Need help on how the game is fun.....

[Deathraven13]

Hi, the only phantasy star I've played is phantasy star portable 2 wich I really liked and I think there was a PS on PS2 but I'm not sure, you played as a story character.

So the casino is kinda cool and a change of pace after you grind some missions, I don't mind grinding since I'm a huge Disgaea fan and so upgrading weapons is such is fun for me.

Now when it come to the story I have not finished the first episode, I don't mind a game with heavy story but I kinda find the story boring so far along the pace, at least in PSP2 it was kinda like: Go on a mission, story, get some stuff and get stronger, repeat.

So is there like a good story at some point or a reason to really become stronger (I mean urgent quest kinda want me to be stronger so that I'm not a dead weight but I barely make a difference anyway on most urgent quest) ? Most of my friends are not interested in playing the game so I can scratch that. I guess you probably won't understand what I'm asking but basicaly I feel like I'm wasting my time, not that the game is bad and it's a video game but it's like I feel that there is no purpose in the end, you know like you complete a Disagea story then post game you go from level 100 to level 9999+ and your stats went from xx to xx xxx xxx because you have superbosses and ennemies far stronger than the one in the story, so I don't want to grind for nothing I suppose, and if the answer is: "You get stronger just for PvP" then I guess I should stop.

[mimizukari]

I don't focus on the story in this game. Episode 4 is a bit of a different story though and you could start with that.

Otherwise, just play the gameplay loop, do urgent quests, hang out with the community, run whatever quest you feel like doing, maybe let the 3 recommendeds decide what to farm for the day, etc. If you don't like the core gameplay loop of emergency codes and randomly generated maps/missions/etc then it might just not be for you.

[mimizukari]

MMOs are usually about creating your own goals and then planning the way to meet those goals, they're very open ended and you decide yourself what's worth doing. Just like in ESO/WOW/FFXIV/etc.

[Deathraven13]

Publicado originalmente por Kurumi Tokisaki:

MMOs are usually about creating your own goals and then planning the way to meet those goals, they're very open ended and you decide yourself what's worth doing. Just like in ESO/WOW/FFXIV/etc.

Well I'll take some "recent" MMO that I have played, in "blade and souls" and black desert online" the end game content have PvP guilds fights, you can craft stuff for your guild and so you become an expert at like cooking or creating armor, and in BDO you can conquer some territory wich grant you some stuff, there is also some boss world where the strongest team/group earn better stuff and some of them include faction PvP, so it's PvPvE.

As for the story both MMO have you doing quest in the world and such. Tell me: how/why do you enjoy the game ?

[Hare+Guu!]

The game is just mostly endless repetitive grind to get the best gears. 14* and up are account bound only. If you're not into that or a glorified chatroom, then the game is not for you.

You can set your goal to solo urgent quest bosses maybe? Otherwise, there's no point in forcing yourself.

[Le DocGuy]

Publicado originalmente por Deathraven13:

Publicado originalmente por Kurumi Tokisaki:

MMOs are usually about creating your own goals and then planning the way to meet those goals, they're very open ended and you decide yourself what's worth doing. Just like in ESO/WOW/FFXIV/etc.

Well I'll take some "recent" MMO that I have played, in "blade and souls" and black desert online" the end game content have PvP guilds fights, you can craft stuff for your guild and so you become an expert at like cooking or creating armor, and in BDO you can conquer some territory wich grant you some stuff, there is also some boss world where the strongest team/group earn better stuff and some of them include faction PvP, so it's PvPvE.

As for the story both MMO have you doing quest in the world and such. Tell me: how/why do you enjoy the game ?

Same answer when someone ask why I love Monster Hunter : Eat food, Slaying Big Monster, gang some bigger monsters and getting cool weapon.

[mimizukari]

Publicado originalmente por Deathraven13:

Publicado originalmente por Kurumi Tokisaki:

MMOs are usually about creating your own goals and then planning the way to meet those goals, they're very open ended and you decide yourself what's worth doing. Just like in ESO/WOW/FFXIV/etc.

Well I'll take some "recent" MMO that I have played, in "blade and souls" and black desert online" the end game content have PvP guilds fights, you can craft stuff for your guild and so you become an expert at like cooking or creating armor, and in BDO you can conquer some territory wich grant you some stuff, there is also some boss world where the strongest team/group earn better stuff and some of them include faction PvP, so it's PvPvE.

As for the story both MMO have you doing quest in the world and such. Tell me: how/why do you enjoy the game ?

