Don't have friends? (Locked, new topic made.)

[falkenjeff]

Re: Don't have friends?

I edited: because Soda IS going to change it. So it might as well be something that makes sense, and not a stupid 25% drop system where everyone gets their own drops.

If he wasn't going to change it, we wouldn't be in this situation right now at all, would we?

IIRC Soda's gone back on things before because they were sudden and unwelcome changes, so I wouldn't be surprised if he did it again... I'm against the 25% drop system, but I don't care if other people are able to use it if they so choose. I just think that it should be an opt-in sort of deal, where they have to turn it on when they create a game as opposed to anyone who wants to play normally having to turn it off when they create a game.

It would also be favorable if:

1) You could see what mode they are using before you join.

2) They can't change it in the middle of the game (fucking you over halfway through a map or quest).

 

[falkenjeff]

Re: Don't have friends?

@Soda I probably over-reacted (thanks for at least allowing it to be turned off).

I won't quit. I will, however, be passive-aggressively entering people's games, telling them "oops sorry I can't play with you, you have the shitty item drop mode enabled" and then leaving and making my own room. Hopefully if there are enough people like me and Cyan, it will catch on that not all of us want individual drops with a 25% rare rate being the compromise, and people will start making normal rooms instead.

 

[Sodaboy]

Re: Don't have friends?

A "normal" room doesn't mean better rare rates either. Not sure how you automatically figure that.

I mean, I guess it does if you're a dick of a player who picks up every single rare before anyone else can grab it. But, if you're someone who actually cares about the people you play with, then I am sure they get some of the rares as well. Any time you have someone in a group, you're lowering your own ability to get a rare, normal or multi drops, so let's not be ignorant to that fact.

A multi drop style game is actually superior if you're playing in a party because there is equal chance for drops. It's especially better for forces and rangers who aren't always right next to a monster when it dies.

Sure, I guess if all you play is a hunter and can be right over monsters, you'd definitely prefer a normal drop, but in reality, the amount of rare items a person can get in multi mode vs normal play should actually be pretty similar.

There is no actual division going on to the rate itself, and technically the number of rolls for the rare item is identical in normal mode vs the new multi, so I fail to see the point of all the bitching.

Also, if you plan to be passive aggressive to other players on the server for them playing a mode you dislike, you will end up banned. Just a fair warning.

 

[Ryan]

Re: Don't have friends?

As I said, I don't mind this being an option, and I'd even potentially play in games that have it on (normally, not "passive aggressively"... :roll I'd just greatly appreciate it if it were an opt-in option, rather than an opt-out.

 

[Neirene]

Re: Don't have friends?

I'm impressed to see all kinds of points of view regarding this system across the whole thread, however I think it would be better to make a public poll for this because it's a major change to the game mechanics and of course the fact that the final decision of this means that the server will either choose the complete custom route or stay with the original Vanilla experience.

Also Sodaboy, I know very well you dislike my suggestions very much most of the times but just take a look at the Introduction forum and you will notice that the majority of the people joining and greeting everyone are coming to your server specifically because of the "Vanilla" PSOBB experience. Please take that into consideration before making such changes.

In my opinion and to avoid any misunderstandings and problems a public poll regarding the future of Ephinea features such as this should be opened to see what the people will think about it.

 

[Sodaboy]

Re: Don't have friends?

I'd just greatly appreciate it if it were an opt-in option, rather than an opt-out.

I'll set the default drop style to classic, can be switched to PSO2 style with /drops command.

 

[Aleron Ives]

Re: Don't have friends?

Why change the game when you already have people who divvy up items among themselves on an honor system anyway?

It would give people the option of playing with others who may not be honourable while still allowing them to hunt what they want?

Because, as mentioned previously, having someone /call one or two god tier items would completely break it. Who wants to hunt items with a party if all the good things to hunt are already called?

I don't understand this concern at all. You're saying that in any given episode and on any given Section ID, there are only three possible drops that would be worth calling, so a fourth player would never want to join when all three "good" items have been called? There have to be more things worth calling than that, and I don't think people would bother to call at all unless they were actually hunting something. As I also said before, there should be restrictions, and I think at least one additional one is necessary:

• You can only use /call on Pioneer 2.
• You can only use it one time.
• You can only use it if you haven't left Pioneer 2 yet.
• You can only use it if the leader has called something (meaning if the leader doesn't /call anything, drops are a normal free-for-all, thus making the system opt-in, not opt-out).

