willing to give a Tamashii Web link for the item? I'm willing to go through all the hoobob to get one.

"areas considered for future adjustments"

good, I hope that includes class balancing, MPA nerfing and drop rates enhancing.

Hey, if they modify multiparty mobs to have more HP/stun resist/speed, I'm all for it!

Doubt they're gonna go that route, though.

The 2 guns are the H&S25 Justice. If anybody cares.

6825 Yen (68$?)

for 155cm looool, so cheap!

Or Sega could do what Blizzard did with WoW, make an agreement with a third party like FigurePrints or a similar company, and let them handle all the details from there.

1. hope they never put a "no NPC" checkbox mostly because the people wanting it are so obnoxious about it. *glares at PSO-W*

2. said before, say it again; you can render weakbullet useless when you take away hunter's JG and general sturdiness, force's fire skill tree, and so on so forth for the second batch of classes. didn't they specifically call out doing the weakbullet/chain thing in the stuff leading up to the subclass update, anyway?

@-Z-

That is incredibly poor reasoning.

It has to be implemented because it inconveniences a HUGE number of people, including a ton of folks who don't bother airing their grievances on PSOW. When one person screws over 4 or 8 other players in a multiparty, that's called griefing, and it has to stop.

Not implementing it purely out of spite is extremely childish behavior. What are you, 12?

Nah don't change it now that I'm going to sub RA ;D

nooooo.. weak bullet has synergy with weak hit advance. without weak bullet Ra will have a hard time destroying ragne legs. and if you change it to weak traps, the clumsy Ra will have a hard time putting weak traps.

maybe in MPA a.k.a easy mode weak bullet are too strong, but in smaller party or solo play its so helpfull, especially if youre equipment is not end game equipment.

please dont destroy this class. >.>

@Freudia

Actually no, i have not used traps yet. Not since Alpha2 at least. I have a Hunter and Force, but my ranger is only like level 18. But i do notice NOBODY uses them.

the reason i say they should move them to traps is because it seems like the whole idea of the newer traps seem to be derived from Monster Hunter anyway. They have a really high-risk / High-reward kind of aspect. Traps don't work too well becuase they need to be fixed just the same as everything else. The ranger skilltree is 100% one-sided. That's obviously a balance issue.

And in regards to Forces killing everything, yeah Weakbullet doesn't overtake any other balance issue. But the difference is, Zondeel can simply have its %s reduced. For some retarded reason Weakbullet's effect does NOT scale with its level, so nerfing it is gonna require a fundamental change.

@anonymous (and everyone really)

Does anyone remember Alpha gameplay?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detai…

The Weakbullet ammo seemed to be a regular cartridge that shot bullets that seemed to ignore defense. Later this was changed to the weakpoint maker we have now.

I simply think Rangers need to have Weakshot return to that form, give the Weakpoint status to another ability. This is the reason why i said it needs to have its effect given to traps, because then it would lower the amount of weakshot spam avaliable during any given boss. ESPECIALLY now with Subclasses, where pretty much everyone has access to weakshot.

That way Rangers can still do damage (Without getting bosses killed in seconds) and Weakstatus can still exist (with a bit more skill involved to make it work).

At least, thats the way its working in my head. SEGA has a really lazy way about fixing issues with Phantasy Star, so if they fix any of these things it'll probably be some little number tweaks, like everything else in the game is

why are we even talking about nerfing classes when the metagame hasn't even been established yet. Even if we were to assume the max level in this game was going to be 100, we haven't seen ultimate difficulty yet.

By metagame I mean the big picture, the state of the game in which each class must be used to its fullest. if ultimate difficulty results in faster, more aggressive AIs, weak bullet becomes very much akin to zalure. Right now certain skills and abilities might seem OP, but the word "endgame" is being thrown around far too much here. Right now there is no endgame, there's end of episode. As far as I'm concerned, we're still on easymode with optional level scaling.

Also, using MPA as an example of anything being OP is ridiculous. MPAs are 12 players fighting mobs and bosses that are easy to SOLO. The only scaling here in the number of enemies that appear so that areas dont seem empty for all intents and purposes. to properly adjust for this, rather than nerf players which makes no sense since these tools are essential for solo and basic party play, is to create a system in which monsters "power up" as the group size increases. bigger, stronger faster mobs that dont stagger as easily have more HP and moves that allow them to withstand the barrage of attacks that clear out normal trash mobs. For you Borderlands players, I'm saying mobs need to have badasses mixed in that make melee classes USE their skills for basic survival and don't allow forces to spam Rafoie and clear a room. Some badasses may even try to subvert the melee classes and go after the forces and rangers. The more players in an instance, the more badasses that appear and yes there should be an improved drop rate for beating these badasses. While you're at it, increase rare boss appearance rates the larger the MPA is and improve these rare bosses so they also have new movesets and abilities that force players to use their abilities to their fullest instead of just spamming for DPS.

