Anything pointing towards the possibility that rare bosses actually have new attacks or is it just stat boosts?

At last something interesting . Anyway, I looking forward to a "decent" client order in order to unlock VH.

That kind of kill collect xx bla bla or blu blu kinda sucks

Subclasses are the dumbest idea ever. Not even blizzard would have an easy time balancing 1 class and then Pso2 team thinks they can just apply it without any thought. What a bunch of morons with no sense of what makes a game good. Totally breaking the game balance is not a good feature. Its things like this that throw me off a videogame. Guess that will be another week/month not playing.

@Mastermind

I don't see what's the problem even if it does unbalance the classes. For starters, we (still?) don't have PVP, so other people having better stats than you wouldn't affect that. Second, sure it will be faster if you do more damage, but it shouldn't matter that much since it needs skill to play it, due to its action-based game style. And third, if someone really need to have the best stats, they could just change to the "best" class combintation available, since you can change the classes as needed.

That said, I don't think unbalance IN THIS GAME would be much of a problem, since you're not forced to stay on the same class during all the game.

We can't forget Guardine on a stick!

Is the English patch screwing up for anyone after applying this update?

It's not about PVP guys. It's about equal attractiveness of classes and class combinations. Now the game wasn't very balanced with 1 class yet so I hoped they would put their priority on that, but it seems balance isn't their first priority.

Balance is a key element to any game. When the game is not balanced then it is simply broken. Balance doesn't just mean balance among the players, but it also means balance between you and the enemies. If the enemies are a cakewalk than that obviously means the game is unbalanced in the sense of the players being too overpowered in comparison to the enemies. Now tell me with a straight face that a gunner/ranger isn't going to be an overpowered class.

Anyway i'll defenitly admit that being powerful doesn't equal having fun. Another class may be alot more fun to play with so people's choice would go to those picks as well, but it would have been better if all classes were equally attractive when it comes to power.

This may be the first worthy update in a while, however it has some shitty aspects too:

- 10+ stars items and weapons and lv11+ techs/PAs aren't tradable NOR sellable via player shops

- Mesetas earned by selling junk weapons/units will be decreased

This is utterly fucking dumb. Ruins completely the point of having a shop and earn mesetas.

@Beta

"Trash mobs aren't supposed to be a challenge"

Durr, o really? Well you sure have an eye for good gamedesign don't you?

Basically that's the whole problem with the game to begin with. If you think it's good that bosses are the only challenge, then I don't really know what other games you've been playing, but that makes for a terribly boring experience for 70/80% of the time.

@Mastermind

Attacking someone's taste for game design… Have you played the late game yet? I've already stated that in the late game unless you build very tanky that you get 3 or 4 shot by trash mobs. Of course the enemies are easy to dodge but they do tons of damage. Enemies get tankier in late game. The flying birds in Flouting Island for example are very tanky and deal big amounts of damage if you don't dodge their laser. Next time when you respond, can you not attack someone and actually support what you mean more cearly?

Where's the like button for the comments? Damn…

Beta.like++;

Ricardo Look : http://www.4gamer.net/games/120/G012075/201210030…

@Nibelungelied

I think most people who "QQ" about balance here are talking about how fast bosses can be killed. To kill or not to kill is not a question anymore. It will always be killed, the question is how fast it will die (one's e-peen size is inversely proportional to the time it takes to kill a boss solo).

Considering this, against bosses the /TE you mentioned doesn't work, because main bosses can't be poisoned (maybe Quartz?). The FO/HU is not a concern, because really good FO's don't get hit.

Then if we consider "farming" potential, yeah your suggestions are pretty good. I myself had not really analyzed them before.

About -Z-: this guy is annoying as f*ck calling ppl l33tists and no lifes since day 1, just because his current PC can't run the game properly and he was (and maybe still is) having problems with the timed quests. Maybe his PC is the real problem, maybe he is plain bad. I really don't give a F***, but he insists to not admit the game is easy and some enemies are retarded (e.g. digs, kraadas, rappys or any other small "filler").

