Were any changes made to make the life of Force users easier in Ult?

Status
Not open for further replies.
FOs can solo ep1 and ep4 pretty effectively by spamming techs to stunlock large groups of enemies. A max atp humar would certainly be able to kill a single delsaber easier than any FO, but it would be much more difficult for a HUmar to effectively solo all of ruins. I think you should try shifting your perspective on what FOs can do vs another class, and you'll have a better time with it. You can also acquire tech boosting gear or things like adept, to ease the issues you've been having.
 
Unsure if this is bait at this point but there are many good FO videos out there which are a great watch for new and experienced players alike so I figured I would post a few---

Playing FO basically requires knowledge of what gear boosts what and what enemies are weak to, along with the ability known as menuing. He shines in TA solo mode as the best in many areas due to the range and many targets of techniques- see examples below:

Forest, Caves, Mines, Ruins, Sub Des

And yes these videos are all solo mode because that's where FO can go all out, in multimode he is concerned about not dmcing so you don't spam huge techs as much spammed as other players can get the large groups as a team. In multi-mode however FO is still very powerful (OP buffs), and the use of gifoie comes into play much much more, in Forest/Mines/Episode 4.

You will zalure, shifta, and gifoie mostly with some demons, then sometimes other attacking techniques, physical damage and deband/jellen.

Here are some multimode examples of FO gameplay:
Mines:
Crater & Sub Des:

There are more examples around but you get the idea.

Now what you will notice is they are all FOnewm specifically but that's because he is the ''best'' Force due to his GI and RA tech boosts for time attack. Other FO can work just as well. FO may not be super big dick damage like a HUcast wielding a DF but no HUcast can hit the whole room of enemies with 1 attack for widespread damage, gotta play to your strengths whatever that may be, within your class.
 
Last edited:
I think there's an issue of confusing balance with total equity in terms of DPS. It's true, a Force will never match the DPS of a Hunter or Ranger on a single target. In that aspect, why would anyone ever play a Force in a game about killing monsters when they're the weakest monster killers?

You have to look at what the class is capable of doing that other classes aren't. In a group Level 30 Shifta brings a lot of damage to the table for the hunters and Casts that they wouldn't be able to get, at least until they pop off a PB chain, and Jellen adds even more on top of that. If techs were able to reach near the same DPS as Humar's swords then they'd be obscenely broken, especially since hitting with techs doesn't require ATA.

When playing Solo it might be tedious to have to mash out 7 or 8 Rabartas to deal with a Chaos Bringer or whatever, but that's the price you pay for huge AoE and attacks that are guaranteed to hit without having to break your back hunting for high hit% weapons.

In a group you won't be doing the most damage by a longshot, but when people see a Force join the group I don't think they're expecting damage, rather they're hoping for a reliable support. If you're playing multi and want to see enemies health bars drop, I recommend seeking out a Slicer of Fanatic and learning about the SNS glitch.

Forces are good as long as you don't ask them to do things they can't do.
 
Of course, you shouldn't get us wrong, there are serious balance concerns with how Force plays in terms of Hunter and Ranger, and playing them intuitively (i.e. using offensive techniques on everything everywhere) doesn't work as you might expect. This is definitely a failure of SEGA's balance team, but it is more an issue with the game mechanics vs pure stats and stuff (damage cancel, techs not having ATA check, techs working against % resists instead of a type of defence, SDJZ being irrelevant for techs, and so on), but Forces are very, very, very strong in many situations, it just might not be the situation you want them to be strong in, and that's fine, that's why classes exist.

PSO BB balance is fucked up, but it is what it is, and there's nothing truly useless.
 
