With the new Multi-Weapon system PSO2NGS has a big chance to truly become a game in which one can create their very own Hero, both visually and gameplay-wise, but all of this will be for nothing if brutally superior meta sub-classes make their appaerance again.

And the reason why some classes are so superior to others is simply because of the performance boosts they offer as a sub-class, allowing the main-class to benefit from bonuses and multipliers originally intended to make the subclass viable on it´s own.

I think an easy way to solve this problem and make a good use of the multi-weapon system would be to tie the boosts to the specific class weapons&PA of the sub-class, and not affecting the damage and performance of the second class.

In that way, sub-classing would be all about choice in style and gameplay, allowing you to choose two different ways to fight and contribute, and allowing for any combination of classes to be truly beneficial in their own way.

It would also make it fun and worth to level many classes, as this would have the literal and actual benefit of allowing you to choose different loadouts and configurations for different types of content and cocoons, instead of just going for whatever kills the baddies faster.

Something I have mentioned elsewhere numerous times already is that I would love to see some return of the Skill Board or at least a very big separation of what "skills" do for the classes. As in I would want to have the "core" skills for classes be something you shouldn't have to sacrifice (All Guard for the Hunter, the Focus/Gear skills for weapons, and things like the Luster's "moveset" that unlocks as you level up) and so that things that are more on the passive side of things (like Stances) can become optional to equip and mix-and-match with other similar skills.

The big reference point I would have for what I would like to see stems from Dragon's Dogma Online where the "Custom Skills" are equipped to a palette just like our Photon Arts are and largely determine how you enact your playstyle, the "Core Skills" are all baseline functions that your class should be able to do that give them an edge over other classes and their essential core gameplay (things like the Gear Gauge, Chain Trigger, the Phantom Marker, Hero Time, elemental swapping for the Techer/Bouncer, and more), and lastly that all passive skills are counted as "Augments." Augments are unlocked and typically are specialized for shifting the behavior of a class such as loosening and relaxing the timing of a just-guard to things that can potentially change gameplay such as adding striaght-up unconditional damage boosts.

However, in Dragon's Dogma Online, players are limited to what I recall was something along the lines of eight or ten of these being equipped at a time and in addition they each cost a specific amount of "Ability Points" (AP) to install which meant that you pick all the damage-based skills but have absolutely nothing in terms of quality-of-life gameplay conveniences. This meant that the unconditional damage was the lowest effort to play but came at the highest cost (with little room for leeway in customizing your build) and that going a high-health build meant you had to maintain your health in order to maintain that damage. However, a high-health build was undoubtedly stronger than the unconditional boost and granted some room for more quality-of-life changes but it was still very costly. The low-health build in that game was easily the cheapest but the most dangerous option due to how it was difficult to maintain (allies can heal you past the point where the build would have worked) and gave you the potential to stock all sorts of quality-of-life changes and tweaks to really shape your playstyle further. In that game, you can play as the Warrior (Greatswords) who had a mechanic that allowed them to reduce the damage taken upon both attacking and being attacked at the same time. The act of taking damage during your attack animations filled up a meter that can be expended to deal heavy damage (typically damage-cap levels of damage) but with the right combination of augments and the low-health build you can reduce the damage you take by up to 90% which typically turns "1" damage into "0" so you can effectively be immortal so long as you play properly. Keep in mind, these are "options" for how a player can build their class so that there could be another Warrior who wishes to simply play more traditionally and safely while still dealing that high damage though in a slightly different means.

My hope is that Phantasy Star Online 2 (and hopefully New Genesis considers this) takes a few pages of how the Skill Board from Phantasy Star Nova was very similar to what I described from Dragon's Dogma Online as leveling up classes unlocked skills that can be used on the Skill Board and allocated. It had limited space and specific skills synergized well including skills from other classes which created "Skill Combos" that boosted the effects of equipped skills. The classes you play as already would have some of these skills be innate (such as "Equip: Swords" being naturally innate for a Hunter) and using weapons off of the main class resulted in the player not having mechanical features those weapons would have had (Hunter's Just Attack multiplier bonuses, the Ranger's "Chain Combo" bonus, and so on). A large part of that is that there was also a universal class (Buster) that utilized every weapon but without the bonuses except for its own exclusive weapon (the Pile).

I would love to see and anticipate that subclasses in New Genesis will be much more polished than they currently are and would absolutely not mind if the subclass offered nothing to the main class at all outside of access to more weapons and gameplay opportunities rather than pure stat boosts and utility.

