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PSO2NGS Rant

I’ve been playing this game for far too long so I figured it’s time for me to end this perfect attendance of mine at the start of 2026. I am so sick of this game.

I’m not going to bore you on the history of the NGS launch but understand that SEGA and the devs are making a game that is clearly chasing treads (like open-world) only to fall flat on it’s face. Now it’s only the die-hard fans demanding for older aspects that we all loved about, to be added in.

Lets get to the end of the 2025 and where I stand for this game.

Around months ago I finally reached towards one important question that I finally asked:

“What’s the point of getting good at this game?”

This is the part where you laugh at me. “Wow Yalyn finally asked this question?! How late is he?!”

Yeah I know. It’s just that I’ve finally reached the point where I didn’t die as a hero but lived long enough to be the villain (yes, I finally watched that film.) What I mean is that I managed to be the part of something I hated for so long and that is elitism. I never like elitism in many videogames out there because let’s be honest, we all just want to have fun and not get angry over the little things.

But somehow, for the first time, I’ve become an elitist in NGS. Thankfully, I do not speak publicly about pubs in area chat and official public Discord servers. But it’s insane for me to be part of the 1% rather than 99%. I rather be in the realm of being clueless and still finding out meta and strategy here or there. However, it’s too late, I’ve reached endgame by knowing how to play effectively and having the best augs on my gear. I can easily experience the difference between pub runs vs alliance only runs, it’s clear as night and day.

Something I’ve been stubborn about is looking at my teammates’ gear. I hate the idea of doing it because I feel there is better things to worry about such as my own gameplay, making sure I don’t make mistakes here or there. Let’s be honest though I cannot be oblivious for too long, it’s not helping.

But if I where to push aside gear. There are many kinds of players I cannot stand that even an average player do not like in combat:

•.Idling / AFK
•.Holding down the normal attack
•.Pretending to play the game (Attack little, stop, then repeat.)
•.Running around the map and never attacking
•.Bypassing the gear check and equipping weaker gear
•.Using Simplified Movement

When it comes to the most difficult content, players would quickly check to see if there is any Ranger in the team and also Techter. If they don’t see any, they’ll leave. It’s understandable why, Ranger’s Blight and Techter’s S/D seriously benefits the team. But what if I told you that players are now abandoning in easy quests now? Yes, it happening. I guess some players do not like that it took 2 to 4 minutes longer to finish a LQ.

Speaking of Abandon Quest feature … a good chunk of players have no idea that if you are the leader of the team and you use that feature, not only you leave, you also kick everyone out of the quest AKA disbanding the group. It’s really annoying for the those who wanted to stay in the quest. Don’t worry I’m guilty of doing this twice long ago.

Allow me to give an example, on Dec. 27th 2025, I missed the chance to play with the alliance, so I had no choice but to go pub … or not. I actually debated on this but I said, “lets see how awful this will be.”

Double UQ, Ruine Luther

Attempt 1: Success, but had a RA player just normal attacking from a distance and AFK right at the final phase and kept dying (with the ball at the center.) I managed to report the player in time.

Attempt 2: Fail, two players already left at the start possibly due to no RA in the team. Abandon.

Attempt 3: Fail, we have three RAs, what could possibly go wrong? Some idiot doesn’t know how Abandon Quest feature works so it quickly went from 8/8 to 4/8. Or maybe it’s a team that didn’t do matchmaking properly with the passwords. Abandon.

Attempt 4: Success, there a little argument about attacking the nose but thankfully other teammates explained quickly that it’s better done later to skip the phase, in which, we did!

So imagine someone like me who put a lot of time practicing and getting good at my class, only to get a lot of headache because of my pub teammates are not giving a damn.

Back to difficult content, rather—the weekly nonsense. Where to begin? Well, I don’t know why I’ve become somewhat obsessed with making sure I complete the weekly boss task. I’ll never forget having a pen and paper to check off once the new boss came out:

Day 1 release Dalion

18 Pub attempts

Timed out: 2

5/5 Deaths: 14

Abandoned: 0

D/c'd: 0

Matchmaking bug: 1

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Failed at the start: 4

Failed at the mid-way: 8

Failed at the end: 5

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17 Failures and 1 success

Now I don’t expect the pubs and myself to automatically be good at brand new content that just came out. However, it doesn’t solve the fact that even a month later, I’ll still either be waiting for a long time to queue and/or once I’m finally in the party, we fail halfway.

Now there are times I’ve been on and off for alliances. Thankfully there are those who are skillful enough to do this kind of content. And once we are in the grind the hardest content out there, I feel exhausted. The same kind of exhaustion that I get when we finally defeat the boss for the first time.

I don’t how is it possible for the devs to make a stressful game like this, unlike other games I’ll be mentioning soon.

I will say after having a vacation oversea, I finally stopped giving a damn about the weekly boss task. It’s been more than 2 months I haven’t fought the boss. It’s not worth the stress. Thankfully the alliance I’m part of is very nice to help me but I feel very guilty of dragging them into something I know they do not like to do twice or even three times.

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So … how did we get here? I’ll say right away that the devs are to be blamed for this and not the community. I don’t like to point fingers at the playerbase and yelling at them to “learn to play better.”

The other games I enjoyed the most in terms of difficulty is Monster Hunter series and FromSoft action-RPGs. It all comes from one simple concept, dying has consequences. In Monster Hunter if you and your teammates collectively died 3 times, the quest ends and you’ll have to start all over. For FromSoft’s Dark Souls, if you die, you’ll re-spawn from the last checkpoint. There is a sting you feel, you know you made a mistake, you learn failure very quickly. You already know what I’m getting at here. In NGS there is no consequences for dying, you can easily be revived. It’s only until you reach toward the end content where the devs finally added in limit on the number of times you are allowed to die.

