Hiro Arai interviewed the development team regarding the Kvaris region and future contents. Here's a rundown on some of the new information that wasn't explored in the NGS Headline.
The Kvaris Region
- You can access the Kvaris Region by completing Retem's main story.
- You will need to be above level 33 with a Battle Power of 1813 or higher.
- The Kvaris Camp acts as a temporary base for ARKS who have been dispatched from Central City.
- All the shopkeepers here are robots who were in the Kvaris region before the ARKS were sent from Central City.
- The robots were lost and wandered aimlessly until the ARKS found them. The ARKS discovered these robots have a shopkeeper function and thus they tend to the shops for now.
- New motion changes will be released in the future so that players can ride on them to dash and glide.
- There will be new trials where you fight alongside NPCs wearing winter gear.
Two New Actions: Throwing and Boarding
- Players can pick up an object called "Crystaline Ice" that deals heavy damage when thrown.
- You can use this action to destroy containers, and you can also use it within a special Trial.
- The throw action can be used to hurl bombs back at enemies.
- Field Races will be implemented where you can use the Floating Boards through specific courses on an exploration field.
- Players can compete against each other in races, and solo players can try a time attack mode to break their fastest record.
- This will be released other regions as well. Aelio will have two while Retem gets one.
- In the future, they plan to release more content for the Field Races and throwing actions.
Story Events
- The protagonists head to the Kvaris region to find Ilma, a researcher who has gone missing. Ilma apparently knows how to repair the Central Cannon and make improvements to it.
- The story will have somewhat more comical exchanges, and some warm, home-drama like developments between characters.
- The action scenes will be more dynamic than before.
- Due to player requests, mini-events will be released regularly starting in August that dig deeper into the main characters.
- Meri and Kukka live together but are not in a relationship.
Battle Power and Leveling
- If you happened to have taken a break from the game after clearing Retem's story, there will be Tasks available to help you gain more EXP before you head to Kvaris.
- There will be more than 50 Side Tasks available in Kvaris so you can smoothly level up to 60.
- In October, they plan to raise the Lv. cap to 65. In Dec. they plan to raise the level cap even more.
- To make it easier to level your character, they will be relaxing the EXP-gain penalty you receive when you fight an enemy that's at least five levels higher than you. For Battledia: Yellow, the EXP-gain penalty will be removed entirely!
New Skills
- There will be new skills in each class.
- Hunters receive "Sword Arts Overcharge" which becomes more powerful if you charge Photon Arts for a certain period of time or longer.
- Gunners receive "Chain Trigger Count Retain" which increases the number of chains at the start of the next chain trigger if it ends without a Chain Finisher.
- Techters get "Wand Arts Skip Attack" which changes the normal attack into its third stage when using photon arts in succession. In addition, you can unlock the Wand's 4th stage normal attack by acquiring the "Wand Attack Extra" skill.
- Bravers get "Katana PA Combo Finish" which makes the normal attack even more powerful after you use the third stage of a Katana Photon Art.
- More skills will be revealed in the future.
Kvaris Enemies and Creatures
- The Crocodylis will hurl exploding objects at you. By utilizing the "Throw Action" as discussed previously, you can throw it back!
- Some boss enemies can buff all nearby DOLLS.
- Proctys Ael and Proctys Retem are enemies that can use attacks from DOLLS in other regions.
- There are species of non-enemy critters called "environmental creatures" that have varying behaviors based on their location.
- Some of these creatures look like snowmen, snails, and spotted garden eels. They don't have plans at the moment to make Mags based on these creatures, but if there's enough requests……
The Rayjord Gorge
- Your character can take low temperature damage when exploring the Rayjord Gorge.
- You can mitigate that effect by taking on boost effects from Region Mags, Quick Food buffs from Kvaris ingredients, and by using boost items available through drops or from Side Tasks of NPCs.
- New Special Abilities will also be available to increase your resistance to this damage.
- There will also be Special Abilities that increase other stats in addition to increasing the low temperature damage resistance.
- The new Special Abilities can be obtained by defeating enemies in Rayjord Gorge.
Equipment and Drops
- Players have had issues creating multi-weapons because certain weapon series do not include all weapon categories. In the future, they plan to develop weapon series available for all categories including the Sextyl and Evoliclis series.
- Out of all the ★6 weapon series, the Sextyl weapons are the easiest to get from drops. In addition to its general power increase effect, the weapon's potential provides additional power against non-bosses.
- Evoliclis weapons are also powerful. It has a potential that increases the natural PP recovery effect after successfully evading through [Stepping].