MMOs which guide you in a direction and continuously feed you things to do without having to go look for them are theme-park MMOs, this is more of a sandbox. Literally, set your own goals. Every day before you log in decide what you want to achieve that day...

For me, I cleared both of the base ultimate quests completely solo today, but also I just have fun with the gameplay and combat mechanics. When enchanted forest comes out next month I would grind there nonstop even if I don't need a 14* item just because of how dynamic the quest system is and how each playthrough of a map is different, sometimes you have overlapping events, exception codes which have 3+events overlapping etc, each quest is a unique experience.

Plus the social aspect is huuuuge, especially with symbol arts and the amount of emotes/flair you can add to your text in the game. I already wrote a review about the game and I liken it to a successor to Anarchy Online, another pretty much sandbox MMO where you just set your own goals and forge your path. There's an audience for this kind of game, you could always just go and try to clear every client order at least once as well as every stage in the highest difficulty as you can if you just want a basic reason to keep playing I guess?

You'll never get the time you spent in any game back out of it, except when Diablo 3 had a real money auction house or if you're trying to go competitive in a game like Dota 2... You just play to have fun, and the core gameplay loop and damn near everything about PSO2 is fun to me, even taking those breaks for the ridroid matches or casinos, the concerts, the urgent quests, all of it is great.

[Mistfox]

Publicado originalmente por Kurumi Tokisaki:

sometimes you have overlapping events, exception codes which have 3+events overlapping etc, each quest is a unique experience.

No ♥♥♥♥ lol, the last time I thought of doing a quick solo run to the end of an XH Expedition to rack up my collection card but it did not occur to me what it meant when the +100% rare enemies was active in the event.

I ended up with a Rockbear, a Dark Vibras, a Bansheer and a Dark Agarni chasing me around. That was a bit too much.

[Deathraven13]

Publicado originalmente por Doc Nukem:

Same answer when someone ask why I love Monster Hunter : Eat food, Slaying Big Monster, gang some bigger monsters and getting cool weapon.

Sounds like I dodged a huge bullet with MHW, I pre-ordered it and I had to refund it because it ran at like 20 FPS when I meet the recommended settings, it had a lot of issues at launch wich is ok since it was the first MH on PC so it was bound to have some problems. But yeah I guess MH and PSO2 are the same in a way.

Publicado originalmente por Kurumi Tokisaki:

MMOs which guide you in a direction and continuously feed you things to do without having to go look for them are theme-park MMOs, this is more of a sandbox. Literally, set your own goals. Every day before you log in decide what you want to achieve that day...

For me, I cleared both of the base ultimate quests completely solo today, but also I just have fun with the gameplay and combat mechanics. When enchanted forest comes out next month I would grind there nonstop even if I don't need a 14* item just because of how dynamic the quest system is and how each playthrough of a map is different, sometimes you have overlapping events, exception codes which have 3+events overlapping etc, each quest is a unique experience.

Plus the social aspect is huuuuge, especially with symbol arts and the amount of emotes/flair you can add to your text in the game. I already wrote a review about the game and I liken it to a successor to Anarchy Online, another pretty much sandbox MMO where you just set your own goals and forge your path. There's an audience for this kind of game, you could always just go and try to clear every client order at least once as well as every stage in the highest difficulty as you can if you just want a basic reason to keep playing I guess?

You'll never get the time you spent in any game back out of it, except when Diablo 3 had a real money auction house or if you're trying to go competitive in a game like Dota 2... You just play to have fun, and the core gameplay loop and damn near everything about PSO2 is fun to me, even taking those breaks for the ridroid matches or casinos, the concerts, the urgent quests, all of it is great.

Well BDO is a sandbox game apparently, because you can shape the world and economy and such.

About the social aspect I don't know about that, people doesn't seem that talkative most of the time, I mean aside bots XD , I knew that the game was kinda social and it kinda show in the way that you should group with people and be part of an aliance for some bonus but I guess that's it.

Well beating every high quest alone with the weakest weapon would sound fun but doing that in an MMO seems kinda off to me, I don't even know why myself. I mean completing Devil May Cry 4 without getting hit once is fun especialy since there is a game mode that do that so it's challenging yet if it wasn't a mode I doubt that I would try it, so I suppose that if it's not a feature I'm not interested in it, but I do tend to challenge myself (wich on some occasion had the devs balance their game because they don't want such balance to be possible XD).

