overly long thread about modsectionid and information changes relating to beginners

Steven

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Hi yall unlike last time where I got mad cus MAS got removed and made a lot of mumbo jumbo about stuff, this time I was gonna forego the rageposting and instead lay out some thoughts that popped in my head sorry for it being so long - but it's about...

...modsectionid and absolute beginners. most notably the new player guide that I feel is severely lacking in information regarding section IDs. It is only briefly mentioned under the Creating a Character section which reads:

"You can check the drop charts to see what kinds of items your character will find after his or her section ID has been assigned. Don’t worry if an item you want to find is not able to be found by your character. You can always join the game of another player who is assigned to the section ID of an item you want to look for. Also, before level 20, you can use the Ephinea custom command “/modsecid” to change the section ID of your character once, so even if your name and class combination doesn’t make the section ID you want, you can change your section ID."

But I feel for a beginner, one - how are they gonna read that? And two, how are they gonna know what anything from it is?? And third - as a beginner - why should they care to begin with???

Players are only (as of now) given a single use for modsectionid, either upon new character creation at or before lv 20 or whoever currently has one. What beginners DON'T know is that everyone uses the section ID calculator on a completely different website so they can preemptively get the ID they want for their class based on their needs, then just change their name afterwards cus of how the ID thing works, effectively now saving them an ID for later use if they would like to hunt different items. That's not mentioned at all, and if a new player is just told they should be x ID for this and that, they can effectively waste their only ID change right after making a character cus they didn't know any better. Or they're told to just reroll and I don't think that'd be a great experience. Orr...they're then told about the ID calculator by someone, which again I feel that should just be included in the beginner guide now especially.

One more thing - the importance of being specifics IDs - I understand there have been various drop table changes over the years to make it more balanced, but there are still issues where you just have to be a certain ID to get this or that...or tables just being outright better for different classes to begin with, effectively gimping your drops if you happen to mismatch with something. With ID changes being so restrictive now, I feel there needs to be more explanation into what IDs actually are and recommendations for specific IDs for different characters on top of just having a link to one of those calculators to begin with with a little bit of info on how to use it. I recall seeing a forum thread here somewhere that has recommendations, but I am not sure if it's quite up to date anymore. A referral to something like that would help immensely because I remember checking it out myself.

Unless it's just a "suck it up" type of deal where it's expected of you to either go out and trade with people for items you can't get yourself cus you got a "bad" ID or rerolling an entirely new character with the ID you were actually wanting instead but you made an oopsie

TL;DR: absolute beginners (imo) need more info about section IDs that is barely mentioned in the beginners guide since modsectionid is so strict now and the freedom to change based on your needs was removed

ty have a good day
 
Hi yall unlike last time where I got mad cus MAS got removed and made a lot of mumbo jumbo about stuff, this time I was gonna forego the rageposting and instead lay out some thoughts that popped in my head sorry for it being so long - but it's about...

...modsectionid and absolute beginners. most notably the new player guide that I feel is severely lacking in information regarding section IDs. It is only briefly mentioned under the Creating a Character section which reads:

"You can check the drop charts to see what kinds of items your character will find after his or her section ID has been assigned. Don’t worry if an item you want to find is not able to be found by your character. You can always join the game of another player who is assigned to the section ID of an item you want to look for. Also, before level 20, you can use the Ephinea custom command “/modsecid” to change the section ID of your character once, so even if your name and class combination doesn’t make the section ID you want, you can change your section ID."

But I feel for a beginner, one - how are they gonna read that? And two, how are they gonna know what anything from it is?? And third - as a beginner - why should they care to begin with???