So in Monster Hunter, players have no choice but to learn how to get good at the game from start to finish. But in NGS, you can play very sloppy and you’ll end up not ready to fight end-game content with a death limit.

I’ll never forget the Black Dragon for PSO2Classic for JP servers. This is during the time where PSO2Global/PSO2NA wasn’t out yet. Long-story-short, The Black Dragon was too damn difficult that the devs removed the death limit after a week of the players complaining about how hard it was.

Another thing I’ll never forget as well, my brain. When I go to work my brain is still thinking about what I’ve recently played and how I could do better. For Monster Hunter World it was “Hold on! What if I use a different weapon and strategy instead?” For Dark Souls it was “Okay I’ve made an Archer only character but what if I make a Fist weapons only character instead?” But NGS … it was “What is the next crazy fashion/outfit I should wear today?” Yeah my brain doesn’t want to think about gameplay at all for NGS, it’s sad.

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So a recent update happened and it’s more free gear that’s designed for either new players, returning players, and maybe casual/inexperienced players. As long as they reach towards a certain level of course (Right now it’s level 65 when the current cap is level 110 which isn’t hard to do.)

I always have mixed feelings for the devs just straight up handing out free gear. In one hand the players can finally have a way to catch up but on the other hand, the players will just be lazy and not make proper gear.

The thing is, this isn’t new. They been doing this for more than a year, maybe two years.

What my biggest issue is the recent free gear’s potency being too close to my current gear. It used to be that my gear was still better than what the devs would give out for free many months ago. But now it’s too close by 0.5 percent difference. At first when I saw this I was like “Oh no! I better start grinding more so that way I don’t fall behind.” But then after a day or so I finally ask another huge question:

“What’s the point of making good gear?”

Yup feel free to laugh at me again.

Now I understand that right now there is a controversy around the new AC support scratch that’ll include EX Augs. Awhile I like to join the boycott and what not, my problem is the whole system itself.

The idea of crunching down gold swords and units into 100 plus is … time consuming. Upgrading new gear from scratch … is time consuming. Looking at what augs I need to install on the gear is … time consuming. And of course, upgrading the prefixes … time consuming. After when I do all of this … I just want to quit the game and do something else. It doesn’t help how slow the menu are due to lag. No faster method of upgrading the gear other than using 100+ golds n’ other materials. My face is staring at the user interface and menus … the whole thing is boring as fuck. My eyeballs feels like its about to be red when I was trying to get my Add-on Skill for 20/20/x. It’s all 20s now but holy shit it was the worst thing I’ve ever done in gaming ever. I want to kill monsters not waste time looking at menus and spreadsheet.

And I understand, more powerful augs will be added in later so eventually there will be a clear difference between upgraded gear vs freebies. But why even try?

Seriously, I’ll have to grind so much hours for either getting little to moderate amount of materials/augs needed to complete the set. Oh-and-uhh also get screwed with the augs failing on you even though you have 40% boosters. Great system right?

Speaking of grind, just doing any LQs is enough to make me insane. I can’t stand doing more than 1. I get that doing 10 plus with a booster is the norm right now but I must be getting old way too quickly for this. Heck I just rather skip the LQ once I got what I already needed for certain tasks.

If there is anything I’ll say is that at least I know what I’m doing unlike PSO2Classic. I have no idea how to upgrade my gear in PSO2Classic. Even in combat I’m very awful as well.

This game seriously lacks additional variety of augments. It’s just 8 powerful options, with two of them being part of the “pay2win” support scratches. There is only one I know I can fall back to and that is the DP augs. Unless the devs gives us the options to get the LC versions of the current augs that are out there.

Taking a step back, it makes me want to either just use the free gear or use my older gear. What’s the point of doing all the grind?

External factors:

I usually like to think myself and only myself. Form my own opinions and do my own research. However, after seeing two individuals doing something off putting, it really made me think: “I can’t ignore this any longer.”

The first person I saw was Millie who is well known for making spreadsheets for the community. This person finally had enough and is now cutting back on the math n’ such. This is the second time we seen something like this. The first being Abandac meta nonsense.

(Image)

The second person is BigPabz, known for being in the top 10 in the leaderboards (and maybe even making serious videos showcasing top plays?) This person has left the alliance and has “retired.” Whenever that means, it could mean that the person will still put little of hours into the gameplay or just idle in the lobbies. Who knows.

(Image)

Summary:

Basically, I don’t see the point of getting good and I don’t see the point of making good gear anymore.

Another way of saying it is, why should I waste hours when my teammates are not performing better?

And finally, if the devs don’t care, the player base won’t care, then I won’t care.

Other things:

Lag:

Welcome to Microsoft Azure servers. I understand the deal between Sega and Microsoft, and sadly, this is the only way for this game to be localized or otherwise, well … the other option is we don’t get the game at all, we all just play JP only.

It is disturbing to hear how PSE burst happens on both Global and JP servers. Basically JP gets even more monsters to spawn quicker compared to Global. It really shows how laggy Global server can be. I really want to test this myself but I don’t want to go through the hassle of reinstalling the JP client.

Either way, lag will always come back in the most annoying ways possible. From a full 32 player all-ship Alter Realm, trails timing out in the Nameless City, and bosses taking additional 5 to 10 seconds to spawn at the end of LCs. And yes those 5 to 10 seconds do matter in LC by the way.

Arks Records is a joke:

If I’m correct, you can cheese the Dash races by using Waker’s abilities. As for certain Trainia’s bosses, you’ll hopefully not deal with certain RNG nonsense AKA attack patterns not being the same. There was a time where me and the rest of the top 15 beat the boss by using a spear PA only. Just seeing the top 10 being fill with nothing but HU is funny to me but not for others. By the way, the meta has shifted away from that so that’s at least good. I’m just going to half ass these attempts and stay bronze from now on.

