Had to make a thread about this since this has been an ongoing thing happening in pso2na. I've been playing pso2jp for many years and have experienced the game quiet thoroughly. Many players currently do not fully understand how important SG is or how to properly obtain more of it. Following that I would like to address the recent "sales" of the SG bundles that we have been getting in the past couple of weeks.

First I want to address some ways to obtain renewable SG in the JP version of the game. New outfits, body parts, outerwears all give 10 sg per piece after roughly a day with a max character limit of 30 coming out to roughly 300 potential SG per day. Daily login stamps offering SG. Casino offers 40SG for casino coins with a weekly limit. Buster quest medals also offer a weekly allowance of 80SG. PVP medals offer you yet another weekly allowance of 100SG. Loging into pso2es daily for 1sg per day and 100k exp ticket. Idola point exchange for another 100SG weekly allowance. We have the weekly rankings for time attacking in a party and solo, red box destruction, room visitation ranking, Challenge mode 1 and 2 rankings, Weekly PVP ranking all offering up to 100 SG for first place (as well as some other prizes). Lastly there is also bonus keys from campaigns or by getting lucky with your daily featured quests including Silver Magatsu (10sg), and Gold Magatsu (50sg). I may be forgetting other things but this should illustrate my point.

Next I want to address how to obtain renewable SG in the NA version. New outfits, body parts, outerwear's all give 10 sg per piece after roughly a day with a max character limit of 12 coming out to roughly 120 potential SG per day. Daily login stamps handing out SG. Weekly rankings for room visitations, red box destruction, time attacks party and solo up to 100sg for first place. The latter which has been broken for 2 weeks now as the TA has been synced to JP server and rolled over onto maps we don't have.

Titles are left off of these lists because they cannot be done multiple times over and once that dries up these are all you are left with. However JP does have many more titles available than NA which also give SG due to the content being further in.

The ways that you spend SG across the games are a little similar but this is where my major problems with the NA server come in. In the JP server there is no "Fresh Finds" tab. Instead we have a shop attendant which does the exact same thing but has 2 key differences. Firstly she has a shop dedicated entirely to meseta only transactions. Secondly all of these shops, both sg and meseta can have their stocks rerolled by paying SG. The items included in this store include the same type of items we see in the fresh finds shop. The difference with fresh finds is that it features old costumes and some small bundles with no preview windows (a thing the treasure shop does feature.) So now the player is forced into the position of obtaining the outrageously priced amount of SG for these outfits with no idea how it will even look and they are locked into a 24 hour window to do it.

Another thing that I should briefly mention here is that in the fresh finds shop they limit how many items you can purchase. So if you are a person with a lot of alternate characters like I am you've already noticed that because they decided to restrict trading on fresh finds items it's now impossible to account bind items from it. Not only do you have to pay a ridiculous price you have to then decide which of your characters you actually want to use it on! Imagine paying $20 USD to only be able to use a hairstyle on one out of 12 characters. Many of the outfit bundles here used to be included in AC scratches as well and could be obtained for as little as 200 ac scratch tickets. Many of these could just be sold on player markets for a range of Meseta often obtainable by anybody simply doing their daily or weekly missions.

Now this is where we get to the most egregious act in the game. These "SG Emote bundles" are by far the worst thing they have done. Listed price shows 760SG so let's do a little bit of math. Assuming you have no SG and you need to buy it to fit this tight 72 hour window to act. Current SG rates in AC are 1900 for 480SG next add in the 120 sg bundle twice for 500 ac a piece to bring you up to 720SG and 2 sets of the 100ac bundle for 20 sg a piece. Bringing your total SG up to 760 and the maximum AC spent up to 3,100. That's $31 USD which is half the cost of a AAA video game.

But that's not all; surely you've all seen in game that this is a "Discount". But it's not. It was released discounted. This is the same tactic Bethesda used in Fallout 76's atom shop. To quote Internet Historian regarding FO76 "They're artificially jacking up the price only to then give it a fake limited time discount in order to create a sense of urgency. That's illegal." Even when you factor in this "Discount" users are still expected to pay 2000 AC or $20 USD for these items. This is the 2nd round of this happening as well and I was hoping it would stop before this monetization got out of hand. It should be mentioned that these items were all scratch bonuses at one point in the JP server. They have since been reappearing in the 6 month long SG scratch in JP so even free to play users had a chance to obtain them.

Doing a small bit of research led me to this which states that things need to have a pre-established price before you can discount it. I'm not a lawyer so take it for what you will.