Forces have a few unique tools outside of their uber level 30 support techs to make life easier after a while

-Gal Wind can trigger mags freely with s3 draining 21% of your max hp for a use. So you can slap on 30 seconds of doing whatever you want around foes w/o worry a good % of the time in your down time if you need. Using hp draining weapons is a good thing for all classes to learn how to do right but Forces get an invulnerability for free button.
As a weapon itself as well it isn't the worse thing. The special attack has hard accuracy, and hits through certain targets due to being a beam. Even if it has less than mechgun range it still pierces foes. Try it on bosses like the worms when they are moving by the rafts it is pretty cool. So building its hit with Photon Chrystals isn't the worse investment as well if you want in a long term goal (sure its on a low end of needs there but still). Due to the piercing thing you can hit Vol Opt 2 like 9 times with s3 or so as well.

-S-rank cards have around the same range needed as mechguns to sns glitch hit with because of their slower than normal bullet speed. And cards have semi auto aiming in general (well the range of their attack targets are bigger than handguns, for better or worse). With cards in general having launcher properties they are great at tagging fast targets. The recovery time of n2 on cards is as well so you can avoid being a sitting duck in some situations better. The final hit slapping 3 times as well makes demons and hell specials pretty potent on this for a nice face nuke that can be set up some even if you miss with the 1st special some.
 
Matt said:
Of course, you shouldn't get us wrong, there are serious balance concerns with how Force plays in terms of Hunter and Ranger, and playing them intuitively (i.e. using offensive techniques on everything everywhere) doesn't work as you might expect. This is definitely a failure of SEGA's balance team, but it is more an issue with the game mechanics vs pure stats and stuff (damage cancel, techs not having ATA check, techs working against % resists instead of a type of defence, SDJZ being irrelevant for techs, and so on), but Forces are very, very, very strong in many situations, it just might not be the situation you want them to be strong in, and that's fine, that's why classes exist.

PSO BB balance is fucked up, but it is what it is, and there's nothing truly useless.
Click to expand...

Well it does appear that I got a little distracted and forgot about my own topic... again. Well SEGA did compensate for their failure with PSO2, but PSOBB (and it's predecessors) still suffer from this great injustice.

The question remains however, does it need to stay this way or better yet, can the good folks at Ephinea do anything about this? I mean these are just random ideas, but why not allow Force weapon attributes to boost techniques against monster types, would give a better purpose to Photon Spheres. Hell, better yet, add extra choices to Force weapons to boost Fire, Ice and Lighting using Photon Spheres?
 
the_importer said:
Are you part of the Ephinea team?
Click to expand...

No, I am not, but I am 99.99% sure they will never do this. I am not speaking for them ofc, anything is possible, but they have been pretty vocal about how they wish to do things. And changing FO weapons to boost tech damage on attributes is broken AF, FO is already strong.
 
Spuz said:
No, I am not, but I am 99.99% sure they will never do this. I am not speaking for them ofc, anything is possible, but they have been pretty vocal about how they wish to do things. And changing FO weapons to boost tech damage on attributes is broken AF, FO is already strong.
Click to expand...

Seems more like your personnel preference overall IMHO, but regardless, maybe they'll change their mind in the future. Meanwhile, Sandbox mode allowed me to see the end game I always wanted to see, which is not impressive at all, happy I didn't waste months getting there the hard way just to end up disappointed.

Oh well, there's a crap ton of modern action RPGs in my Steam library, really should give some of them a try instead of reminiscing in the past hoping for a better experience.
 
I think FO is a lot less fun to play than everything else. FOs remain useful because of unique / creative gameplay, but weren't balanced into the game properly. So unless you already know LITERALLY EVERYTHING about the game, which plenty of us do, you aren't going to have much fun as a FO on Ephinea. You have to do a bunch of weird, counter-intuitive stuff (that nobody would ever figure out by themselves) to be useful as a FO. That is bad design, in my opinion. Especially if the other jobs in the game have utility that is more obvious.

(Sega's fault. Not Ephinea staff.)

I feel for the OP because I remember feeling this way a long time ago. As the community continued to accumulate info (back on PSO GameCube and early PSOBB), I found myself annoyed at the realization that no one person could have ever figured out all the "useful" things to do as a FO by themselves. If the usefulness of a character doesn't make itself apparent through ordinary gameplay and requires an obsessed fanbase to figure it out, it's designed poorly. (This is the same gripe I have with FromSoft's storytelling in their games; nobody would ever understand any of their stories without obsessed fans making two-hour analysis videos.)

