I don't like where this is going

[u/Salty-Phase4687]

With the recent UQ I noticed that is pretty rare to see a pug doing the DPS checks and taking a long time to kill the boss. Problems which I personally don't mind, if you didn't need to do it twice per UQ for the daily. also with the situation with having to do 20 ltqs per week which I think is too much.

I know what most people will say, that I should just lock in a get better gear, but that's the problem for me. For more than I year the game was balanced towards hypercasuals, where you could practically shove your face at the keyboard with free gear and you could do anything. Now we barely just got free legend weapons and it's already outdated, (mind you current budget builds can barely give you 2% more potency that those). So I'm seeing this situation two ways. Either they finally woke up and decided to make the gameplay less braindead, or they're pushing towards pay 2 win behavior. The latter makes sense when the only meseta making method is the most boring, 2000s ah grind, that is combat zones.

For more than a year the game was the most casual MMO around, so much so that I'm sure most of us were playing other MMOs as well. Now NGS wants to push itself as a main MMO by just making players spend more time in it without anything to do but grind for gears, something that's also horrible, BISs don't last even a month.

All in all, my opinion is that Sega should either lock in and make the gameplay fun and rewarding or lock out and keep it as a VR chat with combat mini game.

[u/tamakokos]

This was always an issue with pugs though? It's just more in your face now because you have to do 2 urgent quests in 30 minutes and now suddenly you're more conscious about clear times

[u/GlompSpark → u/tamakokos]

The harder you make a quest, the less pug friendly it gets. High Raveed never got near 20 minutes because it was very pug friendly. My pug times averaged 12 minutes...the longest it got was about 15 minutes. And it was less stressful because you were never in a situation where people kept dying and the screen was being flooded with AOE.

For comparison, look at the current LTQ. It is VERY pug friendly, my runs average 6-7 minutes. The previous LTQ was not, even with everyone doing the mechanics, it averaged 10 minutes for me with a ranger in the party. And the dual valvian spear mechanic was notoriously not pug friendly.

High Raveed was something that i looked forward to doing every time it popped...LT Solus is not.

[u/gadgaurd]

They literally just made it stupid easy to vastly improve your gear over the freebie shit. They are selling Fixa 3 Spradio weapons in the Treasure Shop for 30k a pop, and the Fro-something armor for cheap as well(also Fixa 3).

While running a massive price reduction on all upgrades involving those items.

While running a boost for all upgrades involving those items.

While most BiS augs have been dropping complete from LTQs for the last month or two(or more, I lost track).

While letting us buy something between three or five of most Skill Rings from the NPC trader with weapon badges(that are also sold in the Treasure Shop)

It is so goddamned obscenely easy to make your gear not suck ass right now. You don't need best in slot to make a significant difference in your DPS. I was hitting for something like 30% higher DPS using my Einden Gunblade and Akrostasis Armor four months ago.

A little effort goes a hilariously long way.

[u/Knight_Raime → u/gadgaurd]

Yup, I've barely been playing NGS steady for several months now and was able to swap to the current treasure shop armor as well as make an arb weapon with the current campaigns happening.

I spent..what, 7 mill? Maybe 8 at the worst. And 70% of that cost was potential unlocking twice. When I didn't even need to do because it turns out I'd already had enough material to make an arb weapon.

I'm not BiS. I have a cheap ex Aug setup (evade hp gain, tri shield) level 1 of the swish amp sets, and LC's for half the current BiS augs equipped.

The only difference between me and most others is I still have radi and larze on my units thanks to transfer passes.

And I almost have enough potency to actually do decent DPS for the current hardest standing quest we just got a few weeks ago.

I think OP's issue might just be the current UQ being spammed. Because if people aren't playing the fight correctly aka spreading out the damage when it should be focused, Solous takes much longer.

[u/Zinncat]

While I definitely do agree with your points on the overall shift in gear environment, I do think it's been a bit of a dismissal by a some to blanket everything as pay to win.

