A deep dive into NGS; where is the game now?

[Cat_Heads]

I decided to play NGS so you don't have to.

A bit of context, I've put over 6k hours into base PSO2, been playing on the JP servers since episode 2. I put about 70 hours into NGS upon release before putting the game down permanently due to my dissatisfaction with the game upon launch. I have played the base game with friends off and on since then, but never really tried to touch NGS after I left it. All of the content updates seemed insufficient to keep me playing, but it's been 3 years.

NGS is a 3 year old game now, and during those 3 years, it has had constant content releases, filling up the massive void of content that was once present. So I decided to bite the bullet and play NGS once more, this time putting upwards of 80 hours into it to make sure I explored every nook and cranny possible.

So, what did I find? Where exactly does NGS stand now?


First off, the level cap is 85, and when I quit playing it was 20. Several new classes have been added, including Slayer, which I decided to make my main. I need to hit level cap with it, and the best method seems to be playing the story.

The story is as horribly written as I remembered it being. It's also mandatory to play through to unlock content in the game, which is a step back from base PSO2 which lets you ignore the story entirely. The story took me about 4 hours to beat. Yes, 3 years of story releases cleared in 4 hours, and during that time, I got slayer to the level cap, and my subclass of force to the subclass level cap of 80. Long gone are the days of enjoying the journey, NGS seems to be all about the destination.

Next, I explored the world. Cocoons are nice enough, as are towers. There are some cool mechanics, like the hoverboards. The world itself, however, is largely devoid of any secrets. Your mag uses an itemfinder pinging system to guide you to the location of every point or object of interest, making exploration a process that boils down to going where your mag tells you to go, getting the thing, and then following your mag again. As such, the world itself feels extremely empty and pointless, and it truly serves zero purpose other than being a vessel for gathering materials.

Every older PSO title uses procedurally generated dungeons for level design. Even when there was an open world, such as in PSU, it was used to be a vehicle to get to generated dungeons. The complete lack of them has led to NGS feeling extremely repetitive with its combat zones, quest system, and exploration. This has not been addressed with any of the new areas being added. Unless you count making the areas smaller and smaller addressing the issue.

There are no procedural quests in NGS. Leciel exploration is the closest thing we have, but it consists of a 5x5 grid of rooms with random challenges in each that boil down to defeating the enemies, or pressing the switches, with a boss waiting for you at the end which rotates out daily.

But in order to do any of this content, you need battle power, or BP. BP upon release was a horrible rule, as damage you dealt to an enemy was gated based on level, not BP. As such, someone underleveled but overgeared could queue up for a boss fight, only to deal 1 damage, while people who contributed more would not be allowed to join due to BP gating. This was fixed by also adding in a level requirement and nothing else.

BP is a measure of how good your gear is. I had to buy a 10* weapon from the market to meet the BP restriction of every piece of content in the game, so I did. I have now reached the end game. I can actually play the content. So...


Content!

NGS has various forms of content. Not all are created equal. Here are all of them.

Combat sectors are chunks of the open world dedicated to killing enemies. You go there, kill enemies in a methodical way to force even more enemies to spwan to kill. You do this to grind EXP and money. The mobs die so fast that there is zero difference in each combat sector. Gameplay consists of spamming right click, then walking to a different area to spam right click. Numbers then proceed to go up.

Urgent quests are the fun part. Every so often, completely unscheduled, an urgent quest will pop up. This consists of 4 quests, one for each area, and you get to pick one of them to do. If you think this means that 3 of those 4 quests will be completely barren due to the endgame being so easy to reach, you would be correct!
Here is a list of all urgent quests that show up with less than one full room of players.
Mining defense 1
Mining defense 2
Dark Falz Aegis 1
Dark Falz Aegis 2
Dark Falz Solus
Here is a list of all the urgent quests that show up with people playing them.
Stia rappy rumble
Dark Falz Dalion

Stia rappy rumble is nothing but a gauntlet of bosses and enemies to clear. It's actually relatively fun, and the best piece of content in the game. I had ran it 12 times, and only gotten 2 10* drops, with no 11* drops despite using rare drop rate boosters.

Dark Falz Dalion is the exact same as the world boss version, but much easier. In other words, recycled content.

There was also a world event for one week called stellar grace. It's a scavenger hunt across the game world to find boxes of goodies. This would be fun if your mag didn't point you towards them.


I have already explained Leciel exploration.

Event quests rotate out every week. They consist of going through a gauntlet of enemies to find a boss. They are the same every time for the entire week. Each one uses the exact same song for the background music, and it gets old very fast. Relatively fun, except for how repetitive they are.

Duel quests are 1v1 time trials against bosses. You don't get any rewards for doing these. They are just ways to force spawn bosses for you to get good against. None of the bosses here are new.

Trigger quests are dead content, and are only used for preformed parties. They have you run through gauntlets of enemies to reach a boss... sound familiar?

