|OT| PSO2 - New Genesis | Phantasy Star Online 2-2

[Ascheroth]

This is really fun when it's not laggy as hell. Looks pretty good too!
I've started with Gunner and I'm having a blast just zipping around and seeing lots and lots of numbers pop.
I bailed from regular PSO2 cause that was just an overwhelming and confusing mess of bazillion menus and sub-systems with not much guidance, this one is much better on that front, it's really straightforward in comparison, lol.

Though it might just have the opposite problem of having too little cause... I just finished the story after... 12 hours with a level 13 Gunner/level 10 Hunter using a +30 2* TMG/Wired Lance multiweapon with level 2 potential unlocked .
Couldn't help but think, "wait that's already it?" I mean sure a couple new side quests popped up, there are these new higher level regions with better loot and technically I guess there are the red boxes to look for, but so little story content was quite a bummer. Still, I can see myself casually sticking to this.
The final story boss was awesome fun.

Multi-weapons are cool, but on the other hand this means it's going to be annoying to upgrade to something better. Got a 3* TMG, but I'd lose the wired lance if I'd switch over :/
But when it comes to upgrading in general: would I just feed the +30 2* weapon to the 3* weapon or is that a waste?

 

[ezodagrom]

This is really fun when it's not laggy as hell. Looks pretty good too!
I've started with Gunner and I'm having a blast just zipping around and seeing lots and lots of numbers pop.
I bailed from regular PSO2 cause that was just an overwhelming and confusing mess of bazillion menus and sub-systems with not much guidance, this one is much better on that front, it's really straightforward in comparison, lol.

Though it might just have the opposite problem of having too little cause... I just finished the story after... 12 hours with a level 13 Gunner/level 10 Hunter using a +30 2* TMG/Wired Lance multiweapon with level 2 potential unlocked .
Couldn't help but think, "wait that's already it?" I mean sure a couple new side quests popped up, there are these new higher level regions with better loot and technically I guess there are the red boxes to look for, but so little story content was quite a bummer. Still, I can see myself casually sticking to this.
The final story boss was awesome fun.

The lag is awful, unfortunately the emergency maintenance yesterday didn't fix it...

About not having alot of content, that's also how the JP version of PSO2 started as well, there were only 4 areas at the start, only half or less of the episode 1 story was available at launch, the lvl cap was 40, and alot of the overwhelming parts didn't exist back then (though it was still messy in explaining what to do, worse so than now).

Some people will be disappointed, especially those with alot of free time, but personally I don't mind starting with a small amount of content and getting relatively small updates between large ones (the next large one being in the winter, lvl 35 cap and a new region), especially since I have plenty of other games to play in between updates. Now if only they could fix the lag, it wasn't like this in the closed beta...

Multi-weapons are cool, but on the other hand this means it's going to be annoying to upgrade to something better. Got a 3* TMG, but I'd lose the wired lance if I'd switch over :/
But when it comes to upgrading in general: would I just feed the +30 2* weapon to the 3* weapon or is that a waste?

But at the same time, multi weapons means there's only 1 weapon to grind and augment instead of 2.
In your case, I would only upgrade directly into 4* while skipping 3* (4* is the max rarity right now).
Though, to merge tmg and wired lance, that would only be possible with the Resurgir series, which drop in any of the lvl 15 combat areas (there's other series of 4* weapons, but each of those series only have 4 weapon types, and none of them share tmg and wired lance, so doing multi-weapon with tmg/wired lance isn't possible with the other 4* series).

 

[Ascheroth]

The lag is awful, unfortunately the emergency maintenance yesterday didn't fix it...

About not having alot of content, that's also how the JP version of PSO2 started as well, there were only 4 areas at the start, only half or less of the episode 1 story was available at launch, the lvl cap was 40, and alot of the overwhelming parts didn't exist back then (though it was still messy in explaining what to do, worse so than now).

Some people will be disappointed, especially those with alot of free time, but personally I don't mind starting with a small amount of content and getting relatively small updates between large ones (the next large one being in the winter, lvl 35 cap and a new region), especially since I have plenty of other games to play in between updates. Now if only they could fix the lag, it wasn't like this in the closed beta...

Oh I'm fine with it not being massive, but I was hoping for at least 20-30 hours of story content. Though I suppose I'll reach that ballpark anyway, since I still have fun just playing and as I said, side quests, collecting the boxes and the high level stuff awaits.

