Open Mic

Should we deviate from the "norm"?

  • Yes

    Votes: 37 49.3%

  • No

    Votes: 38 50.7%
  • Total voters
    75
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Sodaboy

Sodaboy

Sodabob
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It's been brought to my attention that there are some people who, although they like close to Vanilla rates for drops and the likes, they would definitely prefer if we went all out and did some changes to the core systems of the game. Examples: Class balances and item changes.

I'm curious to know how much of the community believes in the idea that we should be revisiting stuff like this and not keeping things exactly the same in those departments or more?

If you think we should change some things, vote above and then make a post explaining your choice below. Your proposed changes don't have to necessarily be focused on classes or items.
 
Well I have mixed feelings about it.

If you want to have it close to the Vanilla PSO and all, then that's okay. I mean I honestly never experienced Vanilla online at all, so this was a nice and interesting experience for me to figure out how some things were like back then.

Sometimes I feel some classes are uncommon and often neglected (from my PoV, Greenill, Oran, and especially Bluefull) due to their considered "underwhelming" drops... which ironically some of those IDs do have stuff I'm after. But as of now, through my 2 weeks of being here, I know that Yellowboze is the main superpower ID that gets most attention, though Purple, Red, and Pink are up there too.
Personally I would look at each class and see what stuff they find, their individual benefits are, and any minor bonus that's not listed (someone said Yellow gets higher chances of hit items?).

Examples, based on what I've read on charts:
-Pinkal, from my observation, is that much of its drops pertain to FO gear, while also being able to find Amps/Barriers easier.
-Skyly seems to be the one that has many HU items, including the Chain Sawd and Red Sword, and the infamous SJS.

While I'm fine with either decision, I may lean towards yes only because of Yellow being super common with generally amazing drops everywhere, even if they don't get RRs or Limiters... while a few IDs get little attention at all, and think it isn't fair.
 
Sega's item and character stats (with the exception of how much worse racaseal is than racast) are perfectly fine imo. The changes on schtserv (and other servers) made every class a lot easier to play and less classes worth playing. You'll have to be really careful if you want to introduce changes that don't do this (but still actually do something).

Sega's drop rates were fine for the population of the official servers... which this server will obviously never have.

I can't wait to read 1000 word essays about how humar should have shifta and spread needle needs nerfed. :roll:
 
I vote no simply because I see no current problems with the way things are.
 
Let me make one thing clear, guys and girls, this is just a poll. This is not a promise to change anything based on the result of the poll... Though results of the poll could impact future changes. Just saying, don't freak out like stuff will change immediately because of this topic!
 
I vote "yes" but my only issue is how some of the drops should be handled.

Biggest offender is obviously the heavenly/battles from Del Rappy spamming, I honestly think God/Battle should no longer be Redria exclusive and be spread out to make breaking into Ultimate a little more possible with such a low population server.

You seemed to have put a fair amount of ep1/2 rares into ep4 on lower difficulties as filler, perhaps you could put some of the middling ep4 rares into ep1/2 as well for the sake of homogenizing the drops. The uber ep4 stuff should still obviously be ep4 exclusive as it's generally the most challenging area. I also feel a lot of ep2's loot tables are very underwhelming given how much insta-death flies around in there come Ultimate.

Details are obviously up to your discretion, but it may be worth considering if you want more variety in gameplay.
 
Mr J said:
You seemed to have put a fair amount of ep1/2 rares into ep4 on lower difficulties as filler, perhaps you could put some of the middling ep4 rares into ep1/2 as well for the sake of homogenizing the drops.
Click to expand...
Just want to clear this part up, the current drop chart and assignments are the same as JP BB before shutdown, minus the actual % chance to drop.

Covered in the first post here viewtopic.php?f=18&t=226
 
I really am opposed to this, but I'm sure you know by now I like the game the way it is and Just want to have a place to play it and have fun with the community. Not make an entirely different game with new stuff... I just want to play PSO.
 
I'm all for class balances as long as nothing gets nerfed. Some classes are just straight up better than others. I think that each class should have some sort of redeeming factor. Things such as buffing HUcaseal trap growth to make it closer to HUcast, buffing RAcaseal ATA or HP come to mind. I don't support any huge changes but some small tweaks would be cool.

Items being vanilla seems fine to me.
Unlocking PGF items would be cool but then literally everyone would hunt them and use them all the time kek.