It makes NO sense to take away from the core game and take away from what makes the game as good as it is, which is the combat. instead they need to build from what they have and intensify the enemies so that combat is more fulfilling and skill and awareness are just as (if not more) critical in MPAs than in solo/party play. As I already mentioned these changes should come with increased drop rates from the bigger, stronger, smarter, more capable enemies to reward and encourage large MPAs (and possibly communication) despite the difficulty.

@Nilok

…Because the Metagame HAS been established. And there is zero logic in balancing for an "endgame" that doesn't even exist, and thus could be anywhere from 2 months to 5 years away.

The term "metagame" is suggestive and changes everytime something in the game is altered. So in that sense, we've had an established "metagame" since the end of Closed Beta. This is why there are +10 Volcan Scales and 3*s in circulation. "Endgame" only applies to games that have a defined ending, and thus a reference point. So balancing a current game based on a reference point only the developer knows is not only retarded, it's just terrible design, especially when we've been playing so long ALREADY. This is the kind of thing that only comes from a lack of foresight.

Everything about PSO2's development pass assumes that we: 1) ARE at the "endgame" point, and 2) Things MOSTLY stay the same through Normal > Vhard. This is why people are already complaining about difficulty issues and boring content. Many of us have already sunk over 200+ hours into PSO2 and have already run out of content, despite 3 difficulty modes, hundreds of COs, weapons, multiple classes and 6 area maps to run around in.

As me and a few others have suggested, the issue with PSO2's falloff isn't due to what we haven't gotten, but 100% based in what we ALREADY HAVE. The enemies are boring, the skills/techs dont change, the weapons are static, the bosses are too easy, ect. ect. Our expectations have betrayed us. Phantasy Star Online 2 has been out for over 5 months now, the excuse of "ITS STILL A YOUNG GAME!!!" has been milked dry at this point. Expecially when you have PSO, PSU and PSP2 as reference material. No other Phantasy Star title, probably even UNIVERSE ran dry on content and difficulty this fast in its lifetime, yet neither were updated this fast. It really doesn't matter if you blame it on boring weapons/enemies/abilities or OP characters, because they're ALL issues that need to be fixed.

If it's a problem NOW, then who CARES if it isn't a problem another 100 hours of gameplay away from now? The game is supposed to be consistently fun from level 1-50. But if you ask any player today, they'll tell you — the game's thrill slows down CONSIDERABLY around the Lv20-25 area, and then AGAIN around the lv40+ area…

…which is moronic, seeing as "Hard Mode" and "Very Hard" mode are the points in which you get a "refresh" in content. People are getting bored because we're getting just "rehash". It has nothing to do with the age of the game, and everything to BAD PRIORITIES. And focusing on endgame while people struggle to find stuff to do at level 23 is terrible priority.

tl;dr:

Nobody cares about how good the enemies and balance >CAN< be 2 years or even 2 months from now. People are playing now, and feeling the effects already. "endgame" is nothing but a lazy excuse for Sega.

Easy is easy. none of these skills that you are calling for nerfs on are required to beat them. That means those skills aren't what makes the bosses go from wtf to lol.

And sorry, no. meta game changes with balance changes, but you can't bitch about skills that are released now when the game's content isn't fully developed. Crying for nerfs now when you don't know what else is planned is stupid. What will you do if sega makes the nerfs now and then 5 months down the road you find those skills as they were would have made a next to impossible boss a little more manageable?

The fact is those skills only speed up the grind. This game is extremely grind intensive and there are people saying they want to make the grinds slower and more grueling? How dense would you have to be? From what I can see, anyone who's complaining that a skill is too powerful is suffering from some kind of e-peen envy. The game is already easy, the skills don't make anything easier, just lead to bigger numbers or different play styles. Who would want to get rid of those except for masochists and people frothing at the mouth because they didn't get something they consider equally good?

Vol dragon is a stupid example, btw. Anyone with any sense will break his tail immediately. WHYYYYYY? because it puts him in an absurdly long stun/stationary animation where he just sits there regenerating his tail. During this time you can hit his head and his horns which cause additional stun animations and restart his tail regen process if you do it fast enough.

What does this mean? If it wasn't obvious, it means breaking his tail leads Vol Dragon into a state in which you can bassically stagger lock him to death if you DPS is high enough and if it's not is an exploit you can repeat over and over again until he dies. All the weak bullet does is quicken the breaking/stagger process DPS classes which results in fewer cycles of it. it's 100% meaningless in the long term.

Vol was always easy for me as soon as I saw the tail was breakable. Cat was easy for me right away because I started FO and learned very quickly how useful being able to dash cancel my spell charges/castings was going to be. Quartz and Banther were equally easy because of this same ability. While playing FO, I observed the monster's tells and blind spots and applied that same knowledge to RA and FI. that's not to say I don't die or dont get hit, but that's usually due to my own mistakes, or something hitting me from offscreen rather than direct combat.

