Requesting a review of RBR on behalf of many community members.

I think one thing that I didn't really hammer down on in my post is; I do not want HBR back. Even though I DID prefer HBR to RBR I think HBR was not a good system for those playing casually. And I myself have looked at and HBR roll in the past and said "yeah maybe ill look again next month".

When RBR was created a lot of the staff seemingly wanted feedback, and for a year or so most of the feedback I have seen has been something along the lines of entitled complaining/not being constructive at all with their thoughts. I hope that we will soon hear from some of the staff with their thoughts and ideas as well!
 
Lantana said:
When RBR was created a lot of the staff seemingly wanted feedback, and for a year or so most of the feedback I have seen has been something along the lines of entitled complaining/not being constructive at all with their thoughts. I hope that we will soon hear from some of the staff with their thoughts and ideas as well!
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The staff is aware of this thread and have read / are reading it. We just don't have anything to say publicly in regard to it at this time.
 
RBR, a conundrum; A Revision for a New Vision.

Ragol Boost Road (RBR) is a system which perhaps was rolled out with good intentions but least desired. Though RBR was perceived as the solution to the month long repetitious Hunters Boost Road (HBR) grind alas it is a decaying system that starting to show its crack.

Despite the increase in the number of new players and daily logins, it's still hard to discern it as a net positive of the implementation of the said system when almost everything that is good being nerfed; a hindrance, a far cry from the height of HBR. It might be hyperbole but the drawback of RBR starting to seeps through.

Agree to Disagree to Agree.

After almost 2 years of the implementation of RBR, it is safe to say that the players are being handicapped by the established system. The weekly set quests and quest boost are severely crippled version of the legacy system, HBR. Further more, most of it doesn't quite matched the Weekly Boost. This is not a statement against or removal of RBR but rather a call for a review and perhaps reform.

Reminiscing the HBR days where it encouraged the players to earn their boost by doing the set quest of the month and clearing it. It was a fun mechanic that introduces to tons of quests ranging from easy to difficult, it forced me as a player to be better and actually learn the monthly set quest. In the end, the players are rewarded for their efforts by doing the quest; gaining the incremental boost.

The incremental boost gained feels like a well earned accomplishment and if the players learned the quest better throughout the week/month, they could complete the quest efficiently by cutting down time spent running. A trial by fire, a sense of progression. RBR needs to be rewarding in a similar way on how HBR did it.

RBR is an excellent way for the new comers and casuals to play the game and introducing the other available quests with slight boost to it. It give options to those who wanted to see what this game could offer other than just TTF. However the least desired outcome of this implementation is that it left the "core" grinders castrated with no additional benefits for playing longer.

It is not to say that HBR is the only correct way on handling, there was a time when HBR had their own fair share of bad quest roll and hardly any players are running it and there is also the opposite where people would try not to missing out on a good HBR roll and made them to have "Quest Fatigue" throughout the month. RBR may be the remedy to it but it is still remained uncertain if this is a permanent cure.

RBR may be viewed as the solution to curb the so called "Quest Fatigue", we tend to forget that people are highly receptive towards reward in spite of having to run repetitive quests. Players will and always been using any means that is deem necessary or optimal for them to achieved their goals, hence the infamous endless TTF, box and reset runs; thus rendering the "Avoiding Quest Fatigue" argument with nothing to stand on for RBR in this regard. Both HBR and RBR can be plagued by "Quest Fatigue" argument.

Rotations That Is Not Revolving.

Over 100 quests are available and only 58 are being put into the rotations, exempting and under utilizing a decent more than half of what is available. Those exempted quests has the notion of being over powered even though it has been pointed out by @Ade that some of them have been nerfed.
1. Lost Soul Blade: Now that Lame d'Argent has been moved to Sinow Red, there's no reason to continue excluding this from RBR.

3. Phantasmal World 2: The Pinkal Lame rate for Ul Gibbons was nerfed to over 1 in 4,000 BECAUSE of this quest. Disallowing it from existing in RBR is a double-penalty for the same thing.

4. Phantasmal World 4: If people want to reset the first two floors of this all day to hunt SJS and melt their brains, that is on them. Even with RBR boosts, it would still take well over 1,600 PW4 resets on average to get a SJS. For everyone else, it's a great quest that barely gets played anymore.
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The lack of variety in the quest rotations is one of the contributing factors that made RBR stale; the team and I found ourselves playing more non-RBR quest rather that what's available on the listing. Once again this also nullifies the "just play a different quest" line of reasoning as the core issue lies within the RBR line up which in turn, making it less desirable to play.

