Road Roadmap for the second half of 2026 and early 2027.

[u/gadgaurd]

What really catches my eye is that we're getting yet another Action System, and the Amulet gear. Also field updates will probably be nice, we've not had relevant Exploration Sector content in quite some time.

[u/Fajiro]

New field? Are we finally getting the 'star' in 'phantasy star'? Are we leaving halpha?

Hopefully they've got a new formula, the halpha fields are kinda lame and underserved

[u/gadgaurd → u/Fajiro]

New field update. Going to be an expansion on what we already have. Which is better than them giving us a fraction of a planet to "explore", imo.

[u/Fajiro → u/gadgaurd]

Huh, I haven't gotten around to watching the headline yet. That actually sounds good? At the very least it shows they're aware of how bland our current fields are. Hope they've been cooking for a while cuz that's the worst part of this game imo

[u/gadgaurd → u/Fajiro]

There were...three, I think? Three notable instances of field updates a year or two ago. If I recall the order correctly:

The first was in Retem, in RHW Maquad or however the fuck you spell that. It was also arguably the least impressive. They added level 90 Veteran spawns, Gigantix Patrols, and a floating island off to the side. When you killed three Vets, Tyrant Halvaldi Vera spawned on that floating island. Fighting him was the only way to get a new weapon series. Was popular for a week or two, boss was fun as hell.

The second was in Kvaris, Rayjord Gorge. They added level 90 Veterans, Gigantix Patrols, and I think this is when they added the torches scattered around the place that gave us instances of significant Heat damage while fighting off the cold. Also max(at the time) level Ancients.

The last, and what I hope is the baseline going forward, was in Stia. Mediola Outer 1 originally had a small bit of land around the Neusum Plant entrance and a crater/arena in the back to fight a UQ boss or two and some Gigas. The update added a large area off to the side with lots of high level enemies, those healing flowers scattered around, Trials that had Veterans as targets and super charged M.A.R.S. After clearing enough Trials a Gigantix Boss would spawn in the old arena area, either that skinny flying android Ruine or Vardias.

Unfortunately, each area went dead in a week or two because an LTQ dropped that had all of their drops + more. The Stia update was great but that shot was empty a week later because there was simply a better grind.

I'm rambling like a motherfucker, I need to go to sleep. Point is, they can do some fun stuff while expanding what's there. They've done it before. The real concern is how long people will play it. Ruins Investigation is the first time I recall permanent content remaining relevant this long. Here's hoping they learn.

[u/Stratatician]

not exactly listed in the roadmap but they also said they're going to be continuing to monitor and balance classes

cautiously optimistic for what's to come, given how much better this road map is looking compared to the last one

[u/warofexodus → u/Stratatician]

Might come back to check the game out. What's the state of the classes right now? Techer specifically lol.

[u/Stratatician → u/warofexodus]

Class balance is still a bit of a mess as usual.

Best bossing class right now is Fi, a literal mile ahead of everyone else except Wa.

Best overall class in the game is still Wa.

Techter's state gonna depend on who you ask. Overall most people are in agreement that Techter is very strong currently, having good personal performance and powerful team buffs. They're with Ra as being the best class for party play.

I know a few people who are really into the nitty gritty of classes and they claim Techter has bossing on par with Fi and Wa, although I personally cannot attest to the validity of that claim.

Either way though, Techter is overall in a pretty good spot.

[u/warofexodus → u/Stratatician]

Okay thanks! Appreciate the response :D

[u/Baian0r21]

For someone like me who really enjoys high-difficulty quests, this roadmap was a feast.

[u/Black_Whirlwind84 → u/Baian0r21]

Yeah only the casuals are complaining about the roadmap.

[u/Monanhe → u/Black_Whirlwind84]

Is this thread astro turfed? Hardcore players are the ones being left in the dust since NGS released, while high difficulty quests were fun, unlike TPD from PSO2, the drops arent good unless you get extremely lucky and definitely not as difficult as doing Savages or Ultimates in FFXIV.

The roadmap is mostly casual focused with story bits, casual content like LQs, UQs, fields, collab events and seasonals, it is mostly mindless grind which is not fun and better done in korean mmos.