But lets use your definition of metagame and say it's ever changing. Why are you calling for nerfs then if next week this may be different? Why not ride it out and quit bitching?

The best thing to do is to wait until the dust has settled before making any changes or any moves.

We don't know if there will be bosses with 3min timers and if a properly coordinated wait/zerg would be needed or if they'll introduce a boss with a huge life bar and he gets stronger and stronger over time until his defense is unbearable or if there might be a boss that takes 0 damage until a certain animation.

There are a few things sega might do that we aren't fully aware of so please guys… don't cry nerf until we see sega's cards. Just my 2 cents.

BTW If you want to know the blunt version on why i think Weakshot will never be balanced, here it is:

Even if they buffed the everloving SHIT out of the new enemies, gave them AI and more health/strength/speed, Weakshot will always take the power-defense ratio of that enemy and reduce it to zero. It is impossible to balance any enemy against this type of skill because scaling any ability to Weakshot automatically assumes that Weakshot is a standard player ability (which it is not.) This would mean enemies would either be given copious amounts of a)HP or b)defense, which would astronomically CRIPPLE any player who didn't choose or sub Ranger. This creates a condition where you either 1) have enemies that dont account for weakbullet, have their designs completely compromised and die in seconds (now), or 2) enemies that DO account for weakbullet and thus require it's application to balance out the difference for players who dont own it.

Its very mechanic combined with the simplicity of applying it are LITERALLY a RECIPE for either slingshot balancing if the difficulty does rise, or easily cheesed bosses if it doesnt. Please explain to me if this isn't true. The only way to make it not true would require either a reworking of Weakbullet or changes to how enemies react to it.

And like i said before bro…there is no secret to cheesing the current AI's bosses. This is because THEY HAVE NOT CHANGED SINCE THEY WERE RELEASED. It doesn't matter if they have 200,000 hp or 2,000,000, they will ALWAYS be easy. There is not a SINGLE good action game on earth that i've played that allows this to happen. The only reason they're easy is because we've been murdering them since the game released. I can just tell you right now from experience in-game. They are not easy to newcomers.

Everything you're saying is just pretty much encouraging what ive been saying from the beginning; the game is easy because NOTHING has evolved with the player's ability set, and then gets boring because the player's ability set stops evolving too. And uh, if you killed a rockbear faster than a Ra/Gu then he must have seriously fucked up. Ive seen a lv 42 guy pretty much 2-hit the VHard ones with regular weapons.

Regardless, talking about how easy the current bosses have gotten and then saying "lol wb is fine" is basically just saying " this game is so god damn easy that nothing matters", which….isn't a solution to anything.

How about just make some enemies immune to the skill? or have it so the RA who uses it draws the kind of aggro no one would ever want to be a part of? You know what I mean. Like Wb makes the thing bumrush through the entire party/MPA and proceeds to reenact the scene from The Avengers where Hulk treated Loki like a ragdoll and left him in a crater filled with his own fecal matter and tears.

The thing is I agree with you on the idea that WB should never be made to be the assumption and therefore the solution, but you can certainly make it so that it's a welcome addition to a situation (like zalure) that can be subverted through actual skill while not giving bosses absurdly exploitable weaknesses like easy stun locks.

See, now we're talking. That would definitely be one way of at least giving the ability at least some sort of drawback. The same kind of way Hunters might think twice about Fury Stance based on their current situation, or how PFlare / Stances have drawbacks.

I play alot of competitive games (Blazblue, SF, TTT2, LoL), and if one thing has been made painfully clear through every game and community, "all or nothing" balancing usually always results in leaning to an extreme. When you create a character that revolves around a single skill, their very nature is "OP if it works, Trash if it doesnt". This is essentially my big issue with WB.

In most RPGs, yeah, most enemies simply develop immunities to more powerful spells. (Final Fantasy, where Poison/Demi/Death/Doom simply stop working on most enemies).

In PSO, the more useful Weapon Abilities got prorated effects in higher modes. (like killshot and HP Reduction). OR they could just add an accuracy factor to it, but for some reason Accuracy was completely removed…which would be good if the enemy changes wern't completely stat related.

I don't see how listing off a ton of fighters which suffer from awful balance issues to the point that they end up getting more updates than most other games just to keep everyone quiet and keep them from being phased out of MLG or the FGC qualifies yuo to gripe over this game more than others. The only game that doesn't apply to that list is TTT2 because it's a brand new game.

WB does not MAKE rangers, but if it DID, would there really be anything wrong with a support oriented class?

I would really love to hear about a single boss fight where weak bullet actually turns the fight into easy mode. And I would REALLY love for it to be a boss that playing monster hunter for week wouldn't solve or doesn't have some easy to exploit weakness that makes WB a moot point.