Playing FO proficiently only because I observed and copied what others figured out before me is not satisfying. It just makes me feel dumb.

Edit: Sorry, the OP made another post as I was typing this. Nice work, guys. In your effort to show everyone how leet you are, we lost another new person. Bravo.

Edit 2: It was brought to my attention the OP was not "new," per se, but was returning to PSO after a long break. I maintain my stance.
 
Last edited:
the_importer said:
Well it does appear that I got a little distracted and forgot about my own topic... again. Well SEGA did compensate for their failure with PSO2, but PSOBB (and it's predecessors) still suffer from this great injustice.
Click to expand...
If you're coming from PSO2 this topic makes a lot more sense. In that game every class is a DPS class, with some slight variation. Force in particular with the right gear could easily top damage for a lot of that game's lifespan. I do love PSO2 as well despite that game's flaws, and if your accusation is that a lot of the people here like PSOBB because of nostalgia then I'll admit it, I'm guilty as charged.

You can't expect much from a game with mechanics that border on the edge of being a tech demo, nor could you really expect much from its story or content or level design compared to other games that have come out in the two decades since it released. If you didn't play it when it was new all you can do is appreciate what it did for its time. There's a good reason I don't recommend this game to my friends, even though I still play it.

Ade said:
Edit: Sorry, the OP made another post as I was typing this. Nice work, guys. In your effort to show everyone how leet you are, we lost another new person. Bravo.

Edit 2: It was brought to my attention the OP was not "new," per se, but was returning to PSO after a long break. I maintain my stance.
Click to expand...
It sounds to me like they weren't going to stick around anyway. Part of the draw of this server is it stays close enough to the original release, with some QOL upgrades and seasonal events that don't directly affect the actual gameplay. If the people in charge tweaked the classes at all* it would probably upset more people than it would please, but that's just my take. PSO isn't a game for everyone, and that's fine.

*I'm aware there are a couple very small tweaks to characters, like HUnewearl equipping Clio.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ade
JackSalad said:
If you're coming from PSO2 this topic makes a lot more sense. In that game every class is a DPS class, with some slight variation. Force in particular with the right gear could easily top damage for a lot of that game's lifespan. I do love PSO2 as well despite that game's flaws, and if your accusation is that a lot of the people here like PSOBB because of nostalgia then I'll admit it, I'm guilty as charged.

You can't expect much from a game with mechanics that border on the edge of being a tech demo, nor could you really expect much from its story or content or level design compared to other games that have come out in the two decades since it released. If you didn't play it when it was new all you can do is appreciate what it did for its time. There's a good reason I don't recommend this game to my friends, even though I still play it.


It sounds to me like they weren't going to stick around anyway. Part of the draw of this server is it stays close enough to the original release, with some QOL upgrades and seasonal events that don't directly affect the actual gameplay. If the people in charge tweaked the classes at all* it would probably upset more people than it would please, but that's just my take. PSO isn't a game for everyone, and that's fine.

*I'm aware there are a couple very small tweaks to characters, like HUnewearl equipping Clio.
Click to expand...

You're probably right. Maybe they wouldn't have stayed. But they were frustrated and needed some empathy that they weren't alone (rather than a barrage of facts and statistics). Thanks for providing a constructive response, at least. Someone else responded to my very thoughtful and introspective post with a laugh emoji, which feels not great. (Instead of explaining what was so dumb about it.)
 
the_importer said:
Are you part of the Ephinea team?
Click to expand...
No, but I am, and we're never doing anything even close to that.

FO doesn't suck. Is FO less powerful than HU and RA? Sure, but several people have made long, detailed posts about how to play a FO with a lot more effectiveness than you seem to think they have, and you're consistently ignoring them in favor of making short, snappy replies. That's not conducive to a good thread.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top