Anecdotal is Not a Diagnosis For The Antidote.

Speaking on personal experience, even if the quest line up has been resolved it still would not help the "core" grinders getting their fix. Once again HBR will be mentioned here and it may sound like a broken record but this is not a statement of HBR being better than RBR, it is a reflection of the legacy system rewarding those who put in their time and effort.

There are lots of aspects that made HBR great and without getting into the meat of the whole HBR RBR discourse yet, I miss the days of HBR Leaderboards. Trying to be first to get to SS rank was rewarding even though I haven't landed on the leaderboard myself but it was an exhilarating race and also give some sort of different purpose other than just trying to gain the boost solely.

On the topic of boost, RBR gave out boost without being earned and while HBR boost may be viewed as ridiculous but it is well earned. When the players put in their time and they shall be rewarded, this type of system that actually give the sense of progression throughout the month. Without any tangible progression, RBR is viewed as an instrument that punishes those who are dedicating their time to the grind.

Remembering the days of Lost Hell Pallasch (LHP) HBR, I achieved what I was hunting throughout that particular month (Handgun: GULD) with the boost and I can say confidently that I earned those drops and boost because I put in the time. RBR just does not cut it, it disincentive grinding due to the lack of sense of progression and I would love to see those who are dedicated their time and honing their skills to able to attained some sort of progression through RBR.

Putting the boost argument aside, this game revolves around RNG and it is the beating heart of PSO. Again this is going to be addressed anecdotally and not on hard data however it is still important to shed some light into the players' experience regardless if it is HBR or RBR.

Going back to my point in LHP, though I succeeded in the hunt but those who accompanied throughout the journey are not blessed with such drop although they put in more time than me; same boost, same opportunity but luck just is not in their favour. I too had similar experience throughout my time on the server where I put in the hours but was empty handed at the end.

Fortune favours the bold isn't exactly in play, all of us cast our dice but RNG is still the king who decides the fate.

A whim of fate.

It's a diagnosis, perhaps to a known disease with no proven antidote.

A Fallacy Not A Prophecy

There is a notion where if HBR were to be reintroduced, it could be seen as a catch up mechanics. At face value, it could be perceived as a tool for the newcomers to be able to gain their wealth the same as the "veterans" of the game.

If the idea of veterans being wealthy while those who misses out on HBR are in slums and putting back HBR is the cure, this is where this belief itself stumbled on its own. Regardless who the players are, old or new, both group would take the advantage of HBR to expand their wealth and with it, the disparity of wealth would remained the same; a parallel growth by design, the gap remained. With this regard, reinstating HBR will not be the definitive "catch up" that some may hoped for.

When wealth is the centre of the focus instead of gameplay, perhaps ego is at play.

However with all been said here, do not misconstrue this as a beg of mercy for the return of HBR but rather finding the balance what made both HBR and RBR great in the first place.

I'm writing this not as an antagonistic piece, it is a way to convey the experience throughout the implementation of RBR and if this perceived in a bad light, pardon me as this language is foreign for my tongue and eloquent is not something I'm versed at.
 
So, this is just MY personal opinion and not the entire staff's. This opinion would probably earn me a million downvotes if we had a downvoting system here, but here we go...

The argument that new players should be able to catch up to the wealth of older players is an invalid argument to me. I don't have any sort of concern for this. You may not think it's fair, but at the same time, I don't think it's fair that a player who plays for a week or a couple of months should have the ability to catch up to the wealth of a player who has been here for several years.

Time itself is valuable. The older players were here, they put in the work to find the things they have, you were not. Whether that work was easier or harder back then, it's irrelevant. You shouldn't be able to waltz in here and expect to be on the same standing in very little time. It doesn't work like that. Life doesn't work like that, unless you're extremely lucky.

PSO, by its very design, is a grind fest to find the things you want. You're trying to take shortcuts and I'm not feeling it.

Even with that said, I hope as a newer player, you do realize that items still drop for you. You could have a ton of crap days but then find a high hit SJS or something like that and, bam, you're in the big leagues. It probably WON'T happen like that, but there isn't a 0% chance of it happening. Just gotta, you know, play the game and not play "Keeping up with the Joneses".

