I'm only playing during story updates now. The best way I can describe my relationship with NGS is that I want to love the game but the game doesn't love me back, like at all. I will be there day 1 for the inevitable base PSO2 private server in the future though.
I'm going to be frank; I think it's just a really low quality game and a lot of people see it as such. There's clearly not a lot of resources or passion being put into the game, and for having "Phantasy Star Online 2" right in the name it's a massive downgrade in so many ways from PSO2. I think it's really telling when someone like me with literally 0 prior following or uploads on TH-cam and like an average viewership on Twitch of about 5 people can make a 20 minute "NGS is disappointing" rant video and get 30,000 views... something about NGS criticism videos resonates more with players than videos about updates and whatnot. Could chalk it up to outrage being a more contagious emotion but think it goes much further than that. NGS is fundamentally flawed and Sega clearly does not want to put any significant amount of resources into it.
I doubt Sega would do it but NGS could be saved but it require a fairly big update on the NGS side and some minimal effort on the PSO2 side. Simply NGS needs an expansion pack to drum up interest and provide enough content at once so that people don't burn through the games new content in a week which is what happens now with the drip feed system they have now. I think the new style of quests that play more like raids (Leciel, Nameless City) are a step in the right direction and they need more of that. Additionally they need systems that give longer term goals that will frankly require grinding (think Zig from the base game). An expansion style drop would also allow for a wider variety of content that's needed like more enemy variety, photon arts, classes etc. I would also recommend a system that encourages relevelling or alts like a prestige system. Making an expansion would take time, luckily they have an entirely second game attached to NGS that they could leverage to buy them time, PSO2. In fairness they almost certainly can't put too much resources in PSO2 anymore so I would recommend simply rerunning all the old events in the game and either keeping them on a scheduled rotation or just make them random. Include everything, rerun the old mission passes, the old seasonal events (like the one with the PSU characters), rerun the old ac/sg scratches, sell all the old packs (sonic collabration, ragol memories for example). They're running the game may as well make money from it, and I doubt simply running their already existing events would be difficult. They could do some simple things to buy time as well such as increasing level cap and maybe adding a harder difficulty and maybe adding systems that encourage relevelling or alts. As a final note on the PSO2 side, they could consider a progression server where they effectively relaunch the game, this would require a new server which they could either open ship 5 or merge 3/4. Both an NGS expansion and rebirth of PSO2 would be pretty marketable. However their current strategy clearly isn't working because rather than let PSO2 run a healthy course while they worked on NGS they jumped the gun way too early. Now they can't keep up and the game is losing players. This is what I would do though, revitalize PSO2 whatever way I can while I develop an "NGS: Blue Burst".
As someone that stopped playing NGS roughly 1 year ago, I don't think there's anything they could do to bring me back, NGS pretty much focused on everything I disliked about PSO2, so at this point I'm just waiting for the next game. When it comes to attracting new players, I don't think the name is what's stopping people from trying the game, after all, when NGS launched, it had a huge amount of people trying out the game. The problem is that NGS had a terrible first impression, and it's really hard for a game to recover from bad first impressions. Plus, in my opinion, the new player experience is just not good, and the changes that were made with the release of ver.2 made the new player experience even worse. The game being designed to rush new players to the end game is just bad game design, I think. I think it would take a complete overhaul of the new player experience to be able to attract new players, and even then I don't think the game can recover easily from the launch bad first impression. From a development point of view, effort would be better spent on a future new game, I think.
I don't understand your beef with Base PSO2. If you know Brightstar (Another PSO Fan. pretty the whole history of it) and his Days Arks podcast. in the latest news (10 1 2024 M/D/Y format) His co-host say. Base PSO2 is beloved but NGS is not. Base PSO2 merc sell but not NGS Note not trying to pick a fight.
@@nuruddinshah684 I think you misunderstood me, I enjoyed playing base PSO2, but, it had both parts that I liked and parts that I disliked. What I meant is that the core of NGS is based on the parts that I disliked about PSO2 without keeping the parts that I liked.
oh i actually have a lot i'd like to say about this!!! i'm one of the "die hard" players u mentioned... and for me the biggest issue is that theres just nothing worth farming for right now. we're still sitting on wingard as the best weapon, eredims drop like candy, and exelio isnt an upgrade. theres just nothing to really chase gear-wise right now except small optimizations. there also arent any augments worth grinding for outside of gran gladia soul as grand dread keeper II is pretty much impossible to farm for right now(maybe the coming LTQs will change that), and the other high end augs have tanked in price or don't have a reliable/worth the time farm(aegis soul IV for lux halphinale). not to mention that augment transfer has reduced the need for augments as players now will just wait until they have transfer passes to move their current stuff to whatever becomes the new best... i like playing the game!!!! its really fun to me!!! but i have nothing to do!! nothing big to chase and very few avenues to chase what little there is!! its been nameless city spam or dext base PSE farming for over a month lol.. for both current, new, and returning players... we need stuff to chase.. stuff to get excited about when it drops. we just do not have that at the moment, like.. at all. it would be nice if this came in a different form than just higher rarity weapon that eventually becomes trash down the line lol. maybe weapons with truly unique potentials or something that changes a certain class' PA or something???? i dunno!! something actually interesting rather than just number going up!!! it'd be nice if it also dropped from a wider array of content too. you mention ordinal tower in this and honestly... ive played NGS actively since launch and i've run it like... 10 times max lol maybe some incentives to do things is something sega should try LMAO for new players, honestly i think all base pso2 costumes/layering wear should just be earnable f2p without using meseta or SG. tie it to clearing content instead of just making it a daily 10 pull like the current thing we have... fashion is a huge huge huge hook for this game but its fatal flaw is the time/money investment it requires to truly enjoy it. you need lots of accessories, clothes, makeup options, and body paints to really get into it... so i think giving new players access to old pso2 stuff is an easy solution for that. i know sega already kinda does this sometimes, like with last month's growthment exchange event and special scratch, but it should just be permanent and more abundant and spread across more content. theres really no reason to be trying to sell base pso2 cosmetics for full $2 a scratch prices in 2024 with NGS spec items existing lol. also, to chat about your musings on older vs newer fans: i started with global PSO2 when it came to PC in 2020 and i've been playing since. just a few months ago i went back and tried older phantasy star games, phantasy star zero and recently phantasy star portable 2 infinity and i adore them. those two games have made me a phantasy star fan, not just a pso2 or ngs fan. a big issue NGS has in my opinion is a lack of "identity". the world and story of these older games feels much more alive and fleshed out... i especially love the role we take on in PSP2i!!! it makes me really sad that we don't have that so much in NGS.. sometimes when making a new outfit or character in NGS, i'd like to give them a backstory or imagine how they live in the world and NGS is just such a dead end in that regard lol. even comparing NGS to PSO2 you get the same feeling.. theres this phantasy star charm that feels absent in NGS's world. also, i don't feel particularly out of place in the older games!! theres enough still around in the new games that i was able to feel at home, at least for PSZ and PSP2i. i'd really really love to see NGS get back what these older games have... ever since playing them + revisiting PSO2 lately i can't help but feel more and more disappointed with the direction NGS has taken. like for example... lately ive been doing endless runs in base pso2 and fundamentally the game is similar to NGS in gameplay but the variety of environments and enemies you fight is just..... oh man does it make being stuck on halpha fighting dolls and purple dolls sting that much more lol. that said, there is just nothing else like it! theres no replacement for what NGS offers and i DO still have fun!! HUGE post SORRY!!!!!!!!!!!!! luv ur vids n streams btw!!! i dont normally interact but im around!!! hope u keep it up!! ^-^
No need to apologise, thanks for the comment! One thing I'm noticing a lot in these responses is things to the effect of "there's nothing to hunt or nothing feels special". I think personally that this specific problem started with base PSO2 introducing rare weapon series, but at least base game had some unique drops too. In NGS everything is a series. Everything is a "stat stick" as someone put it. There isn't enough interesting, unique gear. There aren't really any items with special mechanics (occasionally you'll get a weapon with a slightly different potential) and because of the high attrition rate of gear, nothing really feels worth bothering with. I'd always thought the "grind for rare drops" mentality was something that died a long time ago in the series so it's really interesting to hear people saying that's what they miss. Also totally agree about the complete lack of variety in enemies in NGS. We fought dolls for a couple of years and now we fight the Starless, which are just purple dolls. I want so much more for this franchise and even though I'm an NGS Creator I feel that the game's shortcomings (as well as any successes) needs to be addressed.
