Server maintenance concluded for June 25th, 2022 (6/26 サーバメンテナンス終了)

[Sodaboy]

Thank you for your patience! Maintenance has concluded for June 25th, 2022.

Let's dive right in, shall we...?

We feel Hardcore mode, a non-vanilla mode we introduced quite some time ago at Ephinea, is not "Hardcore" enough. This mode should be about survival and permanent death of a character. However, with the way Hardcore mode is currently, it does not come off as such.

The current version of Hardcore mode seems to attract people who want to have an easier time with PSO due to it's double experience, double meseta bonus, and 30% boost to rare item drop rates. Also, the fact that Scape Dolls can still drop from encounters with monsters seems to curb a considerable amount of danger to the mode.

Thinking of ways to improve Hardcore mode and create a TRUE hardcore experience, we thought about removing Hardcore mode boosts as well as removing Scape Dolls from the game. However, since combat in PSO is client side, you could still escape death with a simple ALT + Backspace and live to fight another day.

Thinking more about it, if we pulled Scape Dolls from the game, no one would want to fight bosses like Dark Falz or Olga Flow due to the potential of being troll killed by another player. Removing Scape Dolls from the game would also stop people from wanting to play Episode II completely due to the number of monsters that have instant kill abilities in that particular episode.

Thinking EVEN MORE ABOUT IT, we came to the conclusion that PSO can't really be played as a true Hardcore game and we've decided to remove Hardcore mode entirely.

So, with today's maintenance, all currently existing Hardcore accounts, characters and teams have now been converted to Normal mode. This eliminates one of the three economies on the server. Going from Normal, Hardcore and Classic economies to just Normal and Classic economies, making things less complicated.

We do hope you enjoyed playing Hardcore while it lasted and we will never forget those who died, sometimes with hilarious banners, on their quest to Hardcore greatness.

Outside of Hardcore mode changes, the following changes were also made to Ephinea:

- For aesthetic purposes, the daily luck system no longer changes the color of Normal mode characters' names. The daily luck system is still active, however, and the rare drop rate displayed when joining a game will still reflect that.

- Previously, when the drop anything rate of a monster went over 100% due to weekly boosts, events, or quests (ex: Halloween Cookie quests), 10% of the overflowed drop rate would go into the rare item drop rate. This will no longer be the case. With HBR, you will STILL get rare drop rate boosts when the HBR drop anything rate boost is 25%.

... and that's that!

We hope you understand why we made the changes we've made and, as always, thank you for playing on Ephinea!

￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣
大変お待たせいたしました。 2022年6月26日のメンテナンスは終了しました。

さて、早速ですが...？

私たちは、Ephineaが以前導入した非バニラモードのハードコアモードが、あまり「Hardcore」ではないと感じています。 このモードは、キャラクターロストを回避して生き延びることがテーマであるべきですが、しかしながら、現在のハードコアモードのあり方では、そのようには見えません。

現在のハードコアモードは、経験値2倍、メセタボーナス2倍、レアアイテムドロップ率30％アップということで、より優遇されたPSOを楽しみたい人たちのものになってしまっているようです。 また、エネミーからスケープドールがドロップすることも、このモードの危険性をかなり抑制しています。

ハードコアモードを改善し、真のハードコア体験を実現する案として、ブーストを削除し、スケープドールを撤廃することも考えました。 しかし、PSOの戦闘はクライアントサイドで行われるため、ALT+Backspaceキーを押すだけで死を回避し、生き延びて戦い続けることができてしまいます。

考えてみると、もしゲームからスケープドールを撤廃したら、他のプレイヤーから意図的に殺される可能性があるため、誰もダークファルスやオルガ・フロウなどのボスと戦いたがらないでしょう。 また、エピソード2には即死能力を持つエネミーが多いため、エピソード2を全くプレイしたくなくなるかもしれません。