- In Kvaris, in order to relieve pressure on the Item Pack, they plan to remove drops for weapons and armor that are ★4 or lower. This does not affect Gold and Silver weapons as they will still drop as usual.
Future Content
- They plan to build a Quest Counter so you can replay Story Events and Quests again. In the future, they will also add Limited Quests to this counter.
- There are plans to add a "Kanroku" (Imposing) face type which has a more mature feeling. This could be useful for muscular grandpa type characters.
- Meri and Kukka's hairstyles will be featured in a future SG Scratch.
– Out of all the 6 star weapon series, the Sextyl weapons are the easiest to get from drops. In addition to its general power increase effect, the weapon's potential provides additional power against non-bosses.
Don't upgrade your equipments way too faaaaaaaaast after the new region update.
"In Kvaris, in order to relieve pressure on the Item Pack, they plan to remove drops for weapons and armor that are ★4 or lower. This does not affect Gold and Silver weapons as they will still drop as usual."
Finally \o/
Right now, a single PSE burst is enough to overflow my inventory 🙁
I've just been wanting the ability to restrict things to 4 star drops or higher ngl, and this sounds perfect. In PSO2 I set to only notify me if a 13 star + dropped.
they should release autosell faster
"including the Sextyl and Evoliclis series."
Heh, sex.
Finally, they addressed the item overflow on 4* drops and lower. This way me and others in an 8 man party don't look like fossils standing around after a pseudo burst is completed, emptying out our inventory. o/
This is literally Fortuna from Warframe, right down to robotic NPCs and hoverboards.
This is pathetic.
Make Ysok director again.
This is literally Mario from Mario World, right down to jumping and running.
This is pathetic.
Make Mario the only platformer again. /s
There is a very important difference between PSO2 and WF and that is that most JP PSO2 players AREN'T chatbanned.
"Due to player requests, mini-events will be released regularly starting in August that dig deeper into the main characters."
"They plan to build a Quest Counter so you can replay Story Events and Quests again. In the future, they will also add Limited Quests to this counter."
Finally! xD I like to know the stories of the NPCs, in fact I would like to expand more towards the secondary NPCs like in PSO2 classic where, for example, we could understand at least a little bit the overseer of classes. In NGS I don't know anyone… I don't even know who I am xD
Anyway, I'm happy :3
So you want too many PA/techs where you only use two of them, like PSO2. Too much equipment were you only use one of them, just like pso2. And you some how have so many bugs and lags that, unless you can clarify, sound more like bad PC or internet issues.
Honestly the fact that they're focusing on quality over quantity has made the game actually have more. Compared to before where the game was bloated with things you never used. Given how PAs like Ceaseless and Divine Impact covered weaknesses in weapons, they're actually taking the time to make what they have meaningful.
Really, if you're going to complain about anything, complain about how horribly imbalanced the game is atm. Like how they want to pretend like Force is long ranged, when they have to get close and constantly counter, like Fi, while doing less over all damage, have a harder time trying to get off their counter quick, while having less HP/defense. And for anyone about to complain about range without thinking about it: Sub weapons. Use them.
BotW temperature damage sounds like it could be annoying. I wish it was something like monster hunter's temperature, a debuff, like maybe reduced PP regen.
I guess complaining here won't do much to change it though.
No complaints about the new skills though. Friend already excited for katana's new skill, sounds like it will help it a lot. Does feel like feedback is mattering a ton.
Some what excited for snowboarding. Feels like a Sonic thing, admittedly, just stupid non-sense fun that didn't have to add
@MioBunny (I can't seem to reply to replies)
It doesn't sound like you ever played original PSO2. I played every class in PSO2JP since open beta. I don't think I've ever only used 1-2 PAs/Techs. That's what PSO2NGS has been.
Look up videos of anyone playing PSO2 competently. You'll see everyone uses many different PAs/Techs often. PSO2 combat is clunkier, but it's so much more fun than NGS that it's beyond ridiculous. The proof of that is how PSO2's combat was able to carry it for so many years in Japan. That, and the character creation.
As for NGS (JP) bugs that have never been fixed, here are a few off the top of my head (I'm sure I've forgotten some):
– Sound volume is still broken in general, and has been since they implemened the NGS engine in PSO2JP, over a year ago. Character voices are much lower volume than NPC voices. Footsteps are often inaudible. These were never problems in original PSO2.
– If a block fills when you join it, you used to be teleported to a North-East Aerio random block and fall through the world. Now you just hang forever in loading and need to restart the game. This happens often.
– Game sometimes closes or crashes when transferring between PSO2NGS and PSO2 blocks. This used to be a lot more common.