Time extension quests are time attacks, and are used to farm genesis points, more on those later. They are dead content. I remained in queue for 30 minutes for both of them, and could not assemble a party to run even one with. This is across all of the game's servers.


World bosses are a thing you can queue up for. There are 3 of them. They have you and 3 other people fight against one of the big bad boss fights, similar to dark falz fights from base PSO2. Speaking of... the first one is basically a hybrid between Elder and Persona. The second... I couldn't find enough people to attempt a run. And the third is the newest boss, and would have been fun, had people not left in the middle of a run every time one person messed up a mechanic, then repeatedly leave every time they queue together instead of actually taking the time out to explain what the mechanic is. It seems the community is so allergic to social interaction that they won't even type in game.
I beat it on my 5th try. Was really fun. Felt like I was playing base PSO2 for a minute. Shame there is no reason to clear it beyond once a week.

And that's all the content in the game!
Yes. All of it. 3 years worth. That's everything. There is nothing else.


Fine
Creative spaces! The big thing heralding the title of version 2! Content! How good are they?

The editing UI is extremely clunky and unintuitive. The amount of farming you need to do for single decorations is abhorrent. There are decorations that can only be purchased with AC, the true premium currency. You can make some cool stuff, but the time and effort it takes for such a clunky and outdated system is, frankly, not worth it. You can purchase decorations with either genesis points or SG. SG is needed for quality of life, and extra SG is impossible to get due to time gating. Genesis points can be farmed from dead content that nobody is running.


How about the economy?

Well, they just added a scratch that lets you get augment capsules!
They're the best augment capsules in the game, and equate to a 30% damage increase overall!
The current market rate is 16 million for 1 spirit capsule.
You need 10 capsules to hit 100% success rate, so 160 million.
You need to do this to 3 pieces of armor and 1 weapon, so 640 million.
You get 2 million for doing everything possible each week outside of direct farming.

NGS is blatantly pay to win!
Shame there isn't exactly any content that you can actually win anymore.


Conclusin!
Here is the TL;DR for those of you who value your time more than NGS!

NGS is a content barren wasteland with pay to win mechanics, a toxic community, side content that is not worthwhile, and dead content littering the game. None of the critical issues that make it a step down from PSO titles before it have been addressed. The story is short, the journey is short, the end game is unending. I have spent almost 80 hours trying to cover every bit of this.
6 of those hours were spent gathering
4 of those hours were spent exploring
4 of those hours were spent doing the story
10 of those hours were spent in combat zones
2 of those hours were spent clearing a boss
5 of those hours were spent in a single UQ
1 of those hours was spent navigating UI
3 of those hours were spent in Leciel
7 of those hours were spent in limited quests
1 of those hours was spent watching the same concert 4 times
10 of those hours were spent browsing for cosmetics
10 of those hours were spent making outfits
15 of those hours were spent AFK

What do I have to show for it?
A couple stylish outfits, some good armor, and 4 classes at the level cap.
Did I have fun? For about 2 of those hours.

Does NGS still suck?
Somehow it has gotten worse.

[BToastyBro]

Amazing recap, and makes me wanting to get back into this as a no. I loved and grew up on PSU, so I didn't get the chance to play PSO. PSO2 OG launched wayyyyy to late for my own taste in America. I was so excited for it back when it dropped in JP, and I even had a chance to play it some also.

Such a pity though about how heavy P2W it is now. Major put off.

[Jetspark]

I figured no one would be queuing for Mining Defense, Aegis, and Solus anymore. I'm sure Cannonball, Ordinal Tower, and Trinitas are ghost towns as well. Can't think of a single reason anyone would waste time there. None of them give relevant loot. By the way, now that I'm thinking about it, has Petas Vera been turning up?

Originally posted by Cat_Heads:

Well, they just added a scratch that lets you get augment capsules!
They're the best augment capsules in the game, and equate to a 30% damage increase overall!

Remember when gamers use to complain very loudly about being sold power? We lost that fight. Now the young ones will grow up with it being normal and give developers the green light to do so much worse. I bet it'll get so bad you have to pay to be able to damage bosses and pay again to be able to kill the final boss.

[vale]

Originally posted by Cat_Heads:

Duel quests are 1v1 time trials against bosses. You don't get any rewards for doing these. They are just ways to force spawn bosses for you to get good against. None of the bosses here are new.

Duel quests are some of the best ways to make money in the game since they give you mats to make endgame capsules you can sell on the player market.

Originally posted by Cat_Heads:

You need 10 capsules to hit 100% success rate, so 160 million.
You need to do this to 3 pieces of armor and 1 weapon, so 640 million.

The P2W augments only need 1 per unit/weapon since they have a 100% success rate.

Otherwise yea valid

[Harmless Kitty]

So people actually do 10 capsules eh?

