Hi, folks. I know a lot of people have this sentiment, but I feel it's worth writing down here. With the state of the game balance as it is right now, new players have to get through 50 levels of content before they really get to experience engaging combat with regular enemies. The issue here isn't difficulty necessarily, but engagement. When enemies die after 2-3 hits, it makes the interesting class mechanics feel completely pointless.

For example, leveling as a Techter, I may as well have taken most support techniques off of my bar entirely. What's the point of throwing down a buff if everything is dead by the time I finish charging the technique?

The compounding problem with this is that it upsets the balance of the gameplay loop. What I mean by this is that, with such low HP, a much larger percentage of a player's time is spent just running from place to place than actually fighting--and this is also before most people have movement PAs/Techniques.

To be doubly clear, I'm not raising this issue because the game is "too easy" and I'm some pro player. I'm not. And I've maxed out a class and gotten to the really engaging content. But a lot of that was because I came into the game already a big fan of the series. I can see how someone coming to the game for the first time with no prior knowledge or investment could play for 10-20 hours, deem the game boring, and quit before getting to content that shows off the game's excellent combat.

With that in mind, I think the first four difficulties of the game should give a sizable HP increase to all enemies. Perhaps even tripling their HP. If necessary, increase their XP/meseta drop rates to compensate. What makes this game fun is doing all your character's cool moves against fun monsters. When monsters die before you even get to them, that fun evaporates.

Sorry to update this so soon, but I feel like I have to: I just did the new Urgent Quest on Extremely Hard, and even there, the majority of enemies died before I could finish charging my techniques. This is a serious problem. Ultimate Quests feel like the only place where the game loop works as intended right now. I love this game, I love the way it plays. Please balance the encounters such that I am actually encouraged and able to do so. When the highest difficulty available, called "Extremely Hard", has mobs of enemies dying before I can even get to them, there is something seriously wrong with the balance.

Maybe it's just in multi-party quests? At least that's where it's most notable. An across the board, 4x boost to HP of all enemies in multi-party quests would certainly be a good start. I don't even care if it takes 4 times as long to get loot and level as a consequence. I just want to be able to have fun doing the content of the game.

@LunoMyr based on the current content, I would say that I do not agree with a massive HP increase for these reasons:

Farming even with enemies being squishy is horrendously boring because you are running a mission with no dynamic elements 100+ times for drops with an atrociously low rate.

If that quest that took 5 minutes to complete suddenly took 30, while still containing no interesting elements of gameplay with insanely low drop rates, it wouldn't be worth the time due to the insane time investment just to play 2 quests.

The current HP pool for SH+ allows for a busier lifestyle to be able to participate in the game, whereas every quest taking 30+ minutes eliminates a full-time audience.

@John-Paul-RAGE that's a good point, and I think there should still be options for short quests. But I would also argue that a mission where enemies simply have way more HP is an interesting element of gameplay, because it allows players to utilize their full class toolkits, which is currently only really the case in ultimate quests and advance quests.

I think the combat itself alongside emergency codes and the like is already decently dynamic on its own, but it doesn't feel that way because enemies have so little HP that every encounter is too short to show it. I'd argue that it's boring because the HP is so low on everything.

Alternatively, as I've briefly mentioned, drop rates and XP could be modified alongside HP increases to keep the same relative rate of rewards.

Whatever the solution, something has to be done to allow for the great combat of PSO2 to actually be able to show itself in more places. In my opinion this game can be fun enough to play on its own that people would put up with grinding for rewards. They certain did with the original PSO! But the reward rate is something that can always be modified alongside changes to the gameplay loop.

In a game I play, they made a special place where you can customize enemies. Give them more attack, less attack. Less hp, or more. Increase the amount that spawn or decrease it. Exp and drops are based on how strong you make the enemies and whether or not you nerf yourself. So the best rates in that game come to people who challenge themselves.

I feel pso2 could easily implant this as they already have scripts for buffing/debuffing enemies or altering the player in ways. That way if people want a challenge out of the normal stuff they can get it. It'll also beat the need of just making new levels and calling it some form of "harder" when the only changes happens at lv61 and beyond that is just enemies getting more atk and hp.

I know there is UH where enemies got "new" attacks. But alot of those "new" attacks is nothing more than adding random effects to enemy/boss taunts or their intro poses for the large majority.