Does anyone at SEGA actually play this game?

[Jet Uppercut]

I don't understand how the default control scheme, the control rebinding options or the UI can be this garbage. It's 2023. This game has more nested menus than Final Fantasy. Every time I talk to an NPC I have to mash escape five times just to get out of their menu, that's without the mandatory repeated dialog they say every time you talk to them.
Half of the keys on the keyboard you just can't bind anything to because of weird function layers you can't get rid of.
I want to bind Left Ctrl and Alt to controls. Can't.
I want to be able to dash on double tap movement with dodging being it's own button. Can't.

Why aren't my equipped items at the top of the list by default? It literally makes zero ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sense unless the people making this crap have never used it.
The default screenshot button for Steam (F12) is the same button that brings up the logout menu. I tried taking a picture of the Rappy Boss and quit the game instead because I was left clicking to attack at the same time... How does something like that happen unless the people making the game never played it?
And the lock-on... I'm using a mouse cursor and I still can't ever get it to actually point to the thing I'm looking directly at. No matter how much I mess with the control settings. And it will just randomly lock on to other stuff if the camera decides to wig out and point away from what I'm fighting. How? I never had this issue in PSO2. And the bosses were a lot bigger there.

Why is batch selling items a paid feature? Why can't I batch accept multiple side quests? Why aren't all of the PSO2 exclusive items separated into their own storage area instead of clogging up my character and account storage in NGS? Inventory management is so awful and takes so long I feel like it would be easier if they replaced the interface with Microsoft Excel.
I don't even want to imagine how this game plays on a controller. All of the face buttons have to be some kind of function layer. Do they even have radial menus? Did that concept reach SEGA's development team which is clearly stuck in some kind of time warp, trapped 10 years in the past? The UI must be a total nightmare to navigate without a cursor and scroll wheel. Or a physical keyboard to use the search.

The building stuff they've announced, it will probably take 6 years just to make a dirt house, just imagining the 6 mile long list of building materials and how hard they're going to clog up your inventory with them makes me want to jump off a bridge.

If the rest of the game was even up to a decent or better standard than the game they abandoned to make NGS, I'd maybe understand cutting corners on the UI and control scheme. It'd be forgivable even. But it's not even that much better than PSO2. I've played for like 8 hours and I feel like I've seen all of the content already. And it's been out for 2 years.

I keep trying to give this game a chance because I love Phantasy Star but it's doing everything it can to make me want to delete it and never play another SEGA game again. It's like they took being out of touch with the community to the next level and are trying as hard as possible to distance themselves from the game they're actively developing.

[UrbanMech]

You forgot the party invitation system.

"Do you want to respond to [usernames] party invite?"
Yes
*Request Page*
*Click username request*
"Do you want to join [usernames] Party?"
Yes


The interface is extremely old and they never bother updating it. I'd imagine it would cost quite a bit of money since it is such a mess that it probably needs to be rewritten completely. If this game retained a lot of new players on NGS launch which it didn't then maybe it would of been worth it at that time but how the state of the game is now I think it's best if they kept it the same. Existing players already got used to it and there isn't many new players coming to bother for.

[Alligo]

Originally posted by GhostBear:

You forgot the party invitation system.

"Do you want to respond to [usernames] party invite?"
Yes
*Request Page*
*Click username request*
"Do you want to join [usernames] Party?"
Yes


The interface is extremely old and they never bother updating it. I'd imagine it would cost quite a bit of money since it is such a mess that it probably needs to be rewritten completely. If this game retained a lot of new players on NGS launch which it didn't then maybe it would of been worth it at that time but how the state of the game is now I think it's best if they kept it the same. Existing players already got used to it and there isn't many new players coming to bother for.

The worst is that the party system in NGS is very "aggressive"

A player asked me to join his party in the middle of a fight, and it stopped me directly from fighting/attacking.

I really prefer the PSO2 system (the base).

[Yami Houkai]

I do agree that they should allow keybinding on everything to make things easier for us.
But regarding this

Originally posted by Jet Uppercut:

The default screenshot button for Steam (F12) is the same button that brings up the logout menu. I tried taking a picture of the Rappy Boss and quit the game instead because I was left clicking to attack at the same time...

Why the heck its pso2 fault? Yes the default screenshot button for Steam is F12, BUT thats the steam function, not the pso2. Pso2 are not a game specifically made for steam.
Plus, the default button for screenshot in pso2 are the Print Screen button, which is still usable even on the Steam version.

