This is aimed at the developers/publishers, or whomever it may concern (on the off chance they actually read anything on here).

I've played many many mmo's, and they have been getting gradually worse in terms of greedy monetization schemes. Now, this game is not the worst offender I've ever seen (which should not be taken as a compliment) but it's still really annoying. I was "ok" with the whole limited inventory deal, and you essentially having to get more space, it's a common ploy in F2P games. The locking player trading/auctioning (entirely) behind a premium paywall was somewhat nauseating, but I got over it soon enough. No, my real problem with this game's monetization is "Star Gems". As far as I can tell (apart from some few early freebies you get) the only way to get SG is by purchasing them using "AC" (the premium currency) and they are quite costly as well. The STOP moment came when I wanted to reset my skill tree, and I went to the AC shop to look for a pass, which apparently is not available... So I ended up buying an additional skill tree with is an option, only to discover that in order to simply switch to my newly purchased skill tree I have to pay a large sum of SG... Then you have the utter gall to type out this little pearl of a message in your SG Shop: "Items exclusive to the SG Shop make playing Phantasy Star Online 2 more fun". I'll admit I did laugh...

So, sorry about the rantiness. I usually never vent on forums, but it was either that or waking up the neighbors because I needed to get this out of my system! Pretty sure I'm done with the game after this, at least for now, so to the gamers; be awesome to each other! And to the greedy ones; [insert random obscenities here].

There is quite a few activities that reward star gems now. PVP and Casino are 2 of the first off the top of my head. Each week you can exchange battle coins and casino coins for a limited number of star gems. About 160 if i remember correctly.

Sg can be obtained ingame from events,titles, from challenge and battle quests, and weekly from the casino. It’s not that bad atm.

you can literally farm SG in the game, 140 SG per week and that doesn't include the rank you can get in PVP that also gives a quantity per month also you don't need to buy SG using AC, you can buy SG directly from both Steam and MS Store

@Xycat my guess you are a (very) new player? we get skill tree resets for each big update (next one gonna be in a couple weeks) you get one full reset for each character you own (its 3 for a f2p) and you can freely use all 3 for just 1 character...if you ever mess up again or whatever....so if you got 10 characters you get 10 skill tree resets

as for the SG....well even as a new player it does make sense to play the arena - if youre very good you get an average of 200 SG per week - if youre super good you can get even more than that...the least income of arena being above 100 SG per week either way....casino gives you 40 SG per week wich requires you to be either lucky and not having to worry about casino until NG is out....or you have to spend some time palying various games whenever they are being boosted....like during a mesetan shooter boost you can get around 20k? smth like that...i hate it and donly done a full session once

counting all of the titles and main quest rewards thats maybe around 3000 SG alone

check announcements for SG events currently running...theyre holding weekly events in wich at least one has SG in it....on top of that we are having a login event running tomorrow - login 5 times and you can win 1000 SG in a raffle (total of 100 players can win it) or 10000 AC (also 100 total winner)

the player shop is not entirely behind a paywall - you can grab tickets from fun scratch that open your shop for 3 days each

It's really not that bad at all. Like it was mentioned there are numerous freebies currently, Mission pass is one of them, Also there is one being held if you attend two special Persona concerts that awards you a title and some star gems as well.

So yeah, I'm a very new player. I've been very heavily bewildered by the systems/UI in this game since I started, it's just really hard to get into. And it appears I was overly hasty this time as well, not because there's apparently ways to earn SG that does not involve buying them from the shop, no; I was wrong about it costing SG to switch trees... It's just REALLY confusing. You go into the class switch interface to change your trees, and I've no idea what the swap skill tree thing is/does... So, I'm sorry about the (mostly) unnecessary rant, but I'm still really hesitant about going on with this.

There are ingame ways of getting SG but they are pretty grindy as such to keep you playing. It honestly wouldn't be too bad but the fresh find shop abuses the whole "Fear of Missing Out" thing as you will never know when it is going to cycle back in.

The game is very much a pay for convenience type thing. Additional mags, additional inventory space, additional skill trees, access to the shop, etc.. You can circumvent some of these things (like grinding up some fun to scratch to get lucky and get a shop pass or making another character so you get a fresh mag even though ultimately you won't be able to make 1 of each mag due to 3 character slot default limit.)

@Xycat

so lets say i have an additional skill tree for my summoner (i like having my summoner on its own and a support skill tree for other classes)

i choose to swap that additional tree to another class lets say hunter

i will loose the additional tree on my summoner but have a new additional tree on my hunter

if you want to swap your bought skill tree from your "old messed up one" you just go there in screen and choose to swap so you get the check mark on your new skill tree (this doesn cost you anything)