But at the same time, multi weapons means there's only 1 weapon to grind and augment instead of 2.
In your case, I would only upgrade directly into 4* while skipping 3* (4* is the max rarity right now).
Though, to merge tmg and wired lance, that would only be possible with the Resurgir series, which drop in any of the lvl 15 combat areas (there's other series of 4* weapons, but each of those series only have 4 weapon types, and none of them share tmg and wired lance, so doing multi-weapon with tmg/wired lance isn't possible with the other 4* series).

Yeah only having to upgrade 1 is good indeed.
Looks like I'll just stick with my current stuff then and change whenever I get something 4* (I actually have a 4* rifle, but I like the TMGs more).
Not sure yet if I stick with the Hunter/Wired Lance, that was basically just me going "this looks fun, let's just do it, practicality be damned " (and considering I beat the level 15 final boss solo at level 13 like that I guess min-maxing doesn't matter that much. Also, tbf 95% of the time I'm just using the TMGs anyway, lol).
I'll have to check out how the other weapons play.

 

[texhnolyze]

Yup, the lag has completely killed my interest in investing my time with the game. I only login for the daily stamps and run around for a while until the lag hits, then turn the game off. It's something that can be fixed though, so I'll just wait.

 

[Ascheroth]

Getting a free pull for fashion a day is pretty sweet. I see that's one way to keep people logging in.
Got a new hairstyle

Also, I've reached level 18 with my Gunner and have enough BP to still meet the threshhold for the Rank 2 areas even with a level 1 subclass so I've started to switch these around to level them and also trying some weapons out.

Today was Fighter with Knuckles day. Damn, these babies have some serious oomph. I love it. Although I'm getting hit way more, and I haven't even tried it on any serious bosses
That sweet range as a gunner is not to be underestimated.
Although I've also not put any skill points at all into fighter. I'm thinking of just yolo-ing it and skill every class like a main class. Need to try that Knuckle weave counter
Haven't experienced any lag at all today, and like that it's just really fun.

 

[MegaApple]

Thinking of trying this game. Wanna ask :-

• Does this have a pesky, kernel level anti-cheat?
  I've not installed Genshin or Valorent for that reason
  
  
• I'm reading there is a lot of lag after the NG update. If I wanna play base PSO2, is lag still there for it?
  
  
• How bad is the grind? I just wanna play the main story (or side missions if they are interesting)

 

[ezodagrom]

Thinking of trying this game. Wanna ask :-

• Does this have a pesky, kernel level anti-cheat?
  I've not installed Genshin or Valorent for that reason
  
  
• I'm reading there is a lot of lag after the NG update. If I wanna play base PSO2, is lag still there for it?
  
  
• How bad is the grind? I just wanna play the main story (or side missions if they are interesting)

• Yes, it has an old rootkit anti-cheat, gameguard.
• The lag has been improved alot in this week's maintenance, but still not 100% lag free.
• Story wise, it depends. The story for the base PSO2 has options for casual and hardcore modes, the casual mode has alot lower level enemies, with only the later episodes posing a bit of a challenge if the player is not leveled up.
• The story in NGS, it's pretty much at the very start right now, and more will be added in the future. But, even though it's just the beginning of it, it has gear checks at certain points (must reach a certain battle power to continue). Reaching the required battle power is not grindy, but it does need the player to pay attention to the gear related tutorials and to run the optional dungeons available in the world that unlock skill points to use in the skill tree (using skill points gives alot of battle power).

Completing the prologue in NGS is needed to be able to access the base PSO2 though (note that the prologue does not have gear checks, those only start afterwards).

 

[texhnolyze]

The lag has been almost entirely gone after the latest maintenance from the other day. It's so good when it works, everything is flowing smoothly.

 

[Ascheroth]

A shame that you can't put "male" cast parts on a female cast*.
Sometimes I just want to be a Gundam.
They're all robots, it should just work dammit .

I guess I'll make a 2nd character sometime after reaching level 20 with my current one. Pretty much everything is account-bound anyway, so that's nice.

* You can in the saloon, but that's too pricey if you want to regularly switch.

 

[Ascheroth]

I'll have to correct myself. While it is indeed only possible to change cast parts in the saloon, it's free.

So I can be a mech without having to make a new character

 

[Li Kao]

So how is the state of the game ? Better now ? And it’s a new story, right ?
I think I heard people criticizing it for being at most early access ?

 

[ezodagrom]

So how is the state of the game ? Better now ? And it’s a new story, right ?
I think I heard people criticizing it for being at most early access ?

The lag is pretty much fixed, and New Genesis is indeed a new story but it takes place in the same universe as PSO2, 1000 years later.

