazer (Double Saber) and Bionics (Cast Parts) will be delivered for free!

1st anniversary commemorative artwork will be on display in the Visual Lobby during the entirety of the campaign!

Sakai updated with a brief blurb about PSU Japan’s newest update, Border Break Air Burst. The last time we saw Border Break was when PSP2i characters and weapons showed up in their game. This time the collaboration has extended to PSU with much higher quality models.

SW – Teardowner (Sword)

LZ-Vespine (Rifle)

Plasma Cannon Neo (Laser)

Cougar Type

Sega Heroine Collection

Hobbystock is selling their Sega Heroine Collection Trading Strap, featuring popular female characters in Sega’s history.

• Honey from Fighting Vipers
• Shinguji Sakura from Sakura Wars
• Rin Shaomei from Shining Blade
• Nagisa from Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity
• Selvaria Bles from Valkyria Chronicles
• Ulala from Space Channel 5
• Fei-Yin the Knight from Virtua-On
• Amy from Sonic the Hedgehog
• RaCaseal Elenor from Phantasy Star Online
• SECRET from SECRET

Each piece costs 450 yen, but the whole box set is 4,500 Yen. The release date appears to be around  May.

 Infinity’s 1 year anniversary!

Today 2/24/ marks Infinity’s one year anniversary, but also PSP2 Japan Internet Multimode service has now ended.

Correction

For PSO2′s voice actors we have to make a correction. The meaning behind this phrase “入れ替わる” is actually “changed places” instead of  “replaced”, or in the sense, they replaced each other’s positions.

Basically a voice actor who may have done a minor role in the past Phantasy Star games could do a prominent role in PSO2. Or, a voice actor who played on the antagonist side could play the protagonist and vice versa. It doesn’t rule out new voice actors from appearing, but if you’re expecting Rie Tanaka to return, she could possibly have one line this time or something.

Phantasy Star Online 2 @ Dengeki Game Festival

PSO2 will be playable at this year’s Dengeki Game Festival which starts March 18, 2012. It looks like they’ll use an Alienware Desktop machine. I wonder why..