Reading again, maybe he really meant the game is easy this time. But I still won't believe that until he says it in black and white.

nibel> largely what I'm sayin'. the game ain't super hard, but it's irritating listening to people who seem to have been raised on IWTBTG and touhou, n' think everything should be like that.

n' most people who talk about balance in MMOs haven't a clue what they're talking about. especially since most companies maintain the idea of game balance as "the player has to be horribly weak", and MMO players have in large numbers been convinced to believe it.

I mean sure, anybody can be hax powerful if they minmax their mag like crazy and get their +10'd top-of-the-line rare gear loaded down with high end abilities and whatnot(I was looking at various stuff on that pso2uploader thing last night, some of these people have insane luck with ability transfer…), and exploit their strongest skills, doesn't mean everyone's going to. doesn't mean everyone should have to. cookiecutter stuff gets boring.

there'll always be something that can be exploited if you're willing to cripplingly overspecialize for it. hell, the english PSO franchise "community", if pso-w is any example, actively wants to do that; just go to their PSU section and try to debate the value of wartechter (which was about as "all-rounder" as you got, though slanted in favor of tanking) and watch the fireworks as the majority begin ranting about how it's worthless because it doesn't do high damage rapidly.

ranger here, for example, if you build with an eye towards subbing and all, and don't hurriedly make your mag into the class-specific equip req fixer a lot of people do, won't within current boundaries become capable of the kind of hax damage that one video shows off. weak bullet remains a powerful tool if you get it in the process, but doesn't blow the game wide open. and THIS is a thing the devs seem to be keeping an eye out for; keeping the game set up so that you're not completely worthless without a specific setup. twinkers will be hax, but at some point a curveball might be thrown that makes them less effective than they thought.

@Ricardo Look – the only thing on there that's not already in ricardo's post are the two gunslashes.

speaking of that, was there a weapon called "vraolet" prior to PSzero? because I think it's funny that neither thing with that name in PSO2 looks anything like PSzero's if there wasn't.

Stopped reading when I see the word "Blizzard". You should just stop playing PSO2 completely because its Japanese and not American like WoW and dont bother to post, cos nobody really wants to read your crap around here.

After playing techter for awhile and realizing how horrid of a class it is by itself, and yet how great it will be with other classes, makes me wonder if they put the whole subclass balance into consideration first before single class balance.

I'll wait till subclasses are out and try all combinations myself to decide what's effective and what isn't, instead of complaining about stuff now.

see, you think your ideas will make the game better but you don't KNOW this for sure. that's going to get you challenged/ignored a lot.

anyway color me irritated having gone over sakai's blog post. it's like working in the MMO industry kills brain cells.

@Anon Just gonna shoot some of those points down.

1) RAs can't regenerate PP as well if they have WB active, which means that you either stack a lot of PP+ or you waste your WB shots so you can regenerate faster.

2) Deadly Archer is the only notable thing that DS really has going for it, just like WB is what RAs are known for. You've also got to remember that Deadly Archer is only going to work if the boss is slow enough to stand right in front of you the entire time (hence why a Solo FI Banshee video isn't up).

3) There's a HU on Ship 10 who has hit 5k on a Transmizer with Heavenly Fall. As far as Wired Lances not being good at mobs, I'm guessing you've not spent much time in a party with a Wired Lance user seeing as how that weapon is ALL ABOUT crowd control.

4) The whole thing for daggers about needing to be "in the air and having at least one gauge"……..derp, that's what they were made for. I've yet to see a smart Dagger user sitting on the ground against an enemy when (s)he could be juggling it for the next 3 mins.

I'll go ahead and finish the rest of your "Well this class is OP" argument for you by doing the rest of the classes. Let's begin, shall we?