熟慮を重ねた結果、PSOは真のハードコアゲームとしてプレイするには不向きであるという結論に至り、ハードコアモードを完全に削除することを決定しました。

そのため、本日のメンテナンスをもって、現在のハードコアのアカウント、キャラクター、チームはすべてノーマルモードに変更されました。 これは、サーバ上の3つのトレード市場のうち1つが廃止されることも意味します。 ノーマルとクラシックだけの2つのモードで、より簡潔なものになりました。

私たちは、ハードコアの偉大さに挑み、時には陽気なバナーを流して死んでいった人々を決して忘れません。


ハードコアモードの件に加えて、以下の変更も行われました。

- 景観保護のため、デイリーラックシステムによるキャラクター名の表示色変更を廃止しました。 ただし、デイリーラックシステムは引き続き有効で、ゲームに参加した際に表示されるレアドロップ率は、これまで通り反映されています。

- これまで、ウィークリーブーストや各種イベント、ハロウィンクエストなどでDAR（アイテムドロップ率）が100％を超えた場合、余剰分の1/10がRDR（レアドロップ率）として加算されていました。今後はこのRDRボーナスは無効になります。 HBRによってDARが25%を超えた際のRDRブーストは、これまで通り有効です。


...以上です！

今回の変更の趣旨をご理解いただければ幸いです。
これからも引き続き、Ephineaをよろしくお願いします！

 

[KIREEK]

Do Normal mode items equal Hardcore mode items?

 

[Dezor Inyan]

Holy shit, you guys really are ruthless lmao. If i were a dedicated HC player you'd have a problem now XD!
(Wanted to complain about not communicating things early enough again, but i guess i won't this time, considering people would have pulled funny economical tricks had they known earlier ;3 Still... Holy shit lmao.)

 

[Esther]

Do Normal mode items equal Hardcore mode items?

It's all Normal Mode economy now. There is no exchange rate anymore. HC accounts are now NM accounts so they can now trade among other NM account players.

 

[Penny?!]

This is gonna skyrocket supply and demand.. Market gonna crash now lmao

 

[Cyhyraeth]

I haven't liked many of the other recent changes, but this is by far the worst.

I was never really interested in playing the new Classic Mode, but I didn't mind adding a new way that people can choose to play if they want to. But removing an existing game mode that has been around for years, which literally no one was complaining about, seems unnecessary and insulting to the dedicated players of that game mode.

If increased experience or drop rates were a problem, then those could have been toned down or eliminated without removing the game mode entirely.

This change is not only bad for the dedicated hardcore players, but also for all the players who have died and lost characters, quit and sold their hardcore items, and those who spent normal photon drops buying items for hardcore mode that they no longer need.

This change should be reversed immediately to allow people to play the game in the way they choose to and enjoy.

 

[Sodaboy]

This change is not only bad for the dedicated hardcore players, but also for all the players who have died and lost characters, quit and sold their hardcore items, and those who spent normal photon drops buying items for hardcore mode that they no longer need.

This change should be reversed immediately to allow people to play the game in the way they choose to and enjoy.

The problem is that the game mode doesn't work and can't work due to how PSO is designed.

Also, those players who died knew what they were signing up for. Their deaths and what happened to their characters and inventory are on them and not us.

No one told them to trade items for gear across modes either. Again, their own folly.

If you played Hardcore mode, survived, and were good at it, you literally have lost nothing other than the boosts.

If you want to play a mode where you die without a Scape and get deleted, you can play that mode in your head while playing a Normal game. When you die, delete the character on your own.

You're free to hate what's been done, even quit the server for it if you like, but the change isn't going to be reversed.

 

[SirLagsAlot]

When i joined Eph around 2017 i think i saw the hardcore mode on account creation and chose that because it looked like a fun way to reexperience the game.

I had never actually played PSO online, just split screen with some friends. So for me, hardcore was all i knew for PSO online. I have over 3000 hours in Ephinea PSO and its ALL in HC mode.

