@ENERSHA420 said in Gathering respawns? Really Sega? Really??: you are really full of sh*t man

Kettle, meet pot.

So here's the thing with how I view everything.

• Once upon a time, people played games that rarely got updates. In fact, there was a time when a game simply did not get an update. So what did people do when they ran out of things to earn/unlock/level/whatever? They kept playing through content they had already seen and done. Why? Because they enjoyed the game itself. The game was fun whether they were getting something new from it (items, levels, or just the experience of seeing something new) or not. The current generation seems to not share that same sentiment. If they're not unlocking something, seeing a number go up, or constantly being provided something they didn't have before they are going to complain.

As has already been mentioned, PSO1 was very light on content and heavy on rare drops. You didn't have a lot to choose from in the way of cosmetics (in fact there were no cosmetics after you made your character), and instead the emphasis was on finding a new cool looking weapon. There wasn't even a gear treadmill. It was just about collecting. I was honestly very surprised when I played PSO2 for the first time to learn that the game wasn't like PSO1 at all. Disappointed even.

• I don't think it is out of the question to suggest Covid may be partially (emphasis on partially) responsible for how much content exists. Japan has also been having another surge as of late in Covid cases, to the extent there is pressure to postpone the Olympic games yet again. Even games like Final Fantasy XIV, which tends to release new content more often and in greater quantities than most other MMOs (or games in general), suffered significant setbacks to the extent we did not get a Halloween even last year, and some other events were repeats or merged. I do not know if SEGA had the capacity to enable their employees to develop the game from home instead of the office, and considering they shut down their arcades recently (which accounted for much of their revenue), they may be tight on funds.

• Believe it or not, games are not always designed with the no-lifer in mind. This game (and many free to play games) tend to cater to people who only spare about an hour a day, if that. If you've been spending more than 3 hours a day since NGS launched, then it is unrealistic to be angry at how much content exists currently.

• As mentioned before, here is a breakdown for what, exactly, Japan had when PSO2 launched.

1. Hunter, Ranger, and Force, with a level cap of 30.
2. Free Exploration, Arks Quests, Emergency/Urgent Quests, Story Quests, and Client Orders.
3. The first update, which dropped in July 2012, was the Underground Mines. The game launched with Forest, Caves, Tundra, and Desert.
4. Hard Mode was the highest difficulty.
5. The next Major update was a full year later, in July 2013, which added Braver, Deuman, and Episode 2.
6. Episode 3 released in August 2014, with Bouncer, Casino, skills and zones.
7. Episode 4 released in January 2016, and added the summoner class.

I think you can see what I am getting at. You are going to see a similar update schedule here, except they are already going to be releasing new classes and increasing the level cap sooner than before. The playable content you have now is on-par with what existed before, except it's all merged together. So Client Orders, the story, and even urgent quests are all a part of the free exploration.

You can expect to see the skill trees be expanded incrementally, new zones to be added, and more content to come our way. But if you want to have "all the things" you had in old PSO2, you are looking at a minimum 4-5 years I think. It might be quicker depending on how easy it is for them to make new stuff in NGS, but I think people really need to stop throwing tantrums and making these doomsday posts.

I may have got a few things mixed up here or there as it has been a while, but seriously. Be a bit more mature about things. The entitlement is astounding.

So none of this is really surprising.

• They wouldn't tell you they would shift focus to NGS away from PSO2 while still trying to sell you cosmetics, premium, etc. Hardly any business would tell you to stop buying something. It's why rushing to get all of those augments, max stat 15 star weapons and 13 star gear was kind of silly if you thought there'd be more PSO2 stuff. Some of you are acting like it's some sort of horrible thing that a sequel disguised as a standalone expansion would make your old gear obsolete.

• PSO2 is 10 years old. It doesn't matter that we got the game late. That is irrelevant, aside from SEGA had promised the game back when it was initially announced and never gave any updates on the status of a Western release.

