Why are you cutting off SegaCash? Oh joy. A wondrous Christmas present.

I call on anyone going through this blog to boycott Phantasy Star Universe US/EU versions. Do NOT pay for PC, PS2, or Xbox 360 versions. Please spread the word.

What is with the community? When an ingredient sells at an NPC shop for 100 meseta, the players like to sell it for freaking 500 or sometimes even 2000! Does anyone agree with me this is retarded?

Here’s my policy; if you don’t sell < NPC price, I’m buying at the NPC. I’m not going to support asshats who think they can make a living off overpricing people.

FOs are too damn unbalanced. Deega at level 30 has been reported to damage monsters for some nasty 2200~2500, which is impossible for any HU/RA to perform within that same amount of time. So this is what I propose…

Let us classify skill levels in C/B/A-Levels. So C-Levels would be Levels 1-10, B-Levels would be 11-20, and A-Levels would be 21-30. Since the PP cost is the same from 1-10, 11-20, and 21-30 respectively, it’s better to assume it this way.

1. Higher, worse exponential curve going from C to A-Level for techniques. You can blame Deega for this one.
2. Being able to choose whether or not to cast at C/B/A-Levels for bullets/techniques. I’m surprised that Forces don’t have this ability; it’s a bit on the Ragnarok Online style, but allows for more freedom on deciding whether to go overkill on a monster, or use only what’s absolutely needed in order to get the job done.

You’re probably wondering why I neglected skills; this is because Hunters already have the ability to decide whether or not to finish their combo beyond the first hit. They won’t get this luxury one bit. Rangers do though, since they only shoot once and sometimes Rangers do need to save up on ammo, at the cost of damage potential.

Okay. What kind of asshats are actually running this game?

http://phantasystaruniverse.jp/news/wis/?mode=view&id=109

We apologize for this great and continued inconvenience.
In the process of implementing the planned content updates, serious problems were encountered.
Due to these events, we will be postponing the update.
We will make an announcement tomorrow October 13, with new information regarding the update.

If it were up to me, I’d do the following:

1. Have a test server running at all times alongside live server; if test server checks out with new content/changes, put it on live server. Then I can guarantee 2-hour maintenances.
2. Use SQL server with relation tables for shops. Searches would run a lot faster compared to using .txt files for shops.
3. Look over the algorithm used for handling users playing all at once.

If SEGA of America hired programmers to work on the PSU database/server stuff I’d join in right away. It’s quite clear SEGA of Japan is incompetent when it comes to programming for a PC environment, let alone the server/database itself.

I fear for people who play the Xbox 360 version coming up soon… if it’s being programmed by SEGA of America, you guys may have better luck. Otherwise, prepare for the worst…

The fest may be viewed here, counting 125 images taken from September 5 up until now. Here are samples:

And my Partner Card list is now 45 people big, not including Hyuuga’s NPC card. Here’s the list to prove it:

So we have a reset on Sept. 6, followed by a limitation of server capacity and such. We only had two days’ worth of PSU anyway, so this was certainly coming. Boohoo to those who went powerleveling and such all the way to 20; I didn’t even get that far anyhow, and I’m behind on that.

uhawww’s translation follows this post.

(more…)

You may see screenshots over at the usual place.

Now we know why Gendou is crazy.

It’s Kabuto! Oh wait… Mushiking, anyone?

Flourescent lightbulbs for weapons, anyone?

Sounds to me like:

1. Rollback/reset on Sept. 6 (looks like reset? not sure on this one, no real confirmation people)
2. Lots of server testing throughout September, rollbacks will happen as necessary to maintain balance
3. 30-day Guardians’ License will be reset on Oct. 1

And thus, we have the Open Beta we were supposed to have. Well, I’m content with that. At least they’re honest and realize they’ve screwed this one up miserably. For now I guess I’ll be S-Ranking all of the Free Missions and Story Missions at this time… Chapter 5 is a bit harsh though on this sort of endeavor. ^^;;

uhawww’s translation follows:

(more…)

And rollback. So it’s like Day 2-1, then?

Here are the moments before the rollback, accumulating about maybe some 8 hours or so. People, resend your Partner Cards please. (if we lose them that is)

Guess SEGA screwed up. They should have had an Open Beta to begin with…

From PSO-World:

In an effort to address character corruption and unintended item duplication, Sonic Team will be performing a rollback. Here is the news announcement as translated by uhawww:

Beginning last night, there were some issues with reading character data. We have discovered a related issue were item and meseta duplication was possible if this issue was exploited.

We consider this problem critical, however we are unable to respond individually to this problem based on the number of inquiries we have recieved. Also, we have projected that this issue will cause unrecoverable problems in the future if left as is.

Because of this, we will be enacting a rollback to a time prior to last evening when the anomalies occured. We are currently developing plans to compensate players who currently have active characters, though it has not been formulated yet.

In case there are any further problems, your corresponence is not only appreciated, but critical at this time.

We apologize for these issues from the bottom of our hearts and we ask for your utmost understanding, however if we do not resolve these issues immediately, the playability of the game would be compromised, and we have a wish and goal to maintain a fair and level playing field for all players for a long time.

Honestly, they should either give us a certain amount of meseta for playtime that’s lost through the rollback, or give us some EXP multiplier (4x or so for 24 hours). Either would do just fine.