Despite being “easier” because of the boosting exp and rdr surprisingly it changed things quite a lot to have to think about things more. All of a sudden you have actual monetary resources you would burn when you fucked up and you would think about things much more as well as increasing the heart rate lol, knowing you would try not to make the same mistake. Having a series of bad games felt terrible and you would rethink yohr every move. Things like set hp enemy attacks would become relevant, learning to dodge meris and all megids became relevant. During xmas you would have to play carefully as there was no TPing out. This actually forced me to start using star atoms so i could 0 death these quests on a droid. And no, you can just alt-backspace whenever you wanted. If you are hosting a game you cant really do this without risking being blacklisted and having alot less people who want to play with you. Even though hardcore was broken it still had an ediquette.

The exp thing is kind of funny to me. Its really not hard to level in PSO and oftentimes your level can have little to no impact as to how strong you are. A RA can behave like a level 200 RA with correct gear and whacky ATA builds right at level 80. The RDR boost might seem OP but 130% of zero is still zero. For one example alone i hunted 10k spiegells sky during anniversary and saw 3 HP drop, all for NM players. Another factor too is that the scape dropped from the same “rare” pool like pds. Sometimes youd have the same seed as another NM player, theyd get a PD and youd get a Scape. This effectively halves the PD rate for HC.

Even the chars who do need levels for stats like hucast and foney are essentially capped once they hit 180, halfway, and its not incredibly hard to achieve, boosted or not. Now of course from the hardcore perspective (something ill never be able to say again lol) those levels DID matter because they meant more HP and DFP. Without HC being a thing these levels mean absolutely nothing, you die, its nbd, you get resd almost immediately.

Leveling a HC foney was probably the most fun activity in the game. You feel so weak the entire time and every single level feels like it really matters and you closely calc which content you can take on the entire time making sure not to enter a place with spawns that 1 tap you, or if that gibbles jumps, you literally shit yourself and simply dodging it becomes you main objective. This feeling cannot be replicated in any other PSO game mode or server.

Sure hardcore was broken and maybe not well thought out enough but there was plenty of time to implement changes, and it still provided a unique and fun gameplay experience. None of the suggested changes in the OP were attempted or even discussed with the community.

For many hardcore is something you could do once you already found everything in NM. I think the intention is to have classic mode be the alternative now but it could be possibly too limiting since what people usually hunt anyway is things like high hit HS or lames, which do not occur there. For most there is little to hunt there and therefore little reason to play the mode.

HC was/is already dead/dying. There really was very few people actively playing it all the way into the lategame. For most it was something they never even thought about. I would often have well established players asking me why my name was red. If i wanted to experience the game through the HC lense it really only affected me and its kinda mean to deny a player this after such a long time. The idea that it was broken and should be removed should have been realized quite quickly after its inception and 6 years later might be a bit too late.

I think that all 8 active HC mains are gonna be pretty upset over this…

 

[Matt]

tl;dr but if we were to ever rebalance or change Hardcore, the current Hardcore would need to become Normal anyway as it wouldn't be fair for them to keep their status on new rules (which would be along the lines of extremely limited lives, scapes wouldn't work, etc.)

After the initial "scary" part of Hardcore, it just turned into normal mode with less inventory space and extra boosts, and people lost characters because "I thought I had a scape", not because they were being really careful but fucked up. Like obviously in this scenario they fucked up, but they played the way they did because they thought they could -- that's not really a Hardcore mode.

Permadeath is also a bad mechanic for a game like PSO, downgrade to normal would make more sense, but all boosts would have to be stripped, and again, everyone would have to be demoted anyway, as why should you have your status after a significant rule change?