Anyhow, I also find no value in the argument of RBR not being as strong as HBR was. It doesn't need to be. However, if the majority of players agree that RBR is fundamentally flawed, then I'm all for reading real arguments that suggest real ways to fix it. But if your only argument is "I don't get as many drops or rare items" when compared to HBR, that's not a good argument. All I care about is finding a way to improve RBR so that players would want to engage with it more and find it worth their time.

Perhaps the current quest list does need to be tweaked, that's definitely something to look into. (Actually, I think the staff has already agreed to review this in our private chats.)

Perhaps the boosts you get from RBR do need to be tweaked. Maybe even on a quest-by-quest basis. Again, something to look into.

I don't think you really need to have a sense of progress for RBR, though. If a quest is included for the week that has something you're hunting for in it and it's a fun quest, go for it. You might get lucky. Otherwise, yeah, you can play other quests not in the current RBR. You don't need to always have what you want right then and right there.
 
Nah Soda I big agree with everything you've said actually, and you've really highlighted a lot of the points I was getting at in my own posts. I don't think RBR necessarily needs to be stronger, and it doesn't need to be HBR (although see again my pondering on potentially having both, just because everyone knows there were people who - hopefully - enjoyed it for more than just the rate increase), and that's fine.

Having more quests available in it, and potentially tempering the "stronger" quests with lower boosts than "weaker" ones for balance purposes, would do a lot to increase variety of quests played.

When it comes to "you can play other quests not in the current RBR" though, something I maybe didn't emphasize is that there's still a lot of people who are glued to "omg boosts," because, well, why wouldn't they? A point Lantana has brought up previously is that while RBR was originally meant to highlight previously less popular quests, that "omg boosts" mentality has unfortunately flipped the system on its head a bit, where now they're paradoxically more popular and more well-known than even some old standbys like PW2/4 or better/more interesting quests such as the Rev series.

So if that boost mentality can't be escaped, at least having more quests highlighted would draw everyone, new and veteran players alike, to all kinds of different experiences through the RBR system.

And even if we set aside boost mentality for one reason or another: PSO still has a whole bunch of quests to choose from; it can be overwhelming. RBR also functions as a great guideline for players who are less familiar with the game or every quest available to find one (or three) to focus on for the current week.

For reference, I only played the very last month of HBR, which was during the 2023 Easter Event after I joined the server late March that year, and I genuinely believe RBR is the better system for the longevity and balance of the server, even if that month of goofy rates felt like a real kickstart to my account. I've still made plenty of personal progress well beyond that of any other server I've played on here on Ephinea.
 
I also agree with soda. I don't think the whole 'catch up' argument is really a good one, no amount of boosts is going to make up for thousands of hours of game-play. I ALSO don't care to have HBR back, I just want to provide the best feedback i can to help better the system and the server. (And it seems like over all, the one thing people agree on is the quest list). Some of the staff (Ryan and Ender) are probably SOOOO tired of me, cus whenever there is a new update im always in their DM with CONSTRUCTIVE feedback.
 
I just want fun quests in RBR, and "un-fun" quests tweaked to make them more enjoyable, not more worthwhile to run. Stuff could be added like more chances for tickets, coins, or even a brand new currency or trade in item or material reward but i still wouldn't ever want to play "The West Tower" on any RBR week because I dont have fun in that quest.

I think if any changes should be made, they should be made on the quests themselves. Teleporters in quests like WOL, denser spawns in MUO's, less backtracking in Seabed ect. I'm sure there are more. Maybe even a chance, at the end of a quest, to be teleported to Dark Falz or Olga Flow or one of the episode 4 ones. A special extra room that's super dense at the end with good enemies that have good drops. Just a few random suggestions.

Regardless if it's the drops or the rates or the quests or the entire system I don't think RBR as it currently is "works". It is a good foundation, but it feels neglected and incomplete. I love this game and this server and the community and I want to see things improve and get excited with everyone for the new week of RBRs, instead of fearing disappointment. The current RBR system has so much potential, so I have confidence that The Staff can improve and make RBR something beyond a replacement for HBR.

Anyway, thanks for all ya'll do and thank for anything that you do in the future. I may not speak for the community when I say this but I think most people can agree that our discontent comes from passion and care, and that we appreciate what ya'll do even if it's said half as much as it should be.
Sodaboy said:
So, this is just MY personal opinion and not the entire staff's. This opinion would probably earn me a million downvotes if we had a downvoting system here, but here we go...

