A harder difficulty

[MizRedavni]

We should get the call of duty prestige system and after we get to 10th prestige we can trade our DMs in for DM Storms... Yeah? Yeahhhhhh

If it works and is fun, sure.

[Soly]

DM Storm is of Ghost, that won't happen.

But If we ever get Prestige working, lol, Giving some cool rewards after each prestige level would be good.

[Saber +7]

Oh I guess I forgot the /s

[Cyane]

handful of pds is always nice

also we could add warrior crests C:

[Master Debaytes]

Or dts. How about this? Up to 5 levels of prestige can be earned. 1st time you prestige you get 10 dts. 20 dts for the 2nd time. 30 dts for the 3rd. 40 for the 4th. 50 for the 5th. 150 dts in total. The only issue i see with this is 5xp will definitely be a cheap way through this but it's just an idea.

[Cyane]

so much exploiting D:

[Master Debaytes]

The only problem with implementing a prestige system is that people don't go for it unless the rewards for doing so are worth it... Like there has to be motivation to not stay at max level and prestige over to the next stage. Not everyone cares for a graphical change next to their name (I would be perfectly happy with something like that however, as I care more of the aesthetic of prestige over the reward).

[Saber +7]

Free name change? lol Color of your name changes???

[tru]

That would be cool, or if you could use more materials (with a limit of course), or change your section ID for free if you want. I think a handful of pds would be fair. I tend not to focus on leveling too much since I can level while hunting, then find stuff to sell, but a handful of pds would be nice incentive to level more. I hope this gets implemented at some point.

[bradorego]

Prestige as a way to gain an S-Rank?

I feel like going through C-mode is easier/faster than getting to lvl200....

[Master Debaytes]

The idea to change the name of the character or the section ID is actually not a bad idea...

Edited January 9, 2016 by Master Debaytes

[sauce]

a harder difficulty would suck ass. ultimate is hard enough. we need ingame global chat system, like a dollar per global message.

sponsor me

[Drazn]

hmmm is not so simple to develop.

what is simple to do is to change ultimate or a particular episode or monster.

but if i alter ultimate what will happen with users in levels like 120's not even joking they will be able to kill a booma on ultimate,...

BUTTTT...

i guess we can RUN a TEST in a few days ? what you guys thinks ?

Yeah, i thought so, it wouldn't be easy to develop, but making ultimate harder will make things harder for new users, i mean not everyone here has Dark weapons or a good equipment, or that very hard is a little harder and gives more experience also a more drops, since almost all good drops are from ultimate, like having a chance to get armors lvl 101-122 like electro frame, df field, brightness circle that kind of armors that are usefull when you hit those lvls, well that's i have to say.

Interesting reading this thread 4 years later because this is exactly what happened. Allow me to go on a little rant...

I've been playing PSO for a very long time, basically since I was a kid. I've gotten to 200 on the Gamecube, i got to high 100s on the official Blue Burst servers. I've done ultimate before. It was pretty tough but it was doable and the rewards were worth it.

So then recently I returned to Ultima, decided to give getting to 200 a solid shot again since the server has EXP boosts, figured it would be pretty smooth sailing and with lots of super powerful weapons and items added in for the fun of it.

So far it has been the most grindy and unsatisfying experience I have ever had with PSO.

I have been given donations a plenty from some extremely generous players, even donated myself a substantial amount ($55) to try and piece together an ultimate-capable set of gear. I got a level 200 Mag, got a full set of 115 power materials, even manged to get an Arrest Needle. And with all that i can now clear Ep1 Forest in ultimate. Slowly, taking more than 12 shots from an Arrest Needle to kill even a single mob. I do 0 damage to Gal Gryphon with all my weapons, even a fully grinded Ultima Reaper.