All in all, on top of gouging of combined with removal of methods to get SG, there are now usages of it which are likely illegal. I just want the NA version of this game to succeed and I'm starting to see it go down the same rabbit hole SEA pso2 suffered through. I don't wish to see this server fail like SEA's did

https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=57bb64d92f989ede1bbf4b1b66c5a93c&mc=true&node=se16.1.233_11&rgn=div8

https://youtu.be/kjyeCdd-dl8?t=1404

I don't intend to follow up this post and can only hope the community as well as the NA team are able to see this.

I'm giving a hard agree on all of this. It was one thing to get SG obtaining methods deliberately removed, but combined with how much Fresh Finds Shop asks for and these new SG Shop "sales", it's getting a bit silly. That's before mentioning Material Storage. It's easy enough to rack up SG on JP, but NA has definitely been pushing the envelope on SG while making it harder to get without paying.

Welcome to PSO2 NA!

Yeah, the increase in the amount of stuff that is charging SG and the severely reduced amount of available SG is getting pretty unacceptable. I quite like the game and would really rather not see it unnecessarily flounder like this.

I agree with this post 100%. Even without knowing how much more obtainable star gems were on JP, I knew the Fresh Finds and "sale" prices on NA were way too high considering how many ways we have to actually get SG. And the fact that they are saying "Sale!" on these Star Gem offers that we didn't have a pre-established price for is no good. I really hope this is acknowledged asap.

NA's heavy lean on SG feels remarkably uncomfortable, and this is coming from someone who played JP for years and plays several mobile games - so I'm not only used to shitty business practices, but I willingly wade waist-deep in them daily. A lot of NA's business practices, in fact, feel like something straight out of a mobile game and I'm not a big fan. I've increasingly been dialing back my PSO2 play because there really isn't that much in-game content (oh boy, I get to slog through TD for the fifth time today? Hooray...) for us to play around with yet, and most of their focus seems to be on trying to sell us stuff rather than fixing the busted translation or bugs which doesn't fill me with confidence, and the cosmetic game doesn't feel that hot when I can't get anything to play with because the markets are absolutely bonkers already since people came in from JP with the mindset to absolutely target and predate, while we've seen early on that the dev team was more willing to cater to whales (remember that one topic where they put up an even more expensive AC bundle for one guy who asked for it? But yet other issues tend not to get addressed) and aid them, rather than assist in anything else, and the fresh finds shop while cool is severely hampered by its one-stock purchase so even if I want something, I'm hesitant to buy it because I'll only be able to use it on one character and since it might never cycle back in it'll just be wasting space in my limited inventory. Not to mention that the items themselves are hilariously skewed, every day seems that two thirds of them are items and accessories specifically geared for female characters and such, which is unfortunate for anyone who doesn't want to be a kawaii waifu. It was just the other day where we had a long and short variant of the exact same dress in the same colour, which and of its self was a variant of the main ticket item being advertised. Meanwhile the devs ignore requests to even so much as give people previews or proper details of what they might be buying, and the mission pass still forces people into a sophie's choice of pitting cosmetic options against one another and leaving active players with up to a week or two of absolute empty time rather than reward them for their effort, which is especially frustrating because we can't even sell mission pass items; there's no harm in letting us fully unlock all of the bloody cosmetics if we put the work in. Casts in particular have been getting shafted hard in regards to cosmetics since the bulk of their options have been coming from the gold mission pass.

But hey, they've already got the whale cash so why bother actually making the game good I guess. Time to just double down and ride it into the ground. Who needs item descriptions or client order text, or skill rings that don't translate their own skill names two or three different ways in their own descriptions. Gotta make more bundles, and make them in SG! The currency that was specifically designed as semi-free alternative to AC in the first place that players weren't supposed to be pushed into purchasing since they were encouraged to partake in in-game activities to earn it and thus be able to spend it on certain things that you otherwise would use AC for, or on cosmetics that you could only get with SG.

Remember how they game had barely even finished closed beta and they'd already started trumpeting about their bundles and game pass rewards? I'd voiced my concerns then, and I was told pretty resoundingly to shut up, that there was nothing to worry about; but everything I've seen about this game's monetization since has done nothing but reinforce my worry that they've focused harder on wringing every ounce of cash they could out of people, than they have on making the NA version of this game a solid product that would stand on its own legs. Especially in the face of how they've been treating things like PC and the as of yet even discussed PS4 ports. By the time this game launches on PC, those players will have missed two to four whole AC scratch, and for no real reason.

It's disappointing.