They did the rare drop chase for a good while, but they miscalibrated drop rates and they were way too low. As in there is none for sale in the AH for days and you grind hard everyday and get nothing after months. And then they just release new better weapons so you just wasted your time. The lack of identity is not unique to this game, it's an industry wide plague of cross promotions, cross-overs and games being monetization platforms first.
you are right. For me it's more on the expensive fashion right and repetitive dext farm for nmeseta. The only fun to do right now is nameless city but as you said exelio isn't an upgrade yet so that quest is almost always full but i think only 1 full 32 area is available and there's no point for others to repeat farm that all day. And also the story there's nothing to look forward to yet. And add to that the wellbia anti-cheat. If you look at the steamchart the player count started to drop when wellbia was introduced. Expensive fashion Nothing else to do No story Wellbia Those are the issues that are killing the game.
the unique weapons idea is literally why I got my Relik Sturm Drang to +90 idgaf about top numbers anymore im just trying to have fun in what ways I can and AOE blasts with melee weapons certainly helps. i second this, please give us actual UNIQUES! The community misses "Rare Drops" and *SPECIAL WEAPONs" ...anyway as far as numbers go, my Relik on has 100ish less atp so i really don't feel that number difference when I'm spamming PAs.
I saw a comment and someone summed up how I feel about ngs as someone that loved base pso2 and likes ngs Fanfare is missing from ngs. We have 3 different dark falz fights and none of them have any story implications whatsoever they just exist and that’s insane to me cause that’s dark falz! I think city exploration recently was a great update but that’s been like 4 months ago and it’s still the same thing , we needed like 4 different types of city exploration since it’s the closest we got to getting back on hopping on a stage to quickly farm and move out since base pso2. imagine a forest exploration for example Ultimately the devs simply aren’t trying imo and they don’t need to I guess cause the game is still pulling numbers (they don’t care about global numbers only Jp numbers and Jp numbers are still insanely high) and when they do try it’s either something really good or just moving a goal post on the newest level of highest gear so not that great
Yeah, this confuses me regarding Falz. We don't even have Solus in the story, nevermind Dalion. Falz is meant to be a centerpiece boss with huge story implications and in NGS I feel it's been reduced to a catch-all term for any big boss. It's sad.
Speaking as what would be considered "midcore" in this game (i have no interest in the standing quests whatsoever, i just dont find it fun) there just isnt anything engaging *before* standing quests that makes the game appealing. PSO, PSU, and PSO2 all had things to chase that weren't BiS and came from a variety of locations. It also had a fair amount of sidegrade systems (not counting skill rings, fuck skill rings) that may not have been major power increases, but were *fun*. I enjoyed daily crafting, crafting skill discs for friends, dismantling my gear that i didn't want to list mass mats for meseta, farming advance for spheres for mag food, advance quests, ultimate quest farming, challenge quests for weekly SG, casino games for SG, etc etc. On the flipside, my options in NGS are: get addon skills (done), upgrade PAs past lv5 (why? not nearly worth the investment), grind dext base (zzzz), run nameless and leciel (i've been running leciel for what feels like forever), and then duel quests. Do you notice the trend here? outside of duel quests and leciel/nameless, theres just nothing social about the *gameplay*. It has tons of social features, but the content itself unless you bring friends (which being honest, all of mine quit the game AGES ago) you're just going to be mindlessly grinding while hardly paying attention to the game. With the current roadmap, there's just not a lot of motivation to continue. Lack of clarification on story? fine, i guess, but it also doesn't seem like they're addressing the fundamental problems with the game. But realistically, outside of gambling, what is there really left for a casual? if they've built their house to satisfaction, they can... talk in the lobby. I don't know.. I've been a fan of PSO since 2002 and it's never felt this barren for casual content (actual content, not mindlessly AFK farming dext/el nossa) since the original release of PSO1.
Another factor I've heard from people who have tried to get into the game, got to max level, then subsequently quit, is it still feels like theres no endgame. There *is* but from their perspective, it feels like pre-amble to them. Like we're still in a tutorial. Levels made from digital building blocks, trainia, more and more ranks of areas, nameless city being "exploring this unknown area" and lecial being "exploring this unknown area", zephetto teasing starless, then the recent chapter teasing starless again. It doesn't feel like anything is happening to them. I don't blame them honestly, it *does* still feel like we're in some pre-amble before the real big content comes.
I do agree that there isn't much for a casual player, especially ones that aren't at level cap. The current game cycle to me feels like it only takes into account those at level cap already. I like how you discussed endgame as in how the game progresses; it does still feel like we're in a super early state despite the game being online for a few years now. It's such a shame because as much as I enjoy some parts of NGS it just feels kind of empty and soulless compared to previous games.
As a new player (a month and a half so far) to PSO2 and NGS, that is playing F2P, I find the game itself to be a blast to play and the absurd amount of ways to dress up/build in our creative space is insane. For me, there is just SO much to try to obtain! (Also I had assumed NGS was a soft reboot sequel.) I only really have two big issues. It is mind numbing to make enough meseta to earn anything "pretty" or "cool" off of the player shop. At least it's easy enough to turn off the mind while grinding Dext or the likes though. However, the worst part is the community as a whole for me. It's harsh trying to get any form of conversation, attention, or answers when people are focused on sticking with their already established circles. I assume most people are so certain that anyone new won't stick around anyways that they'd rather not get invested, but if that's the case, they're alienating everyone actually trying to get established. We all expect some toxicity of course, some people are just boorish for either attention or drama, but that's run of the mill for any game that can be F2P. I feel I got lucky and got "adopted" by a small group of really kind people that gave me enough reason to keep coming back, but I'm not sure many people who want to try the game would be as lucky. P.S. I do not like nameless city, as the timer stresses me out when going to collect the boxes near the end lol.
The lack of meseta even for grinding gear and affixing is really noticeable, yeah. I do feel that affixing/potentials etc needs to be overhauled. Glad to hear that as a newer player you're enjoying NGS though!
Wow, what a great point! 15:10 i never thought of that, but i totally agree with this. if i was a new player i would definitely think NGS was an expansion to regular PSO2, and it would require me to play base pso first.
This comment is mostly an earmark while I go hunting for it, but one statement released to investors has NGS as basically stable in terms of income, so in that sense it's not "dying". The attrition on Steam is a bit worrying for a live service, especially this early on in a game's life cycle, I think other historical comparisons might be EQ Luclin or WoW Cataclysm. Outside the scope and a bit tangential, but I think maybe the problem is Sega is just too big, and they look at the money coming in from their entire F2P roster and say "that's fine" while putting less attention into any one game than we're used to. I imagine mobile games are sucking a lot of air out of PSO2's development too. Edit: The "Data Appendices" Sega Sammy release under Investor Relations have tables, "titles released in 2021" means New Genesis. Its revenue is slowly contracting, actually, from 25 billion JPY in 2023, down to 20 billion down to a projection of 17 billion next financial year.
I agree with the comments here. Speaking for myself I take breaks cause I have to. Every time I return people get tired of the Some people don't wanna teach or help. They get blocked and left out. I mean that's fine that's those players.