There is a lack of content right now though, but personally I don't mind, it gives me time to play other games while waiting for new content.
PSO2 started like this on the JP version as well back in 2012, without much content.

The next major update will be in the winter (new region, level cap increased from 20 to 35), but until then there will be other smaller updates (braver and bouncer classes, new quests and dungeons, an anniversary event in July).

Tuesday there's going to be a livestream with details about the anniversary event and Braver class.

 

[Ascheroth]

So how is the state of the game ? Better now ? And it’s a new story, right ?
I think I heard people criticizing it for being at most early access ?

The lag's pretty much gone now.
The gameplay feels great, but there isn't much to do. It took me 20-25 hours or so to finish the main story, most of the side quests and the "end-game raids".
After that there's only grinding to get marginally better gear (not really required), doing dailies and weeklies for money (doesn't take much time), getting your free gacha roll for fashion a day and trying out and leveling other classes.
The character editor is great and you can change most of the things for free and save them as templates to easily switch between. You can pretty much be female, male and mech with the same character.

It's fun to casually play around with and collect some fashion to play around with your character but nothing more really.

 

[ezodagrom]

NGS July anniversary event, nothing really exciting, some enemies will have a seasonal mark on their head and they will be weak to lightning instead of their usual weakness, they'll give points to spend in an in-game shop.

Other than that, the city lobby will have seasonal decorations and Rappys will have a fancy outfit.
In the 2nd half of the event they will also add a gigantix version of the dragon boss.

And also they showed a teaser for the Braver class in August.


08:00 - July 7th AC scratch
09:27 - July 7th 1st half of the event
11:09 - July 14th Revival AC scratch with accessories/weapon camos/emotes from PSO2
11:53 - July 21st AC scratch
12:56 - July 21st 2nd half of the event
20:59 - Braver teaser

 

[ezodagrom]

August updates:


06:24 - August 4th AC scratch
07:50 - August 4th side story
08:28 - August 4th braver class
10:42 - August 4th SG scratch
11:21 - August 11th renewal AC scratch (a few PSO2 outfits remade for the NGS bodies)
17:34 - August 18th AC scratch
18:31 - August 18th urgent quest, Mining Rig Defense
21:54 - August 25th SG scratch

Pretty underwhelming, so the "defense quests" in the roadmap were just a single urgent quest (for now at least), I thought they were going to be permanent (not time gated) content...

 

[Ascheroth]

That does indeed sound underwhelming.
Tbh I already uninstalled a few weeks ago. I might check back in whenever there's new main story stuff/area, but as far as "daily engagement" goes, they've already lost me. As much as I enjoy the actual gameplay... there's just nothing to do.

 

[ezodagrom]

That does indeed sound underwhelming.
Tbh I already uninstalled a few weeks ago. I might check back in whenever there's new main story stuff/area, but as far as "daily engagement" goes, they've already lost me. As much as I enjoy the actual gameplay... there's just nothing to do.

They've done the same mistake as the previous games, PSU and PSO2 (JP) also started with a very small amount of content instead of being full games at launch and drip fed content throughout updates until the next major update/expansion.

Content wise Phantasy Star Zero and Phantasy Star Portable 2/Portable 2 Infinity had the best launches of the series, but, they were stuck in handhelds...

 

[ezodagrom]

September updates, it's not even worth doing a detailed post.

More scratches, autumn event is a copy of the summer event, but with enemies weak to a different element, and that's it.

And Bouncer class in October I guess.


06:28 for the September "updates" and 17:12 for the Bouncer teaser.

 

[Ascheroth]

If there's a "disappointment of the year" category, then New Genesis wins it for me no question.
I don't understand how you can create such a fun gameplay base and then.... just proceed to mess up everything surrounding it.
I've read some of that recent interview as well and I don't really have any hopes for them to turn it around given that, though I'm willing to be proven wrong.
I guess the Winter update with the next region will make or break it and give a better idea of what to expect from the "big" content updates that they have planned every 6 months, but I have to say if it's only as much as the base game then good luck lol.
(But even then I don't really agree with their general idea of "end-game content" being random Urgent quests or random Gigantix appearances or whatever.)

I'm kinda just following it only out of morbid curiosity anymore to be honest, at this point I'm more looking forward to Blue Protocol which can hopefully deliver better on the F2P Action MMORPG front.

