@ZarexWolf I am of the opinion that Sega always has at least some responsibility, as it is their IP. They should be the ones making the final calls and should be able to veto any decision Lionbridge makes. If Lionbridge is the one causing the censorship and Sega JP is not aware, then Sega is at fault for not paying attention.

@RainGnyu I will be putting it in a PM if that is fine. However do note that often times, they get banned and the accusation posts are deleted. There is no bandwagon crusade.

@Krinos said in Can we not cut out anymore story scenes and stop it with censorship in general.:

I highly doubt Sega is aware of the censorship in NA.

They got a PR team working for Estsoft, a south Korean company which probably doesn't relay anything judging by the severe lack of clarity, and disconnect with NA players. They also have Lionbridge Studios and freelancers localizing the game which means you have faceless randoms sieving through the game's assets picking and choosing what stays, and what goes, and what gets censored. Looking at company photos of Lionbridge studios, most of the staff are old ladies/hipsters, and what it looks like to be an outsourced office from India.

So on both sides in terms of communication with players, and localization, you got a korean company that doesn't care, and an outsourced office in india and random hipster freelancers picking apart the game you love.

Looking at the knitty gritty of who's running the show in NA, it's scary to think the game is still running at all.

I probably come off as a bit condescending, but I'm just trying to emphasize that it feels like there are alot of small-time randoms involved in localizing an mmo that's been around for a decade.

Estsoft handles the support and forums from what I understand. Lionbridge handled the initial translation from what I understand; they even dubbed the bathscenes. From what we can tell Sega JP actually does make the final decisions; it is likely a sub team in the Phantasy Star Crew.

PSU was handled in a similar way, though likely without a dedicated sub team, which left the western version way behind on updates. Sega JP called the shots, but they were completely focused on the JP version.

They have improved a great deal since PSU, but there is still plenty of improvement to be had when it comes to communication. The best version is still the JP version, but the gap isn't as severe as it used to be. Like it is still pretty large, but it isn't like PSU bad.

@RainGnyu You talk as if Sega will implement a censorship toggle. They have no obligation to do so. You keep accusing others of one thing or another. If you are going to imply that we shouldn't try to look at potential future possibilities and their cost vs benefit, then you shouldn't treat a censorship toggle as a certainty because that is also forecasting. You shouldn't condemn others for an action you are doing yourself.

Because Sega is under no obligation to implement any suggestion, it can make a world of difference to make it as attractive as possible for them to implement something. Hence, figuring out a toggle that balances how much it can encompass vs how difficult it is to implement can be helpful. Then we can think of solutions for the censorship that the toggle does not encompass.

@RainGnyu Sega taking those issues into account is exactly why I want this discussion into logistics. There is no money to be made from a toggle system. It would purely be a quality of life update.

From a pure business perspective, it is more cost effective to leave any censorship as is, but to never censor anything again in the future. However that would probably the worst possible outcome when taking into account both sides of this debate. Technically speaking, it would not be the worst outcome for anti-censorship.

Following that, a removal of censorship and no additional censorship would be the next most cost effective. It would only involve work to reverse previous censorships and no additional cost would need to be spent on any future censorship.

Continuing censorship comes afterwards, albeit a bit vague due to being associated with future costs. It has no initial costs, but rather has the cost of any future censorship.

A toggle system has the highest cost as it involves the development of a new system and future censorship costs.

Remember, it may be possible that Sega may see a complex toggle system as not being worth it when it comes to cost if they deem what we are asking for as being too complex; especially during NGS development. We increase the probability of something being done by being realistic with our expectations and giving them something to work with. Different people are expecting different things from a toggle system. So it is very currently vague as to what is expected from it and whether it will deal with all issues of censorship.

As for expertise, I am a Computer Science Major so I do have experience programming as I have shown in a previous post.

@Milk Well, presumably, it would only hide if you have the toggle set to on. So it would still be a choice.

@Weirdo There should be a way to read base height as rappy suits already bypass the minimum height limit. However, yes, when you start looking at adding more factors to the toggle's filter, the more difficult and complex it becomes to implement. It is something that has to be considered as a toggle is a QoL improvement that makes Sega no extra money. The more costly it becomes to develop and implement, the less incentive for Sega to develop it.

@RainGnyu I haven't even suggested a specific toggle. If you actually read my posts, I am asking how encompassing the toggle can be vs the complexity of the implementation.

In fact what do you think my idea of a toggle is?

Right now, the one the one that is the easiest and least resource intensive to implement is one that checks the height of a character and not load the character if it is under the current minimum. That would at least let us set the minimum height back to matching JP's.

The issue is that it does not cover any name, dialogue, cutscenes, cosmetics etc. It only covers one aspect of censorship, the height limitation. So what can be done about those?

@ZarexWolf I haven't put any full support behind a specific toggle method as they either don't encompass all forms of censorship or appear to be incredibly complex and time consuming to implement. I am asking what people think should be done with these holes?

Tbh, at this point, I wonder if it would be better and easier if they officially open up the JP servers for anyone who wants to transfer to them, for a fee of course. Add a character transfer option that lets you transfer to the JP servers. Have a sort of semi-unified service.

@RainGnyu However, we need to consider how it is implemented as well. For example, for censored outfits, how would we implement the toggle for those? The game would have to load different models based on the setting of the toggle. That would require re-writing the code that allows the game to load in the item models, which would require a lot more work and is much more complex and difficult to implement than a simple height based load or do not load toggle.

If a height based toggle was implemented, would the censorship on certain cosmetics be removed? What about the removed cutscenes? What about items like smart innerwear?

