Star Wars: The Old Republic loses 25% of its subscribers

[DarkDragon]

http://kotaku.com/5908338/star-wars-the-old-republic-loses-400000-subscribers

Star Wars: The Old Republic has dropped from 1.7 million active subscribers to 1.3 million, publisher Electronic Arts said today in an earnings statement.

That's a loss of nearly 25% for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game, or 400,000 subscribers.

In its Q3 earnings statement earlier this year, EA reported 1.7 million The Old Republic subscribers. Today, that number is down to 1.3 million.

One explanation for the drop could be simple: Launch-day subscribers stopped playing once their free 30-day trials were up. However, EA has not made any mention of that possibility.

Update: In a conference call this afternoon, EA said the decrease was indeed due to "casual and trial players" cycling out of the game.

[Lastcallhall]

http://kotaku.com/5908338/star-wars-the-old-republic-loses-400000-subscribers
Update: In a conference call this afternoon, EA said the decrease was indeed due to "casual and trial players" cycling out of the game.

Bull. EA executed order 66.

[JCU]

Didn't we hear people claim SW:TOR would dethrone WOW?

[Olls]

Whenever a new MMO surfaces, people claim that it will dethrone WoW. It has never happened and it never will.
Not until Titan makes its appearance, anyway.

[gamevet]

I've heard that most of the available content could be played within a 100 hours or so.

[JCU]

Even the Star Wars nerds couldn't bring Azeroth to its knees.

Maybe the new Family Guy MMO? ;)

[TrekkiesUnite118]

The only thing that would dethrone WoW would be something that didn't try to clone WoW but instead tried something completely different while still offering the same massive amount of content. For example PSU and PSO2 are steps in the right direction. They have the better gameplay formula for an online MMO, they just need the massive amount of content and resources that WoW has. PSO2 might be able to at least shake things up since it's going to be free to play.

[Kamahl]

Guild Wars 2 :cool:
In all seriousness, I'll never understand the appeal of WoW. The game is just soo.... boring.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Guild Wars 2 :cool:
In all seriousness, I'll never understand the appeal of WoW. The game is just soo.... boring.

Guild Wars 2 does seem interesting from what I've heard about it. But I really don't like the cliche medieval fantasy setting that most western RPGs stick to. I really like the Sci Fi setting that games like Phantasy Star and Star Ocean have.

I do have a friend that played Guild Wars and was excited about Guild Wars 2. After I got him into the PSO2 beta he said that it was like what Guild Wars 2 is apparently going to be like, but supercharged.

[Kamahl]

I do have a friend that played Guild Wars and was excited about Guild Wars 2. After I got him into the PSO2 beta he said that it was like what Guild Wars 2 is apparently going to be like, but supercharged.
I can barely find any info on PSO2. Other than having 3 classes at the start (compared to GW2's 8)

EDIT: From videos it seems to have the same style of combat in Guild Wars 2.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Well, if you throw in race combinations you get more classes. For example a Newman Force will have radically different stats and possibly abilities than a CAST Force. The nice thing in PSO2 though is like PSU, you can change your class at any time. And instead of having a character level, you just have a class level. So if your a hunter at level 20, and you switch to a Force, you go back to level 1, but have access to what ever you've unlocked as a hunter. And if it's like PSU, we may get additional classes later on.

This thread has a decent amount of info:
http://www.pso-world.com/forums/showthread.php?t=187376

EDIT:

Here's some Ranger gameplay:
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[EclecticGroove]

This isn't really unexpected. WoW is still the king because people are still trying to out WoW it as mentioned. Even things that try to go a different route tend to roll in a lot of WoWisms.

I'm also aware that most of these "features" and the like that people attribute to WoW were, in fact, usually present in games prior to WoW, but that is where the vast majority of MMO players saw them first and know them from.

One of the big issues with trying to beat WoW at its own game is that they can just turn around and roll any new/novel features right into an update of their own, or release the new content expansion or what have you.
MMO's represent a huge time sink, and a great deal of investment. Many people will look at a game that may be marginally better than WoW in some ways, and will simply go back to WoW because they have a ton of invested content there (both in content and associations).

Other games, of course, simply fail to be any better at all, so people clear out of them fast. Or they have content that is too long to get to, or burns through too easy, so people get discouraged/bored and leave again.