 

[ezodagrom]

If there's a "disappointment of the year" category, then New Genesis wins it for me no question.
I don't understand how you can create such a fun gameplay base and then.... just proceed to mess up everything surrounding it.
I've read some of that recent interview as well and I don't really have any hopes for them to turn it around given that, though I'm willing to be proven wrong.
I guess the Winter update with the next region will make or break it and give a better idea of what to expect from the "big" content updates that they have planned every 6 months, but I have to say if it's only as much as the base game then good luck lol.
(But even then I don't really agree with their general idea of "end-game content" being random Urgent quests or random Gigantix appearances or whatever.)

I'm kinda just following it only out of morbid curiosity anymore to be honest, at this point I'm more looking forward to Blue Protocol which can hopefully deliver better on the F2P Action MMORPG front.

SEGA picked the worst person to lead the NGS project, the director for NGS was the director for PSO2 Episode 5, on the JP version this episode had the roughest launch of all PSO2 episodes by far...

Yeah, at the moment I'm more looking forward to Blue Protocol as well.

 

[ezodagrom]

Summary of today's NGS news stream:

October 13:

• bouncer class
• new type of quest, battledia, they need tickets to be played, there's 2 different types of battledia
• battledia yellow - has silver/gold enemies, they can drop silver/gold weapons and armor for grinding equipment (silver/gold armor didn't exist until now, so with these quests it'll be easier to grind armor)
• battledia purple - fighting multiple gigantix enemies in a row
• mission pass
• change mag appearance
• color variant weapons, basically alternate versions of existing weapons with different colors, these alternate weapons also change the colors of PAs
• more waves for the mining base urgent quest (wave 7+)
• chat filtering options, such as disabling chat and symbol arts for specific types of chat (general chat, whispers, ...)

October 27:
- halloween event, same as other events, enemies with icon on head, this time weak to fire

There was also a Q&A:

• starting with december, they're gonna start doing more frequent updates
• this week there's gonna be a urgent quest calendar in response to players requests, what happens to scheduled urgent quests in the future, will depend on the players response
• when a new urgent quest is released or when an existing one gets updated, that urgent quest will have a higher chance of appearing randomly than the others for around 1 week
• they're going to add a transfer system for fixa abilities, but only for weapons with the same name (including the alternate color variants)
• they're gonna update the mag sonar to have options for specific searching, like, searching for minerals or searching for red boxes
• in the end of october there's going to be a player survey

And lastly there was a teaser trailer for the new region, desert region (december update).



05:25 - October 13th updates
20:05 - October 27th update
25:25 - Q&A
33:26 - New region teaser

 

[ezodagrom]

Player survey (this time an actual survey about the game, and not about the monetization):

Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis Official Site | SEGA

Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis Official Site

ngs.pso2.com

 

[ezodagrom]

The "large" winter update is releasing on December 15th, which will include the new region, lvl 35 cap, new class skills and technics, chapter 2 of the story, and more.

New trailer for the update:

 

[ezodagrom]

First major update for NGS is next week, which includes the new region, lvl 35 cap, chapter 2 of the story, new class skills, wind/light/dark element techniques, new urgent quest, titles system (in-game achievements), options to password exploration/combat sectors, expanded mag sonar to be able to find more stuff (like red containers) and also the possibility of customizing what the mag sonar can find, and more.

1 week later will be a smaller update, with winter lobby for the Aelio Central City, limited time tasks, and a new feature, world trials. Seems to be long trials to find containers using the mag sonar, depending on how many containers each player finds and also the total of containers found in the whole ship, there'll be rare drop boosts.

SEGA is also taking steps to improve the lack of updates with the roadmap for the next 6 months.
When compared to the first 6 months, the next roadmap has rather sizable updates every 2 months, plus some neat QoL features here and there.

Roadmap:

 

[ezodagrom]

Trailer for the next major update in June, snow region (and snowboarding):

 

[SaberVS7]

Oh and apparently we're finally getting a procedural dungeon in two weeks.

Nearly a year for a series staple to be added. Not really fond of this trend of Static Content in loot games that became the norm after Destiny.

 

[ezodagrom]

Oh and apparently we're finally getting a procedural dungeon in two weeks.

Nearly a year for a series staple to be added. Not really fond of this trend of Static Content in loot games that became the norm after Destiny.

Not very fond of procedural dungeons myself, the ones in the base PSO2 were just as boring as the NGS combat areas, people would just find the best route to run in circles around the maps defeating whatever spawned.

I'm fine with small amounts of randomization like in the old PSO1 though, which had a number of static maps for each dungeon and when the player started a run, it would pick one of those static maps at random, I just don't like the nearly fully randomized approach that PSO2 did.

 

[SaberVS7]

IATA, or was this guy just as straight up Terminally Online as it gets?

BTW, anyone here know how to get Steam Input working in PSO2?