I dunno if there are some really masochistic players in this community or everyone expects to be boosted to 180-200 before they can even consider trying to do Ultimate without a level 200 with a Dark weapon helping them. But none of this seems like good game design, or even just a matter of "git gud." Its just boring. Really, really boring. It amounts to either your given your levels and gear by someone else, or you spend days pouring over tradelists not actually playing the game because if you want gear to do ultimate, you either have to get someone to get it for you or have it given to you because there isn't a way to do ultimate so that you can do ultimate...

I've never had an experience like this with PSO before. The game always had something for you to do at each level, and while there were some slow spots none of them were particularly bad. Most of them where to do with the poor pacing of levels between Vhard and ultimate, in that you reach Ultimate too fast and Vhard stops being profitable too soon. All the buffed stats on Ultima have done is exacerbated this problem so that what once was a relatively steep slope is now something more like a brick wall that you either need to pay real money or rely on other player's generosity to have any chance of having an enjoyable experience with.

PSO is a multiplayer game, and yes I know your going to say "but working together with people is the whole point of the game!" But thats hardly a useful point, because if you take 4 people, have them level together to 120 without any interaction with the rest of the community outside of people their level and with similar gear they are almost certainly going to have a terrible experience with ultimate mode, in that none of them do any damage, cant hit any of the monsters and have no way to rectify this problem outside of an extremely long and tedious grind to max level on Vhard. So the only option is that they try to raise wealth inside of a economy that suffers huge inflation on the prices of, and permanently low supply of useful weapons for Ultimate mode, or relying on the generosity of the community.

So its terrible for multiplayer too, not even counting PSO's inherent problems with multiplayer (free for all loot, damage canceling, section ID abuse etc.)

And I don't know about you, but I thought PSO was a Loot Grinding game, not a Loot Donation game. I like the feeling of earning my powerful weapons, not having them given to me.

And while trading is an excellent community-builder, its also a huge barrier to new players with no wealth because we all know how easy it is to make money once you actually have money, but if you have absolutely nothing your gonna have a very long road ahead of you, especially since pretty much everything you can get your hands on is worth absolutely nothing to the majority of wealthy players in this game. Sure with some knowledge you farm up some mats or something and make some money that way, but its slow and tedious outside of green-names, and during green names they are worth half as much as they normally are.

If I wanted to play the long game and build up wealth over the course of several months, i'd go play EvE Online instead. This is not the reason why I enjoy PSO, this is not reason why any of my IRL friends enjoyed playing PSO with me, and I'm sure many others in this community agree with me. Trading is a good thing, as an option. It should not be a requirement to beat the game as not everyone enjoys it.

What is important for Ultima's health and for the health of PSO is to be welcoming of new players. This game is far too close to dead to be erecting barriers that deter new players. I also feel Ultima as possibly the most popular and well known private server for PSOBB has a larger responsibility in this regard that most other servers do.

However I also understand that the long term players of this game need to be given a reason to come back. This community is too small and the influx of new players is too slow to risk shedding veteren players by not heeding their requests.

In other words, there needs to be a balance here which currently, I feel, does not exist. Crack mode needs to come back, another difficulty needs to be added, Priestege, something needs be done to remove the wall between Vhard and Ultimate so that newer players can have a smoother and far more enjoyable experience with Ultima.

I'd love to help, but without any programming experience I fear I might be useless to you. But if you need testing, or advice or anything you think I could do to help, ill be there. This community so far has been extremely welcoming and being the largest server keeping one of my favorite games alive I'd do anything to make it better.

Rant /fin

[Fyrewolf5]

Taking *more* than 12 shots to kill a forest mob with an arrest needle, with 115 pow mats and 200 mag? imma have to call bullshit on that. Even the weakest ranger class (racaseal) at only level 90 with 115 pow mats and a relatively low pow mag (5/129/66/0) and an arrest needle has 1283 - 1403 atp (if the AN is ungrinded vs grinded to +60) can kill easier than that, I just tested 1253 atp and 1420 atp vs bartles and it killed in 8-10 hits. Now 8 hits is not very fast obviously, but for a level 90 racaseal with no shifta who is barely ready to take baby steps into forest, that's pretty good, that's about as fast as a 200 fomarl kills a bartle with pwand (she's slower than that if I take 124mind mag off). And if you have arrest needle, that probably means you aren't level 90 anymore either, need 100 just to hunt gal gryphon and gryphon gives the most exp of anything. Ultimate is a bit of a struggle when you first enter it for sure, but it's also meant to scale from 90 all the way to 200, and that's a long way.