Duel Quests:

I only have issues with the original release with the dumb “make entirely separate gear set to beat it multiple times in swift matter.”

It’s no longer needed now, but that doesn’t stop how boring it is to climb towards the 100th for the Masq (right now I’ve left it at depth 8.) Any new dual quests that is out really bored me to death after a few runs.

These Duel Quests continue to remind me how very single-player the game has become.

Cannot reconnect to a party (AKA rejoin an existing UQ/LQ because you disconnected):

I’ve said this multiple times, it’s even in the first part of my Steam review. It’s clear the devs never played PSU, it’s not a perfect system but at least players will not miss out on the most critical rewards. Or better yet re-balance around that feature, it’s not that complicated. I’ve seen their response … in Discord by the way, not in the official website. Pretty unprofessional honestly, they don’t want to be “internet archived” just in case they didn’t mean to say something stupid. Both PSO2Classic and NGS is far beyond 10 plus years old and they can’t put in this feature? Why? Not everyone has a perfect internet service provider, perfect modem/router, perfect cable/wi-fi adapter, perfect power source with zero interference from weather, and finally I can’t trust that Microsoft Azure servers being perfect either. Disconnections will happen no matter what.

Trading:

This has been talked to death. Alliances are hosting fashion contests and even doing something called a raffle system. Somehow, one way or another, someone is going to get banned for just getting meseta by listing a single grinder/primm weapon. The devs have no way of knowing the difference between a RMT trade vs contest reward/raffle reward. This would of not been a problem if we had a trading function. I’ve already brought this up with the support team and they said they cannot tell me what is acceptable or not unless they make a public statement.

Line Strike:

Look, I actually enjoy PSO Ep3 Card Revolution (for GC). However, Line Strike did not in any way made me feel engaged with the game play. After a week Line Strike came out, most players stopped playing it. I feel as if this is a waste of time and budget on the devs part.

Only two weeks to complete a title but only if RNG is on your side:

Basically there was a title that you could get, only if the LQ has the rare monster appearing. I finally got it … on the last two days of the event. This is unacceptable.

Even worse, someone in the official Discord had the audacity to bring up SJS hunt from PSO1.

Really? Alright. Let’s make a comparison here:

-In NGS you only have two weeks awhile in PSO1 you have almost infinite amount of time.

-In NGS, you are dealing with queue times but in PSO1 you can easily solo the quest both offline and online.

-In NGS you’ll have to reach halfway through the LQ just to see if you get the rare encounter but in PSO1 you can fight the Gi Gues (the monsters that drop the SJS) right away and then reset after a few rooms.

-In NGS you have zero idea how rare this encounter is but in PSO1, the information is data mined.

I believe you already get the point. This is the ol’ live service nonsense we have to deal with now and the Fear-of-Missing-Out (FOMO). I don’t see why a few players being okay with this.

Play the “How much Scratches are going to be announced in the upcoming NGS Headline?”:

No really, it’s sad if you compared to the early headlines to the current. It’s either the same amount to almost double the amount. Too much revival scratches and support scratches. More SG scratches and now a new Meseta scratches. The whole thing is just lazy if you think about it because from the devs perspective, this is “content.”

It was already bad how they want to get away the lack of 3-day shop passes at the start by saying “Hey! We are giving you a free scratch draw per day!” As if we are not dumb enough to see the awful corporate trap. It’s just as bad as giving a child a free pull at the slot machines from the casino.

By the way I understand we finally have 3-day shop passes once they announce their first Mission Pass in NGS.

Urgent Quests:

Oh right, time-gated content. I sure love time-gated content. I understand this is the oldest trick in the book from SEGA but I’ll explain again. It’s simple: You want that new gear? You’ll have to wait for the UQ to have a chance at it.

So one attempt per 2 to 3 hours. There also a double UQ at certain events here or there. But what about Triggers? Well now! You know the chances are a lot more slim than ever from a trigger version of the UQ.

Now don’t get me wrong here, there has been multiple times where it’s pointless to do UQ because the new gear would come from other kinds of content such as Alter Realm and LC.

Still, it’s designed to waste our time in the end of the day.

Tower Defense:

I’ll be blunt. Some are going to ask “Why is there no more Tower Defense UQ? I like to see one for Stia region.”

Alright, I’ll tell you why: Players abandoning the quest.

Yeah--you didn’t like to hear it but it’s the sad truth. No matter what state the team is in, near the end or even the start of the quest, someone will leave. Just because they either want a good rank or kill the final boss for that aug drop. PSO2Classic’s Tower Defense UQs are far more difficult than NGS are.

Think about it, it’s easy to calculate the whole situation: You’ve only finished 2 out of the 6 waves, and there is only two out of three towers left alive, and the towers HP is below 50%. You know your pub teammates are not coordinated for this UQ, and there is a limited task reward for completing it and not failing it. So what do you do? You abandon because you know you have 20 minutes left to complete one to two UQs. The devs never thought too much about the mindset from the players’ perspective.

And that’s important perspective to understand here. Compared to a typical boss UQ, you know no matter how short or long the UQ is, you and your team will eventually win no matter what. But in Tower Defense UQ, there is chance of a losing state, and you know players do not want to fail. The devs definitely have data to know that TD UQs might have the most abandon players compared to other UQs out there (in the past anyway.) It’s clear they do not want to make any more of these kinds of quests. (Sure players will abandon other UQs because of “lack of RA and/or TE player” or “players not skillful enough” but I want to believe that TD is far worse back then.)