– Preview windows always display at a much lower resolution. This wasn't a problem in original PSO2 until they updated the engine to NGS. Yes, I am playing at max settings.
– Probably not a bug, but other player's textures display at a lower resolution. AFAIK there's no way to override this. PSO2 had this problem too, but I don't remember if they ever fixed it. The most obvious was if you looked at a character with darker skin, they had horrible DDS texture compression artifacts that weren't visible with lighter skin.
– Multi-weapon defaults to the base weapon. You could argue this isn't a bug, but it's extremely annoying functionality.
– If you die while warping, you appear dead at your warp destination. If you clicked revive before warping, you will then be warped and revived back at your previous location. Not a serious bug, but it's clearly janky implementation.
– If a PSE Burst occurs and you change blocks, the map indicator for the burst stays on-screen forever, and AFAIK you cannot remove it without restart the game. The map indicator also overrides non-burst indicators, as well as the burst gauge, and stacks up to 3 if you trigger multiple PSE Bursts. They seemed to fixed this briefly and then broke it again in a later update.
– This I noticed recently: bosses at the end of Trials appear to have a random chance to reduce the PSE Gauge. This is why PSE Burst will often lose gauge at the exact moment players complete a Trial, instead of triggering the Burst like it should.
– If you open up too many GUI windows (eg. to get the title for inspecting people) the GUI appears to run out of memory and extra windows will be invisible. Not a serious bug, but still stupid.
– A few places in the world where you can get stuck, but that's to be expected.
The game is also plagued by bad conflicting design issues in general, not just game balance as you pointed out. For example, you say to use sub-weapons, but one of the core problems with NGS is it's relatively expensive/difficult/tedious/time-consuming to get ahold of and upgrade decent weapons/materials, and they become obsolete very quickly.
This is a worse problem in NGS than it ever was in original PSO2, because the combat in NGS is so simplified, repetitive and boring that you NEED other weapons to keep the combat interesting. One of the Japanese comments for a recent NGS Headline stream on PhantasyStarCH YouTube channel complained that increasing the amount of EXP received by subclasses doesn't solve the problem that people can't/don't want to make more weapons. I agree with this. Every time I make extra weapons in NGS, I end up regretting it.
People often argue that players should be spending their hard-earned Meseta/N-Meseta on upgrades instead of aesthetics, but there's little point in playing PSO2 if you aren't able to afford the aesthetics you want.
It's always been very clear to me from the beginning that NGS was very lazily slapped together with temporary contracted workers, and they are still being very cheap with updating it. People keep trying to argue that PSO2 updates were even worse, but they definitely were not.
Original PSO2 got new enemies, areas, content, skills and attacks earlier and more frequently, and the quality was better. Look at the new NGS Katana PA. It's basically the standing pose moving forward. It looks like crap. Then look at the animation for Guren Tessen in original PSO2. Far superior. You can say the same for the new Knuckles PA. Original Backhand Smash is far superior. That's the difference in quality between PSO2 and PSO2NGS.
The outfit design in NGS is much worse and have worse clipping issues. The 3d models don't even have proper outerwear support anymore. Some of the NGS "high definition" remakes of old outfits actually look worse than the old PSO2 models/textures. There are too many of the same few looking hairstyles, almost no "normal" hairstyles.
Accessory quality is also worse, or inconsistent at best. Look at the old cat on head and back accessories, then look at the NGS cat-on-face accessory. Sound design in NGS is also much worse. I could go on and on about how much worse PSO2NGS is in almost every way.
The fact is, SEGA have long been using PSO2 to generate money that they pump into other failed ventures, such as their crappy new smartphone RPG, and their rumored new West-oriented NFT-focused game project. Most of the money PSO2 makes obviously does not go back into PSO2 itself. I believe NGS was redesigned with this as its core purpose. That's why it's worse than original PSO2.
When I browse EN forums and website, I keep seeing other people saying, "I miss when PSO2 was good", or "I just want to play original PSO2" so I know I'm not the only one. When I play PSO2NGS JP, I still see old names I recognize from the past decade. But almost everyone on my friends list (mostly Japanese playesr) already quit a long time ago and never came back, or only came back for a few days and then quit again.
thanks Ricardo
I think we're at the perfect number of PAs honestly. In base PSO2, we had a ton of them, but most of them weren't worth using at all. With the way they are now, we can utilize the palettes properly.
I do think some elements aren't well balanced in terms of Techniques. Ice, for example, lacks a good distance AOE. And a few elements need a close range surrounding AOE like uncharged Gifoie. Most other elements change their behavior when charged and use that to have an option for most situations.