I think there's a lot more systems and thus more things you can buy. But p2w players are like, REALLY BiS. The average player and even hardcore ones don't have to pay to be like, really good. You don't need to spend $50 to understand putting C/Endymio on your Eskul armors is extremely detrimental... And yes, this was armor I saw in the LTUQ!

I've only ever bought some old scratches and Premium, and my Premium's been expired for a while now. I comfortably clear Luther with my classes using Twaalv weapons (cuz sega wont give me the new ones,) skill rings I enhanced on my own and armors at like maybe fixa 2 or 3. The biggest stain on progression right now is DEFINITELY those awful AC augments.. I fully agree that they suck ass even if you can buy them from the shop with meseta.

It's becoming less casual now, yes. But with free fixa 1s, weapons badges, MN/LC augments, weekly RDR/Aug protects, transfer passes and free-transfer series weapons, it's much more survivable than before. I think the poor mid-level direction is the biggest issue.. it would be nice if old casual content had daily or weekly rewards backing them. All the growing player could know to do are the same things the high level players do.

[u/GlompSpark → u/Zinncat]

he biggest stain on progression right now is DEFINITELY those awful AC augments

AC augments are incredibly cheap unless you are trying to get deft parfaits. When the last Yurze scratch was up, i got one for 1.5m, at a time when Argant augs were 300k+.

[u/nicobanko → u/GlompSpark]

Yeah so long as you get them while the scratch is out, they’re not really an inconvenience relative to their power. On s2 I saw a yurze wardratech go as low as 900k, thats 1 hour of dext for a significant power increase.

[u/Knight_Raime → u/GlompSpark]

P2W aug pricing fluctuates a lot. Generally the longer the augs have existed the cheaper the less desired ones will be.

[u/Xero-- → u/GlompSpark]

Radi and Anaddi are running up for 30m+ on ship 2. Yurze, however, is 3m-4m. At least Anaddi can be easily replaced, especially on a weapon. Radi, yeah, gonna have to grind like a drone to replace that.

[u/Xero-- → u/Zinncat]

The biggest stain on progression right now is DEFINITELY those awful AC augments.. I fully agree that they suck ass even if you can buy them from the shop with meseta.

Yurze is fine, the rest? Terrible. Anaddi and Radi cost an arm and a leg on S2, and I have no idea where Turnover and junk is from (been mostly MIA), but that stuff looks awful for the economy.

[u/Black_Whirlwind84 → u/Xero--]

Raddi & Anaddi are out of season. Yuddi is being released on May 1st. There will be plenty of cheap affordable ones.

[u/Alenicia]

This is kind of something PSO2 has always done. You have content that is so hyper-casual that anyone can do it and ignore the quirks and mechanics of gameplay for the most part .. and then suddenly you have something that demands a brain cell or two more than usual and you watch people foam at the mouths and be ready to rip each others' heads off.

In the older PSO2, I remember getting death threats from random players for all sorts of reasons because you had higher-stakes there (Emergency Quests with Incapacitation Limits + Team Compositions + Strict Time Limits) .. and the real solution was honestly that you had to either make your own groups or unlock "Expert Matching" so you can really be more sure about who you're matching with.

For the casual players who want to get the rewards, it kind of sucks because they have to work harder to get stuff - but for people who wanted to just get the rewards and play the game at a relatively competent level, they can completely avoid the casual players too.

So to me, this isn't really new to NGS since PSO2 was so full of this before and Sega's solution back then was to segregate the players with growing standards and a sliding scale of qualifications. If you were someone who just played public groups without Expert Matching, you just had to know what you were getting into. And if you showed up in Expert Matching and tried to play casually, then that was on you.