Bring back dungeons, Bring back collab based missions, give enemies creative spaces drops, stop blacking out bosses and give them color so they can pop and stand out more and stop with the lack luster rewards on the endgame content
I don't think I heard it in the video but one outside factor to consider for July at least is Final Fantasy XIV's expansion launched so I could see it having an impact at least temporarily players who play both. For me personally, I struggle to get into and commit to the original PSO2 as well. I think for me it really comes down to the feeling that I need to commit to one game for 6 months to really get a feel for it. So I'm not sure there's anything NGS could do for me at this point, but maybe reusing the toolset for a more focused experience like Phantasy Star Nova would be slightly more appealing. But I don't see that happening lol.
I'd never thought of XIV's expansion, thanks for the input on that! Not sure how much impact that would have but there's definitely some NGS players who also play XIV.
They need to fix the drop rate. Rotate rare drops to different bosses in different regions. Make certain quest have exclusive gear & cosmetic drops. Fix the character models & how accessories are worn. Allow more accessories to be worn. Allow to only wear “in wear”. Fix how face paint is applied to the different character models. Add more class skills. Add more PA’s. Add a version 2 of the same class thats less/more stronger but you attract faster/slower. Make urgent quest more like a “raid” instead of just a boss fight. Add more “permanent” concerts. Allow to make your own weapons but are less stronger than the rare drop versions and make them “non-resale”… i could go on and on 😅
June was effective at bringing players back into the game, as it can be seen in the peak of the month. Players usually come back during regional patch cycles, and they will come back in october even if it's just rescaled stia with gear upgrades and no story. The problem is not bringing players back into the game, but rather building up momentum with a meaningful loop to keep those players around. June in particular was an example of players coming back, playing for 1 week, get their ex augments and quitting the week after. This happened in ver2 when lc and solus dropped back in august 2023, which was followed with one of the biggest drops in the playerbase right after in september. The only reasonable conclusion is that players give the game a chance on those updates, realized it's more of the same and quit.
Apart from ffxiv for july, im guessing what affected June/July was also Wuthering Waves and ZZZ release. (although wuwa released May, and ZZZ was on June/July)
Id rather spend my ingame money on cosmetics instead of maxing out gear because cosmetics are permanent whereas gear isn't until were at endgame, the free seasonal weapons are good enough for me
they need to add more class expression and complexity there need to be something to sink hours into understanding even for vets. Also enough with the gradually increases square icons for armors, I killed x boss let the drop reflect that. A community board in game already for better organizing group activities.
Community board is a really interesting idea actually. I'm guessing it's not a thing as most people use things like Discord for meetups, but it would be cool to see!
@@SectionSkyly I played during the captan farm , gold box farm era. A community board where you could reach players in game instead of navigating 3 discords would have been swell. Imagine the ease of purple and yellow triggers organizing.
15:25 I agree about the name being problematic: From an outsider's perspective, one would probably feel like they're missing a significant amount of context to want to jump in, which isn't helped with the largely negative word of mouth surrounding the game. However, the main reason SEGA would choose to use a name like PSO2:NGS as opposed to PSO3 is purely for domestic reasons, which is that PSO2 was a *massive* game in Japan throughout its lifespan. On global, players only had about a year's worth of emotional and monetary investment, meanwhile JP had *eight* years. Had SEGA started fresh with a hypothetical PSO3, they would have had an uphill battle convincing their player base to migrate from PSO2 to PSO3, which would have meant losing all their cosmetic progress over the years (namely, the collab cosmetics which legally are tied to PSO2). As for the downward trend with active player count, I have a simple explanation, which is that the game doesn't have a vision and direction laid out for its player base. During ver. 1, we essentially had the promise of a new region every half a year. With ver. 2, the major focus became Creative Spaces and Leciel, with Nameless City and M.A.R.S. being teased as the next thing to look forward to. Well, now that Nameless City and M.A.R.S. are out (to underwhelming fanfare, imo), what is there to look forward to that isn't recycled content? This is the first time NGS has absolutely nothing greater on the horizon for players to look forward to, which is essential for drawing in new and returning players. Nothing SEGA is releasing right now or in the near future could be tied to a marketing campaign that would interest people to join or come back. As a comparison, PSO2 during its life span had 7 CG Openings (Ep 1~6 + VITA), 3 spinoffs (PSO2es, PS Nova and Idola), 2 animes (The Animation and Episode Oracle), and a physical TCG. PSO2NGS after 3 years of live service is still using its 1st CG opening that came out when it released, with ver. 2 only having a title and marketing redesign.
Good call on the name being to tie it to PSO2's success in Japan. The base game made a huge amount of money for Sega in Japan so it's no surprise that they'd want to retain close links with it. It's just unfortunate that with that comes the confusion for new players. I'd never thought about there being no statement update on the horizon. I guess we have always had one big update to look forward to whereas now we seem to be drifting aimlessly between one NGS headline and the next.
And yet during Base PSO2. There is Bloat. You still need to watch PSO Animation to understand the EP4 holistically. what the point of Pso2es Nova Idola. They don't add anything to Base. Even tho I have a soft spot for Nova TCG is not something I can comment. Not my "Class" specialty
@@nuruddinshah684 The point I'm making is that PSO2 during its prime was visibly showing a lot of financial support through its multimedia presence. When the publisher is showing confidence in its product, the consumer can more easily have faith in said product being of quality. Conversely, when the publisher is clearly being stingy or risk averse, consumers can sense that and typically equate low confidence with low quality. People also tend to have a bias of popularity being correlated with that of quality, so when more and more people quit, you end up with a live service death spiral. I'm not claiming NGS has reached that point; if anything, NGS will likely get by surviving off its JP player base revenue. If anything, having that historical context should make you wonder if SEGA is doing enough for NGS, or if more can or should be done, why things are different than before, etc.
@@LooseBrieFactory "I'm not claiming NGS has reached that point" It is....Word is mouth is more powerful then any marketing can do. Surviving on JP sub.....One question. Why is it ITS in Xbox and Steam. To get more right? First impression is bad. now why would anymore spent when recession is here
I wanted this game to be great so badly. It definitely has some awesome aspects to it! The groundwork is there. But it takes far too long to update/fix anything. The drip feed of content is real. The combat is fun and flashy, and I love the customizing options for your character. But...the game just feels empty for me. I never really get excited to log on and play anymore. It just feels like the majority of players just sit in towns and shows off their glamor. Most of the outfits are for female characters and the combat, although fun for a moment, gets boring fast. Trying to find a goal to grind for seems exhausting for me. I hope this game turns around and improves, but at the moment, I have more fun playing the older PSO games.
what do you think would help this game? it seems like the player base all want different things. for me i want more team activities with satisfying rewards to grind to. joining a alliance makes it more fun but doing LTQ together still gets stagnant because they are repetitive and the rewards are not satisfying. the game is great if youre a casual and like to lounge around, maybe thats their main demographic. its a shame because the combat and aesthetics of the game are very good i just wish there was more goals to grind to and the team play grinding was more satisfying.