Each episode on the decent Section IDs has more than three items potentially worth calling, so I don't see how this "completely breaks" the game. If anything, falkenjeff has already stated how the per-player drops breaks the game far more. If a calling system is also too broken, then the only non-broken solution would be to do nothing.

 

[Ryan]

Re: Don't have friends?

Also Sodaboy, I know very well you dislike my suggestions very much most of the times but just take a look at the Introduction forum and you will notice that the majority of the people joining and greeting everyone are coming to your server specifically because of the "Vanilla" PSOBB experience. Please take that into consideration before making such changes.

Given that the default behavior is vanilla, this shouldn't be much of a problem.

You're saying that in any given episode and on any given Section ID, there are only three possible drops that would be worth calling, so a fourth player would never want to join when all three "good" items have been called? There have to be more things worth calling than that, and I don't think people would bother to call at all unless they were actually hunting something.

We both know pretty well that there are more than a few items that are likely to be hunted by more than one person in the same game...

If anything, falkenjeff has already stated how the per-player drops breaks the game far more. If a calling system is also too broken, then the only non-broken solution would be to do nothing.

I'd prefer doing nothing, but either of these solutions is just fine with me on an opt-in basis. Unless someone in this thread is a die-hard opponent of either including or excluding this feature, I think having it enabled on an opt-in basis is the best decision we can reach.

 

[Neirene]

Re: Don't have friends?

Now i'm gonna ask "why break your head in creating new features and game mechanics on the first place that doesnt belong to the original game? what's the real goal of it?"

This is a closed game and it's a game that it's development didnt continued any further after EPIV, so what's the point in trying to modify it's contents and modify the core gameplay so much? I think all the people in this forum (or at least thats what i want to think) loves the game as it is with its defects and virtues. The goal was set a server with the game as it is to introduce PSO to the new generation of players and also have a place for all of us old players to gather and relive the nostalgic days again.

The goal is acomplished we got a server to play PSOBB as it is wihout any extras, if I want to play with items dropping on the floor just for me and not visible for anyone else there's PSO2 or PSP2i for that, that i'm gonna get ninja'd and they will steal my items? well that's my fault not the games fault! , every Phantasy Star offers their own features and gameplay styles I think it's very silly to implements those mechanics in PSO you are just making a hybrid game now which of course is as vanilla as a chocolate ice cream.

If a certain player don't like the PSO mechanics as they are, simple, quit the game and play something else.

Instead I think the effort should be focused on trying to fix all the bugs of the server and adjust everything to have the ultimate PSOBB experience that we had back in the SEGA days.

I'm very sorry for the long post!

 

[adamck]

Re: Don't have friends?

My 2 cents, I don't personally care much for any sort of call system, but I would love a balanced implementation of the drop system where each player gets their own drops independent of other players. One of the reasons I solo more often is because I'm not good at sharing and I don't want other people grabbing things I might need. Either way, Soda, I appreciate the fact that you're so active in wanting to help the server and I'm sure I'll keep playing regardless of what you change. Granted I'm not on every day, but I still like how things are here more than my other server options.

 

[EvilMag]

Re: Don't have friends?

Because most people look at PSO1 without their rose tinted glasses and realize how very flawed the game really is and would like changes to fix the issues.

I'm gonna be honest and I know people will disagree with me on this but I'll say it bluntly,

PSO1 hasn't aged well

This game has a lot of archaic design choices, the controls and combat is very stiff, when playing this game compared to PSO2, PSP2i, and even PSU, I feel like I'm going through mud. Mag feeding is very boring and slow. At least on PSO2 if I had the meseta to spare, I can get an instant Lv200 Mag right now without having to wait to fucking feed the damn thing. Granted its expensive and yes if you do fuck up you will have to buy a new mag but its hard to fuck it up if you aren't paying attention. Section IDs while gives you control over what drops was really unbalanced and how it decides your ID is dumb. (HI PINKAL) I love PSO1, I really do but my god it is really flawed. I'm forward changes assuming they aren't Power creep.

 

[Aleron Ives]

Re: Don't have friends?