Players are only (as of now) given a single use for modsectionid, either upon new character creation at or before lv 20 or whoever currently has one. What beginners DON'T know is that everyone uses the section ID calculator on a completely different website so they can preemptively get the ID they want for their class based on their needs, then just change their name afterwards cus of how the ID thing works, effectively now saving them an ID for later use if they would like to hunt different items. That's not mentioned at all, and if a new player is just told they should be x ID for this and that, they can effectively waste their only ID change right after making a character cus they didn't know any better. Or they're told to just reroll and I don't think that'd be a great experience. Orr...they're then told about the ID calculator by someone, which again I feel that should just be included in the beginner guide now especially.

One more thing - the importance of being specifics IDs - I understand there have been various drop table changes over the years to make it more balanced, but there are still issues where you just have to be a certain ID to get this or that...or tables just being outright better for different classes to begin with, effectively gimping your drops if you happen to mismatch with something. With ID changes being so restrictive now, I feel there needs to be more explanation into what IDs actually are and recommendations for specific IDs for different characters on top of just having a link to one of those calculators to begin with with a little bit of info on how to use it. I recall seeing a forum thread here somewhere that has recommendations, but I am not sure if it's quite up to date anymore. A referral to something like that would help immensely because I remember checking it out myself.

Unless it's just a "suck it up" type of deal where it's expected of you to either go out and trade with people for items you can't get yourself cus you got a "bad" ID or rerolling an entirely new character with the ID you were actually wanting instead but you made an oopsie

TL;DR: absolute beginners (imo) need more info about section IDs that is barely mentioned in the beginners guide since modsectionid is so strict now and the freedom to change based on your needs was removed

ty have a good day
Tried not to skim thru most of this.... buuuuut, didn't we not too recently change the /modsecid to once every 3 months....regardless of whether you're lvl 20 or not? =P
 
This is about the new change from the latest patch. New change is you get 1 ID change before level 20 and that's it, server-wide.
 
Also I fully support better section ID propaganda. What IDs are best for what classes, what each ID is good and bad at, what each ID is known for in regards to actually useful items that can't be otherwise acquired via coren or BPD, etc. I've done some spreadsheeting for myself, but I don't have high level experience enough to give perspective on what is really fitting.

---

I'm of 2 minds about the change itself. On the one hand, it does encourage playing and trading with other people, which develops the community more, and for the most part ID seems to only really start to matter when you want to hard hunt a specific item for hit, which if you are at that point you are probably committed enough to make another character.

On the other hand, using a system that encourages and relies on community interaction only works if the community is interacting. Not that this community isn't good, but when your active population is in the low hundreds, there is a catch-22 centered around a mechanic that encourages cooperation but punishes low population count.

I know you didn't make this thread to discuss the change itself, but I want to chat about it nicely. I'm pretty ambivalent about it either way - I eventually want one of each class leveled with all 10 IDs represented so whatever - but it does make it harder to prep for a ranger when I have a hunter ID on my only high level character.
 
I wasn't aware a change was made to limit section ID changes. Why'd they do that? I actually really liked that feature, where one could change it every 3 months.
 
I primarily solo, so the section ID switch was kind of helpful figuring out which quests I enjoy doing with which character. From that perspective I can see why people can be upset.

That being said I'm sort of indifferent on the manner so I'm just gonna ramble. The biggest ID change for me was always the first one, which is after I reach ultimate and figured which hunts I enjoy doing with the class. After that, any ID switch I made I sort of changed back again anyway after regrets were had.
So like, for HUct, I had him on Redria through N-VH.
Then I eventually switched him to Oran, because lo and behold I didn't like Redria on HUcast when I was actually there in Ultimate, and I figured I really enjoy Mines, REV2 and LBA/PS2 with him (the "important decision on your character creation" notion never applied to me basically, I always figured my preferences out later).
I then just delved into trying to change him into Pinkal and Skyly, where the former made me barely play him and the latter has an overlap with the spaceship quests but ultimately also didn't make me play him much. Thus, I'll switch him back to Oran.
The same happened with all of my characters, being making a choice, regretting it and switching it once, really liking it, switching it again, hating it, and eventually just revert back to my first ID switch.

