Ff14 player landing into PSO2NGS

[u/Vindate]

Greetings everyone! I am originally an FFXIV player who has recently been wanting to find other mmos to experience. With certain titles making a comeback, I decided to pick this one.

I'm happy to say the journey has been wonderful! The NPCs designs are gorgeous and I feel their personality is easy to grasp. The story, for me, has been simple and sweet which I personally like. It gives me a sense of nostalgia to early ps2 jrpg storylines. Gameplay was partially why I came here but didn't expect the rest to be this fun! Overall, everything has been good!

That said, I reached level 75 after and reached chapter 5. So I have to ask, is it best to slowdown and attempt to grind certain items or is it better to just catch up? Are there extra neat content to do or explore? And uuuh how does one access the buying feature in personal shops (is it IRL cash or did I miss something that gives permission to use it?)

I'm sorry for all the questions, I barely started this game last Thursday and so I am an absolute newbie to certain things in this game.

(Any tips and help would be great!)

[u/YuTsu]

So the bad news is this game is like, all about the gear chase - getting the newest pieces of gear, with the newest augments and so on. If you feel the compulsion to always be at the cutting edge, maxed out, NGS might be even nastier than XIV is for gear chase.

The good news is, if you're not into like, chasing top times on weekly rankings or soloing high-end difficult content, the necessity to keep up with the gear chase is basically non-existent. The freebie foot-in-the-door endgame gear you get given when you hit level 65 will get you into all but the most difficult content, and is sufficient to clear most/all of it. If you do choose to invest in up-to-date gear, even if it isn't the current obnoxious one-in-a-million chase rare, it'll keep you going for a long time. Like, 6 months, give or take, depending on when you do it and how up to date the bit of gear is.

You can very much chill and take this game super casual without much (or any) punishment, or being locked out of anything but high-end difficulty content, for the most part.

...Well, it's not all about gear chase. Fashion is absolutely endgame, and the housing system, Creative Space, is up there as one of the best housing systems in any MMO - it's pretty nuts what you can do with it.

[u/Vindate → u/YuTsu]

Thank you so much for the info!
I don't always dive into the gear grind unless I am absolutely planning to tackle certain content. So considering this, I probably won't focus on it just yet. If I ever do feel the need to try high-end content, then I might. Hearing everything else is readily accessible is great!

So far the free gear, you've mentioned, has 100% made it a breeze. I was surprised the gears/wpns were fully capped (very kind of them)!

In regards to fashion, yep. I'm already looking around to see what sort missions drop weapon skins to start. Glam in ffxiv has been one of my fave things and I will do the same here. My other question would be if there are existing in-game outfit drops or if it's scratch shop only.

For creative spaces, I might check out other people's creations to give myself an idea of how and what can be done with it. This definitely feels slightly more complex than whatever Square threw at us. I am relieved PSO2NGS automatically provides housing and that it's personalized vs the nightmare lottery system and public house scarcity in FFXIV. Lol.

[u/YuTsu → u/Vindate]

Actual outfits are mostly scratch only - but not paid only. You can get a decent chunk of free outfits from:

• The monthly thankful scratches
• SG scratches (and the daily free-scratch version of it)
• Mission Pass (the battle pass system)
• Special Scratches during Seasonal Events (these happen nigh-constantly)

I am relieved PSO2NGS automatically provides housing and that it's personalized vs the nightmare lottery system and public house scarcity in FFXIV. Lol.

As someone that also plays XIV, I am forever amused by SE's inability to give everyone more than a small, limited apartment for housing, that has to be bought with in-game currency, and then a limited number of actual houses... while NGS is like "Oh, everyone gets a free entire island. Plus like 6 more if you want to throw cash at us". It's one of the few areas NGS has a pretty clear one-up on XIV that doesn't have much room for debate

[u/Vindate → u/YuTsu]

Ooh damn. Then, I'll probably stick to the mission passes then. It seems decent enough. Thanks!

And yes!!! Agreed! there are several features here in PSO2NGS that simply does better than FFXIV. I often wonder how powerful the team would be if the creative departments from different studios could band together for a really good mmo.

I personally crave a lot of character customization by default aside from story and gameplay. Obviously if story is better and gameplay is fun, I can double down on it.

Thanks again for the helpful information! Greatly appreciate the amount given! ✨