@Zarozian Anecdotal, but here's my experience:

Me and some friends liked to rank in pso2jp, and some/most of us stopped playing for one reason or another (ep4 was like 42 years long), and when it got released here we regrouped and thought it would be a good idea to compete for the rankings, which seemed fine for the first few weeks. We ranked TA and cm on all ships, each of us had significant expenses with extra characters, skill trees, mags etc.

From around 2-3 weeks after PC release, rankings got completely taken by trainer users, you could clearly tell they were using trainers because one of them got a time that would only be possible about when we got level 90 cap, but he achieved it at level 70 and without any crafts on harukotan.

All of us sent several tickets regarding these and the CM ranking exploiters (there was even video evidence of them being able to just warp through cm and fighting anga at like level 6?) our tickets ALWAYS got a standarized response several weeks, sometimes up to 2 months replying "we're investigating but due to the nature of the report we can't give you updates on the matter", but the hackers were clearly still there, we could see the same names in the rankings, some are still there now.

The friends quit, because the only challenging end game is unattainable, people still playing see no reason to improve their gear or skills because the content that's competitive isn't there.

So whenever people make threads complaining about lack of expert or how shit their pugs are, I know of at least half a donzen of the players that would be on the top few percent that are just not here at all because of it.

Even myself, I'm barely logging in because there's nothing worth grinding for.

JP had campaigns to bring players to less-populated ships. We got none of those, also no panels, no ship competitions (imagine how that'd go here), no nothing, it's like the game already got launched in maintenance mode.

Amazing how we got 1/10th of the age of the game but feel 10x more abandoned than the JP servers.

@ZENCHI You'll only get a quick reply if it's related to RMT or scratches/fresh finds, everything else gets thrown in the backburner out.

People suggesting tickets either never used it or just want to derail threads.

Imagine leaving JP for NA hoping for better ping for the rankings and player support, only to get no support at all and all rankings taken by trainer users and exploiters.

And for anyone saying to solve it with tickets, tickets do nothing. They'll reply to you a month later saying "we're looking into it and can't give you updates about the matter" and do nothing else.

@Neek I knew it was possible but... wow.

While I'd like to have expert MMing, most seem to be vastly overstating the impact it would have in the game. The requirements, that weren't hard on release already, are of over 2 years ago in JP and we are almost on content parity with them.

It wouldn't be only the top 1% players getting it, it wouldn't even be the top half of players, it would be pretty much everyone except that guy that only uses a sigma launcher everywhere and his mate that didn't learn about subclasses and skill trees yet despite being at level cap.

Yes, I'd like to not see those guys in my groups, but MPAs wouldn't change a lot because 2 people that did literally nothing were replaced by 2 people that can hold lmb on hero.

Thank you, almighty JP vet.

@Gurgles said in So how is everyone enjoying Masq?:

Got any tips for te/hu? I'm trying to whack and heal but it's pretty grueling. What's your general strat? Just dodge and whack?

I recommend changing your sub to fo. Whacking is a mobbing thing and that's not a mobbing quest.

I got all 10 class clears on the first day and climbed to 20 on techer today, the fight is fun but i wish it wasn't time gated. There's a non time gated depth 500 one on rondo but needing a competent party for it makes it kinda-more-gated than the other one.