 

[Mille Marteaux]

The idea that it was broken and should be removed should have been realized quite quickly after its inception and 6 years later might be a bit too late.

it is never too late to remove something that doesn't work. should it have been done sooner? sure. but that doesn't mean its too late

people can be cranky that bartles aren't worth 520 experience anymore all they want, there were repeated attempts to make HC actually be "hardcore" and then it was just left alone.

nowadays seeing a red name in your game just functioned more like a scarlet letter than anything - you knew they were going to immediately drop out when in any kind of danger because the "risk' of losing a character they spent twenty minutes on getting to 200 was just too much to handle.

for better or for worse, dying is a part of pso1. run from it all you want, but falzbarta is faster than you.

 

[SirLagsAlot]

.

I like the idea of producing a new hardcore mode. Like you said, maybe it could provide boosts etc but it only lasts for 1, or limited lives and then resetting the player to a normie account. Making it all the way to 200 without EVER dying would be quite the feat and it would still allow players to strategize in all the ways i mentioned in my post that was too long for you to read.

nowadays seeing a red name in your game just functioned more like a scarlet letter than anything - you knew they were going to immediately drop out when in any kind of danger because the "risk' of losing a character they spent twenty minutes on getting to 200 was just too much to handle.

Idk why you are so upset that others could play a different game mode than you that you would insult us by saying it only takes 20 minites to get to level 200. Took me about 150 hours per account to get there casually and i bet i could do it even faster if i just played in ep 4 on a regular account. Even as a HC i can proudly say i never DCd intentionally while hosting a game, the game is already so easy you can barely even land a hit on enemies with a strong team of 3. This is why anguish mode is so great because it actually makes the game more fun to play and yes, i mostly only hosted anguish games even though i was a hardcore and i never minded burning scapes because i could always just grab more or buy more if it came to it. Very few quests stop you from tping back to the bank and thise that did happened to be some of the most fun content for HC to properly plan to do the quest safely.

for better or for worse, dying is a part of pso1. run from it all you want, but falzbarta is faster than you.

Sure dying is a part of pso. The best example being mericarols curse attack. Of course with no risk of monetary loss from dying from said attack you would have little reason to learn strats to dodge the attack because your death would mean nothing.

Your other example, falzbarta is an avoidable death at nearly all levels. You simply equip a cure/freeze and can then spam mates, or even some ice resist if you need it or a barrier like gratia. These strats are something every HC had to consider to conserve financial resources to maintain the account. I wouldnt expect any NM account to know or care about this because their deaths are meaningless

 

[CTB]

Trade 1 inventory slot for all the boosts is gone?

Oh no....

Spoiler

Here is a fun project for someone bored enough.

So you think you're hardcore mode

- Periodic saving by server for hardcore characters is now only done in random intervals of 10-30 minutes (save attempts to sync with other HC players in room) outside of normal difficulty.
- Hardcore players can play with Normal but not Classic players.
- Hardcore players do not get to pick drop style, they are forced into PSO2.
- Hardcore players cannot drop items, though they can discard them. They cannot see any item dropped by Normal players to the floor.
- Hardcore players can trade, but they are only able to do so in normal difficulty games (to prevent duplication/server syncro issues.) Scape dolls can only be traded between hardcore accounts; the trade will fail if one of the parties trading isn't HC.
- A new NPC will be present in the Hospital. This NPC is the only place that HC players can save and quit on demand (and you must quit to do a save on demand.)
- Alt+Backspace is disabled. If you want to be a weasel and pull your Ethernet cable or kill the process with another hotkey, you risk losing up to 30 minutes of progress.
- Scape Doll rate set to 3x that of Photon Drop
- (To prevent issues with trolls/high degrees of instant kills) You will be kicked to the lobby, mid-quest or not, if you die more than once after a Scape Doll/Ragol Ring is consumed. You can still be revived a second time with another scape but will ejected from the game.
- Your character will be deleted if you die otherwise (Phoenix Claw / Ragol Ring will be ignored by server check if you have one)

Now that you actually have a knife to your neck, you "enjoy" the following in HC:
- Permanent 100% EXP boost that can stack with other bonuses
- 2x HBR points rewarded
- You can switch section IDs once every 3 months.
- You can (well are forced) to use transparent section ID chairs in lobby


Probably not feasible, but I would check it out if it was!