Tera is a decent looking contender, but from what I've seen, the gameplay is nice, but it still has many of the tropes of a Korean Grindfest MMO... which means a lot of people will probably just give it up, or only start playing intermittently aside from a small and dedicated community. I've already seen a few posts on a few forums where players are talking about "feeling the grind setting in" and that's a bad sign so shortly after release.

I think things are getting closer at least. There's more willing to take chances at a different game altogether, and not just more "copy WoW, but try and do it better" games. Maybe another year or two a game will fit all the pieces together and release a real killer of an MMO.

[Kamahl]

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to TrekkiesUnite118 again."

[Olls]

For example PSU and PSO2 are steps in the right direction. They have the better gameplay formula for an online MMO, they just need the massive amount of content and resources that WoW has. PSO2 might be able to at least shake things up since it's going to be free to play.

Nah, too niche.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

The niche issue has to do with the fact that Sega of America does zero advertising for anything that's not Sonic. In Japan Sega advertises Phantasy Star and not surprisingly the games do very well and have rather large communities in Japan.

[gamevet]

That's because PSO is very much a Japanese style game.

If you can't sell Star Wars, what makes you think Phantasy Star would do much better?

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Because gameplay wise it's radically different from the typical western MMO. It can draw in it's own crowd that's not the same as what WoW brings in, and it could easily get people who play WoW but want to try something that's actually different. On top of that PSO2 will not only be free to play, it will also be free to download. Theres zero risk to take in giving it a try.

[gamevet]

Because gameplay wise it's radically different from the typical western MMO. It can draw in it's own crowd that's not the same as what WoW brings in, and it could easily get people who play WoW but want to try something that's actually different. On top of that PSO2 will not only be free to play, it will also be free to download. Theres zero risk to take in giving it a try.


So was Darkspore (Electronics Arts), and it had a solid marketing campaign, including beta invites. Not even 6 months after it was released, I could find a brand new copie for under $9. I promise you, no amount of advertising could make PSO2 a hit in North America. Right now, Japanese style RPGs aren't a big seller here.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

PSO2 wont have retail copies. It's 100% free to download. So that makes things very different. You won't have to purchase ANYTHING to try the game. Just download it, make an account, and log in. You only have to pay if you want things like additional character slots, additional skill trees, an optional room for your character, etc.

[gamevet]

PSO2 wont have retail copies. It's 100% free to download. So that makes things very different. You won't have to purchase ANYTHING to try the game. Just download it, make an account, and log in. You only have to pay if you want things like additional character slots, additional skill trees, an optional room for your character, etc.

Yeah, you can do the same thing with Lord of the Rings and the Marvel MMO on PS3. People just don't care, because there are 100s of free games out there, that try to get a piece of the MMO pie.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

But PSO2 is radically different from all of those. Those other ones that try to do that either mimic WoW or just come off as Cheap and generic. PSO2 is neither of those. PSO2 is different enough to stick out from those games. I'm not saying it will dethrone WoW, but it might make enough of an impact to shake things up a bit.

This gameplay is radically different from those other MMOs you listed:

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The only thing that comes even close to that is Guild Wars 2.

[gamevet]

Yeah, I understand your enthusiasm for the game. I really liked playing PSO on the Dreamcast as well. PSU, on the other hand, didn't wow me enough to keep playing it more than a couple of months.

Unless you're a fan of Phantasy Star Online, most of the gaming public probably won't take notice to it.

[Kamahl]

Yeah, you can do the same thing with Lord of the Rings and the Marvel MMO on PS3. People just don't care, because there are 100s of free games out there, that try to get a piece of the MMO pie.
Those 2 games are exceedingly boring though. People only care about MMOs with good combat these days. (Wow get's a free pass due to the huge community, tons of content and well developed lore, because otherwise it's boring garbage).

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Yeah, I understand your enthusiasm for the game. I really liked playing PSO on the Dreamcast as well. PSU, on the other hand, didn't wow me enough to keep playing it more than a couple of months.

Unless you're a fan of Phantasy Star Online, most of the gaming public probably won't take notice to it.

There's nothing wrong with PSU. I've been playing it since it released in 2006. If you would have continued to play it instead of quitting after a few months like all the other PSO fanboys who cried it wasn't PSO Episode 5, you would have been able to see how much better it got.

At this point the only thing PSO has over PSU is a better lobby system, and a better atmosphere. PSU beats PSO in every other category.

