The first thing I want to stress, as I believe it's super important, is for a company to be upfront with any planned censorship changes. Adding censorship under the guise of silence only leads to hysteria, assumptions, and fear mongering. Unmentioned changes also just seem like a company is trying to be sly and slip them in unnoticed. This will never work. We are observant. There is literally zero negative that can come from being upfront about it. When a company informs their consumers about changes it shows they respect their time, money, and values.
Players fall into three catogories when it comes to censorship.
- It doesn't affect me, thus it isn't a problem. They will still end up playing.
- I'm against censorship but never take a stand thus just aid in perpetuating the problem. They will still end up playing.
- Censorship is a deal breaker. They won't play. I have never once seen a comment stating that because they didn't censor something they won't be playing. So really, why take the time to make unneeded changes? In the end, you're guaranteed to lose players or money over it. The number may or may not be a large sum, but it is still real.
The first and main point against PSO2 censorship is to point out that this game is M rated. That rating covers everything short of extreme violence (ie: Manhunt 2) and visually shown sexual activity. It doesn't matter how visually revealing an outfit is, if it isn't showing genitalia, it's would be fine with an M rating. There is nothing in PSO2 that wouldn't be covered with an M rating.
"But what about the kids! They'll be exposed to predators!" ...I'm not sure if people are just oblivious to the rating or just assume based on the anime style of the game that it's rated E for everyone and that there will be kids here, there, and everywhere, but this shouldn't be the case and definitely not one to take preliminary measures against. If kids have access to it , it's NOT Sega's problem. Its on the parents for not applying the very easy to use parental controls that consoles now have. Again, it's M rated...
It's clear that the game is NOT being marketed to kids as shown with the mature rating, so I have to ask, who's eyes are you trying to protect with the currently known implemented censorship? The kids that shouldn't be playing anyways, or in my case, my adult eyes? As an adult I'm perfectly able to decide for myself what media I ingest. I do not need a company to white-knight for me in my stead. It's M rated, I know what I'm getting into.
I can't believe I have to type this, it almost seems like a joke, but for real, you censored the character height... You are aware people come in all shapes and sizes, yes? NA doesn't hate small people. You censored the height. In. An. M. Rated. Game......
Gameplay. Not everyone plays the fashion end-game. Some are all about that min-max. Character height has an effect on performance. However large or small it is, it exists. You will have players with hundreds or thousands of hours coming from your JP servers who've known a certain level of performance. They should be able to experience that same level on NA servers.
On a personal note, it's obvious I'm anti-censorship. I'm in that #3 category listed above. If I know a game is censored I simply just skip it, and have skipped a number of them over time. I'd rather not have to skip this one but it's a value I'm ironclad on. Change doesn't happen if you disagree with something and continue with the status quo anyways.
tl;dr IT'S M RATED. Nothing PSO2 currently has wouldn't fit under this rating. Leaving the game in it's pure JP form will not cause anyone to stop playing or outright not play, where-as changes will have a negative impact on the game.
Thanks for reading.