 

[No Hit]

Of course with no risk of monetary loss from dying from said attack you would have little reason to learn strats to dodge the attack because your death would mean nothing.

Death in PSO does have meaning outside of HC. You lose time, shifta, and put others at risk if its multiplayer. You have good reasons not only to learn to dodge it, but how to kill it before it even spits.

 

[Ender]

Another factor too is that the scape dropped from the same “rare” pool like pds. Sometimes youd have the same seed as another NM player, theyd get a PD and youd get a Scape. This effectively halves the PD rate for HC.

PDs aren't rare drops. They're just tools with red boxes. Scapes for hardcore characters aren't rare drops either. They're just tools that have a little announce message for the party. Both drops happen because the server failed event/global drops, passed DAR, failed rare drop check, failed drop type check, and then landed in tools category.

Scapes were "less common" for HC because they were disabled as quest rewards and not allowed as fixed box drops for HC characters.

I like the idea of producing a new hardcore mode. Like you said, maybe it could provide boosts etc but it only lasts for 1, or limited lives and then resetting the player to a normie account. Making it all the way to 200 without EVER dying would be quite the feat and it would still allow players to strategize in all the ways i mentioned in my post that was too long for you to read.

I agree that HC should have originally been like this. No scape drops, no shared bank, no trading/drop trading. It would have to be basically 100% self-found just for that 1 life. But it would still need anti-cheese methods in place because someone could still alt+bs or crash their game just before death.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I mean that even if HC was originally implemented like that, it would still be flawed because client-side combat like the news post mentions.

 

[SirLagsAlot]

Death in PSO does have meaning outside of HC. You lose time, shifta, and put others at risk if its multiplayer. You have good reasons not only to learn to dodge it, but how to kill it before it even spits.

Sure it does have meaning. Its meaning just carries a different weight in both scenarios. I see it mattering the most with RTA players. Still being HC forces you to learn to either dodge or kill before spitting, whatever you need to do to avoid the death. I dont think any player will really mind having you die and be resd and SD’d, unless its incredibly excessive lol. A player who does mind is probably being toxic as well since we are all at varying skill levels. HC simply encouraged a player to learn more strategies that may have only been considered unless you were super lategame. I personally really enjoy being super fast on the moon atomizer button and seeing how quickly i can res the player as an additional skill.

At the end of the day all i can really say is that HC mems and NM mems enjoyed the same game with slight differences. I just fell in love with these mechanics and it became PSO to me. Thank you for the clarification @Ender i guess i was just extremely unlucky when i had games getting multiple rares from the same spawns as others while the only difference being pd/scape. RNG can be a wild thing and i only ever thought it was an oversight and not intentional.

Hopefully more experimental gamemodes or something like seasons can be considered in the future. I just think more options is good and the classic mode is a another great option to expand gameplay scenarios.

 

[machine]

At the end of the day, we still get to play pso in more or less its original form. HC was originally meant as a challenge, but people figured out how to game the system as Ender pointed out.

I myself was very guilty of this. And I would often /lobby or crash the game to save scapes/avoid dying to lose scapes, which kind of defeats the purpose of HC-- it was more so just abusing the game mode.

I probably pissed off a TON of people doing this, but aside from this, HC made me grow a bit as a player to learn spawns/dmg output/mob attack patterns, but now that I'm getting more serious about quickly farming hbr, I find the desire to improve my skills/knowledge of spawns/how to position/attack/dps/etc is more inspired from my desire to quickly and smoothly complete the quest for drops, not because of my status as a HC player.

Also the best players I've played with weren't even HC, but normal players who are serious about efficient, fast, smooth HBR runs. They knew all the spawns, where to position, best way to dps, etc. So using HC as a way to "inspire yourself to play better" is only a different way to look at it. You can improve your play from any basis that inspires you.