5) There is a video of a HU using no units, and doing over 300 damage per hit of Speed Rain on a QUARTZ. Speed Rain is 5 hits, therefore in the time it took this player to swing his partisan 5 times he's done ~1500 damage (and the skill takes all of what, 3 seconds max?). Add into that the fact that this player is not using any form of Units, which means he's not getting a boost from the Abilities/Set effects they would offer.

6) There have been NUMEROUS accounts of Sword HUs Just Countering bosses to death. Sure it takes them longer, but you add into the fact that not only are they dealing their own damage but also reflecting the bosses damage?? "OMG THAT'S SO OP Q~Q" -_-

7) GUs have three major things that you can min-max around to deal excellent damage: Zero Range Advance (1, implying that there will be more later), Chain Counter, and Chain Finish. Now with all three of these, you have a Chain Counter that offers roughly 4 seconds between hits before the Chain ends, a massive boost to the Chain Finish, and even further damage if you're up close. I've recorded somewhere in the range of ~5600 on a Ragne's back myself, with a 72 hit chain and using the Sneaky Shot PA. Also note that I can use 2-3 of these PAs in the time it takes my Chain Counter to vanish, therefore allowing for A LOT more damage.

8) FOs have access to Photon Flare. For those that do not know, Photon Flare is a skill that turns your HP into added T.Atk. So at the cost of 30% of your HP (if Photon Flare is maxed), you get an additional 200 T.Atk. Shoots up your damage just a teensy little bit eh??

9) As I pointed out in my earlier argument, TEs have access to Poison Ignition. Poison Ignition; increases state (poison) damage by 30%, increases the damage caused by the ignition to 300%, and decreases the cooldown to 30 seconds. Throw Poison on a weapon, or even use a darkness tech like Megid, and you've officially got yourself a nuke TE. Add into that that you have to put points into Dark Mastery just to even be able to use Poison Ignition, and behold massive damage.

tl;dr: Don't blame the classes and say that they're unbalanced. Any class can be unstoppable if you use it correctly. Instead of wagging your finger at the devs to fix everything, instead wag it at yourselves for not figuring out how to min-max it yourself. If you don't like being min-maxed, then wag your finger at the people who did it because "they're ruining your gameplay" -_-

brain twitch here:

"This applies only to the items that are introduced on or after the 10.10.2012 update, and will not affect the items that were released before then."

given no 10* items or level 11+ discs have been released prior to that update, I find the fact he felt this should be called out strangely suspicious.

Why are people supporting that 10* and what not can't be traded now? Oh wait they assume everyone can play hours on end as they do trying to grind threw the games terrible drop rates. I don't see how buying them in a player show deems the game pay to win lol.

pretty much. and that whole rediculous claim of a "sense of accomplishment" from finding a rare, when it's more of a sense of relief that you're done hunting it. being able to buy stuff from others isn't "pay to win", it's "counter your abysmal luck with patience in a manner the RNG can't drag out for months" :/

I seriously don't see anything good happening with nerfing junk item meseta sell rates, after all that is what it is all ment for when you don't have a myshop to pawn off affixes left and right.

And besides, the main income nowadays is TA rewards, but not everyone can do TA S ranks for the steady meseta it gives and a lot of those who can also tend to have myshop as well or use myshop alot, thus prices will only still get worse.

Good going game… might as well save all my meseta now and farm the shit out of the next week.

>“sense of accomplishment”

right more like I'm glad I don't have to grind for it anymore.

http://www.pso-world.com/forums/showpost.php?p=28…

lol post of the day

Yeah, i mostly solo or play with 2 friends, i still don't understand most of the game mechanics, but i have fun. You guys should be more like me. You guys as in the qq ers, play for fun damnit, play for fun. Pff pff pff P.F.F.!!!!