IMO drop charts should stay the same, we've been through a lot of balancing and I think they're as good as they'll get.
I'm a Yellowboozer though so uhh... B)....

I'm also a huge proponent for changing difficulty level caps to 20/40/80 from the current 20/50/90. on a server with such a small population, I think this would lead to more people grouping in VH and ULT.
 
Server is already different so I don't mind things being changed, would keep things interesting to me.

I'm fine with whatever though.
 
I would prefer better frequency appearance of rare monsters, I think is hard to wait 1-2 weeks to see one of them especially to one person mode.
 
I voted no, because I think drops and classes are fine vanilla as they are, and we don't need broken combo-unlocked items like shitserv.

There are a few minor changes I would be fine with, though:

1) New quests, as long as they aren't broken and stupid like the shitserv ones

2) Maybe lower the Red Ring level requirement to 160 or something so there aren't a total of 3 people on the entire server who are able to equip it (as far as we know JP BB left it bugged/typo'd at 108 anyway, right? I thought that's what I saw last time I scoured their wiki anyway, I COULD BE WRONG)

3) The "allowing one person to press the multi-mode freeplay switches" thing should be revisited. A couple days ago I soloed the entire subterranean desert, with my game completely open with no password, but no one joined. It was actually really fun. Way more fun than spamming PoD or MA4B to be honest. An hour and a half into it I realized "oh hey, there were no stupid 2-person switches blocking my path.... If this was episode 1 or 2 I wouldn't have even been able to do this." I don't think opening these switches up would make more people solo - people already do that. I think they would actually have the opposite effect - if someone could load up an episode 1 or 2 freeplay map without getting locked out by a switch in the 2nd room, they might actually wait for people to join instead of instantly loading up a quest before anyone has a chance. Plus the fact that episode 4 doesn't have these switches (or at least desert - I haven't played the other areas so I can't verify them) makes it seem like NOT removing them in episode 1 & 2 was an oversight on SEGA's part. Most people also aren't a high enough level to solo episode 4 like I am, so "just solo episode 4 and wait for people" isn't really a solution for most people. And neither are the ep 1 & 2 government quests, because while yes they are joinable, I'm pretty sure 75% of the server hasn't even done them.

4) Material reset command would be nice. For people who: 1) Accidentally ate a material in the quick menu instead of a dimate or something; 2) Are legit new to PSO and didn't make a mat-plan, and just ate every mat they picked up; 3) Messed up their mat plan; 4) Didn't know things like BOVN exist (or changed their mind and decided they now want to use it instead of v101); etc... I actually legit won't even make a force until I have 150 mind mats, because that's my mat plan on my FOney, and I literally have zero wiggle room to "accidentally eat a material in the quick menu"

5) Full dressing room would be nice. I'm still not sure if I like my RAmar's proportions or not, but I'm stuck with them. This is also another thing that prevents me from making random new characters: not wanting to spend an hour in the dressing room getting the proportions right, because they are "permanent".

6) NPC skins would be nice as long as you limited them somehow. Even if you didn't... Was the lobby ever filled with 20 Sonics on any other server? They have no gameplay benefit (animations, etc) right?

7) Unobtainables should be obtainable (eg: mag cells). As far as I know (could be wrong), none of them affect gameplay. Except for the ones which are planned to be implemented in the future, and were obtainable on SEGA (eg: wandering tekker shields). Speaking of wandering tekker... He gonna be implemented soon? I really want one of his shields for my FOney (so I can just go the "heavy resists" route instead of the "swapping shields nonstop for damage" route), and I'm sure others do too.

8) Even if it was JUST limited to people who had previously been in the room but left/crashed/DCed... Allowing an experimental "use at your own risk" command for people to join quests in progress would be nice... Although I don't know what the abuse-cases are for this. And if you didn't have the people you were playing with in your guild card list, you'd have no way to contact them and tell them to activate it (so I don't know how useful it would be without defaulting it to "ON"). I actually don't care too much about this one, I just figured I should mention it, because crashing after forming a party sucks (the other 7 ideas are the important ones).