Anyway yeah, just rambling about my experiences. Off to make my HUct/HUcl army.
 
Why'd they do that?
Two reasons, primarily - one was that having a single SID per character is kind of the "point" of a SID to begin with, and the other was that there were a decent number of people who would just change their ID every three months to whatever was best for that month's HBR, which definitely runs counter to the purpose of an ID.

I don't see why we can't disseminate more in-depth information about SIDs - I know it's been done on the forum previously, and it's definitely doable on the wiki - but I also don't think there's really a good reason to, say, have a pop-up in game that says "HEY YOU CAN ONLY CHANGE YOUR ID BEFORE LEVEL 20" or something. If you've played PSO before, you already know how IDs work, and if you haven't, it's a co-op game, and you're not really "supposed" to only play a single character all the time.
 
Changing section IDs is more or less cheating. IDs are part of PSO for better or worse. The change just reverts to how it should have been: delinking your section ID from your character name.

Everyone has access to Google and you're no longer limited to how many memory cards you have for new characters. Sonic Team made a conscious decision to avoid clarifying many mechanics, including IDs, so I don't think it is fair to push this onto Ephinea.

Absolute beginners should absolutely have to suck it up if they decide to jump in blind. Which is honestly pretty far from a total loss, seeing as you now have a second character/ID with some idea of how the game works.

If you're one of the few who have been constantly changing IDs because you don't want to make a new character...here is a virtual hug!
 
Oh wow. I didn't even consider the hbr abuse. That's a funky strat (when it worked, hur hur).
Anyway I'm kinda glad with the final ID-plan luckily. If there's anything I'm unsure about when it comes to my enjoyment in runs ID-hunt-wise, I'll probably just sandbox first.
 
Changing section IDs is more or less cheating. IDs are part of PSO for better or worse. The change just reverts to how it should have been: delinking your section ID from your character name.

Everyone has access to Google and you're no longer limited to how many memory cards you have for new characters. Sonic Team made a conscious decision to avoid clarifying many mechanics, including IDs, so I don't think it is fair to push this onto Ephinea.

Absolute beginners should absolutely have to suck it up if they decide to jump in blind. Which is honestly pretty far from a total loss, seeing as you now have a second character/ID with some idea of how the game works.

If you're one of the few who have been constantly changing IDs because you don't want to make a new character...here is a virtual hug!
is sucking it up part of The Experience™? There's no harm in having helpful information that would prevent likely frustration and practically character-ruining errors because they didn't know any better

"just google it bro" is a callous response and just leaves people to fend for themselves. rather than throw them under the bus, one could attempt to be helpful which not only gives them someone to possibly connect to and have as a guide, but to leave a better impression on them about the community as a whole

just a lil tidbit: I started playing final fantasy 11 for the first time semi-recently which is by far more convoluted than this game and this is the go-to response to any question I would ever ask and I honestly hate the community for it and feel so lonely playing it. nobody even tries to be helpful and I now have to sort through conflicting information between two wikis the game has because everyone tells me to google everything. I'd rather not be the experience new players have to suffer through in this one

anyway, with IDs given their identities back which stresses the importance of them and choosing what's right for your character, some more information regarding what they are and how they are the most important aspect of the game would do wonders for someone who's never played before.
 
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is sucking it up part of The Experience™? There's no harm in having helpful information that would prevent likely frustration and practically character-ruining errors because they didn't know any better

