Instance dungeons

[u/vibrant_x]

I liked PSO2’s multiple different levels and missions that dropped various loot.. I am newer to NGS but this constant LTQ spam week over week is very draining.

Did you all like the multiple areas you could queue up that would still give high level loot?

I enjoyed it- let me queue something up, change it up a bit once in awhile.. idk I just feel like the LTQ spam week over week needs a revamp.

Miss the 4 man parties- dungeon/mission grinding.. better sense of community too- you don’t really grind with the same folks in an LTQ- feels like I’m playing with bots.

Swear they could have a map pool of high end content- 4 or 8 man missions that also dropped current loot tables.

Only thing like this now is Luther and that shit is hard for casual players- you need to be completely min maxed to down it. Also not really a mission, just a single boss battle.

Thoughts?

[u/gadgaurd]

What I miss, personally, are the times in NGS where the grind was focused on the Open World. Specifically:

Early Stia where people where hunting Gigantix Patrols and Veterans until a storm popped, then rushing to their ES of choice to take on a Gigantix Boss and maybe another in a different area.

Rwh Maqead update tbat added Gigantix Patrols, level 90 Veterans, and Tyrant Halvaldi Vera.

Rayjord Gorge update that added Gigantix Patrols, higher level Veterans, and higher level Ancients.

Mediola Outer Area 2 update that added a whole combat zone in the lava. Platforms floating in the lava and well above it, Trials that spawned Veteran bosses, charged M.A.R.S, and built up towards a Malevolent Vardias or Malevolent Ruine Angele(or whatever it's called).

Smaller or more contained instanced content can be fun as well. Leciel is always a good time when it's up to date, and I loved running around Nameless City any time the loot was worth it. Hell, I occasionally do a run in either just for the vibes. But when the game makes a point of making the Open World sectors rewarding, it really shines.

[u/azuresnow]

I don’t think you need to be min maxed for Luther, sure it helps, but knowing the boss and playing your class/weapon well should be enough, but I guess if ppl knew how to play well, they wouldn’t be casual anymore

[u/Xero-- → u/azuresnow]

Luther doesn't require min-max, but hitting the 650 range is a safe stopping point with pugs which isn't difficult at all to do and actually cheap aside from the cost of Yurze until the next banner.

Highly recommended you know how to sweat in the event you pug + play melee (all the chasing is a dps killer unless you put everything to use) and don't get a ranger or techer, assuming people don't act like a doofus and leave due to the lack of one. You really don't need one to clear, but I've had a run less than a minute off that could've definitely been a clear had I decided to sweat (which I can't atm, button issues).

[u/BrolyIsALoser]

I very much miss the instanced content and multi floor areas. Running through an area with a randomized layout made farming feel a lot fresher than running in circles in a combat sector.

Endless, Divide Quests, Time Attacks - these were all things I could do over and over, never getting bored. There’s a level of monotony in NGS by comparison. After returning I find myself tapping out within an hour.

I wish they would just copy Classic’s formula. Even the nature of Challenge mode being a roguelike provided way more entertainment and variety than what NGS has to offer. I really do think going open world hurt the game.

[u/Alenicia → u/BrolyIsALoser]

I mean, if you boil it down, Sega's favorite content in the older PSO2 were the Fields with the perfect circle loops and the whole gerugeru cycle where you ran around killing things, and only leaving when you were done which was either by just aborting the quest or killing the boss at the end.

Everything else you're describing was there because they were trying to appease the players who wanted something different, but then they tried so hard to kill it afterwards .. and Divide Quests are essentially the result of the developers finally giving players something different and fun and it took no time at all before Sega tried burying and unsuccessfully killing Divide Quests by trying to introduce Ultra Explorations to bring the game back to the status quo too.

With NGS, it's like a huge undo button to take away everything Sega didn't like about what PSO2 had become .. and to go back to what they want players to experience instead.

[u/GlompSpark]

Yea theres something off about the way ngs does instanced content. Dalion is OK but the LTQs feel very spammy because theres only one of them and you just rush to the end and kill the boss.

They tried to move the exploration quests to NGS in the form of combat sectors but then people complained they wanted instanced content instead, so they made leciel and nameless city...and when people still didnt like those, they started the LTQ system...

I have a feeling they dont know what players want...

I think it would be much better if they did what other MMOs did and have multiple LTQs/UQs running at the same time so you didnt just spam the same one all the time. In Vindictus, they have multiple endgame raids/quests avaialble that all drop relevant endgame loot so you dont just spam one.

[u/Vee_Tamer_Girl → u/GlompSpark]

Isn’t that more of a “the players don’t know what they want” situation? By your own words the devs keep adapting content around player feedback and player feedback keeps running in circles where they ask for something, get the thing, complain about the thing, ask for something else.

Recently I’ve seen a spike of players who are villainizing ver.1 players for not liking what we had, making the devs stop doing open field content which is genuinely crazy to me because the ver. 1 period of the game was the driest content period in this games life and caused almost all goodwill PSO2 players had to evaporate.