Originally posted by Jet Uppercut:

Why is batch selling items a paid feature? Why can't I batch accept multiple side quests?

I did batch selling everytime, clicking Shift button on the item to mark the items and sell everything that got marked at once, its not even a paid feature. Unless if you meant the auto sell or selling to other people.

Originally posted by Jet Uppercut:

The building stuff they've announced, it will probably take 6 years just to make a dirt house, just imagining the 6 mile long list of building materials and how hard they're going to clog up your inventory with them makes me want to jump off a bridge.

We don't even know yet how those item used in building will worked on the game yet. For example it could be like the Layering Wear, Accessories, and Music items, which went to its own list after being used. It won't clog up the inventory if they did it like that. Which most likely this is what they do, because they have their own Build Menu UI.
Even if they put it in inventory, you could just dump the items to the Creative Space so it won't clogged in inventory. I did exact same thing in the base game with Myroom.

[Didaibr]

Originally posted by Jet Uppercut:

And the lock-on... I'm using a mouse cursor and I still can't ever get it to actually point to the thing I'm looking directly at. No matter how much I mess with the control settings. And it will just randomly lock on to other stuff if the camera decides to wig out and point away from what I'm fighting. How? I never had this issue in PSO2. And the bosses were a lot bigger there.

Yep, its trash, and it was worse, they actually tryed to fix or make better... its still horrible when you fight nex vera. You lock-on and try to change using the analogic and it goes to the wings, to the tail, to the head, to his feet, to your mag, to crawford taking a dump but it dont go to the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ weakspot

[Xaelon]

SEGA probably has an internal QA team of some kind but I doubt they do anything besides verify basic game functionality.

Even if said hypothetical QA team did provide feedback regarding this game's core systems they were very clearly ignored considering how stagnant, boring and repetitive NGS's "loot" is, if we can even call the garbage that drops 'loot'.

Does anyone at SEGA play this game? Sure.
Does anyone on SEGA's leadership team play this game? No. All they see are player numbers and revenue. Want things to improve? Stop playing the game and at the very least stop giving them money.

Who am I kidding though? It's too late to make a difference in the game's overall direction. SEGA has very clearly illustrated that all they every plan to do with NGS is add more areas, add some classes, reuse monsters, reuse weapons, and maybe add a few new monsters.

If you're unhappy with NGS find something else to play that's your only option at this point. This game will never change in any meaningful way.

[Rogue]

So in other words. You want more pay to wi... Errr for convenience? Preach.

As for the paid for features... Duh? F2P games. There are clowns paying 100 bucks for a 2023 game that also have severe control scheme with all the monetization works , like cash shop, multi tiered battlepass. That's the future gaming. Everyone loving it, somehow.

[VanillaLucia]

Originally posted by Rogue:

So in other words. You want more pay to wi... Errr for convenience? Preach.

That seems like a very nice way to interpret someone asking for quality-of-life and more modern UX sensibilities, to interpret it as if it's some sort of plea for paying for fixes that should have been made at least a decade ago.

Originally posted by Xaelon:

SEGA probably has an internal QA team of some kind but I doubt they do anything besides verify basic game functionality.

The other kicker to this, at least knowing more context in regards to what New Genesis was going through, is that the game Sega is playing is absolutely not the one we are playing now. They likely have already had solutions for all sorts of feedback and things we have mentioned ages ago - but we will likely not see them sprinkle down into "our version" of the game until a big update period and thus we will only see chunks and pieces of it being served at a time.

I would easily point to the Duel Quests being the newest form of this - as people who were so fussed and excited about it day one would have either spent an exorbitant amount of resources just to race ahead and be the first clears where the people who weren't so fussed immediately realized that Duel Quests weren't what they were originally shown to be. Towards the end of this seasonal event, it would not surprise me any one bit if the Defi capsules suddenly lost their value and became extremely common and frequent drops in normal content (they are not obtainable outside of limited-time content so far) - and that the testing simply had people either already playing with full Defi gear or a very easy means of getting all the capsules easily as opposed to the staged and gated periods we currently have.

After all, Sega has been extremely consistent and relatively capable of keeping to their schedules so I would imagine that there is quite a bit more that we as players have not seen yet - that I personally wish there was more transparency about especially related to the user experience and the player experience.

[Rogue]

Originally posted by VanillaLucia:

Originally posted by Rogue:

So in other words. You want more pay to wi... Errr for convenience? Preach.

