Together Retro: Phantasy Star Online

[alienjesus]

Yeah, forces are pretty rough for a first character and in Blue Burst, Rangers do have an advantage (at least until the new items schtserv has added are taken into account).

Too bad someone had to DDOS the server and ruin everyone's fun. Terrible timing. I was looking forward to maybe helping some of you guys see the true final boss in hard mode and showing you some of the cooler items.

I actually got to the point where my spells were hitting enemies for 3 or 4 times the amount the rangers attacks were. The problem was I still casted them slower, had shorter range and could only attack 1 enemy at once in msot situations (the bigger attack spells made me need to telepipe for more TP even more than the basic ones did )

[Omerta]

Level 44 and MAG is at 100. I can help people see the end if they want.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I honestly never felt like my character was particularly effective - those rangers you guys all went seemed to outpace, outlive and outdamage me, even when I felt I'd powered up quite a lot.

Yeah, as I said earlier I feel like guns really break the game in the player's favor. I wish I had chosen ranger as I believe he can use more/better guns than a hunter (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Nevertheless, my final weapon with my hunter was a +40-something autogun and I had no problems with the final boss.

Level 44 and MAG is at 100. I can help people see the end if they want.

Damn that MAG is high! When I finished the game my character was level 30 and I believe my MAG was level 53 or so.

I just looked up the GameCube version(s) of this game. DAT PRICE.

[Omerta]

^ I got to a point where I found that my MAG will level up on DEX in 3-4 antidotes. It's IQ is way low, but I'm bringing it back up with Trimates.

Also... you're much better off to grab Version 2 on Dreamcast unless you wanna do local multiplayer.

EDIT: Also got a couple of Hunter rares if anyone is beefing one up. (Haven't seen it yet.)

[Melek-Ric]

Yeah, as I said earlier I feel like guns really break the game in the player's favor. I wish I had chosen ranger as I believe he can use more/better guns than a hunter (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Nevertheless, my final weapon with my hunter was a +40-something autogun and I had no problems with the final boss.

Yeah, rangers have base stats that favor guns. I played hunter at first solo in 2002. Then I got online and played with a team. Much better experience.

Over the last week, I've been lucky to have even one other person in my team so ranger makes more sense when fighting off hordes online meant for 4 players to deal with. I've never played force, but I guess they need to rely more on a team to aggro enemies. Offline mode scales enemies so maybe all the classes are more balanced then.

This game is still a marvel to me because of when it came out and how ambitious it was for a console. I knew a couple friends that after they beat the game kept going online to chat (or IMing as it was called) with people because their parents wouldn't let them do that on the PC.

[alienjesus]

Yeah, as I said earlier I feel like guns really break the game in the player's favor. I wish I had chosen ranger as I believe he can use more/better guns than a hunter (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Nevertheless, my final weapon with my hunter was a +40-something autogun and I had no problems with the final boss.

Yeah, rangers have base stats that favor guns. I played hunter at first solo in 2002. Then I got online and played with a team. Much better experience.

Over the last week, I've been lucky to have even one other person in my team so ranger makes more sense when fighting off hordes online meant for 4 players to deal with. I've never played force, but I guess they need to rely more on a team to aggro enemies. Offline mode scales enemies so maybe all the classes are more balanced then.

This game is still a marvel to me because of when it came out and how ambitious it was for a console. I knew a couple friends that after they beat the game kept going online to chat (or IMing as it was called) with people because their parents wouldn't let them do that on the PC.

Speaking as a force who was forced to play with rangers, what a force really needs is a few hunters to play with. Magic is smaller range and slower to cast then guns, so I often lost out on a lot of experience because stuff would die before I could hit it.

Also, it meant that I was the front line despite being the weakest defensively. It also meant I was forced to spam magic even more than I already did, because otherwise stuff would be killed before I got to it too, so I spent an absolute fortune on fluids. 15-25 monofluids per mission was the rule, not the exception. Buying fluids and spells emant I never had any money either.

I liked force, but I feel like they're really badly balanced compared to the offensive classes. Expensive, underpowered (they hit like a truck, but they don't hit quickly enough to make use of it), slow, and compared to the ranger, short ranged. Shame, because I feel they were more interesting than just spamming the attack button all the time.

[dunpeal2064]

When you get to Ultimate, Forces feel way stronger than any other class. They can regenerate TP faster than even their AOE spells can spend it. They are pretty much the best dps, and best farming class in the game. When my friend (Force) and I (Hunter) do Ult Ruins runs, he basically freezes the entire room and blows it up, and I kill maybe 2 enemies in the process.

I guess, to avoid everyone picking Force, they had to gimp it pretty badly for the first 80 levels

[Melek-Ric]

When you get to Ultimate, Forces feel way stronger than any other class. They can regenerate TP faster than even their AOE spells can spend it. They are pretty much the best dps, and best farming class in the game. When my friend (Force) and I (Hunter) do Ult Ruins runs, he basically freezes the entire room and blows it up, and I kill maybe 2 enemies in the process.

I guess, to avoid everyone picking Force, they had to gimp it pretty badly for the first 80 levels

Do modern online RPG's, generally, balance classes from the start better than PSO? Or is that just the norm with melee, ranged, and mage skill sets? I have little experience with online RPG's.

[dunpeal2064]

Most online jrpgs have far more severe balancing issues than PSO, which leads them to constantly change how all the classes work.

Then again, most online rpgs tend to make leveling overly easy after the first expansion, since people just want to see the end-game. You probably wouldn't have any trouble leveling any character in Wow to max level. The balancing issues for online rpgs usually show up at the end-game content.

PSO does it pretty simply, imo:

Hunter: Easy to play in the beginning, hard to play in end-game
Ranger: fairly balanced thoughout the game (until they get the most broken weapon in the game)
Force: Very hard to play in the beginning, easy to play in end-game

Playing a Hunter in Ultimate is a nightmare.

[Gunstar Green]

When you get to Ultimate, Forces feel way stronger than any other class. They can regenerate TP faster than even their AOE spells can spend it. They are pretty much the best dps, and best farming class in the game. When my friend (Force) and I (Hunter) do Ult Ruins runs, he basically freezes the entire room and blows it up, and I kill maybe 2 enemies in the process.

I guess, to avoid everyone picking Force, they had to gimp it pretty badly for the first 80 levels

Unfortunately in Blue Burst forces were severely gimped. Enemy resists are heightened in Ultimate multiplayer making them almost purely a support class with the exception of fonewearl's hard-hitting simple techniques and gifoie to weaken mobs in episode 4 where most enemies are weak to fire.

Though they do a lot better in single player mode where the resists are lower, making them the best class to do solo hunts.

Schtserv did some things to counteract this like change the boosting items to make it easier to do higher technique damage but still, in Blue burst Rangers and hunters that are even moderately equipped will be out-damaging forces in Ultimate. Most people expect forces to buff, debuff, heal, attack enemies weak to insta kill and use demons special weapons where appropriate.

Which is why there are a lot of people who really don't like Blue Burst. The lower levels play pretty similarly but the end game balance has been severely changed.