Having too many equipment items results in spending way too much reaffixing a new weapon every month.. most people I hear STILL don't affix stuff because there'll be something better…. which is basically always true.
Miobunny, for how few PAs there are, barely anyone even uses Sphere Eraser on enemies that don't move around a lot in spite of BR+Sphere Eraser being the easiest way to do a ton of damage (against ones that do move around a lot I use BR+Multi-launch instead) and for mobbing, it seems like people would rather use whatever that chain lighting Zonde tech is instead of Homing Darts.
@Mattwo
"Miobunny, for how few PAs there are, barely anyone even uses Sphere Eraser on enemies that don't move around a lot in spite of BR+Sphere Eraser being the easiest way to do a ton of damage…"
To be honest, most regular players are gonna miss out on what works best, especially if they don't play around enough. I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with it. For players who just wanna bash things, they have the option, for those who wanna go in depth, they have the option, which is nice. Normally. Techs and Katana have been iffy sadly.
There's no chain lightning zonde thing. There's Gizonde UC that does something visually similar but that's used to charge up the ele master for lightning and doesn't bounce. They'll usually used charged Gizonde to do some powerful AoE, especially if they get the boost off, but there's actually better for dealing with groups, tech wise.
There's also been some development concerning talis and dealing with groups lately, as it might be over taking C Gizonde spam soon.
@Whatever
As some one who's actually done the solo content of 35 DQ and Sodam 100, you are very likely picking the wrong fight here(and can probably still do them if you really wanna tempt asking for proof btw). The only content anyone uses a ton of PAs on is Masq if they're good at the game. Which, if I had assume, is the videos you are referring too.
-Footsteps are not meant to be loud, just ambience. I haven't really had trouble with NPC voices and it sounds very intentional? Then again, this is Sega we're talking about, SA2. That seems so…minor
-I have yet to see this happen. Often seems…not really a thing. I have seen some one purposely trigger that though. Darkspinesonic I believe.
-I would need to look this one up honestly. I have no clue either way. I do recall it being an issue before.
-I never noticed it. I'll keep an eye out for it. It could possibly be that because you're at max settings it happens? I'm not exactly running at max specs myself so that might be why I don't trigger it
-It sounds like a bug to me. Perhaps there is some LoD going on and it's bugging out? I would say you could probably avoid it by lowering amount of player's details loaded but that's not a bug fix, ya know?
-I guess it's not a bug but hey, a complaint is a complaint. Honestly I wish it would change back to the base weapon when not using their action as I really hate needing to attack first with a tech weapon to switch back. Maybe an option would be best?
-I assume the dead state was not meant to be overrided while teleporting. I guess this is less a bug and more of an "exploit"? At least, intended mechanics working in unintended ways, vs an error in programming. I guess you can say it's more of an oversight.
-I think I had this happen once. It was weird. I think it's my problems with talking about bugs in NGS, they are not good things to have but they're not quite as dangerous as some stuff I've seen or heard about in PSO2. So far the only one that really sticks out is the warping out of map. If anything, I think there's an issue with how the game handles blocks over all that should be fixed.
-I believe bosses are not meant to actually trigger, but be a chance to trigger a PSE, with risk it might go down. This feels more like intended. If you hate it though, yeah, all the freedom to you for it.
-Yeah, that seems kind of really dumb and should just be fixed.
-Eh, yeah, I think that might be more serious than it seems at first. I guess you can warp out but as sturdy as the map can be, I've ran into some rough edges myself. Maybe I do play around a bit more than others but I'm not some mega fan at the same time.
I found sub weapons to be far more manageable now actually. It used to be a horror show, but now it's easy enough to get them in within a day or using weekly tasks to get money. Well, there's also the issue of length when going in depth, but I think that's just purposely designed that way given the early stages of the game. Don't get me wrong, I think it sucks, a lot. I'm just saying I can see why in PSO2 at the end it was so much easier to get things made and finished(though thank god we changed the ability system to capsules… That involved months to get the money to make excellent affixes on units).
As for combat, I have to hard disagree. I felt like PSO2 could get flowcharty a bit too easily. The combat focus though, in NGS, feels far more enemy based than player based, which results in more distinct fights, even with "hitscan" techs.
As for aesthetics, I feel like making alpha reactors daily may have lightened up things concerning grinding but it also made buying accessories and outfits worse. They really need to change that system hard, especially since not everyone is going to be able to play daily. I do also agree people telling others to only focus on weapon grinding first are probably massively invested players who got to everything first and could profit off them, like selling gigas capsules. Same with Tria, it's so cheap now but even at release, despite it being cheaper than most, they likely made buck off of that stuff.