@Blaze Totally. We're essentially going to numb down the amount you can earn if you aren't premium, meanwhile the premium people will still be able to afford all that jazz. As far as EVENTUALLY coming to lessening the grind cost, that doesn't help much if they're not implementing it at the same time as the meseta nerf. Instead of us taking an hour to earn enough meseta to grind to a +4, it'll now take a week to earn that much -_-

>I’ve recorded somewhere in the range of ~5600 on a Ragne’s back myself, with a 72 hit chain and using the Sneaky Shot PA.

wwwwww

@nope Because you know my play style? Chain counter max + Chain Finish Max + Zero Range Advance 1 = Damage. Have fun trying to poke holes in an argument you probably don't know anything about though.

About the meseta nerf and not being able to buy the new rare weapons: I think this will screw the game and make it even more "grindy". Just like those endless PSO1 hunts for rares. I think I found only 1 rare shield (dat red shoulder) in the whole year and people would call me h4x for that. Never found a legit red partisan etc.

But we will have to wait and see if it will be ok or not.

feels kinda pso-w in here all of a sudden.

Hahaha PSP2's fucking retarded "can't trade s-ranks" system returns.

That meseta nerf won't mean much when you have nothing to spend it on because nobody can sell anything of worth.

@ nope LOL I hope thats not your max damage. I can do over 11,500 with HU alone.

I've seen a RA in Night Arks take down Rockbear on hard mode in 3-5 seconds. And you still think this game is balanced?

@ Roast Beef: Agreed.

Looking at what Segas going to do to the game's economy, Sega clearly doesn't know how supply/demand works. Unless if they don't want non-premium players to buy anything from player shops. If you're a non-premium player and want that red shrine maiden outfit, get ready to grind overtime. Even when the price drops to 1-2million, due to supply/demand of course.

>Mastermind

>playing techer

>underpowered

Woah woah woah what? Can't find a good party to play with? Techer is the ultimate support class if you build it right. You save your teammate's time of drinking pots and their money for buying pots. You buff their atk, def, crit, and even reduce their received damage, while still being able to deal a considerably high damage to the mobs/bosses.

>weaker class

>close combat class

With the right abilities one your equipments, you can fight just as well as a Fo. Yes, your T-Atk is about 100 points lower, but at the same time, your S-Atk is significantly higher. While Fo has to use gunslash/talis to recover PP, you can deal a much higher damage output with wand gear and recover PP 1.4 times faster than others. Besides, what's the fun of standing in one place and click your mouse? You might as well play some flash games.

>it sucks being weaker than the rest

Why don't you play some other classes then? No one is telling you to be a masochist. If you don't like it, change. I you do like it, deal with it. If techer gets buffed, the subclassing system is just going to make it an OP subclass.

@ Anon

You're the one who was crying about everything being OP. I'm merely helping your argument out by pointing out the "OPness" in all of the classes.

@nope & yup, who I'm assuming are the same troll

I was using my damage as an example, not to wave my epeen around. Of course it's not max damage, seeing as how that's always done with what you all call the "haxx" WB. Also recall that I said I hit this "2-3 times in the time it takes my Chain to disappear", giving me anywhere from ~11200-16800 in about 4 seconds. Please go back to pso-world

There's already a commission on the items, but it's so lawl that players can afford to put junk items up for 10,499,999,999 just because the tax won't do anything. Imo, a higher tax on player sold items is all you really need to keep people from doing putting a bunch of items up for ridonkulous amounts of meseta.

This is how PAY 2 WIN games are born!

Ricardo Look New Boss o.O

http://www.pso2-uploader.info/uploda/src/up20894…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BAYKvH58xU&fe…

@Nibelungenlied LOL again are you kidding me?

I was pointing out that your damage is garbage. I wasn't trying to show off at all. The fact that you thought that only proves your ignorance. People are out doing you by 3 to 4 times especially RA.

In the time it takes you to do 16800, RA or FI can do 50000-70000.

Jesus learn2 PSO2.

ricardo

i love you man. thanks for making information clean easy and accessible. even if that information isn't necessarily what we wanna read.

