Overview of the CBT

[Dragonblue]

So I just wanted to post my thoughts of what I experienced with the CBT. Bit late on posting considering when the CBT ended but it took longer trying to remember everything I did. Things that I notices and then suggestion to go along with my review of it. Obiviously since I only got to lvl 22 and just scratched the surface of Kyoto I saw the majority of what I would call the early game. Still there is plenty to comment on and I hope many of you will add to it so developers can get a more comprehensive overview of the state of their game.

Gameplay:
The combat and movement are done fairly well however there are many glitches and hiccups with it. Combat flows well enough however discrepancies with server timings/lag makes it very hard to time dodge roll and blocks. There are many instances where I go to roll or block before the damage hits, then get hit regardless. Lag was an increasing issue with combat the further I got into the game. I would have random spikes and hiccups while playing but the vast majority of clear lag and player/enemy rubber-banding was in Izumo. The moment I hit that zone and for a while after being in it and doing dungeons and random quest, the lag there was atrocious. Many folks would randomly disconnect while in that zone for unknown reasons and often repeatedly within a small time frame. Aside from the lag, the combat itself felt decent and flowed effectively. Enemies reactions to being hit and recoiling were not always consistent as they would ignore the damage impact and go on to continue attacking you at times so that could be faulted to lag or how the server pings your actions versus the enemy's.

Skills:
I enjoyed this aspect of the game. That each weapon type has it's own unique skill set, multiple ranks to the skill, levels per rank, and vast array of skills available to use when you have multiple weapons of the same type. While you are only limited to three skills per weapon, I feel that limits the abuse of certain combos and forces players to invest in multiple weapons to fit the situation. My biggest complaint though is the skill menu, it literally lists ALL the skills from all weapons equipped, in inventory, and in storage. This can get very confusing trying to see the status of your current skills from equipped weapons. Another issue is the skill rankings. It needs to be listed at what level a higher ranking skill will actually give 100% of its intended value listed. This is extremely apparent with healing skills. For example, at the player level of 15, Heal I lvl 10 does around 85 HP. Heal II lvl 20 will do 10 HP. There is no description listing when it is better to shift to a higher level skill other than experimenting with it yourself and knowing when to switch.

Leveling/EXP:
Obviously the biggest complaint with the game from many folks was the experience rewards for leveling. From what I've read and seen, currently the US exp rate is 1/10th of the JP exp rate. Whether this was done intentionally for throttling players to see how the server loads reacts or just a coding error (since compared to the JP version alot of the exp rewards were missing a 0 on the end) we can't be sure unless Cyberstep says otherwise. Considering how long it took to level to get to 20 and since you can do dungeons much higher level than you with some careful planning, I would suggest increasing the current exp rate to about 3-5 times its current amount. This should help alleviate the level difference when the story quest progression. Granted that most of us in the CBT will be getting the 10k exp boost this will still help overall in the long run with level grinding.

Items:
Dealing with items and managing inventory was a fairly simple process. They stack and organize very efficiently and automatically are sorted, even with same name. I am impressed with how most of it is done, I do wish quest specific items that are only used for a quest were a different colored text. While some items are used in crafting or battle, there are quest specific only items that can get confusing among my inventory. I do think that item drops should have additional color codes to signify their purpose aside from the blue and brown bag tints that have been already assigned. I believe the currency compensation is adequate enough for what folks need it for. Right now the two most expensive investments are Weapon Smelting and buying healing items (that I've come across so far). Farming in a dungeon for a while helps with the majority of expense issues.

Weapon drops are an interesting concept for this game as all weapons found in the open world/dungeons have to be identified. One thing I have noticed is the frequency of the drop rate for certain weapon types. Being of the Defensive "class," my specialities are Spears followed by Staves, and both of which seem to have a low drop rate when compared to other weapon drops. I did some testing on it for comparison and I've noticed an average consistency to it.

134 Weapons, Kishinden Hard Mode. After farming it for about an hour.

5 Staves
22 Wands
15 Bows
8 Spears
23 Axes
13 Twin Swords
22 Odachis
26 Swords

So as you see here, the two weapons my class is good with...lowest drop rate. Now later on I did get more spears from other dungeons but I would get a far higher percentage of weapons outside my specialties. Improving drop rates for your class would also help with skill aquisition giving you a more flexible access to different skill setups on weapons rather than relying solely on Momotaru for skill transfers. Trade system would help allieviate the issue or some form of a auction house/market place.