PSO1 hasn't aged well

This game has a lot of archaic design choices
[...]
Mag feeding is very boring and slow. At least on PSO2 if I had the meseta to spare, I can get an instant Lv200 Mag right now without having to wait to fucking feed the damn thing.

...so you're basically saying that "hasn't aged well" means that it's actually semi-hard and requires you to put in some time, unlike modern games that have pay-to-win systems where you can just buy cheats with real money? I'd call that a strength of the game, not a flaw.

Now i'm gonna ask "why break your head in creating new features and game mechanics on the first place that doesnt belong to the original game? what's the real goal of it?"

...to punish players who solo? I mean, that was basically the reason Soda gave for changing things in the first place. He wanted people to stop soloing. Soloing has always been part of the PSO experience; BB just doesn't have an offline mode, so unlike in previous versions, you can monitor everyone who's soloing using the server. It's not necessarily a bad thing; if it were, Sega wouldn't have included a solo mode. I'm all for rewarding people for playing together, but I'm adamantly opposed to punishing people for taking advantage of one of the game's canonical features, as even much of multiplayer mode can be soloed.

 

[EvilMag]

Re: Don't have friends?

...so you're basically saying that "hasn't aged well" means that it's actually semi-hard and requires you to put in some time, unlike modern games that have pay-to-win systems where you can just buy cheats with real money? I'd call that a strength of the game, not a flaw.

Except that real money isn't really involved in getting the Mag to Lv200. the Mag food that is used can be bought in the PD shop with Spheres which is obtained ingame with no real money required. You can buy the spheres in the player shops. Maybe I worded it poorly when I said you have to pay real money if you fuck up because you can't fuck up if you do this method. the food only raises one stat. (Unless you buy the wrong food but it isn't hard to figure out what food raises what stat even if you don't know Japanese)

Mag food in the AC scratch is a ripoff. It's pretty much recycle shop fodder. I wonder why its even in there in the first place?

 

[sealed_jsword]

Re: Don't have friends?

personally, I solo out of laziness and due to the fact that I hardly have time to play for extended periods anymore. For those like myself, know that 1p modes aren't being reduced, but are just lower relative to a full part. 1p is still vanilla.

 

[falkenjeff]

Re: Don't have friends?

A "normal" room doesn't mean better rare rates either. Not sure how you automatically figure that.

I mean, I guess it does if you're a dick of a player who picks up every single rare before anyone else can grab it. But, if you're someone who actually cares about the people you play with, then I am sure they get some of the rares as well. Any time you have someone in a group, you're lowering your own ability to get a rare, normal or multi drops, so let's not be ignorant to that fact.

I already explained this, and it's not because I'm a "dick player" who picks up every rare (I have used the call system in the past and honored it - although I haven't met anyone here yet who has tried to use it, probably because they use multi-games for exp and solo for items). 1) Parties don't always stick together. If I stay behind to kill the shark to open the boss room, or I stay behind to kill the lilies because I want their drop, my party members won't see what dropped for them. So my drop rate (and the party drop rate) is 25% for monsters that only I see and kill. This would literally mean your new drop system is dictating my gameplay ("nope these lilies aren't worth killing, better run up and catch up to my team"). 2) Some people are dumb and don't tilt their camera to look at ALL the drops, and will miss red boxes, essentially lowering the "party drop rate" for people who actually care and pay attention. If anyone disconnects, dies and returns to pioneer 2, or quits the game, and a boss has just died, this will have the same effect in reducing the "party drop rate". And oh shit, I FORGOT one in my previous posts: telepipes. Any time one person leaves to go back and buy/sell shit, the party drop rate is reduced, assuming the rest of the team keeps going on ahead.

so I fail to see the point of all the bitching.

I guess you skimmed everything I wrote instead of actually reading it? I made my concerns pretty clear.

Also, if you plan to be passive aggressive to other players on the server for them playing a mode you dislike, you will end up banned. Just a fair warning.

I can be banned for joining a room and saying "I know you guys wanted a 4th player, but it can't be me, because you're using an item mode I dislike, sorry" and then leaving? That's kind of worse than League of Carebears tbh. Which is kind of sad, because that game's punishment system is SO bad that trolls will actually troll you through gameplay just TRYING to get you to say flagged "bad words" so they can report you and get you banned.