FFS people. Go on Skype or some other Chat program and argue this stuff out. Just sayin'

HAHA If you think they recieve updates only to keep people quiet, then that clearly explains why you hold the position you do on this issue. That's the decision that crappy fighters make. Pointing out their changes does absolutely nothing to help your argument.

BB has received so many system changes because unlike Sega or Capcom, ASW refuses to settle for a game developing a meta that does not agree with the way they intended the game to be played. They are able to see flaws in their original designs and redesign accordingly. TTT2 and T6 avoid this — Namco devotes entire TEAMS of their attention towards maintaining balance. T6 had 40+ characters, only a single rebalance and still remained the most balanced fighter avaliable. They're simply experienced.

Like i said…Meta is a constantly changing, and only begins to settle once the community has found (essentially) the most efficient strat for dominating the game. This is why fighting games change more often than others. The concept carries over into all games. This is why named MPA bosses get shat on in (literally) 15-20 seconds in Vhard mode.

Is there anything wrong with a support oriented class? Obviously not. Moot point; Phantasy Star MMOs have no pure support classes, and with the advent of the PP system from PSP2 they will never need them, because there is no scarcity of resources anymore. There's no place or time for support in PSO2.

A single boss fight where WB turns it into easymode? Is this a trick question?

And for the last time, you cannot downplay weakbullet by pointing out that simply walking into VHard mode makes all the enemies die faster than they did than when you first walked into normal.

You can say that all you want, but as someone who mains tager in BB. A character btw who has ALWAYS been "Bottom tier" I have no problem holding my own against anyone and only get better as I learn the matchup. If their "meta" was som important though why do the same few characters tend to be top tier while a very familiar batch remains on the bottom?

The reason Tager has never had the tools for him to be "tournament worthy" in the eyes of most people is that not enough people play him for ASW to care. It's all about silencing the squeakiest wheel. Call it cynical if you want, but it's reality and I'm sorry you're not able to see it for what it is.

Funny how you say T6 is balanced but at most US tournies I always see one Bob at the grand finals. That's not even the point, do you know why Namco devotes that kind of time and money? Fighting games are becoming big business. Many games live or die by what the FGC picks up and what gets dropped. The biggest fighting game dev in the world though is capcom and look how they shit all over their fans. AE launched and within weeks if you weren't playing one of the twins, you weren't winning a tourney. even Daigo who is known for being a shoto player in more recent games, most recently Ryu in the SFIV series though it was Ken in SFIII. Daigo dropped Ryu in favor of Yun because even he felt it was the only way to remain competitive. Yet this game was released and it wasn't until they released AE2012 due to the huge number of complaints as people saw everything they knew about the game had become completely useless in the face of a goddamned dive kick that the game was brought back into something that resembled a competitive game.

This same company created MvC3. And if MvC2 wasn't enough of testimony to the reason that fighters should be play tested, Capcom release this abomination with a character like Phoenix who may not be the worst thing to happen to a game these 30 years totally ruined everything and allowed someone like Viscant to take Evo last year. you wanna talk about a situation where killing something quickly was the only way to survive? If a Phoenix user got a full hyper gauge before she died and maintained it, the only way you could beat her, given that the person had any clue what they were doing was to hope you could random her out and catch her with some move before she filled the room with traps that were basically instant kill. You had to build a strategy around this one character just to fight them. people built whole teams with gimmicks just to beat her and even then it was a 50/50.

in the most recent build of the game, only the better players even try to use her and they finally gave players enough tools to make the fight reasonably fair. but even with all that I see people burn 5 meters and their X factor just to kill one character off and give themselves a fighting chance. These games are not balanced and will never be balanced. the only reason they even bother is if people think the devs don't care they won't buy the game.

But I digress

So your argument is not that WB is OP because the whole game is about DPS, but that RA sucks because WB is good and everyone benefits and RA wouldn't be as good without it. By that logic, should we remove PP Charge Revival? Techers have been looked at as the worst class in the game, but if we made it so forces didn't regen PP while charging, then They'd be flimsier techers with worse melee.

Why is the response to what you consider to be an issue to hit it with a nerf? Why not give FO/TE Zalure again but give it a cooldown? Make it so every part of the boss takes 1.75 -2x damage and make it so it overwrites WB? Why not give HU or FI a passive skill that ignores defense as long as the weapon's gear gauge is full or something? Why NERF? give buffs to make WB even stand out-ish. and FFS BUFF THE MOBS!

And isn't the fact that things die just as easily for on VHard as they do on hard for as little effort with the same equipment regardless of WB the whole point? Why is WB an issue if no one needs it, no one is hurt by it and the only benefit to it once you learn to play the game is time attack/farming?