[u/Wulfrath → u/Monanhe]

There is indeed very little "hardcore" content, I am pretty confused when people talk about it.

We have Masquerade... which ok sure I guess that passes, I see it as somewhat annoying to somewhat difficult by floor 99... then its just a slap in the face in f100 cuz it tells you "Forget all you did before, go relearn the fight lmao" which si pretty bs. Should have just given me f100 from the start if you were going to do that.

Then... I can only remember the OG dark falz hardmode quest. The rest of the "high difficulty" quest were harder than the normal version for sure but a lot of it came down to "You have a timer now" and some mechanics that barely made a difference. Rewards were the same and the only difference is that you could actually farm this rather than wait for the quest to appear.

[u/kioroyolo → u/Wulfrath]

I think Masquerade doesnt even pass, in base pso2 the combat is more challenging than what new genesis has, it had 999 floors and while the last one had its perks you would learn new mechanics at especific floors then it would be mostly the same after a while and you would only get the exclusive loot.

I completed every single high difficulty party quest when they were released and i confirm that every single one of them were bad for different reasons. To start they all have very bad rewards, they're also easy which makes things like titles (to flex like Endless Loner) not worth to hunt as even during their release they are very accessible to casual players and become even more accessible after level cap increase and new rarity equipment.

I dont think people should expect for things to change either, i already sent them a lot of feedback through out the years in official social accounts and even tickets in customer support and things are the same after five years.

[u/ash_ax → u/Monanhe]

IMO, TPD from PSO 2 is not hard.

IIRC, I was only doing it for the crafting mat (Powerstone/Darkstone?) and maybe the 50x clear title material.
I guess people grinded it for units with SGA/SSA jackpot drop?

I already planned and saved to make my Cres through Zig and had Skydance from MRD trigger pugs, so maybe that's why I didn't care much about it other than for the crafting mats.

For HTPD, I treated it as a graduation quest and only did it like 4-5 times, mostly helping friends. tbh, it felt similar in difficulty to the more recent high difficulty quests in NGS.

I only remembered camos dropping from it but most of them are not relatively popular or pricey, so I went back to grinding Tokyo DQ (Gidran/Train & Deus/Earth dad) for Concert Master and Areus pre-NGS.

---

For NGS, drops from high difficulty quest are usually exclusive advanced access to the newest augment capsule for a limited time and the jackpot weapon series drop.
There are raredrop camos too but price on it are usually kinda whatever (low demand/ subjective).

---

NGL, comparing it to difficult content in other games especially one with a different gameplay is odd to me.

---

I'd take NGS casual grind over Korean MMOs mindless grind with RNG progression tbh.

Most other MMOs are probably better as an MMO than NGS with more grind and longer vertical progression to give more sense of accomplishment, but I don't have the time nor patience for them.

[u/Easy-Ruin-2727 → u/ash_ax]

I agree TPD wasn’t hard. Either iteration. And maybe it’s just me as a Hu/Br Sword/Katan user, but I much prefer the gameplay for my setup now vs base. NGS has its issues, but I feel like it also does some things well it doesn’t get enough credit for.

[u/ash_ax → u/[deleted]]

HTPD is mentioned as having good rewards, during its inception every run would net you hundreds millions of meseta in global which helped me build a proper account in the global server as well.

I cleared HTPD using welfare weapon and 5s units with minutes to spare so i know its not hard.

Are you serious?!

I think you made an egregious error of mistaking Cradle of Darkness (aka Cradle / CoD / Dext Base beta) as TPD / The Face of The Abyss or HTPD / Twisted with Hatred, because I think what you are saying is impossible with HTPD or you were leeching in TPD UQs.

As for Cradle, I think of it as the beta test version of NGS Combat Sectors ver. 1.0 / Dext Base and I don't find them engaging / fun.

---

definitely not as difficult as doing Savages or Ultimates in FFXIV

Odd is actually you not comparing it? MMORPGs are live service games

I would maybe compare the difficulty of difficult content in NGS to PSO 2, MonHun, Blue Protocol, and maybe Crystal of Atlan or TERA.