Chat:
Chat worked well but is very limiting. You have the four tabs; All, General, Party, and Whisper; but you can't edit or changes settings for the chat other than the size of the window size. Trying to chat with folks in whispers and party chat can get difficult while in a dungeon and exp/loot text is flooding your window. But if you put the chat in a specific tab you can only see one thing so you'll miss message. Also the chime sound for whispers so be different from normal chat and higher pitch for it so that it stands out.

Quests:
Most quests were fairly straightforward and simplistic. A number of quest require some text to finish the explanation as well some were missing items or the quest markers would point to the wrong area. Some of the quests do seem out of order when compared with the story quest. I know early on I got the quest to fight Tiamat (followed by the Momotarou fight), which was lvl 19. When you go back Kusamo village and turn it in side quests unlock that range from lvl 13-16. This makes no sense as why does the main story quest unlock quests that are lower level than it? So that should be address and quest order be structured correctly.

Partners:
The partner system for this game is very unique in my opinion and very well done. Each partner has unique functions and passive abilities when summoned that improve as their affection/relation with you improves. Some of the abilities could use a bit more of an explantion and more of a help tutorial with certain ones. Momotaru's skill Evolution is a bit vague and needs some more information added for clarification on when you can actually do the skill evolvutions.

Suggestions/Improvements:
-Trade system or Market place/Auction House for items.
-Extra description for items, especially on Magatama when certain ones conflict with one another and can't be equipped at the same time.
-Customization options for chat
-Key Binding menu as well as controller customization. (I'm sorry but I did not like the default settings and used the keyboard)
-MOre color codes for Items on the ground and quest specific items.
-Increase EXP rate 3-5 times current values for quests, dungeons, monster kills.
-Numbered or Markings on quest arrows to show which quest it is leading you to.
-Clarity on the map. Clean up the textures and wording.
-Server Region selection to help with lag.

Bugs/Issues:
-Items floating in the air when dropped from kills or laying away from the aura circle linked to them.
-Weapon drops continually keep spinning even after hitting the ground.
-Quests not giving items necessary to understand where to go. Or text missing from quest. (The puzzle scroll is one such quest)
-Quest markers pointing to the wrong area for monster kills.
-Walking through walls on door bounderies when the door opens.
-Camera repositions itself to be zoomed in and right behind your character when backing up after going through a locked door and then fighting by kiting back through that doorway. Camera acts as if the door is still there as a wall.

Well this is the end of my review of the game so far. If others out there like to add to this, especially with suggestions, bugs, and issues to help get them fix, I'll edit the post to include them along with credit to the original source.

[Rufei]

I'm curious as to where you're playing from and what kind of connection you have (including the ISP). I personally experienced no lag except in one instance where my router was burning up.

Regarding EXP, rumor has it that they're adjusting it so that ours is different from JP and the beta we just experienced. As for spear and staff drop rate (I also played Defensive), you're farming the wrong dungeon. I remember Well of Five Virtues shitting out oodles of spears for me because its loot table contained three different spear types. As for a market, JP does a license system, so we'll probably get the same.

I pretty much agree with everything else, though partners were largely useless given the level discrepancy. There were also some interesting bugs that I saw:

• Loot would clip through terrain, sometimes through the floor such that they couldn't be picked up. (Solution: Loot check should add some more z?)
• Many cases of terrain clip-through, largely related to diving at a corner and having the collision detection resolve me by putting me into the terrain.
• Delayed MP deductions caused by extra-hit skills, which would autoresolve at a later date or resolve on weapon swap. It's pretty depressing when you switch to another weapon and suddenly realize that you have 3 MP, not 103 MP.
• Poor camera resolution for when the player is backed up against a wall (I can see through the mob and thus can only partially see what they're doing). Sucks to be a tank.
• Occassional crash-to-desktops, but those weren't reproducible. A helpful post-crash dump would be nice.

[Dragonblue]

I'm currently in New Mexico and my ISP is Century Link. It's a modem styled internet but I get 17.5 Mb down and 1 Mb Up. So I have a steady connection, on top of having a powerful laptop to play the game with so I'm not sure while I was seeing such bad rubberbanding in Izumo.

Hmmm I did see some higher drops in certain dungeons so that could be it. Unless you going for a specific spear really.

License system makes sense for a Free-to-play game, so we'll have to purchase the ability to trade and do certain things most likely. It's the same in PSO2.

[Rufei]

Hrm, I'm in St. Louis using Charter. I'm on their 100 Mb down, 5 Mb up plan. The benefit is that the fiber optic trunk of the US runs through St. Louis, so I also hit fewer nodes.

That being said, New Mexico shouldn't be any issue esp. since it's closer to the servers. It's possible that it's your laptop instead - while powerful, it could have been overheating.