By quitting early you missed out on all of this:

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And theres even more than that.

[gamevet]

I saw no reason to keep playing, because I lost interest. I wasn't going to keep playing a game that I wasn't enjoying. We've had this discussion before.

Star Wars: Galaxies was a far better community experience than PSU, and even it got dummied down to be more like WOW.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Well that's your loss, but it's completely unfair to dismiss an MMO based entirely on it's first few months when it's been out for over 5 years and has grown and changed dramatically since then. Most of your complaints about the game are probably not even valid at this point.

[EclecticGroove]

Well that's your loss, but it's completely unfair to dismiss an MMO based entirely on it's first few months when it's been out for over 5 years and has grown and changed dramatically since then. Most of your complaints about the game are probably not even valid at this point.

Maybe so, but this is often a failing of the company itself. Either for not advertising what is available correctly, or not managing expectations of the playerbase.

But more often, it's usually their fault for not actually providing that content initially. A game 5 years in is not the game when it was released, and unless they are constantly adjusting, tweaking, and changing the game to keep people interested, many will just stop playing. And if they are not consistently trying to keep the game in the eye of gamers both new and old, then people will never have any reason to check it out again.

One player giving up a game is the gamers fault. If the game just never took off and remained relatively niche, that is the company's fault.

[gamevet]

Yeah, Sega wasn't doing a lot of updates the first 3 months. They added the ability for players to open their own shops to sell crafted goods, opened up a few map area and added a couple of new enemies. It just wasn't enough to justify paying for the service. Still, you could burn through everything the maps had to offer within a week and then it becomes nothing more than a grindfest.

I'd much rather have KOTOR 3, or an expansion for Skyrim over either of these games.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Wow, so you left before we even got the first expansion or the first events. And what you described, it sounded like you didn't even play for more than a month. The shops were available from the start of the game. I know because I remember using them the first few days and have screenshots of crazy prices within those first few days.

The game started with 10 missions spread across Parum, Neudaiz, and the Colony, with about 6-8 unique areas, 3 classes, and the level cap was 50. In the next month they added 8 new missions with about 6-7 new areas. In the next month they added 7 new classes, a bunch of new skills, spells, and items, they increased the level cap to 60 and added in higher difficulty level missions. They also added the first Story Missions.

By November of 2007 the level cap was 100, tons of new skills and missions were available, we had had 2 events, and they implemented tons of system updates that tweaked the gameplay and fixed problems in preparation for the Expansion.

The PSU that exists today is radically different from what we had 5 years ago.

In just 3 months the game had changed dramatically. But from what you described I doubt you were even around for a month.

[gamevet]

I paid for 3 months and moved on.

PSU is what it is. You get your updated maps, grind through them and wait for the next update. Where it fails, compared to your typical MMO, is the lack of exploration available. It's pretty much Gauntlet with less maps and a lobby.

Biosware tried to break away from being a grindfest, by offering a game that was more story driven, than grindfest and players burned through it.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

The game now has plenty of maps and areas to explore. Yeah, 5 years ago when the game first launched it may have had less areas, but now it's a radically different game. Your argument is based on 6 year old information that's severely outdated.

The game now has challenge mode missions, a cash shop, as well as what they call Guardians Advanced Style. GAS allows you to expand and customize your character even further by spending AEXP on fine tuning different aspects of your character. There's now plenty of missions and areas to keep one occupied. Yeah it doesn't have the exploration that a game like WoW has, but that's because it's instance based instead of being an open world.

The game now has 84 missions spread across about 40 different areas with plenty of different map variations. There are also 36 story missions and 4 side story missions. There are 12 challenge mode missions and 2 versus mode missions. Throw in the tons of event missions that do return every now and then and the game has become rather diverse in area and mission variety.

[gamevet]

Yeah, but you're talking about a game that been around for 6 years, come August.

That is not a lot of content for a game that's been around that long. I could probably find more content in Skyrim, and even after putting in over 200 hours, I've yet to run out of things to explore.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Considering the game was limited by PS2 limitations for years it's a lot of content. In the past year the game has suddenly ballooned in content because they dropped PS2 support. There's only so much you can do when you are stuck with the same 4GB of data to work with and only have 32MB of system memory to work with for new missions/quests.

And Skyrim is a newer and completely different kind of RPG. Comparing PSU to Skyrim is probably one of the most ridiculous comparisons I've ever seen.