Well I guess that's what I feared: I like the game but it doesn't entertain me sadly, I think I have +60 hours and it's free so it's alright, as I said it's not a bad game but I'm a bit disappointed, I kinda fear that I won't be able to the the next PSO if it demand too much for my PC and if in the end it's like PSO2 that's not great for me.

----------------------

Well thank you everyone for your time and your answers, I feel like the post as been answered but I guess you could share your favorite things to do in the game or something like that, maybe that will spark my interest.

[Aumires]

Publicado originalmente por Deathraven13:

Now when it come to the story I have not finished the first episode, I don't mind a game with heavy story but I kinda find the story boring so far along the pace, at least in PSP2 it was kinda like: Go on a mission, story, get some stuff and get stronger, repeat.

Well, the reason why the story feels strange is because beforehand Xion actually handled you those Matrixes, they were like the Bingo cards but with pathways with a start and an end point and branches with extra goods. You had to go to certain Arks missions, explorations, etc to do the event and follow the path so that you unlocked the main events.

This was replaced later with the story mode being selected like that and in Episode 4 it feels a bit better due to the bridge addition. Ep1-3 feels like a playable at times anime right now, which is kind of like what Episode 4 is.

Publicado originalmente por Deathraven13:

So is there like a good story at some point or a reason to really become stronger

Episode 1 gets "good" at the middle, then debatable at its end. Then Episode 2 is great for the most part. Episode 3 is great too aside the boring Harukotan sequences imo but its conclusion is amazing, epilogue mission aside. Episode 4 seems to be some sort of sidestory that feels like some kind of fever dream. From what I heard the story picks up on 5 and 6.

As for a reason to get stronger, mostly Hardcore mode and other game modes like some kind of endless mode I heard about that will come later on?

If you play together though you are going to get stronger as the bar will keep pushing further. Current "Matriarch" UQ asks for 75/75 at XH. Still, the game is accesible enough to a basic bar of power, like the current Collection Folders with Revolsios at +30. There is an incentive right now to grind a weapon to +35 and you can either follow that route OR do the Arks Rally and get as many medals as possible grinding to get the weapons related to them.

[Bongoboy]

Publicado originalmente por Kurumi Tokisaki:

MMOs which guide you in a direction and continuously feed you things to do without having to go look for them are theme-park MMOs, this is more of a sandbox. Literally, set your own goals. Every day before you log in decide what you want to achieve that day...

For me, I cleared both of the base ultimate quests completely solo today, but also I just have fun with the gameplay and combat mechanics. When enchanted forest comes out next month I would grind there nonstop even if I don't need a 14* item just because of how dynamic the quest system is and how each playthrough of a map is different, sometimes you have overlapping events, exception codes which have 3+events overlapping etc, each quest is a unique experience.

Plus the social aspect is huuuuge, especially with symbol arts and the amount of emotes/flair you can add to your text in the game. I already wrote a review about the game and I liken it to a successor to Anarchy Online, another pretty much sandbox MMO where you just set your own goals and forge your path. There's an audience for this kind of game, you could always just go and try to clear every client order at least once as well as every stage in the highest difficulty as you can if you just want a basic reason to keep playing I guess?

You'll never get the time you spent in any game back out of it, except when Diablo 3 had a real money auction house or if you're trying to go competitive in a game like Dota 2... You just play to have fun, and the core gameplay loop and damn near everything about PSO2 is fun to me, even taking those breaks for the ridroid matches or casinos, the concerts, the urgent quests, all of it is great.

I agree with you here. I played the original PSO on Sega Dreamcast ... and it was a game where you had 4 "Stages" but each stage had multiple "layouts" ... so each run was not 100% the same.

Yeah I played World of Warcraft for too long at this point, what you do there is getting online ... and the game tells you what you are supposed to do each day. And that before you think about entering M+ or Raid Dungeons.

The main thing I like at PSO2 is that no one tells you what you have to do that day/week. Yes there is a Mission Pass in the NA version and you get rewards for doing it ... but you not have to. Even just logging in for 2 sec each day gives you something.
Compared to the original PSO or PSU there are allot Missions you can run, and while I did not like at first that the Tokyo or Las Vegas Expeditions have such a different playstyle ... it is a nice change of peace.

The best part is, you are not getting behind here, like in so many MMOs. My Wife plays the Japanese PSO2 since it launched ... sometimes she is just so busy with her work that she has no energy to go play. Then again she has times where she is playing everyday.
But she never gets behind ... PSO2 doesn't limit you on how fast you can level up or forces you to join huge Guilds and adhere to a strikt Raid Schedule ... you can play with friends ... or solo.