...From everything that is on the East side of the ship. This is a totally OCD thing to notice but it dawned on me that the distribution of frequently used areas and features are all on the East side of the Ship.

• The main quest counter

• The class and alliance counter

• The weapons and upgrade shop

• The Swap and Fun Shop

• Franka's Cafe

The West side always feels so lonely and I feel bad for the Item and Armor shop clerks. I suppose there is the Trade Shop but it's usually visited in bulk.

Anyways just a thought! I don't know much about what the Japanese version has on the Oracle but I really hope there will be something opposite of the Cafe and maybe another Clerk added to the west quest counter.

@Merelambasted said in I feel like the Oracle could tip over...:

Anyways just a thought! I don't know much about what the Japanese version has on the Oracle but I really hope there will be something opposite of the Cafe and maybe another Clerk added to the west quest counter.

No. However, sometimes they have an event NPC near the middle fountain for seasonals / etc. But it's true that the other side could see some love with a new feature. Maybe a garden / flower shop to balance out the cafe and badge/furniture stores.

@coldreactive A flower shop would be wonderful! I even thought of maybe a park or zoo housing the various creatures. Has the game ever had a Ship collaborative features, like registering capture quests into a grand total that everyone could observe? Also do you know anything about the empty blue and red rooms on either side of the shopping area?

The Oracle Lobby's changed multiple times for sure, however the recent ones have unfortunately never addressed the whole "West-side lobby being lonely". The only one that might have addressed it is of course... the alpha lobby if only cause all future lobbies would overhaul the design of the lobby:

That lobby would eventually evolve into this:

And eventually (with Episode 3's release) evolve into the lobby we have now.

I do feel the alpha lobby could have worked. Some people say it is too small but personally... this isn't a big MMO with an Open World, there is no reason why players should be too split up, anyone who wants to pose in unique environments can use the Shop area (which is still pretty big) or go to a different block.

Oh wow I love how cozy the alpha lobby looks! Yea I feel with all of the blocks we have I never feel too crowded. I much prefer areas that feel dense instead of deserted. I guess there is always a change for everyone in the feature!

@Merelambasted said in I feel like the Oracle could tip over...:

Also do you know anything about the empty blue and red rooms on either side of the shopping area?

They are meant as a gathering space, nothing more, I think chat was also isolated in each room, kind of to not bother other players if you met with a large group. Yep, western users will never use it, they will just chat openly lol

@Merelambasted Oracle is the name of the fleet. The ship's name is whichever server you're on. There are some quests that take you to the Oracle Mothership too. I don't know why there's no ARKS Quests or Expedition Quests that take place there, it's very weird, Episode 4's story is full of locations like that too (I don't think any of them appear outside of the story)...

@Leonkh99 The Alpha lobby looks more like the lobby in PSO after you accepted a quest (which they made into a alliance room), why did they change it? So weird.

@Mattwo7 Oh whoops, but I suppose every ship has the same layout haha.

@Merelambasted and @Mattwo7 , the alpha lobby... i'm not sure. The way some areas are boarded up and closed does imply that at some point this was intended to indeed be the launch lobby (look closely at the Shop Area to see all the closed shops). Here is more of the overall lobby (shopping district)

And a tour of the same lobby from the game's second alpha test.

I suppose going a bit off topic but admittedly the alpha for its few flaws really did have a lot of neat things going for it which I much preferred over the final game:

The Old Hud

PSO2's alpha Hud an appearance which I personally quite prefer over what we got now.

This overall aesthetic is even carried over to the character creator:

In addition to its appearance and aesthetic I also appreciate how the layout for things like healthbars is similar to that of PSO1:

An even earlier (non-playable, internal only) demo also used this orange-looking hud with Hud placements even more akin to Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst.

Visual Differences

Naverius originally had a planet / moon orbiting it in its skybox:

Some of the icons were changed from the first alpha. Some of these were changed to be clearer... admittetly the alpha version's Telepipe icon was not too visible. That said the brightly coloured icons for weapons or the detailed item icons are definitely something I miss:

Some of the items on the field were going to be quite detailed as well. Monomates would drop not as green boxes like in PSO1 but as the actual item itself similar to how some weapon drops appear as in the final game. This one is one im divided on, I do like the nostalgia throwback but also feel that it would have been neat (the canister in the screenshot is a Monomate):

Also aint got a video of it but apparently the old Monomate animation did not have you drinking the Monomate but rather injecting it. This was apparently changed due to Japanese players finding it "unpleasant" apparently.

Old Way of Joining a Quest

This one.. might be a mixed bag for some. On one hand, the current way of joining a quest and multi party area is indeed quite streamlined but on the other hand, I have seen some people confused about the way joining quests work.

The way you used to join quests was as follows:

1. You would pick the quest you want to play.
2. You would then get a list of Multi-Party Sessions as well as an option on top to simply host a session yourself.
3. (If you didn't make a new session) you would get a list of parties to join in that session as well as the option of making a new party within that session.

Old Announcer

This one thankfully stayed on all the way to the second alpha at least. Here (Mobile Users skip to 0:33) is an example of the old "Emergency Code" announcer or as it was known at the time... "Initiating Code".

So yeah, quite a lot of neat stuff the closed alpha had!

@Leonkh99 said in I feel like the Oracle could tip over...:

I suppose going a bit off topic

Not really, the concept behind the old lobbies is relevant enough to the discussion of the current one, especially regards to contrasting the differences and how things were better or worse.

This overall aesthetic is even carried over to the character creator:

I don't care much for what appears to be the skin color picker design... Ew...

An even earlier (non-playable, internal only) demo also used this orange-looking hud with Hud placements even more akin to Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst.

The healthbar part just looks terrible... It has a lot of personality but something about it, can't put my finger on it, it rubs me the wrong way something fierce.

Naverius originally had a planet / moon orbiting it in its skybox:

That's.... Odd...

admittetly the alpha version's Telepipe icon was not too visible

Its function looked MUCH clearer...

That said the brightly coloured icons for weapons or the detailed item icons are definitely something I miss

Not going to lie, they look less professionally designed.

This one is one im divided on, I do like the nostalgia throwback but also feel that it would have been neat (the canister in the screenshot is a Monomate):

That's one point I can agree with you on.

Old Way of Joining a Quest

This one.. might be a mixed bag for some.

Nah, that sounds like way more of a hassle.

Old Announcer

Sounds a lot more like an offical ARKS announcement, the current announcer sounds like he's voicing a Kamen Rider or Super Sentai henshin device and/or weapon and/or toy gimmick that makes sounds independant of the henshin device/etc. I even set my Emergency Trial autoword to "Emergency, Dekaranger!" just to poke fun at this fact (also all my autowords are references, wasn't really the best reference to poke fun at that though because the SP Licences don't have voice overs for the transformation, only Judgement Time and even then, it sounded more like the old announcer because they're police and it was an old Sentai from before the more excited voice overs started to become a trend)

Oh, seeing Naverius Moons from that promotional image finally explains why they are in the anime. The game could have the excuse that... they are moons after all, so they are not always at the same spot like they usually are in most videogames lol