@@ninonino7465 I totally agree with you. I think you nailed it. More impactful rewards that feel great to get. More unique, cool, rewarding, and realistic weapons to grind for is a start in my opinion. The biggest thing for me is for Sega to provide more legit content and something fun to grind for. I love the idea of grinding for some uber rares, but I also want Sega to throw in some actually obtainable weapons and gear that don't take 7 years to grind for. I am not a fan of all weapons just being a stack stick that all look the same (series weapons.) I miss the uniqueness of weapons and gear that the older PSO games had....the cool special abilities weapons had in the classic PSO. I miss the excitement of finding a weapon and wondering what it was or what it could do. Now weapons just boost your attack a little...it's just numbers. Remember how Heaven punisher would rain down lasers from the sky, or when Excalibur could attack three enemies instead of 1, or when double cannon would shoot lasers from the blade? That was cool! NGS has nothing like that. I miss the sense of community and guild building. I love the open world idea of NGS, but they don't really do much with it. It feels empty and bare. Most enemies in the open world provide nothing of value...zero drops worth grinding for. There is not really an incentive to just go out and grind and roam the open world. And if they do drop good stuff, then it takes waaaay too long to grind for it and it feels discouraging. But you are right, the combat does feel fun, I just wish there was a reward to go along with it.
i think its both.. i think they're ignoring both new players and old players bc it only ever seems like there's the same 1200 ppl across aelio 1/kvaris 1 so yeah there's only the diehards left and the occasional newb running around looking confused atl in my experience anyway, i spend a lot of time idling in towns and i see the same names every day
also the amount of cancer in general chat is enough to scare away anyone tbh you'd be hard pressed to find a more spazzy and edgy community.. just walking through central city can be a nightmare and i kinda say all of this with love 😅
I know exactly what you mean, as someone who sees what gets written in general chat 😂 I would imagine some people get to Central City, see chat and just think "actually, I'm good"
For new players this game is fine because you got ngs and base game together. So youre getting plenty out of it. If your only talking about ngs only well yeah all new/returning players got at the moment is just new armor/exelio weapon that can be upgraded later on along with df dalion r2 and solus r2. Other than that just grinding the best augments as well. I think seasonals the only thing coming for new players to catch up i guess. Im satisfied that the game is not barebones anymore unlike launch where it was deserved and barely had anything at all. Overall yea, the main problem for this game is just their pacing of the updates suck and the roadmap really left things out. I know no game can ever have constant content but i do want to see this game get its story finished and released all the dark falz bosses because i hate unfinished live service games. Sucks more if it never gets closure
For sure, NGS is much better than it was at launch (launch was rough, there was pretty much nothing to do at all). Hopefully sega improve the onboarding process for new players and also give other players more things to do as the daily routine on NGS isn't that great at the moment.
Good look at the issue. I don't think you give enough credit to how much heavylifting the collabs like Atelier Ryza do to bring people in or back, though. I imagine they do more than ARKS Festival campaigns and super-hard four-player quests. And while you mostly concentrated on population trends, I just wanted to point out that the Steam player numbers do not count those who use Tweaker, even Tweaker players using the Steam version of the game. Considering that as well as the number of players on PS4 and especially Xbox, the Steam numbers are likely a small representation of the Global player base. Just look at the number of views that the NGS Headline gets: about 20,000. The vast majority of those are probably active players, plus there are a lot of active players (like you, apparently) who don't even watch the livestream. I know your video didn't get into guessing what the total playerbase is, I just thought it was interesting to think about.
Yeah, the Steam charts figures give a reasonable idea of what's happening but I appreciate they dont cover Japan or the console versions. I will admit I didn't know it didn't count people using Tweaker though so thanks for the clarification on that. Collabs will be a big appeal to some players and not for others. In quieter content months, they definitely help!
How I see NGS personally: 90% of content is LTQ/LT in general. Any new content greedwalled behind RNG/ player shop (when stuff becomes affordable/obtainable - far beyond being relevant). Replayability factor is missing somehow. WAY too much fashion lootboxes.
@@SectionSkyly Ltq are a necessary evil to pad out updates because bigger updates take longer to make.Idm them much but there has to be a incentive drop wise.
I think that's the issue, a lot of these LTQ just don't offer much incentive. Maybe it's because I'm an old PSO player but I wish we had a reason to run them. As it is they feel like an afterthought to fill content gaps
@@ikejacobovits i had to repeat this words that i also says on Qriticaster or whoever that Q in its profile picture channel but someone in pso2tweaker discord even mentions that during its early relases of pso2 in japan, 3rd years of pso2 anniversary we already reaching Episode 3 of pso2 and if we compare it to the anime its basicslly the end of its last episode of Episode oracle PSO just got Episode 4 or PSOBB 3 months after its anniversary ans PSU got Portable 2 and infinity as Episode 3.5 and 3.5.5
The main issue right now is the progression is really poor now. They keep releasing new content with no real reason to do them because the itemization is poor. They seem to fear to lose the casual player base and try to make most of the content and items in the game accessible to everyone all the time.
i had someone on discord who complais they cant do duel quest and cant do PSE on higher rank. its strange that i guess thats where sega afraid of, some players with skill issue that seems to not having fun with the game that turn the game for worse
I have to say, I'm not a fan of some things being locked behind Duel Quests. Not everyone wants to make a duel quest set and grind them for hours to get a few capsules (it's pretty dull to say the least). I dont think its a skill issue thing; I'm just not a fan of things being locked behind solo-only content in an online RPG I guess?
i love pso. so much. but theres just so many things wrong with the game. the amount of augs one has to farm to convert them up the chain to create the better augs takes FAR too long. cutting costs in half would honestly fix that alongside a drop rate increase. actually giving us content instead of a million different scratch tickets would be a solid place to start too. The new bosses and nameless are dank. love it. good content. but fuck man, i wanna love this game but i just cannot invest countless hours into farming the same content to see little to no gain. at least in maplestory i see gain when i grind on mobs for a few hours. but then at least theres GOOD LOOT coming from bosses that i can upgrade when i DO do that content. D: shit man, they could add another concert into the game and id be happy.
I completely agree regarding the augments. I feel that the entire item lab needs a complete overhaul. It costs a ridiculous amount of meseta, and the augment system as you said is just a lot of work that isn't fun. For the scratch tickets, I think we're always going to get a lot of them just because of the money they bring in as well as for those who play for the fashion side. However it does feel lately like we're getting scratch tickets over anything else, which shouldn't be the case.
@@SectionSkyly Thank you for replying and agreeing on the aug side of things. I genuinely enjoy doing duel quests, but man, they could just adjust it so ONE set of defi's applies to ALL phases of duel quests. And yeah, truly cutting costs, amounts, etc or just revamping the item lab all together would truly benefit ALL of the player base. especially the f2p's or small spenders. or people with less time to grind. Yeahhh scratches are fair. i do enjoy making my characters look cool and cute. but lately its just more scratch investment from segas part than actual content. I do enjoy the difficult content theyre putting out but at least have that content give us more rewarding drops. Something to chase, something to WANT to upgrade and hold onto. sure exelio and ektasis armor, but maybe something even more. :shrug:
There is a definite tone change between earlier games like PSO and NGS. Some people will love it, others will hate it. I personally prefer the older sci-fi fantasy style of PSO.
I would like this game to bring in OLD stuff from the original games PSO and psu. Weapons. Costumes. Stages. Bosses. Enemies. Music. ENBRACE the history. Add episode 3 as an extra download. The full card game. Give quests like the old games. With a story narrative. I know you can’t just make the ruins in the middle of aelio, but why not make some missions where you teleport into the ruins or mines or whatever and do a mission then teleport out. The open word ain’t it. PSO never been an open world game. Always based off missions.
![[PSO2:NGS] How To Increase Battle Power and Earn Meseta](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/oNq-AIRd5wc/mqdefault.jpg)
![[PSO2:NGS] How To Increase Battle Power and Earn Meseta](/img/tr.png)
![[PSO2:NGS] The Ultimate Ranger Guide (From 0 to 100)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/7rRv0-HKHVc/mqdefault.jpg)
![[PSO2:NGS] What Do You Think of the LTQ Difficulty & Rewards?](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dBxVdPJcDmA/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm only playing during story updates now. The best way I can describe my relationship with NGS is that I want to love the game but the game doesn't love me back, like at all. I will be there day 1 for the inevitable base PSO2 private server in the future though.
I think a lot of people feel the same. I want the best for the franchise but it's tough sometimes
I'm going to be frank; I think it's just a really low quality game and a lot of people see it as such. There's clearly not a lot of resources or passion being put into the game, and for having "Phantasy Star Online 2" right in the name it's a massive downgrade in so many ways from PSO2. I think it's really telling when someone like me with literally 0 prior following or uploads on TH-cam and like an average viewership on Twitch of about 5 people can make a 20 minute "NGS is disappointing" rant video and get 30,000 views... something about NGS criticism videos resonates more with players than videos about updates and whatnot. Could chalk it up to outrage being a more contagious emotion but think it goes much further than that. NGS is fundamentally flawed and Sega clearly does not want to put any significant amount of resources into it.