[Da_Shocker]

Wait there is a free PSO right now?

[gamevet]

You are comparing an action RPG, that barely qualifies as an MMO, to The Old Republic.

Seriously, you could play through TOR much like your typical RPG, while the single player experience for all of the Phantasy Star Online games I've played, leave a lot to be desired. The Phantasy Star Online games could be so much better, yet Sega doesn't choose to expand upon what they started with. Customizable equipment is hardly a big change.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Wait there is a free PSO right now?

There's been private PSO servers for years that are free to play on and typically support Dreamcast, Gamecube, and Blue Burst. Though the most popular one, schtserv, seems to be doing a lot of stupid shit lately because the people running it are completely in competent. For example an exploit was found that allowed you to get any item from certain quests that gave you item rewards. Instead of fixing the exploit like all the smaller servers did, they instead removed all quest rewards or in some cases removed the quests entirely. They also implemented an anti cheat method which all it does is search all memory for the words "Cheat" or "hack" and closes those processes. So while schtserv is the biggest one, it has a lot of bullshit going on with it.

The official version of JP PSU has a free to play option though, and PSO2 will be free to play and free to download.


You are comparing an action RPG, that barely qualifies as an MMO, to The Old Republic.

Seriously, you could play through TOR much like your typical RPG, while the single player experience for all of the Phantasy Star Online games I've played, leave a lot to be desired. The Phantasy Star Online games could be so much better, yet Sega doesn't choose to expand upon what they started with. Customizable equipment is hardly a big change.

I never compared PSO/PSU to The Old Republic. I did compare it to WoW and WoW clones though saying it has far better gameplay and if it had more content and resources it could be a serious contender. The only reason PSU is being discussed is because you said it was worse than PSO, which is utter bullshit.

As for story, PSU had tons of it. But considering you only played online for a few weeks, you probably never got to try anything beyond the offline episode 1 story. Online the choices you make in the story missions eventually will open up additional subplots that further expand characters and can even change the ending.

[sheath]

I own both Phantasy Star Online versions for the Dreamcast and Phantasy Star Universe for the 360 but I haven't finished any of them in single player mode, much less tried Universe online. Did they ever update Universe so I can use my own character design in the single player game?

[TrekkiesUnite118]

I own both Phantasy Star Online versions for the Dreamcast and Phantasy Star Universe for the 360 but I haven't finished any of them in single player mode, much less tried Universe online. Did they ever update Universe so I can use my own character design in the single player game?

Episode 1 offline you have to play as Ethan. Episode 2 and 3 story modes are online and you use your own character for it. Episode 2 was made available offline for the PC and PS2 with the release of the expansion. The story mode actually has a lot of similarities and references to events that happened in the classic Phantasy Star games.

[sheath]

They never released that patch for the 360 version? Hmm, well my PC runs games better anyway and I bet Universe is cheap now.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

It's not a patch, it's an expansion. The expansion on PC and PS2 was a retail release. On 360 it was a download that expanded the game. To save space they kept the Episode 2 story mode online and didn't make it available offline.

Episode 2 and 3 are available on 360, they are just only available online. Episode 3 is online only for all versions.

[Pulstar]

Where do people find the time to play this kind of cerebral haemorrhage?

I've seen actual pus that served better function. God have mercy on our mortal souls should nerds actually take over control.

[gamevet]

I never compared PSO/PSU to The Old Republic. I did compare it to WoW and WoW clones though saying it has far better gameplay and if it had more content and resources it could be a serious contender.

And I'm saying there's no way that it could compete on that level, with the style of gameplay it has. Has any of the Phantasy Star Online games had a online userbase in the millions? I doubt it.

We'll just have to wait and see what Sega does with this free version being offered in Japan; it'll give you an idea of just how commited Sega is to added content for a game not limited by the consoles. I still don't believe that they can maintain it at a level equal to that of Blizzard, with its huge development staff behind WOW.


The only reason PSU is being discussed is because you said it was worse than PSO, which is utter bullshit.

I never said it was worse than PSO. I said I didn't have as good of a time with the game, as PSO and I stated my reasons why.


Yeah, I understand your enthusiasm for the game. I really liked playing PSO on the Dreamcast as well. PSU, on the other hand, didn't wow me enough to keep playing it more than a couple of months.

Unless you're a fan of Phantasy Star Online, most of the gaming public probably won't take notice to it.