You're still saying meta is dynamic but talking like the game is static. If the meta is changing, WB was a crutch that no one needs anymore, but it's still there. Now it's a buff just like shifta or drinks or anything else. It helps shorten fights, but it doesn't do anything for the difficulty because the current metagame includes the fact that the damned boss strategies have been cracked open and will only continue to improve. No one needs WB to be able to kill a boss quickly or with minimal effort, yet you talk as if it makes any impact. Most parties and even MPAs I run with, people don't even use WB that often. Is there some hidden power or secret boss I don't know about where WB actually makes a boss kill other bosses around them or something? I mean what's it doing that I'm missing here? Triple damage for 15 seconds on a single part of a monster is nice, but if that's a game breaker, this game really is all about stats and there is no metagame.

@Nilok It does not, has not, and never will exist. People just want to complain about WB (and I guess Chain now) because of the old 1 min kill videos, yet ignore the 45 Quartz FI kill or any other videos. Mainly they just want to complain because their skill tree isn't built around doing the best thing possible for their class, which in a RA's class is uber damage with WB. So what do they do? Q~Q

Right. Rather than look for ways to improve they want to make everyone else worse. Then again I remember in PSU how people used to bash spiral dance early on because its second stage had that kick and negated the third if you send something flying. I just would intentionally whiff the kick by telling go fo ly lock-on and pivoting which was great cause it let me kick away anything that was coming up behind me. I could then use the third stage normally and even guide it for better positioning. and if I remained locked on I could use it to stagger lock larger enemies. Later into the game's life I saw more people doing what I had been doing since I got the PA, but it's true that people tend to want to focus solely on flaws and complain or disparage rather than innovate.

I would like to think that most people here would benefit from playing Monster Hunter. A game where preparation, observation and mastery over your weapon class were more important than stats.

Anyway I'll leave it at that. I'm starting to think the "this game is too easy" party is a minority.

"And uh…i dont give 3 shits about Street Fighter, but i seem to recall Daigo tierhopping to Yun in SSFAE and getting curbstomp perfect’d by some kid with Seth at EVO."

Didn't you say you played SF?

Poongko. Korean Seth user. Seth was the 3rd Character is that "god" tier. Few people used seth because in order to do well with you you basically had to go balls out all the time and few people were willing to do that. The few that did performed fairly well, but even seth started to lose steam as people learned the matchup. The main reason daigo lost was because he had no clue what he was fighting.

And I'm aware of WHY Tager is low tier but why haven't they addressed his mobility is that would bump him up a few pegs? He's still a big body and much easier to work over with higher tiered characters like bang. My point in addressing this game was to show that they know what he needs but they keep adding to his strengths hoping that will be enough to overcome his glaring weaknesses.

Tiers will always exist, but a well balanced game will have is so these tiers are always neck and neck, there should never be a point where 10% of the roster just dominates everything and the other 90% sees no joy outside of casual play.

Anyway your idea of balance seems pretty unclear to me and it seems to me you're using a PvP dynamic when talking about PvE. Within the scope of RA, I could see you making a case that there are no other builds for RA that work nearly as well as a WB build. I dont think anyone can argue that the skill trees in this game are…to keep it PG..not well made.

But in the scope of the game itself which is what I'm talking about, WB doesn't not make RA some crazy OPed class and depending on WB doesn't really work. I keep asking you to give me an example of a boss that WB demotes from dragon to kitten, because as far as I'm concerned, and maybe I'm in a minority, playing against a boss a few times is enough to start building muscle memory and basically automate fights to the point that they're incredibly mindless and take very little effort regardless of whether a RA is in the group or not. All bosses have some silly trick to them that basically turns the fight into just hitting buttons/clicking. So what is WB doing to hurt the current "end game"? I haven't seen a clear answer to that from you. I admit WB seems really OP when you start playing, but lots of abilities in lots of games have that kind of effect where they seem totally broken early on but then lose their bite. Maybe not everyone is like me, but I look for patterns and tells and try to understand the way the game and the enemies work. I want to understand, you know? So for ME, WB was great damage and all, but I've logged about 500 hours in this game since the Beta and all WB does for me now is reduce the number of times I have to do something until a boss dies. I can count at least 4 other people on here that feel the same way as me and have been vocal about it.

Do you see what I'm saying though? if you're trying to say that the reason changes need to be made is that no other RA builds are nearly as good, I can see your point. but any other issues with balance and fairness IMO are completely moot seeing as any class can solo a boss with little issue and in most cases very quickly with simple affixes or minimal experience with very basic gear. Anyway the bottom line to me is that WB isn't the problem or even part of the problem. The classes themselves are fairly balanced amongst themselves, the skill trees are what need work and good luck getting sega to fix that.

I'd actually like to see the builds of these people complaining against WB. 10-1 they stacked the passive (stat)+ instead of going for %. Wikis even say it, at end-game the stat+s = bleh.