By the way, rank does not matter for drops, it’s the monsters that are killed, the most important being the boss at the end (long ago anyway). The only reason to care about the rank is titles (and the rewards from the titles.)

I’ll never forget, one of the well-known CAST players (in Ship 1) had to ask “Why are players leaving?” And that’s when the first wave about to start … yeah, we didn’t even get to start the first wave yet, and we are already 5/8 in pub. It’s ridiculous.

Meseta problem:

Augh … all I have to say is who’s idea it was to make these Red Boxes reward meseta? That was an awful start to ruining the economy right at day 1.

Fast forward to now, a lot of stuff is still pricey from the players’ shops. Sure the devs actually boosted meseta rewards for Global side unlike JP servers. It’s still hard for any new player who enter into this game and wanting cool stuff unless they pay for some scratches.

LC:

I’ve sent this feedback to SEGA twice. The only good content that the devs have put out in NGS is the original release of LC. Beside the usual level cap increase, new weapons and units, and … one new aug … in LC we got a lot of LC augs, which in turn allows the inexperienced players to be more engaged with the gear making process, allowing the players to not fall behind too far. It’s great, until the new LC comes out and it’s lazy as heck. No more new LC augs? What is there to expect? Why should I continue doing anymore LC? An event will come around the corner and provide useful materials anyway.

Also I don’t know if this is netcode issue but having those rare moments where it took 5 to 10 additional seconds for the final boss to spawn in is just awful. Because every second does matter in pub runs. How many times do I have to see 5 percent health left and we timed out?

PSE Burst:

This was an absolute running gag for the first two years of NGS. Non-stop of NGS Headline community questions always has something PSE related.

Okay, I’ve never watched a video nor read the Google docs on how this work but lets see if I’m right:

1.There are two methods to getting PSE Burst. One is the traditional, and the other is the gambling method. Most players want to gamble so everyone needs to split up and ignore the T for awhile.
2.Once everyone is split, keep killing random mobs until the bar is up to 4 out of 5.
3.However it’s okay for the bar to be 3 out of 5 under the conditions that there is a Chaos Trial and/or there is a “defend the cargo” trial.
4.And finally, if you ever see Aina and Manon show up in the trial, it doesn’t matter what the bar is. But, remember, only those two NPCs together (Manon and Dozer for example, doesn’t count.)
5.Once you finish the trial in time, you’ll get a PSE burst.

This is assuming I’m right about this system because I could be wrong and providing misinformation.

Problem is that there will always be a tug-of-war with the gamble method because it’s easy for a Force to accidentally kill a mob in front of a Boss Trial thus making the bar go down and of course no PSE Burst happens once the trial is finished. It can’t be helped, what can any player do in that situation? Even worse, the bar can go down at anytime even though no mobs are killed, making it more confusing than ever.

Even in recent months I would still see players getting on to their keyboards complaining on to inexperienced players not understanding how PSE Burst system works in those combat zones.

Seriously, this is devs fault from the very start. All they could of done is simply create a more clear and cohesive way for the players to know what they did wrong or not. But it’s easy to put the players in the dark because every mechanic now-a-days has to be a slot machine.

They could of updated the manual, make a video tutorial, or have a NPC guide you in the game… but no. They don’t. They do not care.

You are free to believe that it’s “common knowledge” on how to get PSE Burst in an efficient way now but ask any active player who grinds this kind of stuff for the meseta and they’ll tell you, it’s the same old problems. Also ask them how many boosters they burned too.

Event fatigue:

This is exclusive to me due to how old I am and the number of online Phantasy Star games I’ve played.

I understand there is a balance to strike and it’s even more noticeable from people who manage private servers. Do you pump out more events within a year or less events within a year?

I’ve played PSU for the PS2/PC servers and it shows that people will only play once the event will drop, making me and everyone else becoming an “event players.” Otherwise it’s a ghost town because the game is pay2play monthly service. Why continue to pay when there is hardly any content to deal with plus very slow grind? Just wait for an event to happen instead.

Fast forward to now, it’s clear the devs have no choice but to pump out more and more events than ever before. It can be quite tiresome and boring since almost all the events are pretty much the same. It’s either have two high quality events in a year or four poorly thought out events in a year. You choose. Wait, the devs are the ones choosing, so we know what they prefer. SEGA got competition.

M.A.R.S. , After Blast , and Skill Rings:

These three things sure look like it’s something to be excited about but it’s all boring to me honestly.

And I understand the need to have something to keep busy with or otherwise the player base will just complain the new content is easy to finish within a week.

MARS is interesting I guess, move fast, get a third jump, able to attack differently compared to your current class (for example I play HU and cannot shoot from a distance but MARS can help with that.) However it does push me and other to think if it’s worth using DPS wise. For me I ended up using it 10 to 5 percent of the time.

After Blast, I’ll say this quick, glad the camera animation can be turned off because I find that to be a rather amateur move in game development. I guess I’m too much in the end-game and I take the game too seriously. The issue is simply that by having the camera point elsewhere you may or may not know what the opponent is doing. It’s the same as game freeze in time to give you a tutorial, it’s annoying.

Anyway, After Blast is fine. I had a hard time understanding what each skill does and I even wasted time in the training quest area too. Either way, my DPS did go high after using the After Blast … I guess that’s good right?

Skill Rings, it’s an easy way to make money. Give it enough time and most of the rings will be affordable. Maybe. For now, there is only a few rings that I’d care about but otherwise most are just junk, and it shows in the players’ shops. Don’t forget that the only way to upgrade the rings is getting the identical rings. So far I only upgraded my rings once and that’s it. Couldn’t bother caring.

Load times:

So this was suggested from someone who I played a lot with and I agree this is worth putting in.