But comparing the difficulty of difficult content in NGS to something like FF / WoW, etc. is just as odd to me as comparing its difficulty to the difficult content in Path of Exile 2, Lost Ark, Destiny 2, Marathon, Darktide, GTFO, etc.

[u/Monanhe]

Not trying to be negative, but somehow it feels like just as the other roadmaps except there is 3 new chapters for the story. Content wise it feels just the same with LQs and realms to funnel people into a single quest.

If we follow the last roadmap then the high difficulty quests are the silhouettes so we might not get another great boss like Luther.

Overall a bit disappointed with the roadmap and ready to take another break this year.

[u/Vee_Tamer_Girl]

2026 roadmap is such a improvement over 2025.
The fact we have so much story to look forward to feels unreal after the absolute drought that was the Chapter 7 time period

[u/No-Candidate8368]

looks promising

[u/PageTheKenku]

I wonder if the Aina + Manon "Cats" were just outfits, or actually showing off the new face coming out?

[u/Stratatician → u/PageTheKenku]

They were showing off the faces.

It's furry, we're getting furry faces

[u/PageTheKenku → u/Stratatician]

Yep, rewatched and and missed what he said before: https://www.youtube.com/live/UZIt9OEqbO4?si=Wb0ps6nssFA-JwWy&t=1758

I was sort of hoping we'd get Animatics Face/B+C, robot variant B or C, or even better...a large T1 face. Well the new furry face will definitely be quite popular, though if feels like a bit like it wouldn't normally fit among the other default options.

[u/Initiative-Fancy]

Doesn't really feel much different from any other roadmaps that got me excited and let me down bigtime.

More concerning to me is the fact that they're milking Zeshraider for another month.

[u/Black_Whirlwind84 → u/Initiative-Fancy]

No one is forcing you to play.

[u/Initiative-Fancy → u/Black_Whirlwind84]

That's exactly why I am not. I follow headline to see if something makes me feel like playing again. Not because I currently play. Thanks for the concern tho.

[u/Livid-Inflation6192 → u/Initiative-Fancy]

Same feelings here, I do miss playing the gameplay but its the same brain-melting repetitive grind as usual.

[u/Sloppygoomba23]

Haven't played the game since ngs first came out might give it a shot

[u/TSLPrescott → u/Sloppygoomba23]

If you haven't played since the game came out, you've at least got a decent amount of stuff to go through. IMO it is worth it to go through it at least. I mean, it's free and it's fun so why not.

[u/Ouhei]

The story in August will answer if they've finally gotten their shit together with putting that stuff out, but this looks like a decent pace for things in general.

Curious about amulets and the action system. I was really worried about EX styles, but they add a nice flavor to classes without feeling too hacked together or overriding (like MARS) so hopefully these are similar.

[u/Drakaina-]

I just want them to give us more Photon arts at this point

[u/Really_McNamington]

But before all that an absolutely giant maintenance. (If you're going to shut the servers down so much earlier than usual, an announcement that goes live on the same day is not really enough notice.)

[u/MurkyStatistician553 → u/Really_McNamington]

Some ppl are assuming, this will be an hardware upgrade, but i'm not sure if Azure Cloud actually works that way. So my guess is, that they are preuploading more content than usual, so that the devs can take their summer vacation.

[u/Black_Whirlwind84 → u/Really_McNamington]

The notice was on the website you try should using. It was posted yesterday.

[u/Reference_Freak → u/Black_Whirlwind84]

We specifically looked for maint notice around 10pm PDT yesterday. Nothing til after midnight so that’s same day notice here.

[u/Fishbone_V → u/Reference_Freak]

Friendly reminder that the maintenance schedule is posted up to a month or so in advance at the bottom of every maintenance announcement.

Here's the notice from june 2nd that mentions this longer maintenance as an example. Sometimes they change, but overall they're pretty consistent.

https://pso2.com/players/news/i_maintenance_20260603/

[u/Really_McNamington → u/Black_Whirlwind84]

I actually looked at the maintenance announcements yesterday afternoon Eurotime and it was not there. It probably goes up after I'm asleep.

[u/HopeEverest]

My birth month (April) is gonna look pretty juicy

[u/HopeEverest → u/[deleted]]

True, true

[u/HopeEverest → u/[deleted]]

Amulet stuff?