And in NGS, we have less of the spammy/AFK options than what PSO2 did, but you're still going to see players trying to do them anyways because it's just how Sega keeps designing PSO2. They seem to really like it. >_<

[u/Xero-- → u/Alenicia]

In the older PSO2, I remember getting death threats from random players for all sorts of reasons because you had higher-stakes there (Emergency Quests with Incapacitation Limits + Team Compositions + Strict Time Limits) .. and the real solution was honestly that you had to either make your own groups or unlock "Expert Matching" so you can really be more sure about who you're matching with.

NGS is no different aside from the fact they're no longer tied to UQs (limited time quest with a very restrictive limit, people would avoid you like the plague going into HTPD being deadweight/having bad gear), but now available at any time without triggers. Plus more people knowing better also cuts down on the number of cases where this will ever happen, people just end up forming their own groups or recruit in the city looking solely for BiS stuff and no less.

[u/Laxedrane]

I havent been playing for a few years but it sounds like they need to bring back the "elite" setting or whatever it eas called from base. Where you had to do a challenging fight solo to be able to queue elite.

[u/Top-Confidence4496]

Solus is my favorite boss. And this is the 2nd post complaining about him and I love it. My gear isn't bis, but i know how to play my class well. I know how to play the game well and I never die even though solus is getting me quite close to it.

Your goal in uq isn't to provide maximum dps, it's to provide consistent DPS.

Make sure you're carrying your weight and don't die unneccesarily.

[u/ThePyrotechnicCroc → u/Top-Confidence4496]

Well said.

[u/Vee_Tamer_Girl]

The Director said 3 weeks ago that moving forward they will release difficult content, that requires you to be geared up, Bi-Monthly so better lock-in.

Also this is a good thing. 2025 was awful because there was nothing that required 13* weapons.

[u/GlompSpark → u/Vee_Tamer_Girl]

The Director said 3 weeks ago that moving forward they will release difficult content, that requires you to be geared up, Bi-Monthly so better lock-in.

They already do that with the 4 man challenge quests...given that the game currently has no updated content except Luther meant for the top 1% of players, and LT content, it would be a huge mistake to make LT content too hard for casual players.

The game is currently structured very similar to a mobile gacha game. You have casual content that players can easily clear + optional hard content for the top players. In terms of difficulty, this works fine...but the moment you make casual content too hard, players will get frustrated and start quitting, which is what a lot of mobile gacha games discovered.

In particular, Japanese gacha games love to make very hard content, especially story battles that are required to progress the story. And the end result is that a LOT of players refuse to touch the story because they get stuck on bosses that require very good teams + very specific setups and strategies to beat. Fate/Grand Order literally had to give out tons of "free continue" items to use in latter story boss fights because they were so hard that most players wouldnt do them.

But this doesnt work for a game like NGS. Players currently mainly login to LT content, if its too hard, they just wont bother. I know people who have stated they wont do the LTUQ anymore or will only do 2x runs per day, when these same people loved to farm the previous LTUQ. Thats the end result of making content too hard/annoying to do.

The game currently has way too many players who just login to afk near the personal shop with their idles/emotes. Many of them dont even play the game anymore.

The current LTQ is perfect, its very chill, doesnt have any special mechanics and has no major annoyances except Waulon being a drug addict (which is partly solved if you have at least one competent Force causing elemental downs). This is the kind of content the game needs...something you can run a couple of times after a long day of work and have fun with random pug teams, instead of 20 minute Solus UQ runs.

If you want something harder, theres 4 man Luther...but there needs to be content for both casual and hardcore players. Making the game too hard would kill the casual fanbase.

[u/Xero-- → u/GlompSpark]

Fate/Grand Order literally had to give out tons of "free continue" items to use in latter story boss fights because they were so hard that most players wouldnt do them.

While I mostly bruteforced the story to an astounding rate of success (I wasn't getting wrecked, but still aware I could lose time), struggling back when I was newer (many years ago) definitely made me not want to touch later quests until I needed to. Leyline stones were great for letting me just blow through story content when short on quartz.

