In Final Fantasy XIV, it was revealed a lot of information is gathered by the developers when content fails/etc. Some of which includes:

• Average Level of Players in the content. (FATEs/Open World Content.)
• Levels of each player (In dungeons/etc.)
• What spells/actions/etc. ere taken/used.
• If people got hit by certain AoEs.
• If a chocobo companion was summoned. (Open World Content.)
• How the FATE/Content Failed. (IE: Time ran out, boss wipe, etc.)
• How many times the content was failed.
• Gear Score / Item levels

This was hinted at when Yoshida, the producer/director of Final Fantasy XIV, let it slip that they were monitoring how many times players failed the Svara series FATE in Coerthas Central Highlands, and specifically if people got hit by AoEs/etc. So I was wondering if PSO2 collects information similar to this. it would provide automated feedback on how to balance content, especially for those doing old story missions that can only be solo'd now.

PSO2 JP does indeed collect similar information and statistics, and publish them as a graphical report on an annual basis. (Commonly known as ARKS Report.)

But when it comes to quests, they don't really go in depth with the 'failing' part though if that's specifically what you want? They might come close with stuff like:

• Which boss killed the most Arks.
• Which Emergency Quest has the highest Arks death count.
• How many players unlocked the Expert Mode requirement. (So how many 'failed' it.)

But in general the report is more focused on stuff like:

• What is the most popular Class in the game. (And Subclass.)
• Race Ratio for Each Class.
• Ratio between female and male characters.
• What is the most popular Lobby Action.
• What is the most popular Weapon.
• Which PA & Tech is most often used.

It goes even so far as to list a graphic of the 'most used breast sizes' for newly created female characters. And the list goes on and on, too much to name all topics in here.

If you're interested. This is an excerpt from last year's report, posted on Bumped. It does not cover all topics, but at least you can browse through it at your leisure in English.

This is a report from two years ago on the official PSO2 JP website. I assume it's the full report of that year, I'm sadly not certain if anything is left out (intentionally). You'll have to translate some stuff yourself and have to go through each tab to check everything. At least a lot of the shown graphics are quite clear.

There are some really interesting stuff in there.

I am going to assume that PSO2 NA will have these reports and statistics as well.

I'm mainly wondering, because there are legitimately some EPISODE3 Story content solo things that some people might not be able to complete them without the use of a successor class as their main class. The mining facility's Dark Falz Boss with the three towers comes to mind. It has level 80 enemies, and the quest even states that it is a high difficulty quest. You can get this far in the EPISODE content from 1 to post-3 like I have by using Summoner, which can easily clear all of that content up to where I am now within level 40-55.

So I'm hoping one day the quests are re-balanced so that they don't need other players, which is impossible to do anyway since the quests are considered Solo, and thus other players cannot help you. Plus, there's no campship, and thus you cannot invest in AI Partners.

The developers didn't intend for people to be level 80 to do the content anyway. From what I've researched, the level cap was still somewhere around level 70-75 when this post-EPISODE3 content was required to do story. The enemies in said content seem purposely augmented as well. Which can easily be found out by the fact that a certain character who partners with you alongside Afin has way more HP than any player character ever should. So it should be no surprise that the developers could theoretically lower the content's enemy stats. I know there's an "Easy Mode" option, but I'd rather not have the quest be still listed in the Episode list if at all possible.

Sadly, only the devs are indeed able to give you an answer on the 're-balancing' of story related content.

What I am able to tell you is that the outcome of each year's Arks Report has caused for Sega to tweak/re-balance (some parts of) the game accordingly.

For example. The corresponding Arks Report for the first implementation of the 'Expert-mode', concluded that only 38,8% of PSO2JP's population met the requirement. Sega not satisfied with that number, (Mostly due receiving some backlash from players.) made a second interpretation of the Expert-mode requirement. Giving the players the option to unlock Expert-mode in party form. Obviously, in the following Arks Report they concluded that this made it too easy. (Not only being able to clear it in party made it too easy, but we also got powercreeped quite a bit somewhere.) So they tweaked Expert-mode unlocking again for it to become the current version.

Now, are they going to give story re-balancing as much attention as they did with Expert-mode tweaking? Only Sega knows.

