@Ryoga No

I've been enjoying them. Hope to see something like these in NGS. The pre-boss stages are a nice breath of fresh air because they're more complicated than just burning down a boss or some enemies. Could do with a bit more combat in covert ops stages though, oxymoronic as that sounds. More end-bosses would be nice. I never turn down a fight with Omega Hunar.

Pubs are basically unplayable though and I only either play alone or with friends, but that's not on SEGA.

Better Tech gameplay overall, smaller groups for MPAs with more teamplay, and no PSO2 subclasses

My experience with Tech classes can basically be summed down to

1. Cope with the fact you don't have enough space for every Tech with maybe possibly a usecase and your actives and your items
2. Realize you don't actually need much of anything besides Ilgrants and Gigrants

The combat just really devolves down to spamming the daylights out of a specific Technique and maybe one or two other ones that do something better than the big DPS one, like how Grants will hit no matter what unlike Ilgrants. For that matter I actually don't like how every single Tech class has to make do with the exactly same pool of Techniques either because it makes them play too similarly to each other. I traded spamming Ilgrants on Force for spamming Ilgrants on Phantom.

I think ideally, we'd have 2-ish Techs with the ability to modify behavior by charging like Foie and Barta in the demo, and some Techs exclusive to each class that emphasize the class' playstyle. For example, Force could have a powerful Fire Tech that works well at long ranges but has a more noticeable charge time, while the Techter has one that works at close range, and has guard frames to avoid retaliation.

As for MPAs, I feel like PSO2 has the same issue I had in Warframe where when I'm in a party, it can feel less like we're a group of adventurers trying to wage war against the Falspawn and more like it just so happens there's 4-12 murderhobos that are coincidentally in the same area. I think smaller groups and more teamplay abilities would help the game feel like we're individuals working together.

I don't have much to say about subclasses except that by and large most everyone agrees on a single subclass for their class that gets them the most damage and sticks with it. I feel like this will be the case anyways with how Scion classes don't allow them but I just want to say I'm not going to miss subclasses.

Edited for clarity

@NonnoN said in Would be nice to have a Serious Bouncer Buff:

Really? Do you need math for that? Have you tried Bouncer?

Yes and Yes I played the class for most of Ep1-4 here on NA but saying one class does three times as much damage as another is something I cannot believe without pictures of a 20 second rockbear parse, and I did end up doing rockbear parses with similar weapons on my Force and Bouncer loadouts and Force does indeed do much more damage, just not three times as much, or anywhere near that on single targets.

It would help your argument greatly if you could provide in-game evidence that agree with your statement. Yes I need math. It's the language of the universe and much harder to dispute than "well, in my opinion, this and this and this" I'm not really satisfied with the state of tech classes either, more just resigned to the fact that things aren't going to change any time soon.

@NonnoN said in Would be nice to have a Serious Bouncer Buff:

I'm sorry as far as i know the damage of the Force class right now in NA is kinda three time higher than the Bouncer class.

You wanna show us some math buddy or are we just supposed to take your word for it?

I feel like as we get closer and closer to Episode 6, good Units that stop you from getting oneshot and provide you with adequate PP and Attack to work with become more and more important. That said, I feel somewhat strained in my current endeavor to make units that are usable for Episode 6. Every affix slot involved is another layer of complexity to the recipe, and the 4 and 5 slot units I made in Episode 4 took three or so weeks of grinding. My units for Episode 6 either need 6 affixes or 5 especially powerful ones, the kind that aren't cheap, and I think the strain involved is a little excessive.

I would appreciate if certain convenient affixing tools were released near episode 6. For one, as far as I know there hasn't been much added to the mission badge shop since its introduction. I have everything I could want from the mission badge exchange and it might be a good idea to add some more things to buy from there, like Receptors. Similarly, the mission pass has often featured Tier Rewards that were either lackluster or barely rewards at all, like these Augmentation Aid 10%s and these Affix Augments that only provide 25 of one attack type. In the future, it could probably stand for those to be replaced as well.

I tuned into the NGS stream at TGS 2020 and I was pleased with what I saw. I'd begun to question why on earth none of the non-melee weapons were allowed to have Weapon Actions, and to see this will not be the case moving forward pleases me. That said, if it's possible, whenever the next bit of gameplay is shown, I'd like to know a bit what else is and isn't changing, specifically these.

Weapon Actions

Are Weapon Actions going to do anything else in NGS besides block/evade? Like I said I'm glad that the Weapon Action button is seeing more use. There's the potential for gameplay to be more than spamming 1 or 2 PAs and simply dodging when trouble comes your way. That said, after seeing/playing some of the Scion classes, or even just Bouncer, I'd like to hope that there's more to these than just being a block/dodge button. I appreciate how, for instance, Shift actions provide additional functions to a PA making it so that I don't just have to put down two different moves on my palette and clutter it.

Rings/SSAs/Subclassing

Are these going to survive in any form? I stuck all of these together because they're all, in a sense, a means of tailoring how a given class plays. I suppose this question could also be phrased as "How/to what degree can we adjust how our character plays within the bounds of class?"

Affixing

Short one: Are we going to rely on affixing again in NGS? I hope so, personally.

I think I had another question or two, but lost them at some point. I'll edit this if they return. Maybe someone else will comment on this thread and ask it instead. Either way, looking forward to NGS so far.