Here I am gambling with 1 single capsule at a time on boost week with +10% success booster.

[tvtoon]

I agree with most of your points, NGS is now a wasteland with void content to attract players, but the classic is not without its flaws. They are constantly uploading most of the classic stuff to NGS now, and of course it won't work.

[Cat_Heads]

Originally posted by magatsu:

Originally posted by Cat_Heads:

Duel quests are 1v1 time trials against bosses. You don't get any rewards for doing these. They are just ways to force spawn bosses for you to get good against. None of the bosses here are new.

Duel quests are some of the best ways to make money in the game since they give you mats to make endgame capsules you can sell on the player market.

Originally posted by Cat_Heads:

You need 10 capsules to hit 100% success rate, so 160 million.
You need to do this to 3 pieces of armor and 1 weapon, so 640 million.

The P2W augments only need 1 per unit/weapon since they have a 100% success rate.

Otherwise yea valid

Dang, the 100% success rate is wild, valid counterpoint. Did not bother to test because I wasn't about to waste my time grinding even more meseta.

Guess there is a purpose to doing duel quests though! Duly noted. Good counterpoints.

[Gilver Redgrave]

I am amused you actually believed you need 80 hours to see everything the game has to over.

I mean most of the "content" becomes irrelevant the moment new content drops. So when you took lets say a 1 year hiatus only the last patch will actually be content the rest is dead.

Thats also the reason why i laugh so hard at people that say "go on a break and come back later when there is content." Those people dont know how MMOs work Companys want people where the action is as fast as possible so no matter how long your break is you will always be at late game very fast in this time and age.

[Xilius]

What's your verdict on classic? I'd like to jump in again, maybe introduce it to a friend and play through together. Worth our time?

[JDog 2/4]

but i want to play

[Jetspark]

Originally posted by JDog2024:

but i want to play

Then play.

[Evil Sock]

honestly, i started emulating Phantasy Star Portable 2: Infinity with an English patch and am having much more fun with it.

[DRIFTER]

> This would be fun if your mag didn't point you towards them.

Customize your mag sonar settings from its menu. Disable all. Now you can run around aimlessly looking for things. I personally would not want this, I have already seen everything the game has and want stellar grace to nerf the required collectibles to about half (doubling the reward to total the same)

Someone already commented, duel quest does have unique rewards (cosmetic) and is the grinding source of "the best F2P can get" affixes.

Since it wasn't mentioned, PSO2 had a better gameplay loop of using drops for affixes ... at least it gave purpose. Right now drops are a nuisance and garbage and autosell should not be a freemium feature.

[RX-3DR]

That's a lot of contradictions and bad information.

BP system working as intended in preventing you from pretending you know what you're doing. Your explanation of why it is "bad" is completely wrong. If you had the BP to queue for it, you could deal damage. You going in with rubbish gear because, "I know what I'm doing" is one of the things it prevents.

Would the game actually be better if they cut the EXP gain rates by 100 times and forced you to do menial tasks and quests with mandatory side story to pad out the required main story? Remember the old days of grinding Advance Quest meaninglessly for EXP? Or Extreme Quest? What about the EQs that no one cares about wasting 2 ~ 3 hours of waiting.

Did you actually play every content for 6000 hours of PSO2, or did you just sit around waiting for EQs and only playing the latest relevant content for most of that time?

[Jetspark]

Originally posted by RX-3DR:

That's a lot of contradictions and bad information.

BP system working as intended in preventing you from pretending you know what you're doing. Your explanation of why it is "bad" is completely wrong. If you had the BP to queue for it, you could deal damage. You going in with rubbish gear because, "I know what I'm doing" is one of the things it prevents.

Would the game actually be better if they cut the EXP gain rates by 100 times and forced you to do menial tasks and quests with mandatory side story to pad out the required main story? Remember the old days of grinding Advance Quest meaninglessly for EXP? Or Extreme Quest? What about the EQs that no one cares about wasting 2 ~ 3 hours of waiting.

Did you actually play every content for 6000 hours of PSO2, or did you just sit around waiting for EQs and only playing the latest relevant content for most of that time?

I wish you could've seen me in any Emergency Quest my first time. You vastly overestimate the base skill level required to play this game. Also, when you've fought 1 Daityl, you've fought them all.

And no one's saying that cutting the experience rates in favor of adding standard fetch and kill quests would be a good idea. If they are, they're not seeing the issue with what we currently have. One of them, ironically, being "latest relevant content".

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by RX-3DR:

That's a lot of contradictions and bad information.

BP system working as intended in preventing you from pretending you know what you're doing.

How does that work? You can buy some outdated weapon and armour in the market to get you over the BP cap and you can STILL not know what you are doing, as demonstrated in the past by a certain (and very certain he was) famous lunatic here in the forums that has finally disappeared. He met all the BP scores but damn was he cluelessly insane.