Doesn't matter what's Nibel's damage, if a specific class can kill the strongest bosses 2~3 times faster than any other just by stacking attack and PP, the sh!t is wrong.

First of all don't come saying that sh!t is "minmaxing" 'cause what a mofo has to do to get that is just stack one stat.

Second of all "minmax" is a completely different thing. Dunno who was the @#¨$*#! who began to call it "minmaxing" to begin with.

And third of all don't run upon my ear saying the sh!t is right and balanced, 'cause it's not. (that doesn't make the game less fun though)

@IamGodsGift No. Everyone will have to find its own equipment. But it seems the weapons will always have an element attribute… I guess? If that's true, at least once you find your weapon it will serve you well instead of the useless no-element rares we find now.

Ricardo:

Is there ANY comment on pure classes (Fo/Fo, for example) using 2 different (premium only ) skill tree?

Sorry, I meant buying a second skill tree.

The question is really if something was said about being able to use the same class as a subclass. The points for that would be using 2 complementary skill trees and having a higher boost on the same stats.

Is there any word about that being possible?

>Doesn’t matter what’s Nibel’s damage, if a specific class can kill the strongest bosses 2~3 times faster than any other just by stacking attack and PP, the sh!t is wrong.

First of all don’t come saying that sh!t is “minmaxing” ’cause what a mofo has to do to get that is just stack one stat.

Second of all “minmax” is a completely different thing. Dunno who was the @#¨$*#! who began to call it “minmaxing” to begin with.

And third of all don’t run upon my ear saying the sh!t is right and balanced, ’cause it’s not. (that doesn’t make the game less fun though)

"Min-maxing is the practice of playing a role-playing game, wargame or video game with the intent of creating the "best" character by means of minimizing undesired or unimportant traits and maximizing desired ones." We never said you're min-maxing stats. You're min-maxing on the skill tree. As far as everything not being balanced, did you completely disregard the wall of text I did showing how any class can be OP if you do it right?? -__-;

@Gokuroro There's been no news regarding that as far as what I've seen, though I highly doubt it'll be included.

Unless you lower the price of grinding, rise the rare drop rate, and put a percentage based tax, I don't see anything good from Sakai's blog. If he wanna deal with inflation, he has to make money disappear via NPC shops, tax and stuff like this. He has to force uber rich people to use their money, or force them not to use their money to win even more money. Limiting the amount of gained meseta delays the problem IMO; the uber rich will stay uber rich, and the average/poor will make less money. You have to balance more or less the gained meseta and the destroyed meseta.

People may put loads of meseta in gear if they are unlucky and stuff like this. IMO, if the (good) rares' droprate raises, or/and abilities and gear are easier to grind, the supply will be adjusted or even higher than demand; thus making the prices fall. It wouldn't do anything about the game being too easy though; we would see lots of maxed-out players, but it's the "less worse" way. Or do the reverse: make rare and money really hard to get. But you still have to purge the overwhelming mass of money in the riches' wallet somehow.

I saw in some games a ten percent tax on the price of the stuff you put in store. It could be a good beginning (with an higher tax that is), making the tax more important the richer the player is for example; forcing them to use their money somehow to lower the tax. Stuff is that they could rise the price of the items accordingly, but such rise would lower significantly the demand.

Tl; Dr?

Anyway; before attempting to clean and reform the economics in this game you have to find a way to purge the incredible amount of money in-game, then limit the access. Because if you only lower the money created, you just went back to Victorian era, with uber richs always rich, and poor always poor.

@Nibel

Your wall of text is mostly wrong and you know it.

I'll just cite #8:

"8) FOs have access to Photon Flare. For those that do not know, Photon Flare is a skill that turns your HP into added T.Atk. So at the cost of 30% of your HP (if Photon Flare is maxed), you get an additional 200 T.Atk. Shoots up your damage just a teensy little bit eh??"

200 T-Atk giving ~20% damage while WB gives ~300% damage (no boss should survive much more than its 1 min duration). Yeah pretty balanced. (FFS!)

