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[Shinra]

Character creator here: http://pso2.jp/benchmark/download/

Translation here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/hat8xl (put it in the Data\Win32 folder)

The wife and I are in the Japanese closed beta which starts on the 19th. Hopefully nobody notices we're Filthy Gaijin. It seems that they learned their lessons with PSU and are going back to the original formula, with minor quality of life changes along the way. The game will operate on a freemium model, with a cash shop currency you can either pay money for or get a limited amount of daily by getting thumbs ups from other players and doing in-game events.

[Beat Bandit]

It seems that they learned their lessons with PSU and are going back to the original formula, with minor quality of life changes along the way. The game will operate on a freemium model

YUP

[Ziiro]

PSU and PSO have evolved to be two completely distinct games at this point actually.

[Shinra]

PSU and PSO have evolved to be two completely distinct games at this point actually.

The servers for both games have been discontinued, so I guess they're not really distinct in that they're both defunct.

[sei]

Maybe they'll do something really clever like destroy your will to play with others by making high tier items impossible to trade. Worked for Phantasy Star Portable.

[Smiler]

Whenever someone mentions this I remember that this, Guild Wars 2, and Planetside 2 will probably all be out at the same time, and I will want to play all three. I might not need to buy a game for a long time.

[Shinra]

My biggest concern with PSO2 is that they're segregating the servers. again. Which is precisely why PSU was so fucking awful.

[Beat Bandit]

But at least you don't need to worry about interobo marriage.

[sei]

What's the freemium currency used for?

[Kayma]

So, what's the state of Phantasy Star games at this point? Are there unofficial servers still for PSO and/or PSU? Is there an english client/patch for PSO2 yet?

If I wanted to get my mag feedin' on right now, what would I have to do?

[Shinra]

there was a english fan patch last i heard and they're coding english support into the client supposedly. You might have to do some digging to find it. PSO has private servers, PSU too I think.

What's the freemium currency used for?

You have two kinds, the standard PSO funbux and FUN POINTS. PSO funbux are used to directly buy premium account features (trading happens to be one of those features, you will be thrilled to know) respecs, room passes, etc. FUN POINTS can be used to buy some of these items, or to buy scratchoffs which give you outfits, room decorations, and a chance at premium items. You can theoretically get any of the premium features through the scratchoffs (or you could in CB1) but the good stuff is obviously pretty rare.

The game is really fun, by the way. I don't really like the freemium business, but it's fun. Having said that, I'm pretty fucking disappointed that they're going to separate Japanese and American servers again. It doesn't help that we prove their rationale right every fucking time - a week into CB2 the guy responsible for the duping glitch in PSU started releasing hacks. This is why we can't have nice things.

 

[sei]

Do you have to pay per trade or to unlock trading?

Spiral Knights was kind of fun in its way too, but paying cash to do basic, everyday shit is never okay.

So, what's the state of Phantasy Star games at this point? Are there unofficial servers still for PSO and/or PSU? Is there an english client/patch for PSO2 yet?

If I wanted to get my mag feedin' on right now, what would I have to do?

Re playing PSO now, just google(PSO blue burst patch server) and you'll find tons of private servers in a similar fashion how you'd find private RO, EQ, UO, etc. servers.

[Shinra]

pay to unlock trading. There's a premium card that you can buy for like, 5 dollars for 90 days that lets you trade, have a room and collect furniture, use the auction system, etc. Otherwise you have to pay like 2 bucks for a 30 day trade ticket. But you can trade an unlimited amount during that time frame.

the japanese cash shop, at least, is very reasonable. the problem is that American cash shops for MMOs tend to inflate all the prices by 200% simply because they can.

[Smiler]

Five bucks for three months is pretty good. That is ludicrously reasonable for a f2p game. Pretty much all of them stick with the standard 15 bucks a month to be able to do cool shit, which totally ruins the point of playing the game for free if in order to access all of the good features you need to basically be paying a WoW subscription.

[Shinra]

FWIW, I don't know the exact prices as I'm not currently playing PSO2, but that's what it was the equiv. of in CB1. Even if it's 15 bucks for 90 days, it's still a pretty good deal given that it's basically the complete experience.

They probably intend to make the real money off scratch-offs for costumes/furniture/mag food, and then the premium shop respecs, and bag space upgrades. Those scratch-offs are addictive as fuck and you can blow through a huge reserve of funbux doing them

[sei]

pay to unlock trading. There's a premium card that you can buy for like, 5 dollars for 90 days that lets you trade, have a room and collect furniture, use the auction system, etc. Otherwise you have to pay like 2 bucks for a 30 day trade ticket. But you can trade an unlimited amount during that time frame.