I doubt Sega would do it but NGS could be saved but it require a fairly big update on the NGS side and some minimal effort on the PSO2 side.
Simply NGS needs an expansion pack to drum up interest and provide enough content at once so that people don't burn through the games new content in a week which is what happens now with the drip feed system they have now. I think the new style of quests that play more like raids (Leciel, Nameless City) are a step in the right direction and they need more of that. Additionally they need systems that give longer term goals that will frankly require grinding (think Zig from the base game). An expansion style drop would also allow for a wider variety of content that's needed like more enemy variety, photon arts, classes etc. I would also recommend a system that encourages relevelling or alts like a prestige system.
Making an expansion would take time, luckily they have an entirely second game attached to NGS that they could leverage to buy them time, PSO2. In fairness they almost certainly can't put too much resources in PSO2 anymore so I would recommend simply rerunning all the old events in the game and either keeping them on a scheduled rotation or just make them random. Include everything, rerun the old mission passes, the old seasonal events (like the one with the PSU characters), rerun the old ac/sg scratches, sell all the old packs (sonic collabration, ragol memories for example). They're running the game may as well make money from it, and I doubt simply running their already existing events would be difficult. They could do some simple things to buy time as well such as increasing level cap and maybe adding a harder difficulty and maybe adding systems that encourage relevelling or alts.
As a final note on the PSO2 side, they could consider a progression server where they effectively relaunch the game, this would require a new server which they could either open ship 5 or merge 3/4. Both an NGS expansion and rebirth of PSO2 would be pretty marketable. However their current strategy clearly isn't working because rather than let PSO2 run a healthy course while they worked on NGS they jumped the gun way too early. Now they can't keep up and the game is losing players. This is what I would do though, revitalize PSO2 whatever way I can while I develop an "NGS: Blue Burst".
It's been 2 years.... yeah this argument is void.
Great ideas no doubt about it! Let's be real though... do you really think they are gonna do it?
As someone that stopped playing NGS roughly 1 year ago, I don't think there's anything they could do to bring me back, NGS pretty much focused on everything I disliked about PSO2, so at this point I'm just waiting for the next game.
When it comes to attracting new players, I don't think the name is what's stopping people from trying the game, after all, when NGS launched, it had a huge amount of people trying out the game.
The problem is that NGS had a terrible first impression, and it's really hard for a game to recover from bad first impressions.
Plus, in my opinion, the new player experience is just not good, and the changes that were made with the release of ver.2 made the new player experience even worse. The game being designed to rush new players to the end game is just bad game design, I think.
I think it would take a complete overhaul of the new player experience to be able to attract new players, and even then I don't think the game can recover easily from the launch bad first impression. From a development point of view, effort would be better spent on a future new game, I think.
I don't understand your beef with Base PSO2.
If you know Brightstar (Another PSO Fan. pretty the whole history of it) and his Days Arks podcast. in the latest news (10 1 2024 M/D/Y format)
His co-host say. Base PSO2 is beloved but NGS is not. Base PSO2 merc sell but not NGS
Note not trying to pick a fight.
@@nuruddinshah684 I think you misunderstood me, I enjoyed playing base PSO2, but, it had both parts that I liked and parts that I disliked.
What I meant is that the core of NGS is based on the parts that I disliked about PSO2 without keeping the parts that I liked.
oh i actually have a lot i'd like to say about this!!! i'm one of the "die hard" players u mentioned... and for me the biggest issue is that theres just nothing worth farming for right now. we're still sitting on wingard as the best weapon, eredims drop like candy, and exelio isnt an upgrade. theres just nothing to really chase gear-wise right now except small optimizations. there also arent any augments worth grinding for outside of gran gladia soul as grand dread keeper II is pretty much impossible to farm for right now(maybe the coming LTQs will change that), and the other high end augs have tanked in price or don't have a reliable/worth the time farm(aegis soul IV for lux halphinale). not to mention that augment transfer has reduced the need for augments as players now will just wait until they have transfer passes to move their current stuff to whatever becomes the new best...
i like playing the game!!!! its really fun to me!!! but i have nothing to do!! nothing big to chase and very few avenues to chase what little there is!! its been nameless city spam or dext base PSE farming for over a month lol..
for both current, new, and returning players... we need stuff to chase.. stuff to get excited about when it drops. we just do not have that at the moment, like.. at all. it would be nice if this came in a different form than just higher rarity weapon that eventually becomes trash down the line lol. maybe weapons with truly unique potentials or something that changes a certain class' PA or something???? i dunno!! something actually interesting rather than just number going up!!! it'd be nice if it also dropped from a wider array of content too. you mention ordinal tower in this and honestly... ive played NGS actively since launch and i've run it like... 10 times max lol maybe some incentives to do things is something sega should try LMAO
for new players, honestly i think all base pso2 costumes/layering wear should just be earnable f2p without using meseta or SG. tie it to clearing content instead of just making it a daily 10 pull like the current thing we have... fashion is a huge huge huge hook for this game but its fatal flaw is the time/money investment it requires to truly enjoy it. you need lots of accessories, clothes, makeup options, and body paints to really get into it... so i think giving new players access to old pso2 stuff is an easy solution for that. i know sega already kinda does this sometimes, like with last month's growthment exchange event and special scratch, but it should just be permanent and more abundant and spread across more content. theres really no reason to be trying to sell base pso2 cosmetics for full $2 a scratch prices in 2024 with NGS spec items existing lol.
also, to chat about your musings on older vs newer fans: i started with global PSO2 when it came to PC in 2020 and i've been playing since. just a few months ago i went back and tried older phantasy star games, phantasy star zero and recently phantasy star portable 2 infinity and i adore them. those two games have made me a phantasy star fan, not just a pso2 or ngs fan. a big issue NGS has in my opinion is a lack of "identity". the world and story of these older games feels much more alive and fleshed out... i especially love the role we take on in PSP2i!!! it makes me really sad that we don't have that so much in NGS.. sometimes when making a new outfit or character in NGS, i'd like to give them a backstory or imagine how they live in the world and NGS is just such a dead end in that regard lol. even comparing NGS to PSO2 you get the same feeling.. theres this phantasy star charm that feels absent in NGS's world. also, i don't feel particularly out of place in the older games!! theres enough still around in the new games that i was able to feel at home, at least for PSZ and PSP2i.
i'd really really love to see NGS get back what these older games have... ever since playing them + revisiting PSO2 lately i can't help but feel more and more disappointed with the direction NGS has taken. like for example... lately ive been doing endless runs in base pso2 and fundamentally the game is similar to NGS in gameplay but the variety of environments and enemies you fight is just..... oh man does it make being stuck on halpha fighting dolls and purple dolls sting that much more lol. that said, there is just nothing else like it! theres no replacement for what NGS offers and i DO still have fun!!
HUGE post SORRY!!!!!!!!!!!!! luv ur vids n streams btw!!! i dont normally interact but im around!!! hope u keep it up!! ^-^
No need to apologise, thanks for the comment! One thing I'm noticing a lot in these responses is things to the effect of "there's nothing to hunt or nothing feels special". I think personally that this specific problem started with base PSO2 introducing rare weapon series, but at least base game had some unique drops too. In NGS everything is a series. Everything is a "stat stick" as someone put it. There isn't enough interesting, unique gear.
There aren't really any items with special mechanics (occasionally you'll get a weapon with a slightly different potential) and because of the high attrition rate of gear, nothing really feels worth bothering with.
I'd always thought the "grind for rare drops" mentality was something that died a long time ago in the series so it's really interesting to hear people saying that's what they miss.