The one and only good thing about fellow MMO RIFT is their superior skill tree. You can literally build anything you want to be with skills at your fingertips to pretty much make any build viable. Pretty sure my last build was a fun dark magic knight bard, simply because I could. Too many MMO’s, PSO2 included, lock the good builds behind certain classes and the others get left in the dust, it becomes a balancing issue and a struggle for players who just want to play their favorite class. So many builds don’t work that we’re restricted to what sub class we can even pick.

I liked what I saw so far in NGS video and I’m hoping for the best!

And i hope they remove sub-classes and damage boosting skills altogether. Then they can add skills that can actually change the way the classes are played instead of just pumping more DPS, which of course means that all new enemies need more HP to actually fight back. Also, remove gear treadmill. If the only way to add playtime is to get bigger numbers without anything changing, least of all the combat, it's all pretty pointless.

@Yggranya In the most recent video shown for New Genesis the subclasses are confirmed to be in the game but this simply seems to require a semi-Weapon Extension similar to what we have to allow your subclass's weapons being usable. Their demonstrations so far involved a Hunter/Ranger seamlessly using a Rifle in the middle of their attacks and a Force/Fighter using Barta to freeze an enemy before switching to the Knuckles to attack the enemy. Alongside this they demonstrated Weapon Grinding (which is derived from NT-Grinding that we are already familiar with) and Affixing which seems to work on a very different method (you feed a weapon ability capsules as more capsules means a higher success rate).

I would still love to go by what I mentioned (separating "skills" learned so that players can pick their preferred weapons/playstyle classes and then have an extra parameter to tweak that adjusts their strengths and conveniences) simply because I feel it would bring more depth so that Hunters can stand side-by-side and actually not play out the same way despite having the same core mechanics (so they can all guard or have innate Focus skills unlocked without any real particular compromises for their core gameplay but can instead specialize in strengths elsewhere). I am not fond of the current approach of "pick what is essential and sacrifice everything else" due to the limited number of skill points that results in skills like "MEL Up" being skills you pick up only at the end because you wanted an extra "treat" for your stats despite it not really amounting to very much in the end.

@VanillaLucia said in I hope that NGS class skill trees focus less on global performance boosts, so that all sub-classes are viable.:

Affixing which seems to work on a very different method (you feed a weapon ability capsules as more capsules means a higher success rate).

If this means i can get 100% chance on affixin, the i might actually use it.

I would still love to go by what I mentioned (separating "skills" learned so that players can pick their preferred weapons/playstyle classes and then have an extra parameter to tweak that adjusts their strengths and conveniences) simply because I feel it would bring more depth so that Hunters can stand side-by-side and actually not play out the same way despite having the same core mechanics (so they can all guard or have innate Focus skills unlocked without any real particular compromises for their core gameplay but can instead specialize in strengths elsewhere). I am not fond of the current approach of "pick what is essential and sacrifice everything else" due to the limited number of skill points that results in skills like "MEL Up" being skills you pick up only at the end because you wanted an extra "treat" for your stats despite it not really amounting to very much in the end.

Yeah, at least the weapon specific skills should be unlocked for all from the start, or automatically on some low level or something.

We can already tell that mixing classes is going to be a lot more doable do to the fact that all types of attacks (rng, melee, tech) have been combined into one simple attack stat. This alone means a lot. Then you take into consideration that Mags also do not boost your character in anyway.

Obviously without seeing actual skill trees and how that stuff works we won't know how viable something might be for NGS end game (which we also have no clue on and likely won't for sometime.) But these changes along side the general flow of combat being improved taking nods from successor mechanics and the many other things streamlining the experience leads me to believe we are going into Monster hunter territory.

Where anyone can do anything and there's no rigid meta on what is required for completion of content. A meta will still form. But it hopefully won't be as rigid as pso2's. I think it's a good direction to move in. Though I hope if someone chooses to "specialize" there's a payoff to do so as well.

I just want more active skills than passives one cuz in mmos i like botton-smashing :3

@Koga If we have active skills I would prefer that it's uniform between all classes if possible such as how games like Warframe have it (four per Warframe in general) rather than how classes like the Techer are currently having to swap subpalettes to be effective in combat and how a Bouncer also similarly has to micromanage their subpalette for optimal play (swapping elements). Similarly on this classes like the Etoile and Luster have only one skill to add to their subpalette and as a result can be loaded up with items if desired just to fill out the space or their photon arts (not that you would really need to considering the controller space you have unless you really wanted the "Smart PA" from the Luster).

Otherwise for me as a controller player it is annoying to have to juggle through stances and then swapping subpalettes just to get to something I can use or to have to swap around just to be able to efficiently play what I need for the situation.