The argument that new players should be able to catch up to the wealth of older players is an invalid argument to me. I don't have any sort of concern for this. You may not think it's fair, but at the same time, I don't think it's fair that a player who plays for a week or a couple of months should have the ability to catch up to the wealth of a player who has been here for several years.

Time itself is valuable. The older players were here, they put in the work to find the things they have, you were not. Whether that work was easier or harder back then, it's irrelevant. You shouldn't be able to waltz in here and expect to be on the same standing in very little time. It doesn't work like that. Life doesn't work like that, unless you're extremely lucky.

PSO, by its very design, is a grind fest to find the things you want. You're trying to take shortcuts and I'm not feeling it.

Even with that said, I hope as a newer player, you do realize that items still drop for you. You could have a ton of crap days but then find a high hit SJS or something like that and, bam, you're in the big leagues. It probably WON'T happen like that, but there isn't a 0% chance of it happening. Just gotta, you know, play the game and not play "Keeping up with the Joneses".

Anyhow, I also find no value in the argument of RBR not being as strong as HBR was. It doesn't need to be. However, if the majority of players agree that RBR is fundamentally flawed, then I'm all for reading real arguments that suggest real ways to fix it. But if your only argument is "I don't get as many drops or rare items" when compared to HBR, that's not a good argument. All I care about is finding a way to improve RBR so that players would want to engage with it more and find it worth their time.

Perhaps the current quest list does need to be tweaked, that's definitely something to look into. (Actually, I think the staff has already agreed to review this in our private chats.)

Perhaps the boosts you get from RBR do need to be tweaked. Maybe even on a quest-by-quest basis. Again, something to look into.

I don't think you really need to have a sense of progress for RBR, though. If a quest is included for the week that has something you're hunting for in it and it's a fun quest, go for it. You might get lucky. Otherwise, yeah, you can play other quests not in the current RBR. You don't need to always have what you want right then and right there.
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Hi. New player here. You can see the exact day I started on the server recently in the introduction thread. It's my own personal opinion but, I share Sodaboy's sentiment.

If I was capable of suddenly being almost on par with long standing members with ease-outside of getting extremely lucky with an absurdly good rare drop. I'd actually feel it would take away from what makes PSO special compared to current day games. Now adays games cater to the 1hr a day, 3 times a week mindset of playing little but, having the best of everything.

I was actually worried the server had insane boosts originally because in the first 5 minutes of playing I got an add slot drop in forest 2. Luckily that isn't the case. Now don't get my wrong, I like having small boosts here or there and I do like the incentives of doing other things to break up the same old grind. As gaming has evolved and the times have changed the norm now adays is "super convenient" and "everyone has everything". Which makes games get old quickly I think.

I wouldnt enjoy the server if I was at the point of having the wealth of the old guard already a couple weeks in. Granted I haven't read this entire thread so maybe I'm off topic but, when it comes to wealth I should be a slow grind. If everyone was rich then the economy becomes hell at the end of the day.

This community is also so insanely nice it left me in shock my first week here. From members joining and throwing some random junk my way to get me on my feet to powerleveling me through content to get stronger faster. I don't think there's ever any worry about being able to play the already easy content of this old game. As I also haven't ever seen anyone complain about "needing to carry" someone or take a toxic approach to someone not having the best of the best items capable of dishing out thousands of damage at a flock of a finger.

When it comes to the boosts I'm not as knowledgeable as I'm still learning everything; it was my assumption it rotated randomly through all the quests with no repeats until it has to. If that isn't the case then maybe that's the complaint in general? I've seen mention of HBR but I barely grasp what RBR is so I don't know the reference. I also haven't played every quest in existence, so possibly some quests need some additional aid in/apart from boosts- or simply instead of an additional boost on them specifically the RBR modifies their spawns to have more?

I don't have the answer here and as stated I'm very new to the server but, I'm thankful from everything I've seen thus far. I'm sure some of the long term players are seeing problems I'm not but, one thing I like about PSO is it has the old game mindset when it comes to rare gear. It's rare. I don't have to have the best of the best to play the game. I can see though that once your 200, have some amazing or atleast comparable gear and grinding for days/weeks and getting nothing it can be disheartening or frustrating. But, I don't think giving you a small dopamine hit on a rare item not being as rare anymore would be good for the game as a whole.
 