"Minmaxing" is just a slang. Don't even know how that would pop up on Wikipedia. It's a slang for the obvious "I think I should focus on the stuff I like here duh". Go full damage. Go full tanky. Whatever you choose, it's nothing fancy or special and it shouldn't be named as if it was. It's not even an exact technique, since "best" is subjective in this context.

@Nilok

Sorry I didn't read all your post and you probably made some good points about the economy etc., but damage is not capped at 9.999 anymore. Don't even know if it ever was or just the interface wasn't able to display the full number. Today I hit a Quartz beak for 14.275 with a lvl 9 Raging Waltz (someone else's WB ofc).

@Anon Totally, I'm 100% wrong. Golly gee mister, I wish I knew as much as you.

But since you like to post up stats, take into account that a FO can regenerate PP by Charging their Techs, gets extra damage for Charging techs, and add that up to the damage that Photon Flare adds. So yeah, pretty balanced ffs.

As far as the min-maxing goes, doesn't matter if it's slang or not. Doesn't matter if "best" is subjective. What matters is that the only players you see doing insane amounts of damage are the people who min-max, so once again; hate the players, not the game.

There is one thing I see happen in MMOs time and time again: Someone is selling an unpopular rare for a high price. That rare sits on the market for a long time. After some time goes by, instead of lowering the price, the seller actually raises the price! Shortly after the price increase, the rare finally sells.

Why does this happen? This could be for a couple reasons:

1. The Apple phenomenon. Take an item no one wants (like tablet PCs), raise the price and they sell like hotcakes (I realize that the brand name has a lot to do with it).

2. Real world economics does not apply to MMOs. One has to remember that the amount of mmo money is infinite and easy to obtain compared to a real world cash.

I'm leaning to #2 myself and I think game companies need to stop trying to apply real economic theory to video games.

@Econ: You could try looking at EVE Online a little bit for real-world economics in an MMO. Seems to be quite interesting over there.

@Nibelungenlied So you're saying that if players are allowed by the game itself to to do ridiculous amounts of damage it's not the game's fault, it's the players?

That is the biggest bullshit statement I've heard all day.

So if the game is balanced why can't Techer put up as much damage as Ranger? Even if you min max it will never happen. No class can put up as much damage as Ranger as long as they have WB. If they nerfed WB then the game would be better balanced. Everyone has known this since Open Beta. That's why most of players play Ranger.

@Luke Kind of going to work off what you've said.

In many games they actually do implement the kind of tax that you're talking about, but there's another feature as well that they use along with the tax to get rid of in-game currency; a timer. So say you put up an item for 1,000,000 for 24 hours. At 24 hours let's say the tax is 10%. For 48 hours, the tax would go higher and so on and so forth. This makes it to where players HAVE to set items at a reasonable price, otherwise they're simply throwing currency away for the sake of throwing it away.

@Luke:

What about then adding that cost to the BUYER instead of the SELLER?

This is how real taxes work isn't it? You pay the object price + x% of it.

So if you sell your item for 1000, it would actually cost something like 1100 for the buyer.

@Gokuroro – That's kinda how myshop works now, the price you see up includes the tax.

(For example, minimum price you can set is 1k… the tax rate is 5% so buyers will see the cost as 1050)

Upping the tax even further would cause people to make less if charging the same total amount.. but it would likely cause prices on stuff to go up as people will set it for the same initial pre-taxed amount.

And no wonder why sellers don't give a shit about it. They are not even afflicted by this tax. Or they are rich enough not to care. Just flipping the tax on the right side of the balance would already give this game's economics a bit of hope.

Anyway, when I say something not correct, go ahead and correct me: my economy classes are behind me.

I think it's more like "The sellers are greedy, so the buyers must be punished" (unless your statement was ironical, my irony sensor is broken lately).