In the world of triple-A gaming, it’s the standard to have major titles being launched buggy and/or unoptimized. The most recent titles I’ve seen that has the dreaded “compiling shaders” nonsense would be Monster Hunter Wilds and Borderlands 4. Now NGS does not have the mandatory compiling shaders at the start (or maybe it does but it’s fast and I can’t see it.) But that Steam review (for BL4) allowed me to re-create this NGS experience, so, allow me to parody what he typed but I go for NGS instead:

(initial load/bootup)

Select ship and character

(loading)

Get log-in bonus and eat food, teleporting to alliance mag

(loading)

Get the alliance mag boost, going to personal Creative Space to complete the weekly task

(loading)

Grab the genesis points from the tree, leaving back to ARKS base

(loading)

Back in base it’s time to feed one the region mags, teleporting …

(loading)

Fed the region mag, before I finish the dailies, I gotta grab the valuables

(loading)

Got the 1/3 of Alpha Reactors

(loading)

Got the rest of Alpha Reactors, next is Stella Fragments

(loading)

Fragments are done, next is Snorals

(loading)

Got the the Snorals, gotta get those hidden boxes next

(loading)

Okay done, next I need … oh-oops! I need meats for my daily tasks and there is none to kill here …

(loading)

That task is done, I need to finish off the final task which to kill 50 enemies in combat zone

(loading)

Oh hey there is a PSE burst going on but it’s really far away, I’ll teleport to the other Ryuker device

(loading)

Made it in time! Finish the task and got some decent meseta from the PSE burst, back to base

(loading)

Checked the shop and turns out an UQ is happening soon, alliance team mates is calling me

(loading)

We gathered party and uh-what?! I disconnected! Okay, I guess I’ll reconnect.

(loading)

I’m back but it’s the wrong block, so I’ll have to transfer to where my teammates are …

(loading)

Finally … ready to play some UQ … yay.

So what’s the whole point of me typing all this? Because sure, there is a high chance you guys are playing NGS in a more modern hardware. However I wish this was the case. It’s oddly easy for me to see if I am playing with teammates that are running on weak hardware. Anytime I run pub LQ, I’m always the first to get to the teleporter. The difference between SSD vs HDD is very noticeable because I had the chance to test this game out on the OG Xbox One. Woo … crusty audio and screen tearring.

So you know that trick that I did by being able to catch up with the PSE Burst by teleporting to the other side by using the other Ryuker device? You cannot pull that off in the older hardware. The load times take forever. It’s better to just run there by foot, you’ll get little but it’s better than zero.

Another unfortunate aspect is switching rooms to finish killing off Dreads. You’ll have folks like me who is able to load in faster, locate the target, kill it before any poor soul who is still loading not being able to finish the task. I didn’t think about this until today and I feel sorry.

So yes, looking back at the lengthy list I’ve made, it’s very painful to play NGS on weaker hardware.

You figure certain number of steps could be knocked down to reduce the number of load times? Or is this elaborate attempt by the devs to waste more of our time?

Story … or rather how they present it and what-not:

Alright, do you like robots learning how to act for the first time? No? Well-too-bad. Welcome to NGS cut scenes. Because you gonna enjoy such nonsense such as placing NPCs in their typical positions. Next the camera will pan towards the NPC, the NPC will deliver their dialogue, cut to the other NPC, awkward silence for 2 seconds, the other NPC is now doing an animation, finally, the other NPC speaks their line. Seriously, this get worse for certain voice actors/actress not doing a good job. Or maybe they did their best and it’s the director not giving enough information to them. Those awkward pauses—god damn.

The lack of believable body language and the characters not being able to talk over each other make this as if I am watching aliens learning how to act like humans. It’s not surreal, it’s bland at best. Okay, here, can you honestly stand still and be symmetrical for a long period? It’s hard right? I’m not saying that we need a NPC who slouching all the time but we need the devs to be able to immerse us into their world. Otherwise what I’m seeing is a bunch of NPCs standing still and each character is taking their sweet time providing their dialogue.

And yet, the action sequences looks like it’s done by a different director. Because they are actually awesome. No complaints there. It’s so odd, when it comes to the talkin’ … it’s not good.

Predatory practices and possible dark patterns:

Many players might be able to see these methods from the devs but I feel it’s my duty to explain it anyway.

This will mostly focus on cosmetics but you could see non-cosmetics being a problem too.

First, quick history, starting with PSU. So after the western servers for both PS2/PC and Xbox are down, the only remaining server that is up is the JP servers. After years of being stubborn, they finally made PSU free to play (called Free Course, bizarre name I know.) The difference between free2play vs premium is the usual stuff, premium has access to room, player-shop, crafting, etc.

Here where things get interesting, they decided to toy with the idea of putting more micro-transactions onto the game. And it’s gacha type [link] [link2] (also known as lootboxes, crates, scratches, and any other type of key words these devs love to use … surprise mechanics.)

For a long time that game haven’t had any new costumes added but once they put in gacha mechanics, that's where things get wild. I’ll never forget a montage screenshot of a female new naughty costume, lots of low-poly crotch shots, those were the days… I understand that sex sells but I want to point out that this is the beginning of where devs are testing out the audience. The devs want to know how far the players are willing to put their money out.