@VanillaLucia

I am in agreement. I dislike managing subpalletes. So I don't play any class that has to. I save it for items and skills. I don't cast. Good to hear that's not something i'll need to worry about for Luster.

@Knight-Raime My method around casting was essentially around unmapping L1 as a button so that it acts as another "Back Palette" button but allows me to use button combinations to access my subpalette instead which allows me to expand my means of combat and casting (effectively another five attacks/techniques with my current setup). As a result with that same mapping I can access things like instant palette swaps (weapons, subpalettes, autowords) without having to fiddle with the menus. But until this is all innate and done in-game and more fluidly than the current system is (if you swap weapons in the middle of combat you are forced to jump or "cancel" your current animation somehow in order for your swapped weapon to show up which allows you to pull off tricks like shooting as the Gunner and dealing absolutely no damage at all which can prolong your Chain Trigger so you can break it when you want in the middle of a photon art), I cannot play the game on consoles simply because I rely so much on having easy subpalette access and I absolutely dislike the current method of navigating it.

@VanillaLucia

So basically pressing left bumper for you acts like you're holding left trigger to switch to your other weapon PA's...but in this case you have it swap your palette? Interesting. However I still don't see how that's super useful for controller since at least with my setup I have to use the d-pad to scroll on said pallete and then click on the left thumb stick to use said thing.

Aside from how clunky it is to use a controller for casting I also just don't enjoy what casting is in pso2. To me it just looks like i'm firing different colored nukes. NGS has me excited because casting looks to have more purpose and that game in general looks more fluid. Like I LOVE the fact that hold casting essentially gives you two techs in one. Wand combat on Etiole is actually doable for me because I use WA to alter the PA. I hope casting further goes down this route.

If I had a keypad to hook into my controller and it wasn't for my big ass hands casting could be doable on a controller for me.

@Knight-Raime Without trying to derail the thread too much, my buttons work in the following:

• R1 allows me to access the Back Palette for weapons (which also in turn changes my D-Pad to allow me to access the right-side of my subpalette for items/stances/active skills).
• L1 allows me to replace buttons so I can access my subpalette such as L1 + Square being Subpalette 1. This also allows me to use L1 + Circle and R1 + Circle to access parts of the subpalette, or to include L1 + R1 combinations if I did not want to use the D-Pad.
• The Dualshock 4's touchpad allows me to create a "virtual" D-Pad on both the left and right halves which allows me to easily access things like subpalette entries (Shifta, Deband, Zanverse, Photon Blasts, Moon Atomizers, all within reach) or allows me to swap weapons (Main Palettes 1-6), subpalettes (Subpalettes 1-6), and also fashion sets/autoword commands (though only four due to the limitation of having ten autowords at at time).
• L2 as a half-pull functions as a lock-on. Fully pulling L2 ends up switching to the over-the-shoulder camera but upon releasing L2 it switches back to the normal camera.

This effectively lets me skip the entire subpalette scrolling (left/right/use actions) and the weapon swapping (up/down/select, or up/down then to left/right and up/down again before selecting) mechanics by granting me access to what keyboard and mouse players have access to.

@VanillaLucia

That sounds incredibly bootleg. I definitely wouldn't put that much effort into it especially this late into pso2. But kudos.

@Knight-Raime I've done this for the Japanese version as well when I played it largely because I played games like Dragon's Dogma (where this sort of thing is normal for the game) so I'm very used to these button combinations especially when Phantasy Star Online 2 already does it as well. This makes playing as classes like the Twin Daggers-Fighter easy because you have easy access to all your height-control photon arts and positioning photon arts at the same time you have access to your attacking photon arts. Otherwise you normally would have to swap weapons mid-combo to do such a thing. Classes like the Wand-Etoile completely sidestep this by giving you innate height-control with your photon arts and by using the Bouncer's dual-function weapon action in the form of Focus Arts which allow you to have a similar control without the subpalette being involved.

In terms of casting classes this allows me to have a universal subpalette with support-related techniques or offensive techniques with with the same level of access as the main palettes.

My bias comes from action games and games that give the player control (games like Devil May Cry and as mentioned Dragon's Dogma/Dragon's Dogma Online, Ninja Gaiden, and more) so my controls tend to mimic those games and classes like the Hero definitely allow me to play very similarly to those games. It wasn't a lot of effort to set up other than that I lost a button (L1 is not mapped for anything combat-wise) but the ability to map buttons elsewhere definitely makes things a game-changer when you have more options at your disposal.