As for lazily slapped together, it's not easy to build a massive world like that. Calling something as actually mesmerizing as this game can be at times as "slapped together" feels so wrong to me. If I would call it anything, it feels like it was rushed out before enough content was down the pipe line to bring out at an orderly time. Retem feels like it should of come out like a month or two after Aelio had run its course. It doesn't help there was clearly more to do in Retem, with some intended extra time sinks. Meanwhile Kvaris feels like part of the update that was supposed to get to the meat of the game.
As for fashion and accessories, it's a mix. I feel like part of it is also not really having enough for tastes. You're also comparing a backlog of PSO2's fashion to a very stifled and limited amount here. Re-releases also slowing things down. As for OU and similar, it's always been very bad. Half of the outfits don't fit unless you're a flat skinny legged stick figure. Anyone with hips at all, at least on female have so much trouble finding outfits that aren't skin tight…and from what I've seen, En or JP, they seem to be far more common than the models Sega uses to promote new fashion. And then there's the busts. Dear god why. I feel like they could at least have two modes that the fashion could switch to that considers not having boob socks to make outfits not make most players reel in horror.
That one rappy shirt…that poor rappy shirt.
It's not like they haven't been able to handle this stuff well before too. I have a lot of old setwear from way back when, including a coat that I hope gets remade for type 2 but doesn't suffer horribly. It would actually stretch properly to the character's attributes, and well, not boob sock. I guess what I'm trying to get at is the actual modeling of new outfits has been an issue for a while when it was clearly not a limitation of the system.
I wouldn't be surprised if Sammy Sega is abusing PSO2 to fund things no one wants and continues to suffer instead of properly supporting the game. Might explain part of EP 5 and 6, though, NGS was likely a bigger reason, as they had to have time to develop this game too.
As for player base, I can't say for sure. I feel like part of it was between ep 6 and NGS, it was way too long of a delay. I've honestly seen more people leave because of Ep5 though, which was crippling. A lot for FF14, big surprise when Sega was happy to promote a rival game during the worst time they could.
I feel like most people will show up in NGS, play what they can, and move on, because there's no reason for them to stick around when the game lacks content. I can't fault players for that, and I do agree with the lack of it. They did nothing to use the fact it's linked to PSO2 to keep players around too. They could of easily had events to help support NGS by playing PSO2 and even give minor updates.
I forget what spot it was in, but on visuals of PAs, I can kind of get why they're not as flashy as NGS is a faster game. Katana just seems like an after thought though in general. All the counter power going to knuckles sway also ruined a lot of the fun for me personally.
On a side note, I am thankful for taking the time to explain your thoughts on the matter. Too often we rush in with people screaming doom and gloom and crying for people to be kicked out and it just comes off as irrational nothings. Just…don't go accusing people of not knowing about a game, ya know?
The fundamental design principles they follow for NGS are flawed, so all this new content they add continues to be bland. The core gameplay loop is boring, and they continue to slightly expand upon that instead of offering anything radically new or different to do.
I would say it's a budget constraint but it definitely isn't, they are just inefficient and bad at creating a fun gameplay loop. For some reason they think players want to run in circles in "battle sectors" for hours until a UQ comes up, do that, and then continue. The labyrinth was a good idea, but it took a year for what amounts to *one* quest.
I'm not sure it's a lack of a fun combat loop, it's the lack of the content that actually is fun while throwing us in sectors to time waste between getting them. We get very brief glimpses of stuff that is impactful and fun, and, as much as some people enjoy the BotW leisurely enjoying a big world, it's hardly for everyone and Sega isn't really doing enough for those people. Given this is so closely tied to PSO2 they stopped updating it, it's really damning that even their efforts to address it have been. Geo is lacking in some long term rewards, a poor difficulty modifier design compared to DQ's scaling which was amazing, and lack of over all rooms.
The side stories for characters is neat but it's something that absolutely should of been in the game since launch, not drip fed at the end of a story for one waifu.
The more I think about it, the more Whatever's comment about them potentially funneling PSO2's profits elsewhere feels true. PSO2 and NGS are themepark MMOs, they need tons of constant, high quality content. It hasn't been constant, and quality has varied way too much, a lot sub par. They need to stop pretending it's fine… It feels like a "can do nothing wrong" leading into a "can do nothing right" that almost killed the game's prospects in Ep5 and part of Ep6.
These comments have slowly morphed into something to behold