@Nilok

"So what is WB doing to hurt the current “end game”? I haven’t seen a clear answer to that from you. "

Just scroll up. ^^^^

"

Even if they buffed the everloving SHIT out of the new enemies, gave them AI and more health/strength/speed, Weakshot will always take the power-defense ratio of that enemy and reduce it to zero. It is impossible to balance any enemy against this type of skill because scaling any ability to Weakshot automatically assumes that Weakshot is a standard player ability (which it is not.)"

************

************

My issue with weakbullet isn't that it makes current enemies even easier, even though it totally does, and anyone who disagrees is absolutely completely delusional.

It's that it always will have the same effect, on every enemy. It's that it always WILL make enemies easier. And furthermore, the approach behind weakbullet is just really stupid, considering how S/T/R attack are all different stats now, with their own corresponding defense.

If Weakbullet only drastically lowered a specific defense, oh say R-DEF instead of all forms of damage, it wouldn't have nearly as drastic of an effect. Or if there were different forms that benefited different classes. But it's a one-shot debuff that universally (and greatly) increases everybody's damage output.

Whatever, when Dark Falz comes out and loses 50% of his HP the first time someone in the party WB+Chain combos him, people will still complain and people will still defend it.

Guys, I think the points being thrown are all valid from, at least, two different perspectives.

Not everyone is as hardcore/has as much experience as hardcore Monster Hunter players (notice that I'm not saying only those play well), and for THOSE people, Weak Shot does make it easier, since they (instead of "not need to dodge much" as mentioned by Nibelungenlied) "won't need to learn to dodge".

On the other hand, we have the very experienced players (either due to previous Monster Hunter like games or due to enough time playing the same bosses on PSO2) to which the Weak Shot ability will only diminish the time taken on a boss.

Even if Sega is looking at it, it may be a very hard decision to make, since currently nerfing Weak Shot (and other PAs as well, possibly) will have many casual players complaining.

Anyway, Sega is (most probably) not going to change anything based on comments on this blog, though I do like reading the non-arguing discussions around here.

let's have a different arguement here:

everything ranger has besides weakbullet and the things meant to feed it utterly sucks. traps? high maintenance stuff that doesn't quite live up to the hassle, and that was prior to being nerfed with delays that make them more trouble than they're worth. status shots other than WB? since normal status effects can't be stacked, only jellen has room to be useful, BUT after the alpha they made it's formula work in a way that means you need ludicrous defense to seriously notice a difference and it doesn't last long enough to matter.

so what exactly are rangers left with in their skill tree, if we forsake WB and it's boosters? um… stat boosters. those things everybody spits on because they'd rather just use their mag for all their equipment needs.

why do people abuse WB with ranger as much as they do? because there's not really anything else worth taking from the skill tree. sega should rework ranger's skills to give people some reason to do something other than WB twinking.

I said it wasn't an instant win button. I see lots of people screw up WB just as bad as anything else. NOTHING in this game by my standards is hard, but nice try.

Giving it some more thought, Remius, The balanced game play you're asking for seems a bit too misguided. I can understand that certain PAs Overshadow others and that certain skills define certain classes, but again, you're going about this the wromg way. Nothing needs to be nerfed, those other skills need to be improved, bosses need to have better movesets and not be so easily spammable if that's the direction you want to take. And if the risk and the effort are greater, the rewards need to be greater too. the big issue here though is it will always in part be about numbers. because what else is there to encourage people to play the same game for 5+ years? How do you measure progression? How do you encourage people to fight the same boss over and over again when they've killed it so many times the fight is practically automated? There has to be incentive to keep coming back and there's just no way they can just keep adding new areas and enemies at a rate which will keep people playing (and therefore spending money) for even one year if every boss is "been here done that" in a matter of days.

Also, you have to understand that not every weapon and PA is about damage, some have other purposes and yes others are mostly useless. This is going to happen when people demand variety and flashiness. They've tried to fix this by making the "less useful" PAs much stronger so their damage output made them more practical. Not an ideal solution, but given the circumstances there weren't many other options.

Anyway if this isn't about weakbullet, don't make it about weakbullet. I'm happy to discuss issues with PAs and the practical applications of different weapons and skills. I think we can both agree though that WB really has nothing to do with what's really wrong with this game other than how it defines a particular class/

"How do you measure progression? How do you encourage people to fight the same boss over and over again when they’ve killed it so many times the fight is practically automated? There has to be incentive to keep coming back and there’s just no way they can just keep adding new areas and enemies at a rate which will keep people playing (and therefore spending money) for even one year if every boss is “been here done that” in a matter of days."

And herein lies my biggest issue with PSU, PSO2, PSP2, and the reason i still say PSO was better designed around its core than either of those 3 games. It's all about progression and incentive. It's such a small difference but it literally changes everything the longer you play. I measure progression by progression. In other words, i measure progressive gameplay by the degree at which the game forces you to move onwards from what you were doing in the past.