"just google it bro" is a callous response and just leaves people to fend for themselves. rather than throw them under the bus, one could attempt to be helpful which not only gives them someone to possibly connect to and have as a guide, but to leave a better impression on them about the community as a whole

just a lil tidbit: I started playing final fantasy 11 for the first time semi-recently which is by far more convoluted than this game and this is the go-to response to any question I would ever receive and I honestly hate the community for it and feel so lonely playing it. nobody even tries to be helpful and I now have to sort through conflicting information between two wikis the game has because everyone tells me to google everything. I'd rather not be the experience new players have to suffer through in this one

anyway, with IDs given their identities back which stresses the importance of them and choosing what's right for your character, some more information regarding what they are and how they are the most important aspect of the game would do wonders for someone who's never played before.
Stop feeling so attacked. It is part of the experience if they decide to jump in blind. Sonic Team made the call here to not tell you about section IDs. If you go through the effort of asking for help on the forum or Discord, people are going to steer you to the right direction. Lobby might not be so hot if everyone is AFK.
I personally don't have anything against the spread of information, but trying to educate total beginners at character creation is extra work. If you want to create a Battle Training 2.0 or overhaul character creation to make it work, go for it.

I don't believe you can ruin a character on Ephinea because you have the benefit of material resets. I understand Pinkal Humar isn't optimal, but the only way to really get a wrong ID is to keep making characters with the same ID.
 
I don’t think anyone is suggesting we need in-game changes. Just maybe a solid section ID guide with recommended paths for first timers, that is available through website info navigation, as the drop tables are.

I can understand making this change to get the vanilla “experience” back in full (even if I generally disagree and feel modID was just QoL and not too hacky), but Sonic Team’s in game design decisions don’t have to guide our out of game information dissemination.
 
I think section ID choices in this game are too subjective to need a guide that goes beyond listing raw game data. And in all honestly what ID you use hardly matters unless you refuse to trade and/or play in games created by other players.
 
I don’t think anyone is suggesting we need in-game changes. Just maybe a solid section ID guide with recommended paths for first timers, that is available through website info navigation, as the drop tables are.

I can understand making this change to get the vanilla “experience” back in full (even if I generally disagree and feel modID was just QoL and not too hacky), but Sonic Team’s in game design decisions don’t have to guide our out of game information dissemination.
I believe I like these things the best when its done by community, as its healthy.
Count me out though. I love to make guides and help dudes out but I'm not doing wiki, especially on the subject of IDs. Ephinea's drop charts are fundamentally pretty varied enough for it to be subjective. Heck, they're looking at making less played areas for some ID's more enticing with the inclusion of skins, so any oddities concerning "weaker" IDs are gradually improving.

When concerning newbloods or people who come after a long PSO hiatus to here, its hard to tell them specifics sometimes when the reality is more often just "well it depends on what you want", unless I wanna drop down meta-facts that may or may not taint the experience.
 
I agree with the notion that some runs feel better in solo when played with certain classes and that some section IDs are much better for obtaining loot on those runs. Therefore, for absolutely optimal gameplay where you get the benefit of playing the class you want on the run you need to get the item you're looking for, late-game modsecid can be a massive time saver.

On the other hand, I find myself to be more sympathetic to the notion that modsecid runs counter to the original vision of having a static section ID per character. It encourages me to simply change my section ID when I start a new hunt instead of creating a variety of different characters or playing with others, both of which promote a more robust gameplay experience. Ultimately I'd like to throw in my support for the rollback.

As for the section ID guide, I think there have been some good suggestions for what type of info could be added to an FAQ or existing wiki pages. However, I feel the need to criticize the current approach of treating it like it's someone else's problem. This is clearly not a task that requires a server admin to make a change. If you want that information to be spread, you should just go spread it. That's kind of the point of having community-driven content like a forum and a wiki.
 
A little treat from one of our devout Tribe members....
*RAPIDLY Places tiny paws over screen @10:42!!!* Pay nu attention to the mention of that 'other server'.....nya!!! =P
 
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I understand the abuse portion of it, but for me, it was simply about enjoying the game.

Sometimes, I didn't want to hunt a V502 with my FOmar, sometimes I wanted to hunt a V502 with my HUcast. Changing my IDs let me do that. I could play the character I actually wanted to play while searching for the things I wanted to find. It was convenient and liberating. Plus, optimizing different routes and different quests for hunts with any of my characters was fun. It really highlights just how limiting the ID system is for so little reward.

