When people said battle arena was dead I assumed they meant nobody played it, but the more I play the more I sense it's that the games are often just dead.

This sort of game happens way too often, where it becomes clear with 4 minutes on the clock that there will never be a comeback. The rest of those 4 minutes is just lost time, and it happens most games.

I know a surrender mechanic to end the game faster would be abused by co-ordinated groups, as would a mechanic to end a game early if it's a clear landslide. Players would just collective make a rule like "Red Team always surrenders" or "Red Team goes AFK".

So what Battle Arena really needs is for better team balancing - since this happens way too often - or simply just shorter games because at the moment players on the losing team are put in the weird situation of needing to pretend to try for 4 minutes to avoid getting reported. And that's about as un-fun as I think is possible in this game.

I do wonder how this was never picked up over several years in JP.

@HarmlessSyan said in Tradable overpriced SG cosmetics is a higher priority than months of gutted content?:

Something like http://pso2.jp/players/update/20200805/?bg=s_26534 where all changes are basically announced with like a 2 week prior notice - with details on such changes so no surprises.

Yep, on this point I agree. Update notes in advance would be nice, just like knowing what the last Tuesday of the fortnightly Urgent Quest schedule contains since we only get to find out when the next schedule is published after it is already over.

I still wonder if they've become shy about declaring update content in advance in case they have to pull it at the last minute (maybe finding some issues during maintenance) and cause upset that wouldn't have existed if they kept saying nothing.

@Tri-Edge said in Tradable overpriced SG cosmetics is a higher priority than months of gutted content?:

So if we didn't know, we couldn't really complain.

In the case of units eating rings, it's more that we know JP got it in mid-Episode 4 rather than on day one, and some of us are deciding to complain anyway.

@Hanakotoba said in Tradable overpriced SG cosmetics is a higher priority than months of gutted content?:

We didn't get the battle ship EQ yet, because reasons. But yet, we also got no notification of that being a thing.

Case in point. The name this was given by English speakers on JP was Unleashed Prestige; it was added on the 11 May 2016 update, 3 and a half months after Episode 4 began.

JP didn't have the Yamato UQ when Episode 4 began. That is the reason: They've been sequencing the launch of UQs on Global to match the story. During Episode 3 we got Manifested Planetbreaker first, then Barren Blossom, and lastly Mining Base: Ending.

To only reason we had and have to expect that to change is the knowledge of the Episode 4 story UQs and the likely four cycles between Episode 4 and Episode 5 launches. I've heard there are three Episode 4 story UQs, so perhaps we can assume we'll get one each in the next three maintenances.

@HarmlessSyan said in Tradable overpriced SG cosmetics is a higher priority than months of gutted content?:

And that's what I'm getting at. They are picking and choosing things from future episodes to implement right now while not maintaining proper communication. Half of these threads on missing content wouldn't exist if they can communicate when they are coming or is it going to end up like crafting being 2 episodes late and only partially working without the swap/recycle shop.

I still don't think adding future balance adjustments early and not adding progression early can be equated like that though.

Yes crafting late was a weird one and they maybe could have communicated that one earlier than they did, but they did communicate it in mid-June which was like 7 weeks before we got it.

If they had to tell us every update everything they weren't accelerating, that'd end up being a huge list, you know? Wouldn't it just be easier as players to assume we're getting things in line with when JP got them? That way we might end up pleasantly surprised if something does arrive early. Or at the very least not so upset as to start calling everyone rude names on a forum.

Right. But most of those skills were quality of life or playstyle changes they happened to add at the same time as level 85 (I understand as part of an ongoing response to people being upset at Hero focus) so it made sense to market them as shiny new level 85 perks.

They could have reduced or removed the level requirement for them and accelerated them too, but they chose not to. This suggests they do want to keep things that aren't simple self-contained tweaks largely as they were in JP, which depending on your beliefs of whether units eating rings is self-contained could also explain the mindset with not accelerating those too.

@HarmlessSyan said in Tradable overpriced SG cosmetics is a higher priority than months of gutted content?:

it is SEGA choosing to not adding it in the game just like SEGA choose to use EP6 skill trees and combat adjustments [snip] That whole top row of "free" skills did not exist till EP5 so most people had to slot things like Air Reversal, Step Jump, Step JA combo. Only class that had double jump was JB Bouncers and there was no first hit JA skill (maybe the tech one was there but definitely not for PAs or normal attacks).

SEGA is using the EP6 combat changes and rings are a integral part of combat

Only partially. I don't believe any of the new skills classes got in the middle of Episode 5 are in Global at the moment. It feels like they've mostly taken the latest JP balance adjustments for Global to avoid leaving us stuck with some of the less fun old metas for months, which for gameplay variety seems like a much better thing to accelerate.

@ErinXh said in What did Japanese players (and now we) do to deserve Battle Arena?:

To OP: (Wrote this on Feb 13.)