In PSU, weapons took backseat to the player. Special Abilities from the original were removed, and replaced with the PA system. Techniques physically changed every 10 levels, skills stopped at 21. Weapons did not evolve with the player, and higher-level weapons had minimal differences outside number stats. PSP2 had more variety, but essentially did the same thing. In PSO2, the weapons have their own gimmicks and mechanics, but still are primarily player-dependent. Techniques and skills do not physically change…well, ever (Apparently). Ability system was from PSO reintroduced, but follows a pre-made set of affixes that include no controllable abilities and no unique attacks specific to that weapon.

In PSO, there were no PAs or manual aiming. So, like in a traditional RPG, everything in was designed around utility. Weapons had clear strengths and weaknesses, but most importantly grew in strength and utility the same way the characters did. Regular weapons had a chance to drop with special abilities..Some were elemental attacks, some support based, some status based. However All "special abilities" were controlled by the player. Techniques physically changed every 4-5 levels.

Whats this have to do with progression? Everything. Because PSO2 places all its focus on the player, it completely ignores the fact that at some point, the inflow of things to customize will become exhausted. Once you learn all the PAs and obtain every weapon type, you have successfully obtained every tool you will EVER use for that class UNTIL sega decides to update the game with either new PAs or new Weapon Types. It doesn't matter if the game has 10 weapons or 10,000.

The original avoided this issue. The loot you obtained is what held most of the utility. This means without equipment, you were pretty much worthless…but at the same time it means that the longer you play, the more abilities you will inevitably have access to. Your inventory was just as important as your player level, and your specific weapon was far more important than its ATP rating, even if they're two weapons of the same class.

One of the reasons PSO is so outdated today though is the most outspoken group of people today want more "content" regardless of whether it adds anything to the actual game play. it adds to the playability by giving players "more to do" and extends the life of the game. Issue is when you want to add ridiculous amount of content it ends up becoming diluted as they try to use content as a drip feed for the game. If they didn't do this though people like me would blow through the game in a few weeks, relaise they'd done all there was to do and not invest any energy at all into getting better gear.

So again you have to look at this in terms of a model in which the game is going to be getting steady content for years. it's going to get less interesting much faster for people who play so heavily.

Also, Affixes are essentially the prefixes from PSO, it's just we can make our own now, and really what were special weapons but rare powerful weapons with built in high level affixes? yeah there were some with unique abilities like heaven's punisher and such. but what was guld milla but a crazy powerful gush vulcan? What made Chainsawd or Soul Eater any more special than a Gush Calibur or a Berserk Gungnir other than the looks and the stats? Tons of the weapons in PSO were like that. Even Lavis Cannon got punked by Orotiagito. For every special weapon that was truly unique there were probably 5 that only had stats going for them.

nilok> I was trying to draw other people to that realization, not you. seems like it didn't work tho.

remius> so you acknowledge that PSO2 isn't a gear-based game like PSO1 was. the question is, why do you seem insistent that it has to be one?

once you have a heavily gear-dependant system, when you work in MMO drop rates, you have a system wherein people who aren't good friends with the Random Number God get shafted. okay, so player market you say. but then you factor in how people typically act in online game markets. all that Important stuff that people would have a reason to buy is suddenly ludicrous in price, be it in normal currency or some other player-decreed currency (SoJs like diablo2, PDs in PSO1, etc) which may, depending on what it is, be almost as hard to get as the items being sought for someone unlucky like that. and if they're not, then you end up needing a stupid amount of them (check that PD trader coming this month. *eyeroll*), which means that for that time gathering, the player in question remains sub-optimal. which might not be a problem for their own fun… BUT. then we run into the Stop Having Fun guys. the ones who absolutely insist that everyone HAS to be optimized or they're terrible, worthless, unworthy of partying with, should quit, etc. and they do the above. now that unlucky player is being shoved away from the game by a group that, even if in the minority, is extremely vocal and easily found in all manner of crowds. now the game's losing players. and then you have people who insist on going with the flow; all their buddies quit so they're quitting too, etc. losing players… which in a game supported by microtransaction means losing money. do I have to explain the problem there? at least with a player-focussed system you don't necessarily need to earn the favor of the random number god to more or less convince those types to shut up.

and yes. the drop rates are abysmal… but if you've been around the block a few times with MMOs you'll find that's par for the course. and if the rates were good, would people need to buy off eachother? that's how companies justify them. personally I don't think anything really does, but I don't run games. (and I don't like the untradeable 10* thing either, really. but the L11+ discs part annoys me more because of how much it limits what's on the market from an already hard to get batch of things, which makes the prices go up and up and oi. vey.)

PSOs battle mode when players went in with their characters as they were, rather than starting from 0 was incredibly one sided. Forces pretty much dominated everything thanks to techs being very fast and unblockable.