So they soft-implemented the hunter's license (via trade blocking) with a slightly less shitty fee.

[sei]

Wound up on ship 6 with Norondor.

Again, Arks Cash ($) is not strictly aesthetic stuff. Decide whether you're comfortable with the following costing money.

• trading items to other plays (small fee for several month license
• respeccing
• buying additional spec trees so you don't have to respec as often
• additional character slot
• additional mag
• (probably, when implemented): ship (server) xfers

I'm still pretty low level, but I don't really like the existing talent tree implementation. You've got a grand total of 45 points after all questing is done, and prerequisites require pretty heavy investment in skills to unlock them. The entire left side of the HUnter tree requires 3 to 5 points in an utterly fucking worthless Extra HP talent (5 points = 10 hp, out of 300+ as a hunter).  There's unavoidable cruft all over the tree that you have to take to unlock stuff.

[Friday]

The entire left side of the HUnter tree requires 3 to 5 points in an utterly fucking worthless Extra HP talent (5 points = 10 hp, out of 300+ as a hunter).  There's unavoidable cruft all over the tree that you have to take to unlock stuff.

not sure if you're talking about PSO2 or WoW

[Smiler]

The newest update to gameguard can pretty much fuck your computer right up, so don't play the game right now.

The best error that can happen is that your copy of Windows can lose it's genuine status.

[sei]

The entire left side of the HUnter tree requires 3 to 5 points in an utterly fucking worthless Extra HP talent (5 points = 10 hp, out of 300+ as a hunter).  There's unavoidable cruft all over the tree that you have to take to unlock stuff.

not sure if you're talking about PSO2 or WoW

It's awful.

PSO2 also learned little from quality of life improvements in other games.

Here's a big list of their sins, so far:

• Too much time between rewards, even early game. The grind is fucking stupid. I think they're down to two """difficulty""" modes (normal, hard=+20lvs). The level cap is correspondingly low (=40), and they made the levels slow to compensate.
• Areas are unlocked by questing, which wouldn't be a problem, except that...
• The questing system is total trash.
  • Quest prerequisites are not obvious.
  • Quest NPCs are annoying to find. (Jean, Ulc, Joseph, etc.)
  • Missions can involve rare drops from rare mobs.
  • Progressing the story involves counter-intuitive behavior. Example:
  • Flesh out the mission board.
  • Repeat a story quest.
  • Go right at the 3-way fork that had an invisible wall on the left/right paths every other time you went there P.S., The leftmost side still has that invisible wall, which may incline you to believe the right remains sealed. There's no visual indicator whatsoever.
• The mag grind is even slower.
• The inventory system poorly accounts for the class switching system. If you have shit equipped on one class, it doesn't remain flagged in any way in your inventory. Bottom line: it's easy to accidentally lose or sell shit you were using as another class.
• Other players using an NPC in the same quest you're on make said NPC unavailable  while you're on that quest. E.g., if someone else took Lisa on KILL THE APE, which is a quest you're doing, and you want to use Lisa, you need to go out of your way to set your game to private (so you won't encounter players in the multi-party areas). This annoyance breaks my immersion more than seeing the same NPC tagging along with two parties.
• The item customization (affix transfer) system is obtuse. Affixes can't be stripped off items independently. This makes trying to customize your gear unnecessarily risky/tedious, since you can't just try to pull mod A off of an item with mods A, B, and C. Also, B and C increase the chance of failure. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
  
• Non-aesthetic things tied to currency. RMT is required to explore character potential and more than just the one class.
• Need $ to buy more character slots. Want to play the ideal race for each class? Cough it up.
• Need $ to buy mags (stat-boost items). Want to be remotely passable at a second class? Cough it up.
• Want to be able to exchange items with your friends? Cough it up.
• The game at large feels incomplete.

Things they did right:

• Instanced loot.
• Combat feels pretty good so far. PAs are compelling relative to, say, original PSO.
• Players primarily find gear for their current class.
• RMT for aesthetic improvements.
• Lisa's voice actress. (Fuhuhuhuhu! Sayo~nara!~)
  
• "Non-combat" sprint. (Could be faster, would like it to kick into total overdrive on the home base ship, since it takes too long to get anywhere on it.)

As mentioned before, characters can now jump. Some terrain adds a minor platforming element. I haven't gone far enough into the game to know whether this winds up being interesting or merely obnoxious in practice, though the juggle system has potential.