EDIT:

9) Still think for episode 4, yellowboze should have 5% chance of hit and other IDs should have 3%, instead of 3%/1%. And uh, all the boxes should be fixed so they can have a rare drop (unless that has been fixed already)
 
I voted no on this poll as well. I think we should leave well enough alone. A lot of player are reaching mid and end game levels now. I know I am not alone in not wanting my drop chart changed for my main character's id. We have all been playing pso for a long time and know how to read a drop chart. If a player want to hunt something specific, they can build a character of the chosen id. I would like to see some of the more obscure gear opened up to hunt. Perhaps you could introduce a quest that offers item exchange tickets as a reward in a limited quantitiy, such as 5 per character on ultimate. Maybe you could also look at adding some of the more obscure sega items like the rambling may or tension blaster to the drop chart, even if it is a low rate on a single character. But overall, I think the drops are good as they are.
 
I voted no as well. Despite maining RAcl and thinking Sega could have done better balancing for her in Blue Burst. I play her to have fun not to min/max. And even though yellowboze is without a doubt the most common, and best ID on this server, I personally think things are well enough left alone.

disclaimer: I'm drunk :3
 
I remember Lee giving the newmans a 200 materia cap on scht and it didn't really hurt anything. I also wouldn't see a problem with the RACasual getting a slight ATP buff. Maybe taking her 1175 up to the 1200 to1225 range. But otherwise I would leave the classes alone. They are balanced enough and their uniqueness is what gives them their personalities. If you want something different perhaps soda could create a new class.
 
I voted yes, simply to keep my interest in this beautiful game.

To put my vote in context, I played BB on the official Sega servers for almost 3 years when it was first released in the U.S., even hitting level 200 with a FOmar named Shocker. I also played v1, v2 and Ep I & II on official Sega servers as well. After not playing for about 6 years, I stumbled across Schtserv while researching PSO 2 once I heard there would be one. I fell in love with PSO all over again. It was great having new items and other items unlocked. Yes, some of the weapons added to Scht made the game very easy, but I enjoyed dominating and running TA games for every quest there was with players who are very skilled and experienced at this game. I quickly stocked up on all the best items in the game through trading (because my luck is absolute shit when it comes to actually finding gear) and was having a blast. Then, it all blew up because of incompetence. Knowing this server was being put up as close to Vanilla as possible and the admins here actually cared for this game and their server, it was intriguing... at first.

However, I have become bored very quickly. It's probably because I have played the Vanilla BB on Sega servers, and then going to a private server in Scht and seeing the new items (some of which were actually released on BB, just after I quit) which brought a new flavor to the game I have loved for so many years. Having such terrible luck when it comes to drops, ever since I can remember playing PSO, I haven't been able to find much on this server. So, my thought process has changed to wanting to wait out on this server until there was a nice-sized economy so I could trade and trade and trade to get gear that would actually make this game fun again.

People have to keep in mind that the Sega BB drop rates were designed for a very large community, where hundreds of players are online simultaneously. Since we have such a small community here, the economy is developing very slowly. I believe if the drop rates were increased at the same rate across the board (say, 20%?), it would help build an economy here. I understand that a major aspect of this game is hunting for your gear. After all, it is very satisfying finding that great rare that you have spent hours hunting. However, spending tens of hours hunting something as necessary as a Frozen Shooter, is just frustrating. It will take hundreds of hours to build one of my characters at this point, and I enjoy playing multiple classes. Now that I just don't have that much time to put into this game, having a full-time career and all, it's not nearly as fun when I do have the time to sign on. Playing my characters with shitty weapons and a General/Battle just isn't fun.

Maybe even having more events (or even weekend mini-events like we had) that increase the drop rate, or adding some unique drops, will help boost the economy here. I'd like to see the unobtainable items be added to the drop chart, even if it is temporarily for mini-events. Maybe add some more end-game gear to the mix that was added to the later days of JP BB.

Also, I do think balancing some of the classes will help as well. For example, giving FOmar more ATA so it would be more enjoyable to play as a battle FO (Scht's Battlemage Cloak was great for this, not sure if this was a JP BB item or not). I can't really think of other stats to boost for certain classes off the top of my head, because I just haven't played with them because of their inferiority to other classes. Maybe boosting the HP for the female characters would help, so I don't have to use HP units in my slots. I also think raising the material limit on the newman classes will help from 150 to 200.

I believe unlocking, or adding in, all of the available quests in BB would be beneficial; particularly the solo quests since it takes a long time to complete all the government quests because people don't play them, and it's too hard to solo them with the gear available.

Maybe I'm just being impatient because I've played this game for countless hours over the last 13 or so years. I'd really like to be able to build my characters in a reasonable amount of time and enjoy playing PSO again, rather than getting my ass kicked and not be able to hunt for items to make my characters decent.
 
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