East Tower and West Tower - One Player

Eistee

Resident of Colony 9
I don't know how this issue was handled on Sega BB, but I remember those quests to be available in Offline Play on Gamecube either through download or by playing "PSO Plus". Were the quests Multiplayer only on Sega BB?

However, I personally would find it to be better if those two quests were available for 1P play on this server as well. Here's a few reasons why I think this would be for the best:

1.) Some enemies - Ill Gill, Epsilon, 2/3 of the Meri family - are virtually locked from 1P mode. To my knowing, this only applies to these enemies, all other ones can be fought in 1P mode.

2.) The tower enemies drop some fantastic items. There's just a few items in this game that you almost need do hunt solo since should it drop, everyone would try to get it and probably not share with the one who is actively trying to hunt it.

3.) Some quests just feel like they... belong into Multiplayer Mode, but the Tower quests just don't feel that way since they were designed to be played in One Player Mode as well. (Not the best reason, I have to admit, but still a reason.)

Thoughts on this?
 
There is a quest called "Seat of the Heart" on 1P mode that has these enemies.
 
According to PSO-World, the quest does not have the Meri-family (only Mericarol), and Epsilon is missing as well.

Is PSO-world outdated here?
 
No need for apologies, I do see your point about East and West tower being made for single player before, not sure why they are Multiplayer in Blue Burst.

I'm hesitant to put them in Single Player mode because:

1) Pretty sure it was Multiplayer on Blue Burst.
2) I am not a fan of making most of the "good" content available in Single Player. It just lets people grind out the quests by themselves and be anti-social. In my opinion and there will be others who disagree, obviously, Blue Burst, well PSO in general, is supposed to be about team work. Why not play with friends, new and old, in some great quests together?
 
Hopefully the community will be good enough that you won't have to worry about people taking the drops you are hunting :D
 
I just put a password up or play one player mode if i'm looking for drops. I hate having to race people for drops. <:D
 
Fudgenugget said:
Or perhaps this server will allow people to make games with unique drops for each client.
It's a good idea. It's not SEGA-like, but it's a good idea. Not sure if we'd do that, though.

If, somehow, it was voted on and decided that all drops in a game would be individual in multiplayer, we'd have to then go and re-balance all the drop rates to make all drop rates LOWER.

Ex: Normally, if a party goes through a quest and hunts a boss, that boss has a chance to drop a rare that the full team decides on who gets it. (Or whomever ninjas it fast enough.)

If we changed to unique drops per each party member (that only they can see and pick up initially), that boss roll would have to happen four times, so there would be four chances for the item to drop from one boss kill. Certainly it's fine if we decide we're living in a world where people can no longer trade or drop items that are rare, but we're not living in that world. People can still trade in this game.

I know for some items, the drop rate is low already, but you could have multiple of a rare drop and if people in the group are on friendly terms, they could combine to abuse the unique drop system to pimp themselves out or maybe boost their team points. It's not fair. (Certainly, trades could be stopped on certain items that are a certain star limit and even hide dropping items from inventory from other players if it hits a star limit... but, that's also another extreme change.)
 
For the record, it is true that Sega added The East Tower, The West Tower, and Seat of the Heart to PSO+ on GC. These quests didn't exist yet when GC was originally released, so they weren't included on the regular disc. (PSO+ also includes Central Dome Fire Swirl.)

I would say that it is worthwhile to make both quests available in solo on BB, because:

  • They aren't ideal for hunting, anyway. PW4 has far more enemies than ET/WT, so if you're seriously hunting something like SJS, you're going to play PW4, not ET/WT.
  • The game contains "offline" stats for the tower enemies, but you can't actually use those stats if the enemies aren't available in solo mode.
  • Most importantly, Seat of the Heart is not a suitable substitute, because not only is that quest incredibly long (so long, in fact, that it is the only quest in the game that allows you to save your progress), but it also forces you to play with an NPC during the tower portion. It's true that you can fight Epsilon in Seat of the Heart, but you can't actually win the fight, because Epsilon's Rafoie blast kills Elly instantly and causes you to fail the quest. Since PSO NPCs are dumb as bricks, you can't tell Elly to go hide in the corner while you fight Epsilon on your own, so she's going to die, and that's all there is to it.

Furthermore, Sega already set the precedent by releasing them on PSO+, although you can argue that there are two possible reasons for this. The most likely reason for it is that many GC users weren't able to go online, so every item drop from the tower enemies was consequently unobtainable for offline GC users, as the tower area isn't accessible in freeplay. PSO+ fixed this oversight by making two tower quests available offline, so it became technically possible to find the drops from tower enemies (even though the odds aren't very good, since ET/WT don't have that many enemies). One could argue that Sega solely put these quests into PSO+ to help out offline players and not so that you could fight the easier offline tower enemies, so since BB forced you to play online, Sega didn't include these quests in solo mode, since everyone already had access to them in multiplayer. Still, the fact remains that you can fight the easier offline tower enemies in PSO+, so I think it's reasonable to do the same thing on BB.
 
Thanks for the answers, everyone. I understand both sides, but I will - to probably no one's surprise - side with Yves here. The quests just scream Solo Mode and PW4 definitely is the way to go for hunting after all.

But I understand that they probably won't be added. I'm pretty sure that adding them wouldn't really break things, though.
 
I'll COPY them to solo. :p Just in case people want to play it in Multiplayer still.
 
Oh, it's also worth noting that the PSO+ editions of ET/WT do not allow you to access the Hopkins side quest (for enabling Paganini upgrades), so you should probably fix the solo editions for that. All you need to do is delete the Hopkins NPC from the solo version, as that's all Sega did in PSO+. :lol: (Note: I was never advocating for ET/WT to be solo only, as having PSO+ does not preclude you from playing either quest online with friends.)
 
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