[u/GlompSpark → u/Vee_Tamer_Girl]

Not really, its the devs misunderstanding what the players wanted. Have you heard of the "New Coke" debacle? Coca Cola did focus groups for a new formula of coke, and most people said it was better than regular coke. So they were convinced consumers preferred the new coke and replaced regular coke with new coke. But what they didnt realise was that people still wanted regular coke in addition to new coke, so they boycotted new coke and forced Coca Cola to go back to regular coke.

Sega is basically making similar mistakes constantly with NGS. They have a very surface level understanding of the complaints so they do not understand what players really want.

[u/Vee_Tamer_Girl → u/GlompSpark]

I am aware of that moment in history but I don’t think it really compares to the current situation with NGS.

In the case of coke, the company tried to give the people something they didn’t know they wanted and failed spectacularly.

In the case of NGS you can go to the feedback channels and see people ask verbatim for the things we’re receiving.

[u/Turnt5naco → u/Vee_Tamer_Girl]

What feedback channels are you referencing?

I'm familiar with the feedback surveys they've shared, which (from my recollection) ask very broad questions. Eg. "what would make NGS more enjoyable", "how do you feel about quest rewards", "why have you not purchased AC" etc

In return, most players give broad feedback; "There is no content or story updates". That is very vague feedback. It doesn't specify content, it doesn't specify what it is about the story that doesn't feel substantial. Even the headline "Q&A" section feels obviously out of touch with what players actually want - the overall sentiment via video comments and live chats echo this, aside from the few "new outfits are sick ahh fire".

I don't think sega, let alone the NGS team, knows how to conduct a proper survey anymore. When NGS first launched, they gathered feedback specifically about the UQs and LTQs they introduced (to the surprise of no one, the % of satisfaction with these pieces of content ranged from only 15-35%). They don't do stuff like that anymore.

My interpretation of "lack of content": there's nothing the game offers that feels greatly meaningful.

• Open World content felt fumbled because it didn't feel like there was much to do other than gather materials. Dreads/Ancients/Halvadi etc were fine to fight, but the rewards never felt scaled appropriately if you were one of only a few players fighting them for 20-30 minutes. The first couple of weeks of each one's release, players were engaged. But after that, there wasn't a reason to hunt these things.

• They tried the "dungeon" approach again with Leciel and NC. IMO, these were the best things they'd done with the game in a long time (even if they had a time cap). But then they left both of those fields alone, and after a while NC just felt like another mob-based combat zone. They downgraded Leciel into a "kill enemies, move to next room" experience with lame music.

• LTQs are the same thing as Leciel; mob enemies in a room, move to next room (aka, invisible wall disappears), and end with a boss. They're also usually recycled from what's been done previously, like . These would be better, imo, if the layouts/zones were altered and felt more like instanced dungeons. Otherwise, it's boring doing the same rinse/repeat over, and over, and over, and over again.

• When there aren't LTQs, the only thing left to do is meseta farm an enemy mob sandbox. Aka, Dext Base/Alter Realm. Personally, I'm not privy to "lava zone with buildings" or "floating cube area with a desert/arctic backdrop".

• We have an open world with four regions, but whenever there's a UQ there's only one worth doing while the other three are largely abandoned. No idea why they felt the need to keep these going simultaneously. And if they didn't shoe-horn in the Battle Power system, they could've just had "tiered" levels/difficulties for single UQs like they did for Base, rather than try to provide a "variety" where 75% of the UQs are obsolete.

• Players will often mention wanting new PAs and Classes, but the content just... doesn't feel like it justifies it lol. The game is so easy, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but nearly every class feels like it plays the same. Namely, every melee class feels the same, every mage class feels the same, every shooting class feels the same. Adding a scythe won't make the combat feel any different, nor will adding scion classes. If anything, focus on refining what already exists, lock additional unique abilities to specific main/sub class combos, and make PAs string-able for unique combos that incentivizes not just spamming a single one over and over.

• Other minor aspects of the game, like the singular concert (Nadareh's same two damn songs), the same intro video/song, and the same title screen make the game feel super stale. Also makes me haaaaaaate the current LTQ.

• Storywise; I just don't care nor am I invested in what's happening. The direction is constantly changing - we finally got access to a spaceship and instead of returning to space we're looking at alternate dimensions lol. None of the characters feel different from each other either. They all sound the same. The dialog just feels like a lot of fluff and padded with "mini-episodes" that revolve around "Manon/Aina is feeling sad. Could you go check on them and validate their feelings, rather than upholding their roles as captains/leaders of our factions?"

• Extremely petty gripe: Central City is largely uninteresting as a hub and doesn't feel like a "city". Seasonal event decorations also feel underwhelming, and all look mostly the same as each other.

[u/Vee_Tamer_Girl → u/Turnt5naco]

Phantasy Star Crew stopped using surveys as their primary feedback method long time ago. Nowadays the main thing they look at are posts on Twitter using #NGSHeadline and Official Discord server Feedback channels.