So let’s fast forward and what do we have now? Let’s see if I can break it down:

•The most obvious will be outside of the game officially, by that I mean the official website and their social media accounts. They present the cosmetics visually by video and screenshots.
•In-game, once you logged in you’ll be greeted by a log-in screen that may showcase either SEGA’s own content and/or collab content, reminding you that there is new cosmetics out.
•The menu will always have red exclamation point reminding you that there is either a daily free scratch and/or free Ex-cubes in the AC shop. There is no way of disabling it altogether.
•The flashy animation whenever you scratch anything, it doesn’t matter. It’s designed to be dopamine driven. They would even add in hidden golden/red scratch just to let you know that you got something “good.” (The “good” is labeled as “feature”.)
•Even worse, the devs keep having to add in more scratches such as treasure scratch, meseta scratch, special scratches, and so on. The goal is to keep players engaged with the scratches. Really, I rolled my eyes when they added in a 3rd new scratch system (First two being AC and SG) because that sure is content right there.
•The devs have huge data knowing what will be the most desirable. Getting hairstyles and emotes will always have low percentage which in turn creates a scarcity.
•Anything that is labeled as “featured” lets’ the players know that the cosmetic is valuable. In addition, those goods cannot be sold under 500k meseta.
•For AC scratches, you’d need to do (usually) 30 attempts to get a special ticket that’ll allow you to choose one thing that you actually want. (For me that’s around 60 USD.)
•Peer-pressure in game. Seeing your friends, alliance mates, and random players having the cosmetics that you may or may not want.
•Peer-pressure outside of the game. Seeing players and content creators showcasing their looks in social media platforms by screenshots and videos (like YouTube, Twitter, Discord, Reddit etc.)
•The somewhat subtle way of showing the costume from 1-2 weeks ahead by having the event NPC wearing the new costume.
•The Fear-of-Missing-Out (FOMO) is always be a problem since these AC scratches are out for a number of weeks (usually 4 weeks.) Usually it’s a very high chance that collab scratches will never come back as a “revival scratches.”
•And who knows if the devs will bring back the scratch averts in loading screens, for now it’s gameplay related stuff.
•Also we used to have video screens in town replaying the update videos, which show offs the new cosmetics, that has stopped for now.
•And finally, the devs knew how important players take screenshot of their characters so they provide additional features to the screenshot mode. This feature is designed to attract inexperienced and new audience into the game. Am I stretching this too far right now?
•Recently, we have free Ex-cubes that can be obtained in the AC Shop just for viewing the shop. This feature limited time and is not always available everyday. This is an obvious and desperate attempt to get their customers to view and buy their goods.
•Extra, lmao to any content creator using their AC to scratch in their videos/streams. (Ex: A single YouTube video showcasing the content creator scratching and … that’s it.)

So seeing this from the new player’s perceptive is gonna be hell. The new player will be bombarded with in-game ads, seeing their new friends’ cool cosmetics, and outside of the game, seeing social media plus Discord posts from players’ new looks etc.

I’ll use my character for example. I’ll have a new player asking me where to get the hair style such as Fluffy Afro. My answer is “unobtainable, it’s from Fresh Finds Shop.” (Which no longer exist.) Okay, then the player asks me where to get that basewear. My answer is, “it’s from SG scratch from long ago, you’ll have to wait until they do a revival scratch but otherwise, there is no way of getting it right now.” And finally, the player asked where I got that mag from. Well, “it’s from a NPC in PSO2Classic that’ll require materials (Medals/Ragol memories) that can no longer be obtained now. Sorry.”

So what I’ve written above is a full blown FOMO in effect. The new player is in shock of how much goods cannot be obtained.

Alright, you know this is coming, that’s right. Players’ shops and the economy. From the new players’ perspective, they’ll have two choices, grind a lot and/or give in to paying AC n’ scratch. And you know, that wasting hours doing PSE bursts with meseta boosters may provide some results but in the end, it’s faster to scratch and sell the cosmetics/augs instead.

The criticism that it’s difficult to obtain enough meseta through combat will always be a problem. And the devs will continue to leave it at that because it’s easier to put in real money into the game. They believe that the more players struggle, the more likely they will give up and pay instead. Or will the players do that? There are times when the market is dry as hell because the scratch is not interesting or not a lot of players want to log-in (some folks call it “slow-week” due to no event and no exciting content happening.)

The only time I’m aware of the meseta reward being boosted, is from the weekly tasks, if I am correct. This is only exclusive to the Global servers due to how busted the economy is.

Yes, RMT (Real-Money-Trade) is a thing but that is a common problem for almost every MMORPG out there. And again, yes, RMT is a bannable offense.

So let’s list the tactics that are being used here: Advertisement, Flashy effects to push dopamine, Fear-of-Missing-Out (FOMO), Peer-pressure, Manipulation in market and scarcity, luring customers with free samples (1 free SG scratch and 2 free Ex-cubes), getting used to scratching system with in-game currency that does not require real money, and of course, constant reminder of their goods. Oh and uhh attracting users with user-created screenshots thanks to the game’s features if you want to count that.

I haven’t played mobile games in a long time but has NGS become like one now? I have no idea.

Unable to Report Players:

This really make no sense. Simply, I want to have the ability to report players after the quest is finished or I teleported elsewhere. So I go the communications menu, look through “multi-party users”, found the user, and … there is no report function. Why? I have no idea why.

So you are telling me, in order to report bad actors, I have to stop doing anything combat related, use the menu real fast and then report? Because that’s sure is convenient for my teammates alright … Never mind the fact that could get others to report me because I had to stop for 20 secs. I supposed to be attacking, not idling and wasting time with menus. (I have Nearby Players in my quick menu if you are wondering.)

This is even more annoying for all-ship servers. There is nothing I can do once the quest is done.

Makeup and certain body paints looks absolutely awful on dark skin characters:

I understand there is a bias and/or most players prefer playing lighter skin tone characters. And I understand I can change the color to my preference. It still does not stop the fact that some of the body paints I want to use looks really awful.

List of issues I cannot speak much about:

Consider this as “I acknowledge there is an issue but I cannot contribute much to the topic.”