IMO, and what I saw, is that even if they put the price higher, the sellers pays the tax. And that's important. Especially given the fact that big sellers are the richest people in game. The fact they never use their money creates inflation, and so on. It wouldn't be a problem if the money could flow around more freely, limiting the gap between ultra riches, and ultra poors.

In a game, there's a twist compared to real life. In real life, if there's lot of inflation, you can't destroy money. In a game, you can. That's why I think destruction of the money can and should occur in PSO2, via tax systems and such.

Developers here are thinking like if they were in real life: "There is too many money? Let's try not to let people make too much money." In a game, you have much more freedom. It should be: "There's too many money? Fine, let's destroy some first, then limit the incomes."

It's so simple I wonder why they didn't though about it: you take the 5% tax you used to put on buyers, and you put it on sellers. End of the story. It's not perfect, but it is better than what we have as of today.

They'd have to code in set restrictions, as well as variables for each ability etc. Ultimately it would be useless, because they can't account for the combination of abilities.

Too complicated, when the solution is really easy, Enough Tax for the Seller, a tax that can make them think twice in the moment they are gonna set their prices so this will prevent ridiculous prices, and limited time to show the item on store.

Tigredor – 1,000,000

tax – 100,000

i.e. time: 1 weak

If this item is not selled in this weak, next time, the seller will lower the price, so he will not lose another 100,000. Also this is a way to destroy some of that excessive meseta from rich people.

And without affect the buyer, cause tax for buyers is the most stupid thing i have seen so far in games.

Don't you think if there taxed they'll just trade sell to people, meaning you'll need premeam to get anything good?

Those balancing changes are typical, common examples of bad solutions by incompetent game designers who are trying to fix silly problems resulting from their poor game design. I'd hoped they'd learned from their mistakes and improve, but it doesn't look that way.

Personally, I enjoy gameplay where I feel I am improving on my personal abilities in some way. Other than some boss encounters, I don't feel I'm getting enough of that from PSO2 anymore.

There's too much reliance on random chance for nearly every aspect of the game. They keep adding goals, but the path to those goals is what they really need to improve upon. It doesn't matter how many layers of goals or gameplay they add, if they all rely on random number generation and meaningless repetition.

How does getting lucky with a randomly generated number constitute personal achievement? Does it makes people feel special to obtain something others don't have? But individuality has zero influence over the result, it could have been anyone. People don't improve themselves to receive rares or successfully upgrade – it's entirely luck-based. All the player does is waste time gathering funds and initiating the random number generation process.

Sorry, but that's not satisfying or rewarding to me at all. As stated by others, it's more like relief than satisfaction. Anyone lucky could spend far less time to get the same results or better.

SEGA needs to focus on improving the core gameplay. They could give players more control by removing random number generators and replacing them with systems that players actually have significant control over… but if these changes are any example of the kind of "improvements" they have planned, I honestly can't see them giving us more control any time soon.

Damage was definitely capped at 9,999 in earlier versions of the game. Clearly the cap was raised. I assume it's 99,999 now.

-Anyway making set prices for items takes all semblance of play controlled economy out of the game. Anyone who thinks it's hard to do this though may have suffered head trauma. In any case, to reiterate, the real issue with the economy is the fact that being lucky is all it takes to make a small fortune. I was able to get a few 9* weapons to +10 with no failures, but I've also spent millions on failed attempts.

Most people have extremely bad luck though and lose tons of weapons meseta and grinders trying to make upgrades. To get meseta out of the system, these upgrades need to cost much more but be a bit easier to get so people dont opt to buy gear and feel a bit more comfortable trying to make their own. Increase the drop rates as well. Decrease the demand and increase the supply. With the increased NPC prices, meseta becomes more valuable and gear becomes less valuable. The economy will balance out.

the game already has values for various combinations of upgrades, element %s, and abilities. standard mechanism for RPG shop NPCs is there's a list of prices for everything, and then that's chopped down by some percentile or multiplier to create the price you get when you NPC something. that's why if you go buy something off an NPC you get rooked upon selling it back.

to implement price caps reasonably you'd use a given multiplier on that base value.