This is what I think, if they see in their Arks Report that a huge amount of players can't complete (a certain) Story Quest and they receive enough backlash about it. I think Sega would comply to make some changes.

If remember correctly they did away with the Buster Story Quests (or at least changed it.) from EPISODE 5. The problem was that you needed a full MPA in order to clear it when it got released. Which eventually became impossible for people who didn't join the 'initial' launch of those Story Quests.

FFXI had these fun events called Vana'Diel Census where they had moogles in game in the main cities that would actually share various data about your character the game was collecting like the amount of time logged in or number of times you died. It was pretty funny when I shared a screenshot with my linkshell from one that said my time logged in game was over 7 years and some of them completely lost it. To be fair I had a period of time where instead of logging out when I was done playing I would just find some place to go AFK.

I kind of wish more MMO games would do something like that.

@Ukyo-Sonoda said in Does PSO2 Collect Valuable Information when missions/quests/etc. fail?:

FFXI had these fun events called Vana'Diel Census where they had moogles in game in the main cities that would actually share various data about your character the game was collecting like the amount of time logged in or number of times you died. It was pretty funny when I shared a screenshot with my linkshell from one that said my time logged in game was over 7 years and some of them completely lost it. To be fair I had a period of time where instead of logging out when I was done playing I would just find some place to go AFK.

I kind of wish more MMO games would do something like that.

FFXIV and PSO2 both have a "Play Time" log for every character. In PSO2's case, it's on the character select screen. In FFXIV, you can use the /ptime command to see that.

I'm talking about FFXI which launched back in 2002. The game did have a playtime command as well but a lot of people weren't aware of it. I recall there being like 2 pages or so of collected character stats it would share during those events. I just gave the 2 examples I could immediately recall.

@Ukyo-Sonoda said in Does PSO2 Collect Valuable Information when missions/quests/etc. fail?:

I'm talking about FFXI which launched back in 2002.

No quest log / tracker in-game.

/shudder

So glad when Yoshida got his hands on FFXI, he added Records of Eminence, and brought a proper quest tracker.

@coldreactive said in Does PSO2 Collect Valuable Information when missions/quests/etc. fail?:

@Ukyo-Sonoda said in Does PSO2 Collect Valuable Information when missions/quests/etc. fail?:

I'm talking about FFXI which launched back in 2002.

No quest log / tracker in-game.

/shudder

So glad when Yoshida got his hands on FFXI, he added Records of Eminence, and brought a proper quest tracker.

Meh you kids and your trackers and stuff pointing out everything for you. Back in my day we had to remember it all and find it ourselves while walking through 6 feet of snow uphill both ways during a blizzard.

why do you guys keep comparing this game to final fantasy? its a completely different thing. infact its probably closer to something like warframe than final fantasy (if you absolutely MUST compare everything).

also, im 100% ok with there being challenging content in the game. if you cant pass it you obviously need to reexamine the choices youve made, not start telling the developers to make it easier.

@MEGAF1UX said in Does PSO2 Collect Valuable Information when missions/quests/etc. fail?:

if you cant pass it you obviously need to reexamine the choices youve made

As I said before, the story content in question wasn't meant for you to take it on at the same level the enemies are at. The Dark Falz Boss in particular was meant to be taken on with 4+ people (you can only take it on with yourself, solo only. There's even a waiting room with a large teleporter meant for multi-parties.) You can't really change your choices about that, other than to over-level to 80+.

@coldreactive so level up. should they really have made a 1 person teleporter? should they REALLY portray dark falz as some trivial annoyance than anyone with any sad broken build can disperse with a wave of their wrist? i dont think so. maybe youre meant to die to illustrate that you arent powerful enough yet.

@coldreactive said in Does PSO2 Collect Valuable Information when missions/quests/etc. fail?:

... level 80 enemies, and the quest even states that it is a high difficulty quest. ...

The story was actually revamped recently... when they introduced episode 5. The revamp is what you see now. It was due to the higher level populace.

Episode 1 used to only go to lvl 30. Ep 2 to 45. Ep3 to 60.

I'm pretty sure the episode 3 epilogue was added part way through ep 4.