•.SEGA giving up on PSO2Classic, no more updates on the base game
•.Erotic Role-play, and players using accessories in a naughty way
•.Whatever is happening in the Aelio block 1 (Spamming, harassment, etc.)
•.Collab content that only exist in the JP servers (surprised we didn’t get Evangelion)
•.Tim’s Tasks, holy shit they are boring to do, always the same old tasks

List of issues I already talked about but I can’t add more to it:

You’ll have to read the main part of the rant from the top to understand why. I’d love to add more but I don’t see the point.

•.Players leaving the quests for both easy and hard content
•.Players not understanding how Abandon Quest feature works
•.Very, very long queue times for difficult content.
•.Support Scratches (A few would like to call this “pay2win” scratches, I mean sure I guess.)
•.Add-On Skills menu boredom.

Outside of the Game:

(If you care on what I have to say outside of the game such as communities in social media sites, forums, Discord, etc, then here you go.)

Lack of support on Wikis:

I get it, I feel as if I should learn how wikis work so I can contribute to the community.

But it still hold the sad fact: The less the players play the game, the less players want to contribute.

That goes for making useful images, videos, docs/sheets, and finally wikis.

It feels as if there is only one person managing the wiki. The moment new gear is added into the game, it’ll take more than 24-48 hours for the new gear to be added into the wiki. To some it would not be a big deal but to others, it is. There will moments here or there when some players want to compare their gear to see if it’s worth upgrading and/or switching. But because no one wants to contribute to the wiki, we’ll have to wait until someone updates it.

I’ll never forget reading the news message from one of the wiki editors saying that he/she will be slowing down and/or quit because no one wants to step in and help.

It’s stuff like this that really paints the picture. It gives that feeling that players do not have the energy nor care to give back. To contribute.

Creators Program:

I shouldn’t have to explain how bad this is but I’ll make it “short and simple”:

•.The lack of transparency from the creators on simply not putting the “NGS Official Creator” in their bio or about me is unacceptable. It’s almost as bad as some person making a review of the product and did not disclose that the person got it for free. Some day a few audience will eventually learn that the videos they watched happens to be part of the program, and also learn that the creators get free digital goods. In the end the audience will feel like they got tricked. You could make the argument that the digital goods are not that great. Sure. But honesty is the most important.
•.The whole program is a corporate trap. Let’s say that one of the creators want to dial down on making less videos on NGS because a new game/MMO is around the corner. Well they can’t because they have to make sure the videos meet SEGA’s demands or else that creator will be kicked from the program.
•.Similar to a previous point, it creates a third level of stress. The first two is pleasing the platform and audience/oneself. The third stress is pleasing SEGA. By making sure that the creators have the ability to get enough view counts per month or otherwise it’s done. Nevermind the fact that someone allegedly already viewbotted their own channel which can possibly hurt other naturally grown channels.
•.This program will only continue to divide the community. Where you have one side that is in the program awhile the other side is not in the program. Thus, creating a awful “cool kids club” kind of silliness. Let me be clear, content creators that are in the program and not in the program are in the same category as the rest of players AKA consumers.
•.Bias, this is difficult. Simply put you’ll have at least have a few that’ll accuse some of the content creators for not being honest because they are in the program. Yes, in the fine print, SEGA wants all of the content creators to be “truthful” about their products. But that would not stop the fact that SEGA can remove anyone from the program without any notice. And it would not stop the sad fact that some creators may or may not have to pull back because they are being too harsh about the game. This sucks for all official creators no matter what position they are in. Honestly it’s easier for the public to trust creators that are not in the program.

If we were to take a step back, YouTube or rather any social media platforms reward users for making informational to mis-informational content, useful to useless content, shocking to normal content, influencing to dis-influencing content. These companies do not care other than money and attention. We’ve reach the point where these videos are filled with manipulative editing/music, sponsors, ads, scams, etc. We went from Trolling to Click-bait to now, Rage-bait content.

Back to NGS videos, I almost never watch them because I get all the information I need from wikis, Discord, and Google spreadsheets/docs. But one video I’ve watched is around 9 minutes long … and it could have been done by telling these users by typing in three sentences instead. These videos are soul-less and it is because the platform rewards quantity rather than quality. And it doesn’t help that the creators program only make it terrible. SEGA did not need to interfere with this busted system but they did and it’s a lot worse.

When I checked out Reddit there was a post about a “beef” between two content creators arguing about SEGA’s upcoming “super-game.” I really wanted to log in and ask the Reddit user: “Did you ever think that what you are doing right now is just giving these content creators views?” Because the whole “beef” between the two creators could be fake. It does not matter who is right or wrong, the content creators only care about the numbers.

The only videos I watch are guides that provide visual aid and the top players beating difficult content.

By the way, please do not bother any content creators about this. Why? Because they already read the fine print. They already know what they’ve gotten themselves into. And if they didn’t know now, they’ll find out later.

Finally, I have not watched any content creators’ videos on “why I’ve left the program” or “my thoughts on the program.” Reason is because I think it’s important to have my thoughts and information coming from my own brain and not collect off of others, if that make sense. This means that there is a chance I may have missed something even bigger issue about the program. So if you have free time, go ahead and watch those videos.

Extra: “Why do I see certain users having an oblivious attitude towards any content creator mentioned? Such as ‘who?’ and/or ‘don’t know who that is’”

My answer is, sounds like those folks might be the older type of gamers … like me I guess. The thing is, the idea of “content creator” did not exist during the days of PSO1 to PSU (plus those portable games too.) Sure you could name a few that’s been around for a long time that played those games and made videos about it but those creators make variety content. It’s hard to find anyone who made a lot of videos for those older online Phantasy Star games in the past. And I mean “only” PS related content.