Also, while arrest needle is incredibly good, it's not like one needs to donate to get the gear to do ultimate; the difference between mid-tier gear and top tier gear isn't usually what makes a player weak damage (red handgun's 300atp 50grind, inferno bazooka's 410 atp 9 grind, flame visit 450 atp 9 grind, all are <100 atp less than arrest needle's 400atp 60 grind). Between the exp boosts, the rare monster boosts, and black paper deal rewards, it's very easy to get a lot of mid-tier weapons with high atp (red handgun requires scaring a rare rappy in ultimate, inferno bazooka drops on hard difficulty and flame visit is hard bpd reward. hunters can get even stronger weapons easy too).

If you want a game with little grinding, you picked the wrong one. PSO is among the grindiest of games, and this server has done a lot to take out much of the grind already. If you have gotten to 200 on gamecube and high 180s on blue burst, then you should know just how grindy the game is already. Arguments like "I do 0 damage to Gal Gryphon with ... my fully grinded Ultima Reaper" is not going to be very convincing, he's notably high dfp even vanilla (easiest to hit spots of tail and body have more dfp than every boss but Olga Flow, body is slightly less but still difficult, head is weak but hard to reach sometimes), he's the 3rd area boss so he's supposed to be difficult, and he flies, runs around, and has the ground stop, all of which are for making it hard to attack with a melee weapon. There are certainly some things to be worked on to make the jump to ultimate less difficult at level 90, but if you are going to fill your arguments with exaggeration and hyperbole ("[have] to be boosted to 180-200 before they can even consider trying to do Ultimate without a level 200 with a Dark weapon helping them"), it's going to be hard to take it seriously.

[Drazn]

I admit that i wrote my post in a great deal of frustration, and probably is full of hyperbole, but i'm sitting here after having tried to grind for a Panzer Faust in Ep2 Ulti for about an hour, and having killed a grand total of about 20ish baranz and dying at-least five times as much as that as a level 123 RAcast with all the listed equipment. I don't know how typical that is, but I don't ever remember having this much issue with getting through ulti in PSO. Sure the later parts were pretty spikey in difficulty, but Forest and the beginning of EP2 I don't ever remember being as weak as this, with vastly inferior equipment.

I will admit that I haven't counted how many shots it takes to kill things with my Arrest Needle, but i can tell you it is far slower than what I would expect were i playing any other version of PSO I currently own with the amount of ATP my character has. Which would be less of an issue if it wasn't content that frankly a character of that level should be able to do, unless you want people to be stuck doing Vhard as I said into the mid 100s.

It is a grindy game, and I do not have an issue with this. I come from a background of many ARPGs like Diablo and Diablo 2, Path of Exile, Borderlands and so on. I am used to and enjoy grinding in games. What I take issue with is bad grinding in games, of which I also have a fair amount of experience with, Maplestory, Fly For Fun, and that korean 2D fighting RPG i cant for the life of me remember the name of. Those were bad times.

And what those times had in common was a feeling of making no progress whatsoever. What better ARPGs had in common was that they gave you a little often, and a huge amount some of the time. its what keeps you coming back, a feeling of accomplishment.

It was a feeling I had when i hit 200 on GC or when I get a build running on Path of Exile and its a feeling that I totally lack on Ultima. There is a lot to be said for a smooth progression in a game, and what exists on Ultima today is far from smooth and is compounded further by the game's economy and many of the issues vanilla PSO had.

I just think Ultima can do better than this. We need a steep slope, not a brick wall.

Edited April 6, 2016 by Drazn