That seems like a very nice way to interpret someone asking for quality-of-life and more modern UX sensibilities, to interpret it as if it's some sort of plea for paying for fixes that should have been made at least a decade ago.

Welcome to the new age of gaming. QoL improvement comes slow and you either pay for it or wait it out (Sega does provides them after-all, priorities and such.). Long time ago, mini-map never existed. You take a grid paper and draw it yourself or buy guides(Woah, pay to win).

Modern sensibilities is downward spiral, all the way to autoplay, autoeverything. Sit back and let the game play you. Hyperbole is real, dodge actually has its own button as well as weapon action. To false speculation of creative spaces even when there's video of it. Lucky for you, you are not the OP, just someone doing driveby pandering. lol.

[VanillaLucia]

Originally posted by Playstation:

It cause they kept old pso2 latched on via code so the game suffers from 2012 ui code and design which is why we need to trim the dat and remove psold2 and no more limitations

This is absolutely incorrect if you were paying attention to New Genesis' development that was shared on the Japanese side via their CEDEC 2022 presentation and what was shared for the first time in Global from the NGS Headline.

In short, Sega spent years and years developing Phantasy Star Online 2 using a very old engine, concepts, and code originating from Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity (which also was never released westward) but that has a domino effect coming all the way back from Phantasy Star Universe and even Phantasy Star Online. When the PlayStation 4 version of the game came out and made significant changes to the game to make the player experience better, Sega decided that they wanted to refresh the game and committed their resources into reworking the game's current engine instead of making an entirely new one and rework their workflow so that they weren't still making a Dreamcast game in the mid-2010's.

Removing the old game does absolutely nothing for New Genesis when both games share the same code and the same bones - especially when New Genesis is actually a fork of Episode 5 when Episode 6 went on its own and made its own advancements (hence the compatibility issues between the two). If you take even those away, New Genesis without its graphics engine is still Phantasy Star Online 2 with how the server architecture and engine quirks are handled - and Sega was not going to simply throw away their decade-old (and still-existing cash cow) just for the sake of a sequel.

[Hermit]

Originally posted by Alligo:

Originally posted by GhostBear:

You forgot the party invitation system.

"Do you want to respond to [usernames] party invite?"
Yes
*Request Page*
*Click username request*
"Do you want to join [usernames] Party?"
Yes


The interface is extremely old and they never bother updating it. I'd imagine it would cost quite a bit of money since it is such a mess that it probably needs to be rewritten completely. If this game retained a lot of new players on NGS launch which it didn't then maybe it would of been worth it at that time but how the state of the game is now I think it's best if they kept it the same. Existing players already got used to it and there isn't many new players coming to bother for.

The worst is that the party system in NGS is very "aggressive"

A player asked me to join his party in the middle of a fight, and it stopped me directly from fighting/attacking.

I really prefer the PSO2 system (the base).

PSO2 was so simple, you drop a party beacon and people join. So much of the stuff from PSO2 that has returned in NGS has been done in much worse ways. It's like they are making things different for the sake of making them different.

[Terrence M. Delawgan]

Originally posted by Jet Uppercut:

Does anyone at SEGA actually play this game?

If that was the case then NGS wouldn't be in such a pathetic and miserable state.

[Ikagura]

Originally posted by VanillaLucia:

In short, Sega spent years and years developing Phantasy Star Online 2 using a very old engine, concepts, and code originating from Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity (which also was never released westward)

I saw a video of an early prototype with many elements from PSPo2 for sure.

[NoSpax]

If a menu depth of 5 is too much for you, I can tell you PSO2 classic actually has a single menu with a depth of 12.

Yes, you have to tap ESC 12 times to get out.
That's why there is a dedicated menu button to skip out of it at once.

Btw.. What normal NPC has a menu depth of 5.. Most of them are Taskgiver, which just have one menu, 2 maximum depth including the "accept/cancel" popup.

[chill out]

No. SEGA hasn't actually had developers playing their own game beyond basic crash/function testing since the early PSO2 days. It got so bad that they actually hired a group of social influencer/parasocial marketing gimmick to pretend to be actual PSO2 players in order to play the game on stage and capture footage, because people were starting to wise up to the fact that SEGA didn't play their own game.
TBQH, I have a hard time believing they really played much PSU either. This is just part of the corporate culture, and is pretty common in game development.