Also totally agree about the complete lack of variety in enemies in NGS. We fought dolls for a couple of years and now we fight the Starless, which are just purple dolls.
I want so much more for this franchise and even though I'm an NGS Creator I feel that the game's shortcomings (as well as any successes) needs to be addressed.
They did the rare drop chase for a good while, but they miscalibrated drop rates and they were way too low. As in there is none for sale in the AH for days and you grind hard everyday and get nothing after months. And then they just release new better weapons so you just wasted your time.
The lack of identity is not unique to this game, it's an industry wide plague of cross promotions, cross-overs and games being monetization platforms first.
you are right. For me it's more on the expensive fashion right and repetitive dext farm for nmeseta. The only fun to do right now is nameless city but as you said exelio isn't an upgrade yet so that quest is almost always full but i think only 1 full 32 area is available and there's no point for others to repeat farm that all day. And also the story there's nothing to look forward to yet. And add to that the wellbia anti-cheat. If you look at the steamchart the player count started to drop when wellbia was introduced.
Expensive fashion
Nothing else to do
No story
Wellbia
Those are the issues that are killing the game.
@@SectionSkyly
I don't it "grind for rare drops". It the feel of progression. For all the MMO. Remember it a RPG as well
the unique weapons idea is literally why I got my Relik Sturm Drang to +90
idgaf about top numbers anymore im just trying to have fun in what ways I can and AOE blasts with melee weapons certainly helps. i second this, please give us actual UNIQUES! The community misses "Rare Drops" and *SPECIAL WEAPONs"
...anyway as far as numbers go, my Relik on has 100ish less atp so i really don't feel that number difference when I'm spamming PAs.
The player retention is ok, they still keep the same 100 players afk in the lobby since day 1 :)
This game makes me want to go back and play everything pre PSO2. Looking forward to the inevitable classic pso2 server to show up.
I saw a comment and someone summed up how I feel about ngs as someone that loved base pso2 and likes ngs
Fanfare is missing from ngs. We have 3 different dark falz fights and none of them have any story implications whatsoever they just exist and that’s insane to me cause that’s dark falz!
I think city exploration recently was a great update but that’s been like 4 months ago and it’s still the same thing , we needed like 4 different types of city exploration since it’s the closest we got to getting back on hopping on a stage to quickly farm and move out since base pso2. imagine a forest exploration for example
Ultimately the devs simply aren’t trying imo and they don’t need to I guess cause the game is still pulling numbers (they don’t care about global numbers only Jp numbers and Jp numbers are still insanely high) and when they do try it’s either something really good or just moving a goal post on the newest level of highest gear so not that great
Yeah, this confuses me regarding Falz. We don't even have Solus in the story, nevermind Dalion. Falz is meant to be a centerpiece boss with huge story implications and in NGS I feel it's been reduced to a catch-all term for any big boss. It's sad.
Speaking as what would be considered "midcore" in this game (i have no interest in the standing quests whatsoever, i just dont find it fun) there just isnt anything engaging *before* standing quests that makes the game appealing. PSO, PSU, and PSO2 all had things to chase that weren't BiS and came from a variety of locations. It also had a fair amount of sidegrade systems (not counting skill rings, fuck skill rings) that may not have been major power increases, but were *fun*. I enjoyed daily crafting, crafting skill discs for friends, dismantling my gear that i didn't want to list mass mats for meseta, farming advance for spheres for mag food, advance quests, ultimate quest farming, challenge quests for weekly SG, casino games for SG, etc etc.
On the flipside, my options in NGS are: get addon skills (done), upgrade PAs past lv5 (why? not nearly worth the investment), grind dext base (zzzz), run nameless and leciel (i've been running leciel for what feels like forever), and then duel quests. Do you notice the trend here? outside of duel quests and leciel/nameless, theres just nothing social about the *gameplay*. It has tons of social features, but the content itself unless you bring friends (which being honest, all of mine quit the game AGES ago) you're just going to be mindlessly grinding while hardly paying attention to the game.
With the current roadmap, there's just not a lot of motivation to continue. Lack of clarification on story? fine, i guess, but it also doesn't seem like they're addressing the fundamental problems with the game. But realistically, outside of gambling, what is there really left for a casual? if they've built their house to satisfaction, they can... talk in the lobby. I don't know.. I've been a fan of PSO since 2002 and it's never felt this barren for casual content (actual content, not mindlessly AFK farming dext/el nossa) since the original release of PSO1.
Another factor I've heard from people who have tried to get into the game, got to max level, then subsequently quit, is it still feels like theres no endgame. There *is* but from their perspective, it feels like pre-amble to them. Like we're still in a tutorial. Levels made from digital building blocks, trainia, more and more ranks of areas, nameless city being "exploring this unknown area" and lecial being "exploring this unknown area", zephetto teasing starless, then the recent chapter teasing starless again. It doesn't feel like anything is happening to them. I don't blame them honestly, it *does* still feel like we're in some pre-amble before the real big content comes.
I do agree that there isn't much for a casual player, especially ones that aren't at level cap. The current game cycle to me feels like it only takes into account those at level cap already.
I like how you discussed endgame as in how the game progresses; it does still feel like we're in a super early state despite the game being online for a few years now.
It's such a shame because as much as I enjoy some parts of NGS it just feels kind of empty and soulless compared to previous games.
I do like this opinion piece type video. Different than your normal stuff :)
As a new player (a month and a half so far) to PSO2 and NGS, that is playing F2P, I find the game itself to be a blast to play and the absurd amount of ways to dress up/build in our creative space is insane. For me, there is just SO much to try to obtain! (Also I had assumed NGS was a soft reboot sequel.)
I only really have two big issues. It is mind numbing to make enough meseta to earn anything "pretty" or "cool" off of the player shop. At least it's easy enough to turn off the mind while grinding Dext or the likes though.
However, the worst part is the community as a whole for me. It's harsh trying to get any form of conversation, attention, or answers when people are focused on sticking with their already established circles. I assume most people are so certain that anyone new won't stick around anyways that they'd rather not get invested, but if that's the case, they're alienating everyone actually trying to get established.
We all expect some toxicity of course, some people are just boorish for either attention or drama, but that's run of the mill for any game that can be F2P.
I feel I got lucky and got "adopted" by a small group of really kind people that gave me enough reason to keep coming back, but I'm not sure many people who want to try the game would be as lucky.
P.S. I do not like nameless city, as the timer stresses me out when going to collect the boxes near the end lol.
The lack of meseta even for grinding gear and affixing is really noticeable, yeah. I do feel that affixing/potentials etc needs to be overhauled.
Glad to hear that as a newer player you're enjoying NGS though!
Wow, what a great point! 15:10 i never thought of that, but i totally agree with this. if i was a new player i would definitely think NGS was an expansion to regular PSO2, and it would require me to play base pso first.
Honestly it might not make much of an impact; it's just something that might cause additional confusion for people coming into the franchise new.
There is now a single extra cutscene if you played base, but the connections are pretty minimal
@@rex_melynas WHERE. Is there a video about it.
I remember something like you said for FF14.
This comment is mostly an earmark while I go hunting for it, but one statement released to investors has NGS as basically stable in terms of income, so in that sense it's not "dying". The attrition on Steam is a bit worrying for a live service, especially this early on in a game's life cycle, I think other historical comparisons might be EQ Luclin or WoW Cataclysm.
Outside the scope and a bit tangential, but I think maybe the problem is Sega is just too big, and they look at the money coming in from their entire F2P roster and say "that's fine" while putting less attention into any one game than we're used to. I imagine mobile games are sucking a lot of air out of PSO2's development too.
Edit:
The "Data Appendices" Sega Sammy release under Investor Relations have tables, "titles released in 2021" means New Genesis. Its revenue is slowly contracting, actually, from 25 billion JPY in 2023, down to 20 billion down to a projection of 17 billion next financial year.
