So ive played alot of mmo's in the past. FF14: ARR, elsword, aura kingdom, elder scrolls, warframe, trove ect.

PSO2 as the tittle says feels like a huge cash grab. This game is coming out in the west, you cant get away with some of the stuff you get away with in the east.

For example, locking skill trees behind pay walls is going to instantly turn players off. Being to rework your skill tree is a basic function of any game let alone mmo's. If you want players to quit your game before they reach lvl 20 then fine keep it the way it is. But if you actually want players to enjoy your game and spend money on it then you should probably remove the pay wall to reworking skill trees.

My second gripe is with another basic feature in literally every mmo, trading. I can not remember a single mmo that ive played where TRADING IS GATED BEHIND A PAY WALL. Again your trying to get a western audience to spend money before they hit lvl 20 like this?

Its not going to happen. People wont bother.

Ive spent over $300 in warframe, not because the company forced me to, but because i actually wanted to. I wanted to support them in the game they are making. With the way PSO2 is gating off basic features, $300 is $300 more than i would ever consider spending on this game with the way things are now.

Im lvl 52 atm, im invested in the game but as soon as i saw that skill trees and trading were pay walled i seriously thought of quitting the game.

Im not over here asking for extra storage or anything huge, im just asking for basic features in a game to not require a $10 payment monthly to use.

The last thing you want is your game feeling unfun, and roght now it feels like a whole lot of that.

So please change these 2 things and im back in.

aura kingdom

trove

Are way more cash grabby than PSO2. Period. I would know, I played TROVE for a while, and it got worse over time. In addition, I played Aeria Games... games, a lot. X-Legend's (Aura Kingdom, Kitsu Saga, Grand Fantasia, etc.) were the worst of cash grabby MMOs I had ever seen, besides Perfect World and some of IGG's.

I was really looking forward to Lime Odyssey myself back then, but the developer gave into their publisher, had to re-do the game to make it more cash grabby then went bankrupt soon after.

@coldreactive

1. Doesnt mean pso2 should be cash grabby

2. Why do you think i quit those games?

There is not reason for pso2 to gate off basic features of any mmo period

And theres no defense of it either.

@WhiteKnightBlsm said in PSO2 feels like a cash grab, heres way to make it better:

@coldreactive

1. Doesnt mean pso2 should be cash grabby

2. Why do you think i quit those games?

There is not reason for pso2 to gate off basic features of any mmo period

And theres no defense of it either.

There's no defense that TESO should have its "Market Board" system gated behind being part of a guild, and gated behind NPCs you actually have to go to, to see said market boards. There's no defense that TESO should gate you from gathering lower level materials because you upgraded your gathering levels. (respec'ing to make them available again is expensive AF.)

@coldreactive this is literally not at all what im talking about And it has nothing to do with the topic im talking about

The "what about"-ism your doing here isnt making any points Your just saying people are worse But cancer doesnt make poison look any better Both are bad and should be treated as such

A few things to consider:

1. At least on the JP server, they semi-routinely distribute free All-Tree Reset Passes. They basically do this every time the level cap increases or they add/change any skills. You get one free pass per character. I've been playing PSO2 since the second alpha test; I have never once felt the need to reset a skill tree. If you are cautious when making your skill selections, you won't really need to reset the tree. If you mess up, then you can pay to reset it, but it's actually cheaper just to buy a second tree.

2. Trading...is something people don't really do in PSO2. Even with Premium. Instead, the economy is based around the player market. You do not need Premium to purchase items off the player market. I personally feel Premium is a pretty good value for everything it includes, but not everyone will feel that way.

@Ilúvatar said in PSO2 feels like a cash grab, heres way to make it better:

they semi-routinely distribute free All-Tree Reset Passes

They actually did recently in one of the last patches even. You also don't need to use AC to use "Recommended," on a Skill Tree, which also respecs all points you already placed into a recommended point allocation. (Usually for beginners.)

@Ilúvatar If they distribute free passes on a regular basis then why not make it so you can just reset your skill points all the time?

Would make it so you dont have to distribute them every time you do a balance pass.

Also so what if its not really something you do in pso2? Its a basic function and feature of literally every mmo on the market that pso2 is directly competeing with.

Even if you take your points into account it just makes it even worse.