And I never knew what Ender said about the Scapes/PDs not being part of the rare pool. That's a relief.

I was running into a lot of issues with the dwindling HC community, which made trading suffer greatly since it was either one of these things:

1. no one online to trade with
2. no one had the item you needed/wanted the item you were selling
3. price inflation because of reasons 1 and 2

It is a bit of a relief now that HC has been converted to normal, but I can see where some might have an issue with this.

We're playing the game we love for free, and to me that's all that really matters in the end.

I was drawn to Ephinea because it was the most Vanilla of the free private servers. I wanted to play the original PSO that I grew to love on DC and GC, which they graciously allowed for us. HC and HBR are just the icing on the top. Removing either still leaves us with the game that I still love. Any other server(Ultima which is the next runner up) doesn't feel like the original PSO since they added in so many new things.

As much as it sucks in the short term that HC was removed, I understand WHY it was done, and it's not that big of a deal to me. It does kind of suck for the people who traded their HC items for normal pds/items, but that's a problem for them to get through.

We just have to remind ourselves that this is their money, their time, work and effort. This game is completely funded by them, not us, we're not customers but people being allowed to experience a service for free and we shouldn't be acting entitled to how they should be running their server.

Just focus on gaming folks.

 

[SirLagsAlot]

I would say the worst part about it is that it removes the exclusivity of having certain ubers and high hit weaps and skins within HC.

Due to the reduced playerbase it made it function like an ironman mode in alot of regards. Forcing the player to hunt certain things they could otherwise just save up and buy.

Having these uber rare items felt like a huge accomplishment within hardcore while in normal mode they seem to be quite common.

Im not trying to act “entitled” to anything. I always figured forums were for stating opinions and discussing things, if i pissed you off by explaining why i and others enjoyed hc for all these years im sorry lol. I completely understand that everything i say doesnt matter and wont change anything, its all good

 

[redria7]

My draw to Ephinea was stability. Run by the people who sourced the server code everyone else uses, player data is downloadable at any time, no history of data loss, and not accepting donations/using the server as an income source, etc. All of this tells me this is a server where I can happily make a bunch of characters and play a few hours a week for the next decade+.

I can appreciate the HC mode had issues, and that the limited population was not improving. This change might even be the best option available and make the most sense.

The execution makes me question whether I want to trust this server or just work on setting up a private server now.

A minimum of communication would be nice. Turn off hardcore account creation, give a heads up that this is on its way, and give the community an opportunity to offer an alternative.

Every reason and explanation you have might make sense and be correct, but if this is just a 1-way street where you drop massive changes removing things that have been around for years without any notice, then it will never go over well. It isn’t about right or wrong, it’s just a matter of communication.

 

[Thomas]

My draw to Ephinea was stability. Run by the people who sourced the server code everyone else uses, player data is downloadable at any time, no history of data loss, and not accepting donations/using the server as an income source, etc. All of this tells me this is a server where I can happily make a bunch of characters and play a few hours a week for the next decade+.

I can appreciate the HC mode had issues, and that the limited population was not improving. This change might even be the best option available and make the most sense.

The execution makes me question whether I want to trust this server or just work on setting up a private server now.

A minimum of communication would be nice. Turn off hardcore account creation, give a heads up that this is on its way, and give the community an opportunity to offer an alternative.

Every reason and explanation you have might make sense and be correct, but if this is just a 1-way street where you drop massive changes removing things that have been around for years without any notice, then it will never go over well. It isn’t about right or wrong, it’s just a matter of communication.

Excellent post and says exactly what I think.

 

[Ade]

I’m intrigued to see what the influx of supply and demand (and a few legendary % items) will do with Auctions. Interesting choice. I don’t have a dog in this fight. I would have loved to try HC because I average one death maybe every 4 to 7 million EXP, but I’m always at 27/30 items with my loadout, so the idea of having to carry Scapes kept me away from it. I guess I gain “not feeling bad about making the choice.”