The other thing with PSO was there was no economy. Meseta was worthless and people couldn't give enough varistas away. Furthermore PSO on GCN was full of duping and so everyone could have anything they wanted as soon as one person found it. I never played BB so there's nothing i can really do to comment on it,

Also on DC I remember hitting 100 and thinking "now what?" so I'd just run around drop off a ton of stuff in random parties to clear my bank and tag along to kill stuff. "oh Normal mode Vol Opt? Let me get my lvl 100 HUcast with his spread needle and kill the boss before he knows where he is!"

PSU had plenty of elitists, but most people quit due to sega's negligence, not the people.

This game is suffering from Sega's negligence too. Almost all these updates have been rehashing the same content to the point that a lot of people are already sick of the game. We'll have to see what the next few months hold, because as of now this game is wearing on the patience of even the most diehard fans.

And as that giant post above me stated, i do not think PSO2's content deprivation is due to Sega not giving us content. We have plenty of weapons, stages, armors to search for, and 3 modes to play. It just FEELS like we have no content because the content we already have is so transparent and fake that there's no incentive to seek it out. The items and armors are all modelswaps of eachother with different stats, and the new enemies and modes are cheap stat increases with no real alteration to anything important.

This is really the only reason i even brought up PSO's weapon system. It wouldn't fix the shitty AI issue, but it would most certantly make me feel better about all the useless rares in my inventory, and all the other shiny weapons i haven't found yet. But there's no use bitching about it, i should probably just give up. The playerbase is more concerned about teammates AFK following them. Players apparently complained that the 10* weapons are too weak, and so they're just going to BUFF THE STATS on the ones that are out now.

Sigh…the most depressing part about this is that we already know what's coming later this month, and in December too, but the chance that any of the issues we're discussing will be addressed terribly low. It's time to just give up on MMOs i guess.

Well its not like they're buffing ALL 10*s, just the ones that are clearly weaker than 9*s and below so their inability to be traded is somewhat justified

Anything that can launch someone can be avoided, just the same as a technique can. Players can break stun, grounded enemies cant be launched, and unlike enemies, players can recover from the grounded state.

Hunters can block attacks, Rangers EASILY kite even the fastest enemies in the game, and forces are nigh-untouchable from any attack unless they're flat-out blindsided.

If they were to add an "Aerial Recovery" ability and limit PP reduction to limit Hu combos and Ra/Fo nuking, you could have some pretty interesting stuff going on. And i don't see how Ra/Gu would be detrimented from this at all. They can accurately shoot things from across the map, and almost every launcher skill in the game either launches or downs the opponent.

Unlike a real fighting game, i dont even think this game would really require any kind of combo proration system. If they didn't do anything obviously smart (like remove PP regeneration ) then i dont really think there would be an issue with catch-and-kill for hunters. Furthermore, if they removed PP regeneration altogether for Hunters/Rangers, and instead forced you to gather meter the fighting game way (attacking enemies) or finding powerups, then a hunter could only overpower a player to the extent they had enough energy too. Damage reduction on confusion was so intense that i've never seen anyone actually kill another player, even using very powerful skills like WL spin, Cruel Stab or Heavenly Fall anyway.

Furthermore…seeing as players are allowed to recover from a fallen state without taking damage, unlike Monsters you wouldn't really be able to loop them, especially if they recover. And with the exception of Daggers….there really are no infinite juggles (not touching ground) that im aware of. Clostest thing would probably require a ranger and a rifle. anyway bottom line is, with very little work a PVP mode could not only be fun, it could actually be given some depth. Seeing as PSO's battle modes are only for recreation, and PSO2 is boring as fuck right now, i'd definitely sink some hours into PvP.

Especially if it was like PSP2's PvP, and they throw some team-play and monsters into the mix. Since enemies on this game have an aggro system, they could theroetically do some really neat stuff, like one team having Native NPCs and the others having Darkers.

Players can still be hit on the ground before they start their recovery animation. Stun Coincide and Quake howling will hit and pick them up allowing for infinites. Rangers can shoot from acress the screen but it' not like they have the kind of access to instant nukes that forces have. each attack with the exception of maybe one basically travels in a line. with twin daggers able to close gaps very quickly, only expert rangers would even have a chance.

Just seems to me that this game would undergo so many changes for PvP that it wouldn't be this game anymore.

I think they should change a lot of stuff for PvP mode and don't apply those changes globally. Make them work differently on PvP and that's it. Recovery time, hit-stun and all this stuff too.

But ultimately, I'd not play it at all, because LAG. Can't really play an action game with ~400ms latency. PvE works because some stuff are client side. PvP no way. It'd make me smash my head on the screen so many times.

….at least i hope thats how they'd do it. I highly doubt Sega would put that much stock into it though.

Even if they didn't FI can easily outrun the tracking feature of auto target. FOs dash is also completely invisible til their feet touch the ground.