They've chosen their monetization methods. You can criticize them if you want, that's certainly fair. But I don't see any reason why they would feel an overwhelming need to change them. Most people do not have any issue with it.

Oh, and I don't get why you are so hung up on trading. Just use the market! It's so much better than trying to arrange trades the way people used to in PSO. Want something? Just search for it and, if the price is fair, buy it!

@Ilúvatar this game will die if all it has is whales who want to spend money on a basic feature if a game.

If you fine with getting ripped of and dont want the game to be more fair then fine you do you. But dont come here to try and convince people otherwise because again its a basic feature in any other game. Theres no logical reason reason for it to be the way it is other than $$$$.

And on the trading, im not hung up on it. Its just blatantly stupid. Again its a basic feature of any game. A market place that isnt pay walled is a basic feature of any mm.

Your making it out like im asking for the moon here. When im legit asking for the bare minimum.

This is not hard, its not rocket science. Its literally the bare minimum.

Sure its a monetization plan they chose. But since they actually have agency over their own decisions they should make better ones.

Like not charge for basic features.

Players are going to feel punished for playing the game and wont bother shelling out money if every time they lvl up theu get screwed.

@WhiteKnightBlsm said in PSO2 feels like a cash grab, heres way to make it better:

So ive played alot of mmo's in the past. FF14: ARR, elsword, aura kingdom, elder scrolls, warframe, trove ect.

PSO2 as the tittle says feels like a huge cash grab. This game is coming out in the west, you cant get away with some of the stuff you get away with in the east.

For example, locking skill trees behind pay walls is going to instantly turn players off.

There are regular skill tree passes issued in the JP client which reset all of your trees at once, so I've never found this to be much of an issue at all.

My second gripe is with another basic feature in literally every mmo, trading. I can not remember a single mmo that ive played where TRADING IS GATED BEHIND A PAY WALL. Again your trying to get a western audience to spend money before they hit lvl 20 like this?

Its not going to happen. People wont bother.

And yet, loads of people seem to have bought it anyway, judging by what I've seen. That said, I agree. It's one thing to have trading passively gated on a free to play client, and have the ability to either pay your way in or earn your way in. It's another entirely to first require that people subscribe (as in the Xbox gold pass) and then still require the monthly premium set to get access to the store system. I personally think, given the price of the Xbox gold pass, that users who play on the xbox should have certain premium features unlocked by default as a result of having to use the gold pass to even play the game in the first place.

edit:

I should qualify this statement a little. You can access the shop system to purchase items, but not to put items up for sale. You can also get three day shop passes through the fun scratch, but they're exceedingly rare. Selling items on the market is also the fastest way to get money, and therefore get into the endgame, phashion star online 2. Yes, the endgame really is farming meseta to access the best customization options via the market; some costume parts regularly exceed 40million meseta in price, so it will take upwards of 6 months to get enough meseta to complete that set you really want if you don't also have access to the market to sell your old and unwanted costume parts and gear.

@Vicodin-Villian said in PSO2 feels like a cash grab, heres way to make it better:

Yes, the endgame really is farming meseta to access the best customization options via the market; some costume parts regularly exceed 40million meseta in price

Final Fantasy XIV to Phantasy Star Online 2:

This was meant to be in reference to fashion being end game for PSO2 / FFXIV.

i agree, free reset and free trading

Cash grab? It's a free to play game, you're not entitled easy access to anything, if don't spend any money.

Though find it funny people complain about this, but not about the price of Premium and material storage*. Isn't that something like $30+ a month if you want both? Dunno about you but things like that, then the loot boxes on top - if anything is the cash grabs. (and now there's a battle pass as well)

*2500 slot space for materials, any mats pick up can go automatically straight to it and can use some things from it - without needing to manually take them out. (if remembering right, latter thing)

To be fair, given that the open beta is kinda phase 2, they should have given out at least 1, maybe even 2 skill resets. There are many people that don't know what they are doing and could use a free reset.

Trading being free would be more useful in the West versus the East, because friends are much more likely to migrate from game to game in groups, but we have already made many suggestions to how they could offer trading for free with limitations to prevent it from being a RMT problem, but I have almost given up on anything being implemented here differently.

SEGA JP doesn't communicate with us, so there is really no feeling that they are receptive to our recommendations. It is probably just being converted into metrics for future projects.