-----

Unrelated to the wall of text above: are you going to let photon drops get inflated and become worthless by dropping at a non-reduced rate for every player in the game? Because if rares are being reduced because you're worried about an "economy"... Then PDs - the economy's "currency" - should be reduced too. Otherwise 4-player games will be introducing 4x as much PDs into the server, and PD prices for everything will go up.

 

[Matt]

Re: Don't have friends?

I personally think unless you give everyone a separate chance at the rare roll, it's not going to incentivize people to play together.

Right now the system just seems to be like PSU's "rare drop goes to random" system, just the rare drop can only drop on one client so that person will get it. The rare drop rate increase doesn't mean much if it means you'd still get 4x the amount of rare items just splitting into 4 parties, although now a 4 player party will get the full set of normal items playing together.

The majority of games on PSO BB have always been solo (Saw a pic the other day of the JPBB ship select -- 900 odd players and 570 parties, no way everyone is playing and there's more parties than population/2) -- all a direct change would do (same rates, and all players getting their own drops with no changes to that system) would condense a lot of those solo games into 4 player games. I don't think you'd see a massive influx of items, although it would increase somewhat, naturally.

 

[ezodagrom]

Re: Don't have friends?

If the PSO1 way of handling drops is the default and the individual drops PSO2 like way is just an option, I think it'd be fine for the PSO2 way to have reduced drop rates for balancing reasons (only as long as it's not the default way). I would have it dividing the drop rates by the number of players, and then have a bigger boost than the original multiplayer boost mentioned in this topic just for this method.

For example, PSO1 drops method would be 102/104/106% drop rates for 2/3/4 players as mentioned in the first page, while if the party leader chooses the PSO2 individual drops method instead, drop rates would get divided by the number of players and then get a bigger multiplayer boost than 102/104/106% (for example, 104/108/112%, something like that).
I think I'd prefer this over the more PSU like "rare drop goes to random" way.

 

[falkenjeff]

Re: Don't have friends?

One thing I didn't mention, because it's not feasible to code (I think?), but it would address my concerns:

If a rare goes unclaimed in the PSO2 style mode it gets deleted from the ground on their client, and dropped just inside the door to the guild counter/lobby teleporter room for EVERYONE (specifically the door, so you will see it if you're going to the guild counter OR the lobby exit). Then if a Red Ring drops, but the person it dropped for disconnected... Someone from the party will be able to grab it just before they exit the quest/game, because it will drop in that room as an item grab-able by anyone.

This would address every single one of my concerns (including people splitting up and killing monsters on their own, or simply just not looking to see if items dropped).

The best way to code it (again, if it's even possible) would be: if the person it dropped for leaves the map (or is not even on the map to begin with, eg: dead, shopping, etc), that is when it gets deleted from the ground and dropped in the guild room for everyone. If it's not possible to detect someone leaving (or not being on) the map, then a 60-120 second time limit should be used (any longer and people might leave the quest before it gets moved to the guild room).

This should also apply to PDs, assuming you change the code to treat PDs like rares, with a 25% rate per person.

 

[JezMM]

Re: Don't have friends?

I'm not much of a technical player who cares about having the best gear and drops and stuff, so I can fairly safely say when I'm playing solo it's usually because I don't want the extra anxiety of making sure everyone is having fun (what if we don't wanna do the same thing?). As a result I tend to save my multiplayer time for when specific friends are on since I know we'll have fun and be able to chat together as we head through dungeons.

Since I do enjoy solo play too though, one of the main reasons I keep coming back to PSOBB rather than just play on Gamecube is simply because Gamecube does not have Episode 4 and I really love Episode 4's visuals and music. Drives me nuts that said content is locked into an online only game forever that can only be played offline with heavy modding.


The optional PSO2 style drops is a good idea though, I dig it. I'll probably keep playing vanilla since the discussion and sharing of items between my friends and I during multiplayer is part of the PSO1 experience for me. I play plenty of PSO2 and like a lot of its improvements but PSO1 is like a nostalgic happy place lol.

 

[diemildefreude]

Re: Don't have friends?

falkenjeff raises some valid points. I don't think people should be banned for obscenity-free passive-aggression. I'm also someone who often likes to hang back or split up and go different routes, which, as he pointed out, could mean reduced rates if we've understood your proposal correctly.

I think the call system could be alright as an option to avoid backstabbings.