Sounds a lot like "boo hoo im poor" to me...

@SpeedierJam1135

If that's what you got from this, then I feel sorry for you.

People are entitled to their opinion, but the fact of the matter is that SG has a lot more use here than it ever did on JP. I don't think this is a bad thing, but with how much SG you'd need and how frequently they are doing these sales, it's a bit much.

Honestly I never considered AC > SG worth it on JP, and I still have that mindset here. However, I think at the very least giving x2 for a consumable accessory since you cannot sell it would be fair.

I also agree with all of this, I was hoping the case was they just havent added the other methods to obtain SG but its seriously just not cool that its so SG focused and AC scratch ticket focused. Might stop buying them all together but its quite hard. Hope they stop to be honest.

@Nuebot said in SG cosmetic "sales" and the current state of SG.:

But hey, they've already got the whale cash so why bother actually making the game good I guess

Because apparently this stuff magically makes the rest of the game AND what's to come complete garbage.

Do you guys just TRY to find more and more reasons to complain about something? I love how you're all STILL crying about content after you rushed it, as if other games throw huge patches daily, when we were already told we should be getting everything JP has by the end of 2020. There's ZERO patience from you guys, just rushing, demanding for more and then go right back to complaining and crying when you're not given more IMMEDIATELY. Almost everything you guys moan about is done in other MMOs and no one complains because IT IS IRRELEVANT TO THE ACTUAL GAME, yet you all act like this is the core of the game and you're all being forced to throw money at it.

Is it stupid that they're limiting people's SG gains compared to Japan? Of course it is, but it's not a damn dealbreaker and certainly not a damn conspiracy to milk whales while "not bothering to actually making the game good". It's like you people WANT this game to fail so you find every reason possible to get angry at something. Jesus Christ, every single day i see people moaning about something new or repeating the same complaints that were already answered, idk what's worse: Everything here or the power-abusing mods from the PSO2 subreddit.

@Subject-Astra said in SG cosmetic "sales" and the current state of SG.:

@Nuebot said in SG cosmetic "sales" and the current state of SG.:

But hey, they've already got the whale cash so why bother actually making the game good I guess

Because apparently this stuff magically makes the rest of the game AND what's to come complete garbage.

Do you guys just TRY to find more and more reasons to complain about something? I love how you're all STILL crying about content after you rushed it, as if other games throw huge patches daily. Almost everything you guys moan about is done in other MMOs and no one complains because IT IS IRRELEVANT TO THE ACTUAL GAME, yet you all act like this is the core of the game and you're all being forced to throw money at it.

Is it stupid that they're limiting people's SG gains compared to Japan? Of course, but it's not a damn dealbreaker and certainly not a damn conspiracy to milk whales and "not bother actually making the game good". It's like you people WANT this game to fail so you find every reason possible to get angry at something.

Nobody is saying this alone "magically makes the garbage". Nor does someone who doesn't care about the game make a large rant post expressing frustrations. We would just like if something was done about some of this stuff. I don't think anyone sane expects change overnight, but I do hope they at least consider issues, particularly when they seem to be issues introduced with this particular server.

At the end of the day as part of the game's active audience, it stands to reason that it's down to us to voice concerns if we're not happy with something, after all. That said, I can certainly agree that being overly negative past the point of criticism probably won't yield great things.

Just adding to a specific part of this, namely the battle pass. As you said, the items aren't tradable. Items that were from AC scratches and thus tradable on JP are now untradable and thus anyone who missed them is screwed if they don't bring them back or make them tradable eventually.

It was obvious from the get go that the NA client was straight up going to be the inferior version as its coming from a company that didnt care about us to begin with, but even knowing that this is a tough pill to swallow. These are deliberate decisions that only come across as them trying to make a quick buck. Sad to see this early on.

What, another valid criticism against the game? Good thing we have Astra here to set everyone straight! You realize that once the small % of the playerbase that whales and keeps it a profitable venture wakes up to the garbage practices of how its ran/ crazy prices/ untradeables/ limit 1s/ items on sale that never had a price to begin with/ etc STOP whaling, game dies. The issue is quite relevant actually and best addressed now before damage is done.

@Shadowth117 said in SG cosmetic "sales" and the current state of SG.:

Nobody is saying this alone "magically makes the garbage"

.......did you not even see the bit i quoted?

@Shadowth117 said in SG cosmetic "sales" and the current state of SG.:

I don't think anyone sane expects change overnight,

Is that why a few people here have done nothing but complain and demand changes and content since the betas started?