Let me advice you to at least get all the rewards related to PVP before it becomes dead content. Once it is dead, you'll probably never going to be able to reap the rewards from it again. PVP sure has some nice stuff to get though.

I'm curious about this. I hear the JP players do play it but only enough to get to X rank for SG purposes. I also hear on JP rank doesn't reset reach month but instead players just drop one bracket? Which would mean they don't have to play much. Even swiki says that can make it better to play at the start and end of the month.

But as you say, some of the drops are nice - and rewarding. And if battle arena is dead those must surely become highly valuable which would make it lucrative to play it again?

New content syndrome. Everyone's going to pay over the eventually settling rate to get earlier access to the new shiny.

Those of us with a little patience are smiling at the easy millions we've made on technique disks since Wednesday knowing we'll be able to buy anything we need back for a fraction of the cost in 1-4 weeks.

It'll come down. Stuff like this always does.

@Ranmaru said in Tradable overpriced SG cosmetics is a higher priority than months of gutted content?:

@Loona said in Tradable overpriced SG cosmetics is a higher priority than months of gutted content?:

they aren't wrong. No reason we shouldn't have skill addition to the game and we're in Episode 4 now.

The reason is most likely a business decision. (Money) I'm fine waiting for it to be added. I don't dislike being told the truth.

Then why are you ignoring people telling you it's just not when JP got it?

How is not accelerating something they had no reason to accelerate a money-based decision? If you're saying they didn't add it sooner than when JP got it because units eating rings doesn't have any monetisable aspects, that feels like a huge stretch when more obvious explanations exist.

For one thing, Episode 4 already added a lot so they could have wanted to avoid confusing us with the addition of even more new systems. For another, it added Steam and officially supported more countries so they might have wanted to keep rings simple for their benefit. For a third, it could simply be more work to change the order of such additions compared to JP.

@Loona said in Tradable overpriced SG cosmetics is a higher priority than months of gutted content?:

they aren't wrong. No reason we shouldn't have skill addition to the game and we're in Episode 4 now. It's beyond retarded. Sounds like most people here just dislike the truth being told.

The truth:

• JP got Episode 4 on 25 January 2016.
• JP got Episode 5 on 25 July 2017.
• JP got Ultimate Amduskia and unit ring skills on 19 October 2016.

Episode 4 lasted 18 months in JP, and 10 of those were without unit ring skills. toybox explained this back in page 1 and others have repeated it since. They are not wrong. We know by the roadmap Episode 4 is going to last less than 2 months, it's baffling that some people can't even wait probably 1 month to get a mid-Episode 4 addition on the same schedule JP got it.

@Le-Lilly said in Tradable overpriced SG cosmetics is a higher priority than months of gutted content?:

@Loona said in Tradable overpriced SG cosmetics is a higher priority than months of gutted content?:

Lol how does a skull = telling someone to die

That's exactly what it's suggesting

As the person the comment was directed at, I just thought it was a way to express severe exhaustion. Don't the Lillipan Roulette lillipan use it when it spins a Miss?

I'm C2 (C1? I forget where I finished today) now and enjoying it. It's good to see some folks giving various weapons and PAs broadly the same assessment as me.

I am surprised people are rating Ride Slash highly. It seems to be the weakest of the three sword PAs and if it goes up against either of the others it will lose, regardless of pings involved.

I've had a couple really good runs with Rifle's Piercing Round too. Its purpose is not to kill, but to ding multiple enemies in a group and basically doom them. I've managed to set up a couple awesome team sweeps that way. Sure it doesn't get you emblems or battle points, but it helps win games.

I've had one or two instances where I've hit an enemy who has taken damage but not died, before they hit me with exactly the same weapon and I have in one hit. It's... baffling, but fortunately doesn't happen that often. I can only imagine there's some damage variance in the attacks, perhaps as a balacing mechanism?

What does happen often is lag. From the UK I am at a definite and permanent disadvantage; multiple times I've ambushed people around corners only to die to them because the game apparently communicates my position faster than my attacks. I've also escaped to safety only to die behind walls a bunch of times. These are a frustration for sure, but I don't know what can really be done about it.

I think it's related that no weapon gets Sidestep Jump. Mobility in battle arena is really awful and as a jet boots main it felt painfully slow at first. But if everyone could zip around the ping issues would be way worse, so I've come around to that as a necessity and got myself used to the slower pace.

The most annoying thing of all for me? Whenever I'm on a losing side that's being slaughtered, I'm usually in the top 3. It's not even that it feels like it's not my fault we're losing. It's more that since I am in the top 3 I can't sneak around and assassinate the other team's effective players. I like the mechanic of giving that advantage to the bottom 3 though, so hopefully in a week or two the people who are will have learned how to take advantage of it and games may become more balanced than they typically are now.

It amuses me that people haven't really mentioned skills in this topic. I think they can be unbalanced at times; Protect used right can seriously be a tide-turner. None of the others can do so much with lag involved.