I agree with the comments here. Speaking for myself I take breaks cause I have to. Every time I return people get tired of the Some people don't wanna teach or help. They get blocked and left out. I mean that's fine that's those players.
Bring back dungeons, Bring back collab based missions, give enemies creative spaces drops, stop blacking out bosses and give them color so they can pop and stand out more and stop with the lack luster rewards on the endgame content
The laziness of bringing old bosses back but paint them black shows
I don't think I heard it in the video but one outside factor to consider for July at least is Final Fantasy XIV's expansion launched so I could see it having an impact at least temporarily players who play both.
For me personally, I struggle to get into and commit to the original PSO2 as well. I think for me it really comes down to the feeling that I need to commit to one game for 6 months to really get a feel for it. So I'm not sure there's anything NGS could do for me at this point, but maybe reusing the toolset for a more focused experience like Phantasy Star Nova would be slightly more appealing. But I don't see that happening lol.
I'd never thought of XIV's expansion, thanks for the input on that! Not sure how much impact that would have but there's definitely some NGS players who also play XIV.
They need to fix the drop rate.
Rotate rare drops to different bosses in different regions.
Make certain quest have exclusive gear & cosmetic drops.
Fix the character models & how accessories are worn.
Allow more accessories to be worn.
Allow to only wear “in wear”.
Fix how face paint is applied to the different character models.
Add more class skills.
Add more PA’s.
Add a version 2 of the same class thats less/more stronger but you attract faster/slower.
Make urgent quest more like a “raid” instead of just a boss fight.
Add more “permanent” concerts.
Allow to make your own weapons but are less stronger than the rare drop versions and make them “non-resale”… i could go on and on 😅
June was effective at bringing players back into the game, as it can be seen in the peak of the month. Players usually come back during regional patch cycles, and they will come back in october even if it's just rescaled stia with gear upgrades and no story.
The problem is not bringing players back into the game, but rather building up momentum with a meaningful loop to keep those players around.
June in particular was an example of players coming back, playing for 1 week, get their ex augments and quitting the week after. This happened in ver2 when lc and solus dropped back in august 2023, which was followed with one of the biggest drops in the playerbase right after in september.
The only reasonable conclusion is that players give the game a chance on those updates, realized it's more of the same and quit.
Summer holidays
Apart from ffxiv for july, im guessing what affected June/July was also Wuthering Waves and ZZZ release. (although wuwa released May, and ZZZ was on June/July)
Id rather spend my ingame money on cosmetics instead of maxing out gear because cosmetics are permanent whereas gear isn't until were at endgame, the free seasonal weapons are good enough for me
Fashion is the true endgame of NGS
they need to add more class expression and complexity there need to be something to sink hours into understanding even for vets. Also enough with the gradually increases square icons for armors, I killed x boss let the drop reflect that. A community board in game already for better organizing group activities.
Community board is a really interesting idea actually. I'm guessing it's not a thing as most people use things like Discord for meetups, but it would be cool to see!
@@SectionSkyly I played during the captan farm , gold box farm era. A community board where you could reach players in game instead of navigating 3 discords would have been swell. Imagine the ease of purple and yellow triggers organizing.
15:25 I agree about the name being problematic: From an outsider's perspective, one would probably feel like they're missing a significant amount of context to want to jump in, which isn't helped with the largely negative word of mouth surrounding the game. However, the main reason SEGA would choose to use a name like PSO2:NGS as opposed to PSO3 is purely for domestic reasons, which is that PSO2 was a *massive* game in Japan throughout its lifespan. On global, players only had about a year's worth of emotional and monetary investment, meanwhile JP had *eight* years. Had SEGA started fresh with a hypothetical PSO3, they would have had an uphill battle convincing their player base to migrate from PSO2 to PSO3, which would have meant losing all their cosmetic progress over the years (namely, the collab cosmetics which legally are tied to PSO2).
As for the downward trend with active player count, I have a simple explanation, which is that the game doesn't have a vision and direction laid out for its player base. During ver. 1, we essentially had the promise of a new region every half a year. With ver. 2, the major focus became Creative Spaces and Leciel, with Nameless City and M.A.R.S. being teased as the next thing to look forward to. Well, now that Nameless City and M.A.R.S. are out (to underwhelming fanfare, imo), what is there to look forward to that isn't recycled content? This is the first time NGS has absolutely nothing greater on the horizon for players to look forward to, which is essential for drawing in new and returning players. Nothing SEGA is releasing right now or in the near future could be tied to a marketing campaign that would interest people to join or come back.
As a comparison, PSO2 during its life span had 7 CG Openings (Ep 1~6 + VITA), 3 spinoffs (PSO2es, PS Nova and Idola), 2 animes (The Animation and Episode Oracle), and a physical TCG. PSO2NGS after 3 years of live service is still using its 1st CG opening that came out when it released, with ver. 2 only having a title and marketing redesign.
Good call on the name being to tie it to PSO2's success in Japan. The base game made a huge amount of money for Sega in Japan so it's no surprise that they'd want to retain close links with it. It's just unfortunate that with that comes the confusion for new players.
I'd never thought about there being no statement update on the horizon. I guess we have always had one big update to look forward to whereas now we seem to be drifting aimlessly between one NGS headline and the next.
And yet during Base PSO2. There is Bloat. You still need to watch PSO Animation to understand the EP4 holistically. what the point of Pso2es Nova Idola. They don't add anything to Base. Even tho I have a soft spot for Nova
TCG is not something I can comment. Not my "Class" specialty
@@nuruddinshah684 The point I'm making is that PSO2 during its prime was visibly showing a lot of financial support through its multimedia presence. When the publisher is showing confidence in its product, the consumer can more easily have faith in said product being of quality. Conversely, when the publisher is clearly being stingy or risk averse, consumers can sense that and typically equate low confidence with low quality. People also tend to have a bias of popularity being correlated with that of quality, so when more and more people quit, you end up with a live service death spiral.
I'm not claiming NGS has reached that point; if anything, NGS will likely get by surviving off its JP player base revenue. If anything, having that historical context should make you wonder if SEGA is doing enough for NGS, or if more can or should be done, why things are different than before, etc.
@@LooseBrieFactory
"I'm not claiming NGS has reached that point"
It is....Word is mouth is more powerful then any marketing can do.
Surviving on JP sub.....One question.
Why is it ITS in Xbox and Steam. To get more right? First impression is bad. now why would anymore spent when recession is here
the free shop pass nerf they did for ngs killed f2p play and the lack of content (besides gacha ofc) just made the game not appealing
I wanted this game to be great so badly. It definitely has some awesome aspects to it! The groundwork is there. But it takes far too long to update/fix anything. The drip feed of content is real. The combat is fun and flashy, and I love the customizing options for your character. But...the game just feels empty for me. I never really get excited to log on and play anymore. It just feels like the majority of players just sit in towns and shows off their glamor. Most of the outfits are for female characters and the combat, although fun for a moment, gets boring fast. Trying to find a goal to grind for seems exhausting for me. I hope this game turns around and improves, but at the moment, I have more fun playing the older PSO games.
what do you think would help this game? it seems like the player base all want different things. for me i want more team activities with satisfying rewards to grind to. joining a alliance makes it more fun but doing LTQ together still gets stagnant because they are repetitive and the rewards are not satisfying. the game is great if youre a casual and like to lounge around, maybe thats their main demographic. its a shame because the combat and aesthetics of the game are very good i just wish there was more goals to grind to and the team play grinding was more satisfying.