A simple height based toggle doesn't cover everything and a much more complex toggle has logistical issues.

@Kodiakmax-101 The question is how far do people want the toggle to go. Cyberpunk's toggle is rather minimal and was likely within the specifications early on, making it easier to implement. A height based toggle is relatively easy to implement, but if we want to get more involved and focus on a combination of height and specific items, then it gets trickier.

Personally, if a toggle is to be implemented, I'd say the best way to do it would just be a height based toggle due to its relative simplicity. The question is though is how well the censorship for things not related to height limit be handled. Things like the removed cutscenes, censored cosmetics, etc.

@Kodiakmax-101 Yes, but the toggle in no way affects the rating of the game. The game would have the same rating, toggle or no toggle. The toggle exists to make it possible for streamers to stream the game.

The point I am driving at when comparing PSO2 to Cyberpunk is to show how much more extreme Cyberpunk goes than PSO2 does while still having the same ESRB rating. To give an example of a game that was highly anticipated and made more headlines than PSO2 while having far more graphic content. If people are fine with that existing in a video game, then is there really any worry about the censored content in PSO2 being uncensored? Even when censored, Cyberpunk is still more graphic than PSO2.

@RainGnyu said in Can we not cut out anymore story scenes and stop it with censorship in general.:

That is my point! You come on here as tho you know and what you say is factual. People can be experts behind a computer screen and claim to have a self proclaimed credited degree all day long just to push their own agenda. Where is your proof that the logistics to implement the toggle censorship system is difficult for Sega to implement.

I have given lawful discussion about how games can influence behavior. How the rating system for gaming is vague and how some company have taken responsibility interpreting want is best for their gaming community beyond the greed for money.

Also if you don’t believe games don’t influence behavior then why do we have a 100+ pages on censorship in this thread alone?

This is what you linked: https://medium.com/@baemisaalbybae/sexual-innuendos-in-childrens-cartoons-in-depth-analysis-f0138333719f

It is a blog website. This is what the owner of the blog described themselves as: "Social Media Nerd who’s using her degree in Liberal Arts & Social Sciences to educate the rest of the population one article at a time."

It is far from hard scientific proof.

Here I can link a study as well: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4478390/

Here they focus on neurobiology, discuss about the failings of past research attempts on pedophilia. In the section when they discuss the development of pedophilia, they note how there have been flaws in past research on the topic. Furthermore, if you look at research on how media affects behavior, such as video game violence, you find that the studies have been shown to be rather inconclusive.

As for actual proof that a toggle can be difficult to implement. I have stated that a toggle that simply decides to load or not load a character based on their height is relatively simple and easy to implement. While something that is more involved with specific items is much more difficult.

Pseudo Code for basic height based toggle:

//You basically get the height of the character and store it in a vaiable
height = GetCharHeight(character);

//Then depending on whether if the height is above or under the minimum amount in the current version, it would load or not load a character. While this is an overall simplification, the logic behind is easy to visualize.
if height < 150 then
{
DoNotLoadCharacter(character)
}
else
{
LoadCharacter(character)
}

Now if we want to get more complicated with various items. Then you need to look at how items are coded. Based on the job postings from Sega where they are looking for programmers with experience in C++ and C# for NGS, it is safe to say that PSO2 uses those languages. Both are object orientated languages. Thus, it is likely that items are a type of object within the games codes with a variety of fields. A simplification written in pseudo code can be:

Class Item
{
//Variables
Name
Model
Textures
Item(name, model, textures)
{
//Constructor method
}
}

It then likely reads a database and parses the information in the database and uses a constructor method to generate the different items we see and own in game. Obviously there are more variables, but this is just a simplification written in pseudo-code.

Now to make the toggle more item specific, you then need to add an additional variable; likely a boolean variable to determine whether or not the item is affected by the toggle. Adjust the constructor method for the additional variable and the database for the additional variable, not to mention adjust how the game loads items as it now needs to read that additional variable and determine the course of action depending on whether the toggle is on and if the new boolean affects. And again, this is all just a simplification of the actual process; there is optimization, checking for bugs, make sure it functions properly on a variety of hardware, etc. There is a reason why games can take years to develop.

I'm pretty sure I've shown and explained that programming can be a very intensive process.

Also yes, I know I am horrible at explaining these things in layman terms.

@RainGnyu How is it not relevant? We are looking at how a toggle can be implemented. It is on topic discussion.

@RainGnyu said in Can we not cut out anymore story scenes and stop it with censorship in general.:

If the toggle censorship system is not applied then more the half of the community will give up a leave PSO2 and not even play NGS!

Also, do you have any proof that half or moreof the players would leave and not play NGS if censorship was removed without a toggle option? Are you aware that none of the censored content is outrageous in anyway. There are games and other media that go way further without issue.

Hell, look at Cyberpunk. The game gas full on nudity, genitals are fully viewable (they are even a character customization option), and actual in-game first person sex scenes that just has the camera look away from the genitals. Cyberpunk has an M rating just like PSO2 and was one of the most anticipated games of 2020. Its issues are all technical issues; no one has issues with the actual content. If a game like Cyberpunk has no eye batted at the extreme nature of its content so why would PSO2?

Persona 5 has a bath scene, the characters are high schoolers, and it was one of the most popular JRPG's to come out in recent times.

To say that PSO2 would lose 50+% of its players if the game removes the censorship to match the Japanese version is completely baseless. To say that the statement has no basis is an understatement. Honestly, I'd call that statement to be an impossibility.