Had a lot of fatigue from HBR, so I'm mostly enjoying the way RBR works so far.

Kind of agree with the tangent that some quests could use a touch up, but I'm also against changing the official ones in that way. Maybe if instead a "DELUXE" version was made for such quests and we could have both, that'd be neat.
 
As a new player I never got to experience HBR, so I don't really have anything to compare to. However, after reading through all the responses in the post, I can say that I do get where everyone is coming from. I started playing right at the beginning of the Christmas event and really enjoyed playing it. It was actually the perfect time to start because it allowed me to lvl and gear my character much more quickly. I certainly didn't get rich from it, but I was able to get a pretty good head start. After the event was over, I was looking for the next grind and started trying out the RBR quests. I quickly found it to be underwhelming comparted the Christmas event, but not because of the drops, boosts, presents, etc. I know that the events are supposed to be grand, so to expect that in normal gameplay is unreasonable. So what I was really missing was the sense of progression. When you do a Christmas quest, there's a guaranteed reward. Even if you don't get any drops, you still get coal for completing the quest. So it always made the christmas quests exciting and worthwhile. The RBR quests on the other hand have no guarantee. You could do 10 of them and not get anything for it. I know this is the nature of RNG, but I think the RBR quests would be a lot more rewarding and enticing to players if it had a similar guaranteed reward mechanic. This would be in addition to the tweaks suggested in this post to balance out the quests and add more to the lineup. Even if the reward was minimal, I think it would add more appeal, especially to new players. I really like Joe Joe's suggestion of adding a new currency. The currency could be rewarded based on the difficulty of the quest and traded for basic but essential items. Maybe things like pds, mats, addslots, mag cells, meseta, etc. It would be especially helpful for new players because it provides them a path to follow and they could use the currency to help gear their character and prepare for ult. As an added bonus, I think older players would appreciate having more geared and better prepared new players in their pub games.

Also, I’d like to commend the staff and community of this server. Everyone has been super nice and helpful, easily the best community I've experienced in a long time. I look forward playing with you all and seeing this server develop along the way!
 
I'd be in favor or expanding the quest list. 'Bad' quests like East/West Tower don't even need to be removed if all quests are in the rotation- there will just be some weeks with good/broken quests and some with bad quests and that'd be fine and balanced when seen over a long period of time (even though the nerds will still be whining on Discord about wanting a reroll for the week).
 
I don't really have anything extensive to add nowadays anymore as I don't follow the general gist of the community (I just lurk sometimes). So all I can do is just bring down a biased perspective.

Anyway, I've always been someone who's never been really particular about caring about boosts. PSO's just that side-hustle that I like to run sometimes whilst sometimes I get a goodie here and there. I care naught about the economy. I like puzzling with what I have mostly, and make little realistic upgrade-goals from there. Its just a side-part of the server. The meat and bones is still the gameplay and that puzzling is additive to that gameplay, not the core.

All I've ever cared about is doing things I enjoy. Its what I do in life, and its what I do in PSO. Rewards more often than not follow suit, and it doesn't have to be some extensive drop, because what's the success if you're not getting fullfilment out of it, right?

From that perspective, HBR was...kinda boring, but its nature of playing something I didn't know/play-often to progress also dragged me in weirdly enough. Even so, RBR's inclusion kinda overjoyed me and had a good deal of fun with that, until I got to the inevitable realization that I also didn't get to play a bunch of things with other people (just solo's....a lot of solo's). That's my biggest issue with it currently. It doesn't have the "kick". Where beforehand every month was its own event, nowadays its just "some game". I think RBR as a concept is super fine and that it can have that "kick", but it doesn't have it now, nor do I know what the solution is tbh. I just have a feeling it has potential to go there, is all.

What I can say is that I don't think its that big of a deal if strong or weaker quests are handled in rotation. I know PW2 will be played to heck when it pops, and if it rolls with a quest I enjoy far, FAR more (like Scarlet Realm), its gonna sting for me specifically. But at least I actually *get* to play the darn quest with people sans premades, and in the end that's sorta what even brings me to even spawn the will to play with randoms. Just playing and learning quests that way was a heck of a lot of fun, and still is even as a veteran honestly.

Again, just a biased perspective. I don't know what the solution is. I'm just some guy with a specific way of enjoying this game and wanted to share it.
 
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