@@ninonino7465 I totally agree with you. I think you nailed it. More impactful rewards that feel great to get. More unique, cool, rewarding, and realistic weapons to grind for is a start in my opinion. The biggest thing for me is for Sega to provide more legit content and something fun to grind for. I love the idea of grinding for some uber rares, but I also want Sega to throw in some actually obtainable weapons and gear that don't take 7 years to grind for. I am not a fan of all weapons just being a stack stick that all look the same (series weapons.) I miss the uniqueness of weapons and gear that the older PSO games had....the cool special abilities weapons had in the classic PSO. I miss the excitement of finding a weapon and wondering what it was or what it could do. Now weapons just boost your attack a little...it's just numbers. Remember how Heaven punisher would rain down lasers from the sky, or when Excalibur could attack three enemies instead of 1, or when double cannon would shoot lasers from the blade? That was cool! NGS has nothing like that. I miss the sense of community and guild building. I love the open world idea of NGS, but they don't really do much with it. It feels empty and bare. Most enemies in the open world provide nothing of value...zero drops worth grinding for. There is not really an incentive to just go out and grind and roam the open world. And if they do drop good stuff, then it takes waaaay too long to grind for it and it feels discouraging. But you are right, the combat does feel fun, I just wish there was a reward to go along with it.
i think its both.. i think they're ignoring both new players and old players bc it only ever seems like there's the same 1200 ppl across aelio 1/kvaris 1
so yeah there's only the diehards left and the occasional newb running around looking confused
atl in my experience anyway, i spend a lot of time idling in towns and i see the same names every day
also the amount of cancer in general chat is enough to scare away anyone tbh you'd be hard pressed to find a more spazzy and edgy community.. just walking through central city can be a nightmare and i kinda say all of this with love 😅
I know exactly what you mean, as someone who sees what gets written in general chat 😂 I would imagine some people get to Central City, see chat and just think "actually, I'm good"
For new players this game is fine because you got ngs and base game together. So youre getting plenty out of it.
If your only talking about ngs only well yeah all new/returning players got at the moment is just new armor/exelio weapon that can be upgraded later on along with df dalion r2 and solus r2. Other than that just grinding the best augments as well. I think seasonals the only thing coming for new players to catch up i guess.
Im satisfied that the game is not barebones anymore unlike launch where it was deserved and barely had anything at all. Overall yea, the main problem for this game is just their pacing of the updates suck and the roadmap really left things out. I know no game can ever have constant content but i do want to see this game get its story finished and released all the dark falz bosses because i hate unfinished live service games. Sucks more if it never gets closure
For sure, NGS is much better than it was at launch (launch was rough, there was pretty much nothing to do at all).
Hopefully sega improve the onboarding process for new players and also give other players more things to do as the daily routine on NGS isn't that great at the moment.
Good look at the issue. I don't think you give enough credit to how much heavylifting the collabs like Atelier Ryza do to bring people in or back, though. I imagine they do more than ARKS Festival campaigns and super-hard four-player quests.
And while you mostly concentrated on population trends, I just wanted to point out that the Steam player numbers do not count those who use Tweaker, even Tweaker players using the Steam version of the game. Considering that as well as the number of players on PS4 and especially Xbox, the Steam numbers are likely a small representation of the Global player base.
Just look at the number of views that the NGS Headline gets: about 20,000. The vast majority of those are probably active players, plus there are a lot of active players (like you, apparently) who don't even watch the livestream.
I know your video didn't get into guessing what the total playerbase is, I just thought it was interesting to think about.
Yeah, the Steam charts figures give a reasonable idea of what's happening but I appreciate they dont cover Japan or the console versions. I will admit I didn't know it didn't count people using Tweaker though so thanks for the clarification on that.
Collabs will be a big appeal to some players and not for others. In quieter content months, they definitely help!
How I see NGS personally: 90% of content is LTQ/LT in general. Any new content greedwalled behind RNG/ player shop (when stuff becomes affordable/obtainable - far beyond being relevant). Replayability factor is missing somehow. WAY too much fashion lootboxes.
Pretty much my thoughts. LTQ being the main content loop needs to change.
@@SectionSkyly Ltq are a necessary evil to pad out updates because bigger updates take longer to make.Idm them much but there has to be a incentive drop wise.
I think that's the issue, a lot of these LTQ just don't offer much incentive. Maybe it's because I'm an old PSO player but I wish we had a reason to run them. As it is they feel like an afterthought to fill content gaps
PSO2 for all intends and purposes died with NGS. Be thankful we had a nice year and a half of PSO2 global reliving the episodes
That first year was so good, got me to go back and try the OG too and had a good time. NGS is just hot dookie, simple as. SAD! But many such cases!
@@ikejacobovits i had to repeat this words that i also says on Qriticaster or whoever that Q in its profile picture channel
but someone in pso2tweaker discord even mentions that during its early relases of pso2 in japan, 3rd years of pso2 anniversary we already reaching Episode 3 of pso2 and if we compare it to the anime its basicslly the end of its last episode of Episode oracle
PSO just got Episode 4 or PSOBB 3 months after its anniversary ans PSU got Portable 2 and infinity as Episode 3.5 and 3.5.5
The main issue right now is the progression is really poor now. They keep releasing new content with no real reason to do them because the itemization is poor. They seem to fear to lose the casual player base and try to make most of the content and items in the game accessible to everyone all the time.
i had someone on discord who complais they cant do duel quest and cant do PSE on higher rank. its strange that i guess thats where sega afraid of, some players with skill issue that seems to not having fun with the game that turn the game for worse
I have to say, I'm not a fan of some things being locked behind Duel Quests. Not everyone wants to make a duel quest set and grind them for hours to get a few capsules (it's pretty dull to say the least).
I dont think its a skill issue thing; I'm just not a fan of things being locked behind solo-only content in an online RPG I guess?
i love pso. so much. but theres just so many things wrong with the game. the amount of augs one has to farm to convert them up the chain to create the better augs takes FAR too long. cutting costs in half would honestly fix that alongside a drop rate increase. actually giving us content instead of a million different scratch tickets would be a solid place to start too. The new bosses and nameless are dank. love it. good content. but fuck man, i wanna love this game but i just cannot invest countless hours into farming the same content to see little to no gain. at least in maplestory i see gain when i grind on mobs for a few hours. but then at least theres GOOD LOOT coming from bosses that i can upgrade when i DO do that content. D:
shit man, they could add another concert into the game and id be happy.
I completely agree regarding the augments. I feel that the entire item lab needs a complete overhaul. It costs a ridiculous amount of meseta, and the augment system as you said is just a lot of work that isn't fun.
For the scratch tickets, I think we're always going to get a lot of them just because of the money they bring in as well as for those who play for the fashion side. However it does feel lately like we're getting scratch tickets over anything else, which shouldn't be the case.
@@SectionSkyly Thank you for replying and agreeing on the aug side of things. I genuinely enjoy doing duel quests, but man, they could just adjust it so ONE set of defi's applies to ALL phases of duel quests.
And yeah, truly cutting costs, amounts, etc or just revamping the item lab all together would truly benefit ALL of the player base. especially the f2p's or small spenders. or people with less time to grind.
Yeahhh scratches are fair. i do enjoy making my characters look cool and cute. but lately its just more scratch investment from segas part than actual content. I do enjoy the difficult content theyre putting out but at least have that content give us more rewarding drops. Something to chase, something to WANT to upgrade and hold onto. sure exelio and ektasis armor, but maybe something even more. :shrug:
I think it sway away from sci-fi and more into anime fantasy. It puts it against Genish impact which is way more popular than pso2ng.
There is a definite tone change between earlier games like PSO and NGS. Some people will love it, others will hate it. I personally prefer the older sci-fi fantasy style of PSO.
I would like this game to bring in OLD stuff from the original games PSO and psu. Weapons. Costumes. Stages. Bosses. Enemies. Music. ENBRACE the history. Add episode 3 as an extra download. The full card game. Give quests like the old games. With a story narrative. I know you can’t just make the ruins in the middle of aelio, but why not make some missions where you teleport into the ruins or mines or whatever and do a mission then teleport out. The open word ain’t it. PSO never been an open world game. Always based off missions.