You could argue both sides for days, but I don't dedicate more than maybe an hour a month to PSO, if that. For me, at this point, it's easier to just shrug I guess. I left my FOmar on an ID I didn't want though, so I hope I can still at least change him back to what I did want more that this change has taken effect.
 
Lastly, and this affects all characters on all ships, the ability to change your section ID is once again being limited to one time before level 20. Because of this change, we are allowing all characters of all levels a free ONE TIME section ID change to a permanent ID change. Once you use this special change, you will NOT be able to change your section ID again.
Kevdo, you'll be able to make one final section ID change on all characters who are currently over lvl 20 :)
 
I understand the abuse portion of it, but for me, it was simply about enjoying the game.

Sometimes, I didn't want to hunt a V502 with my FOmar, sometimes I wanted to hunt a V502 with my HUcast. Changing my IDs let me do that. I could play the character I actually wanted to play while searching for the things I wanted to find. It was convenient and liberating. Plus, optimizing different routes and different quests for hunts with any of my characters was fun. It really highlights just how limiting the ID system is for so little reward.

You could argue both sides for days, but I don't dedicate more than maybe an hour a month to PSO, if that. For me, at this point, it's easier to just shrug I guess. I left my FOmar on an ID I didn't want though, so I hope I can still at least change him back to what I did want more that this change has taken effect.
basically this. I'm way more of updating and improving past features to make them more player-friendly especially in this day and age when not everyone has time to spend an additional hundreds of hours leveling/gearing up multiple characters with every ID to obtain every possible item in the game. Being able to change your ID like that was great and yet it didn't matter because people would still make extra characters/IDs on top of that, so I'm not sure why it was reverted to begin with. Now it's back to square 1 with choosing a specific ID and going through both the leveling and gearing process again because you want a select few items from a different section of the charts. Trading exists, but to a degree I feel throwing PD at someone just defeats the purpose of this loot-grinding game if you can forego the low drop rates and even lower chances at hit on weapons and get whatever item you're seeking immediately...so being able to change ID according to what you wanted to hunt, especially if you planned on helping boost a possible new character, was pretty nifty and convenient. That gave me a reason to keep doing stuff anyway.

so with it being back to a one and done deal, it's back to stressing over what drop chart should I best use for my character, or since i'm maxed already if I should use something to farm gear for a potential new character instead, though I still have to make the decision depending on what I would actually wanna farm for. I guess this is the experience SEGA was wanting for everyone back in the day?

anyway, this is why I made the thread to begin with because new players definitely need to be guided in somewhat of a direction when they start since the whole ID mumbo jumbo is gonna raise questions and probably frustrate people. Having that kinda information readily available at the start would help stave off some of that since section IDs are a vital part of the game. There's a reference to the drop charts, but that doesn't do much but lead to more questions from my experience. As a little extra, telling my S/O about the change made them NOT want to play, so I would say it has at least been successful in driving off one brand-new player so far which is honestly disappointing since I am pretty passionate about teaching games I enjoy playing to people. :rolleyes:
 
Two decade old game stuck in two decade old ways in some parts. Section IDs have pretty much always been a quirky mechanic. Quite frankly, having the change availability does have a modernizing relief to the server. However, I was not really a fan of the window we were given. Initially, it was a monthly thing which was 100% abusable to change each and every HBR. Then the three month system came to liquidate that. Again, if you have a bank of chars that you rotate each time, the abuse continues. Although more thin, it was doable. The more egregious pointer of the three month system was that even tho it hampered your ability to change every HBR, it still gave you the ability to change every event.

I would like to keep the changing system but make it something you need to think about before doing. Such as making it a year 'from the date you changed' rather than refreshing on the first of January, etc.

Not everyone is going to be the extreme player that has banks of characters for all IDs. Having the ability to change with a heavy limitation I think isn't just novice/casual friendly but user/player friendly overall.

JUST MY TAKE :Eyes:
 
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