• They are not going to make PSO2 all that appetizing because they want to shift gears to NGS, and they want their players to move to NGS. A large reason for them transferring all cosmetics over is to provide further incentive for people to shift to NGS themselves.

• This shifting of focus to NGS in addition to apparently permanently ceasing all development and updates of PSO2 means, given SEGA's Phantasy Star history, that PSO2's servers are going to shut down probably in a year or two. I suspect within 3 years only PSO:NGS will exist.

And yes. Western servers for both PSO2 and PSO:NGS will probably shut down before the Japanese servers. That happened with PSO Dreamcast, Xbox, and then Gamecube and Blue Burst PC. Then PSU shut down the PS2, then the PC servers and shortly after that the xbox servers.

I have been experiencing lag spikes lately and getting error 630 often. It seems to come and go but is really discouraging me from playing. I know the issue has existed since release and has never been fixed.

Out of curiosity, others getting the error, are you using xfinity?

@Yggranya There's this thing called immersion. People who can get immersed in a story usually will find a character or two they identify with.

@Phill-N-Kills I wasn't comparing them. You had made the comment "A replicant pack would be 100x better for male characters than 9S's schoolboy outfit".

I responded "I actually like 9S more than Kaine", which would imply given the context of the discussion that I like his outfit more than I would a Kaine outfit, and so would welcome a NGS upgrade. Also 9S has a female outfit variant you could purchase if you got the A2 pack during the collab.

And yeah, they probably won't do the skeletal stuff. But they do have the rappy outfits and a few other weird stuff, like the polygons and that one mascot from Persona, so I don't think it's too absurd a wish. That said I agree they probably won't.

@Phill-N-Kills I actually like 9S more than Kaine.

I would like Nier Replicant outfits (the male stuff as I main males), and I wouldn't mind having Emil's body to go along with the head for my Cast.

Ships 1 and 2 are fairly similar. I have characters on both, and I've found that the population size is fairly similar as well. Ship 2 has a bit of a cult following however. Before Global released last year, many english players called Ship 2 in the japanese version of the game home, and when the global version released a handful of those players flocked to ship 2, so the server had a kind of soft jump start.

That jump start is largely irrelevant now. Global is caught up save for some missing cosmetics which we will probably not see due to licensing issues. Ships 3 and 4 have much smaller populations due to their being populated later, and the smaller population will likely mean you encounter the same people more often, thus making rude players seem more prevalent when it's probably you just unfortunately running into some of the same people over and over again.

Ship 2 developed a negative stigma due to a handful of elitist players and guilds coming in from JP, but it's not really relevant to the current state of the community either. Every game and server will have their fair share of unhelpful, entitled jerks, I think it just happens that since Ship 2's community had that jump start it was more obvious. Several guilds I remember seeing in the first months of Global were also setting up lofty requirements that people new to the game (or franchise) weren't really in a position to adhere to: Must have these classes, this skill tree, these weapons with these augments (when many players still can't figure out how augments work because I have yet to see anyone be able to explain it in a simple, to the point manner). Note too that not all JP players are rude. I've met plenty of helpful and kind individuals.

Ship 1 I encounter rude people too. I've had people criticize my characters, try to shame me for not having a best in slot item, and there's a lot of people in games in general who won't actually describe how to do things, instead choosing to bemoan others when a simple explanation would probably have helped more than anything.

Don't let people get to you. This is a game and it's supposed to be fun. Anyone who has the attitude that you should know more than you do or that you are wasting their time are being entitled, because this is a community game. Teamwork overpowers individual needs and wants.

@_Flux_ said in Phantasy Star Classic AC Scratch is here!!:

Just wanting to interject: If you can play FF6 or Chrono Trigger, then you can play PS4. It's on that level and I highly recommend it. Easily the best RPG on the Genesis, one of the top for the 16-bit era and has aged super well to boot. Plus it covers the lore of the other 3.

If you're not interested, then you're not interested; just thought I'd try to sell it a bit. It's an incredible game.

Are the PSs like the FF series in that each numerical entry doesn't require knowledge of the previous?