I think the thing sega doesn't get is that the drop rates drive the inflation a lot. rarer items always cost more because it's more work getting them; rares outclass non-rares and therefore are more desirable, but the drop rates ensure that many people will never find a given weapon on their own. progression ensures that a number of rares are only useful if you get them before you could equip a better one.

sega and gear progression are a bad mix, too. looking back over PSU, and looking at PSO2, sega has a thing for ensuring that after the first few levels you will be statted for gear you won't see untill you're even higher level, by which point most of it will be junk to you. perfect example, by the time you're in hard tunnels, 1~3* gear is vendor trash for you. you need 5~6* stuff, and you're more than ready to equip it. yet that stuff is almost as hard to find as actual rares usually. it's going to be bizzare in VH when the best stuff you find 90% of the time is 3*. neverminding that as it is, our sole examples of 3* gear is inferior to the weaker 5* gear, but has equip requirements almost as high as the stronger 5* choice. and it's nearly as rare. it doesn't even have a hidden bonus to make up for it, either.

I question the logic of sega's thinking with the market in general. they've made a scenario where rares are THE things to use, and thus THE things to sell, but don't want them to be common on the market. so they're assured to have crazy prices. but since they don't want high prices… they make it hard to earn money legit and AC-lessly, but don't do anything to take the wind out of the sails of those high prices.

starting to think it's 100% cashgrab logic. hell, even if they added an NPC that sold blank 7~9* rares at high prices at least there'd be some implication of trying to take money out of the system and thereby actually fix the inflation problems. anyone looking to optimize would still have to farm or buy to have rares to their liking, but people with bad luck could at least try to stay relevant in gameplay.

add in NPC functionality to get these started on elements and abilities, and you could start sucking out even more money from the system AND drive down player market prices via added competition. if someone can (potentially) get themself that soul'd, power 3~4 ardillo (or whatever) for even slightly less than buying it from someone else, then the market will shift to not be beaten by NPCs. (and yes I'm aware that's an insane suggestion no company would ever implement)

the totally untradeable 10*+ gear and level 11+ discs are just… BS. it simply means that most people will never obtain that 10+ gear that will likely be all-but-critical after a couple more cap increases, and there will be a lot of people who'll hit 100 and never have the best PAs/techs, which will divide the playerbase more by feeding the powergamers who won't associate with people whose characters are "sub-optimal".

If you dickweeds want to wave your penises over ego-pumped opinions, take it to a discussion board. The comment box is meant for stuff relevant to the blog post.

even before I started skilling up my stats and/or heavily boosting my mag stats, I was still ending up able to equip better things that will drop for where I am with a given class' levels. >> and it remains a point that so far, stat progression VS drop progression is whacked out. the subbing bonus will of course make it worse.

but I will agree that armor progression is terrible. at the same time, I've rarely gotten armor I couldn't use for stat reasons via actually running quests. most any units I have that I can't yet use came from the player market.

and while hunter types get all the love in terms of toys and possible setups, they get totally screwed on armor. the jumps in required S-DEF seem to be considerably worse than for the other two DEF types. and yet at the same time they also get bonuses for equipping (rare) sets outside their type, that are nigh impossible to equip within their useful lifespan (defense gains VS enemy power) unless you've built a mag solely for that, which hamstrings it's use other ways; unless you're level skipping it like a boss you'll end up with a PB that's crap for you (unless it's getting to be pure tech, because everybody benefits from PP regen)… even with the subclassing it's kinda weird to expect a hunter/fighter to wear quartz set when you look at the base stats. it doesn't help that most every skill with more than one rank is largely "all-or-nothing" in it's benefits; either max or ignore.

Please implement a 255 character limit for comments.

admittedly so was I. *pat* more the chop than the surf in the case of the sword stuff, but all the same.