So for the old gamers to see any content creator having a spotlight from SEGA’s official social media posts will look very odd, foreign, out-of-place, or even cringe. They rather see news & updates … and memes, I guess it depends on the type of memes. Someone will be offended anyway. Can’t help it.

Merch:

Woo boy. Where to begin?

If you used Red Bubble before then there is a chance you’ve heard of Print-on-Demand services.

I get that companies having their own merch store will require hiring staff, having a warehouse, inventory of goods, making sure the goods are up to standards, customer service in case things go bad, and the tech to make the goods (or just print on shirts/hoodies etc.) Good old logistics.

Now all that requires money but knowing SEGA … they don’t want to waste time and money for that.

Why go through all that when you could just use Print-on-Demand service instead? I get a small group or even a solo business person using it but … this a mega corp we are talking about. SEGA, of all companies out there, can’t be bothered to make their own goods had to resort to PoD.

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So, what about the goods? Well, other than the embarrassing type in keywords in Amazon dot com to find the goods (yes they couldn’t be bothered to provide the link, like seriously, do you want customers to buy your goods or not SEGA? Holy shit.)

The T-shirt/hoodies designs are a hit or miss. A lot of misses though. There are designs that uses small text that can be hard to read, lack of drop shadow effect on the text so people can actually read (white text on white background, really?), artwork that’ll be difficult for the average person to understand what are they seeing, concept art that’s ripped from the artbook and no additional edits on it, and maybe even more I could go on about. These listings keep having way too much misspellings on NPC characters too (“Matoy” instead of “Matoi”).

Hey at least they tell you what materials is used on these clothing unlike Limited Run Games (by the way, never bought a single thing from that company.) But honestly that’s pretty easy on Amazon’s part.

Now I could buy one T-shirt to give a proper review but since this is Amazon, I refuse. I haven’t bought anything from Amazon for 3 plus years.

But looking at how this was done from top to bottom, this whole thing is lazy as heck.

Communities not learning from the past in terms of banning:

Do you remember the Rain Skipper outfit? Do you remember who designed it?

Well it doesn’t matter because the designer who happens to be one the winners is banned from the game. The designer made a post on Twitter saying “I have no idea why I’m banned.”

The community went furious on SEGA demanding to know why. Content creators that are usually within the PSO2 sphere and outside made videos about this, amplifying the issue.

So far, the community believes it’s insane for a company to take a design and straight up ban that person.

During that time, me and other old players pretty much just said “Uh-huh, we’ll see …” or “Sounds like bullshit” and also “We gonna have wait and see.”

What happened? Turns out the designer went under two different usernames. One is clean and the other is known for being part of an awful community, simply, being an asshole.

When a user went out of his/her way putting together an image to prove that designer has two usernames, the designer later confessed.

This in turn makes the community look like fools and makes content creators even bigger fools.

What’s sad is that half of the community never looked into the 2nd half of the story. They probably still think that the designer is still innocent. Even content creators didn’t bother making a follow-up video.

(If you are wondering why we no longer have designer contests, now you know.)

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Now do I need to talk about Sybolt Vs. GwizoftheStars? No I don’t because it’s the same old cycle.

Player gets banned, community/content creators gets outraged, old players are not fooled, time passes, turns out there is a serious reason why the player got banned, and community/content creators look like fools.

Long story short, stop joining the bandwagon and take a step back and ask “why?” Learn to wait and see. The truth will eventually come out.

(By the way, I’m neutral about the Sybolt Vs. Gwiz because I’ve only read Gwiz side and not Sybolt. I would need more time and also giving a darn about it to give my opinions about it. Something tells me a court case happened which is why Sybolt videos are no longer allowed on YouTube.)

SEGA using Discord instead of forums:

Let’s do a simple test. You are having a hard time figuring out what is going on with your game. You noticed that after looking through the wiki that there is no information about it.

So what do you do? You use the search function in Discord. Your results end up being empty.

What about message boards also known as forums? There is none. Sega shut down their own long ago.

Honestly, Discord is not a great place to host information. At least for both fourms and wikis, it’s organized. But in Discord, no. The not friendly user interface, sluggish lag, images needed to be zoom in, embeds not working, fighting with the mods/admins of the servers to add in features, and maybe even more. You’ll notice the flaws and the cracks showing as time passes. Did you ever experience Discord servers being down for at least 20 minutes or even longer? Or even worse, the admin shutting down the server, losing all kinds of information and memories.

And yet we still continue using Discord, getting too comfortable with the platform. For me, I do whatever I can to rarely use it.

I don’t want to talk about privacy nor me wanting that web 1.0 nonsense. The issue is that what does Discord offer to the entire PSO2 and NGS communities? Voice chat? Organizing parties? Sharing images/memes?

I understand moderation is awful in the official forums, but Discord is almost bad too. The mods can just turn on slow mode in certain channels just to signal to the users to not actively chat.

In the end Discord is a graphical version of IRC chat clients … but it’s shoved with Ads.

Community not understanding how SEGA operates:

I’ll keep it simple:

Sega of Japan (SoJ) is responsible for developing the game.

Sega of Europe (SoE) and Sega of America (SoA) is responsible for localization and customer service.

Microsoft helped published PSO2NA/PSO2Global by providing their own servers (Azure) and an exclusive deal by making sure the game is released on Xbox first for consoles, and MS Store first for PC. It took a long time until PS4 and PS5 players can finally PSO2 (and NGS).

Sending hate comments towards SoA and SoE will not solve anything. The only thing they can do is forward their feedback to SoJ. Also believing that one employee from either SoA or SoE is responsible for “ruining PSO2” and that one employee needs to be fired in order for the game to be better is just downright stupid. A certain minority wanted Gwiz to be gone … alright, is the game better now? No.