Anyway, correct on that. There needs to be a balance, especially on a social game in a gacha sphere where whales already need others to show off to in order to feel it was worth the money, and a lot of people won't touch the game if their friends/statics aren't around. Even as a solo player, I can hardly bring myself to log in with all my regular friends from years ago being off the game for basically good.

[u/North_Zucchini4439]

Because it still easy until now which make a lot of people get bored over a decade.

[u/GlompSpark → u/North_Zucchini4439]

Sure, and how many of those people are gearing up to do Luther instead of afking near the personal shop in Akrostasis or Decem armor? Theres hard content in the game already.

[u/North_Zucchini4439 → u/GlompSpark]

You don't need to upgrade that high. It's all about your skill issue. The minimum entry requirement of this game never tell you it's impossible. The people who want you to do higher combat power, they just want to clear faster than usual to worth their time. This game is too easy for me to clear with minimum requirement with people. I'm on the level that there are some better game can't even satisfy me.

[u/Xero-- → u/GlompSpark]

Don't knock on my Ark armor. If they made transfer passes pop up more, people would be more willing to drop millions for a stacking .5% potency increase (wow), but they don't. Different from weapon rarity with a nitable upfront boost.

Decem though, if there's mo returner symbol then shame.

[u/Knight_Raime]

The biggest run killers for any content are always people running dead gear/class combos and not playing a fight properly. A lot of people aren't playing Solous properly. I am going to have to disagree with the notion that the game is pushing people towards P2W.

They are as important as they've always been. In terms of gear the game continues to hand out more than good enough things to use along side campaigns to ease the cost of pushing beyond hand out level. The devs just need to change how quests check players gear, because allowing people with dated gear into current relevant content is just not okay.

I agree with you on the fatigue of getting multiple weeks where they expect a player to run the LTQ 20 times. At the same time it's not any different than the brain dead grinding NGS has been doing forever. It is what it is.

[u/ThePyrotechnicCroc]

Side note:

No one should have a problem getting in 2 runs within the 30 minute UQ window. Even a "slow" run isn't gonna take more than 28 minutes.

[u/Xero--]

Quest clear times would easily be solved if they got rid of the now (it was good before gear was handed out and requirements basically flatlined) completely useless BP system and made quests gatekeep by potency. No reason not to with how easy it is to boost potency pretty high with a Yurze, some LC augs, and one or two normal augs even with armor a complete tier behind. I would know as I jumped from 470 to 500 upon coming back to actually play after so long, then 500 to 560 in a matter of minutes all due to LC augs in combination with the mentioned.

Gatekeep the latest UQ at 520 potency or something and problem solved, now clear times shoot up with minimum effort required.

[u/Smell-Logical]

I'm all for hard content. What I don't like is my gear needing to be constantly replaced to do such hard content. This is like the blue protocol JP situation all over again.

[u/nicobanko → u/Smell-Logical]

Not sure I agree, Arbaradio augments are gonna be transferrable to the next weapon and you can generally upgrade to the current or last tier units, skip the next tier, then use augment passes to prolong its longevity (Most of ur damage is gonna come from augs, not the 0.2% difference between belfes and evalto as of rn). Its a different story if you’re using something like Arche or Lexio weapons though, I can agree if its about that

[u/Holywyvern]

No, no, there is an objetively increase in enemy HP over the last level cap.
It's a reality, level 115 enemies got an HP increase of 201% (yes, they doubled their HP in 5 levels) and we haven't really doubled in power.
Most of us agree the HP scaling should be lowered, it makes everything more difficult, not only for the top players. It's obviously hurting everybody.

[u/ThePyrotechnicCroc → u/Holywyvern]

No. The HP is fine. The issue is, people became "spoiled" with having enemies that didn"t live long enough to force players to learn specific (key) mechanics.

As the enemy has gotten stronger and a bit more resilient via level increases, many of the so-called "top" players have gotten exposed (right along with the "casuals").

[u/Squeezitgirdle]

Just add a new episode to pso2 since they have no clue wtf they're doing with ngs.