See what I said. When PSO came out, it felt something new on the consoles. When PSU came out, it felt like more of the same thing I'd already been through, even though there were changes made to managing your equipment and having a pad for your stuff.



As for story, PSU had tons of it. But considering you only played online for a few weeks, you probably never got to try anything beyond the offline episode 1 story. Online the choices you make in the story missions eventually will open up additional subplots that further expand characters and can even change the ending.

I've already told you I've played the thing for at least a couple of months. Now that I've looked back at my PSU file, the last day I played was March 3rd of 2007, 5 months after I'd bought the game. See my attached pictures. My last save file was at 8:59 PM on March 3rd. My last game save for the story mode was @ 4:30 PM. So, my last play of PSU was actually the online mode on March 3rd and was probably the last day of my subscription.


This guy's review pretty much sums up what I was thinking the first month or 2, while playing the game online.

http://worthplaying.com/article/2006/11/25/reviews/38006/



There's a reason this review hasn't appeared until now. When Phantasy Star Universe released, it was literally half a game. Now, it's about 2/3 of a game, and I'm far too impatient to wait for any more content to come out. So, now that the substantial amount of content that was unlocked on the 17th has been around long enough for people to play it a little, it seems like as good a time as any to write a permanent, non-Web 2.0 review for the game.

With that said, now couldn't be a more appropriate time to discuss the major controversy surrounding the game: locked content. We'll just get it out of the way right from the start, and continue with the review as normal, okay?

There is no downloadable content. It is all on the disc already. You just can't access it.

So why is this a problem? Honestly, I don't think it is at all. Perhaps some see it as an affront to pay $50 for a game and another $10 for the monthly fee, but I completely sympathize with Sonic Team's plan to release content piece by piece. Obviously, it creates excitement to have new content open up, even if our mild Gamer OCD makes our eyes twitch with anger every time we think about all of the content on the disc to which we don't have access. Think about any recent PC MMO, though, and you'll see this business plan put to good use. For one, it paces players and keeps them from burning out on the game permanently before paying for an extra month. Besides, few people complain about this model on the PC, and for a console without a standard hard drive, it could be seen as a friendly favor that this content was put on the disc. No downloads! (How's that for spin?)

For the sake of the longevity of PSU, I think we should support this concept. Besides, we didn't even have to wait a month for a massive chunk of new content to release, including an entirely new planet around which to run. This is seemingly an artificial method to keep people from leveling up too fast, but if you've read many forums discussing the game, a great deal of serious players hit the level cap long before the November 17th update. Given the slower grind in PSU – when compared to the Dreamcast and Gamecube PS games, at least – this is kind of shocking. These are the people who would have burned through the entire title in two months and left forever. Would it really be in our best interest to have a sizable chunk of an online community ditch the game early on?

The only downside to all this is that PC players won't receive the amount of content and upgrades to which they are accustomed. Going by history, Sonic Team isn't even going to try to supply basic patches to fix small glitches and help along compatibility, and some glitches, including some problems getting the game to run without the specific version of Direct-X included on the disc, have been commonly reported but not addressed professionally in any way. That, and the fact that the controls are not optimized in any way for PC play (as they were even with PSO and Blue Burst!), might turn off some potential players.

Personally, I got used to the keyboard controls very quickly, although I have adjusting issues with it whenever I transition to the PC version (which I use when I want to play side-by-side with a friend, which is possible because characters are now server-side, and work on both platforms). Sadly, the Xbox 360 version has its own servers, and while I'm excited that that version has true worldwide compatibility, I'd like to at least have the option to use my PS2/PC character on that platform, even if I can't play with the same people. But really, after the console-only Dreamcast and Gamecube versions, who am I to complain about losing just one platform with a much smaller community? For those of us trying to get away from the PS2 version's blurry, low-resolution look, the PC version is probably the way to go. You can plug in a wired 360 controller for the full experience, if you'd like.

[old man]

Where do people find the time to play this kind of cerebral haemorrhage?

I've seen actual pus that served better function. God have mercy on our mortal souls should nerds actually take over control.

ha ha ha, nerds are too busy playing crap like this to do anything proactive like "take control". I'm not going to dis another person's game too much though. I like action and twitch stuff, but I'm sure MMORGs must be fun to somebody.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

I never said it was worse than PSO.


Ok.



I said I didn't have as good of a time with the game, as PSO and I stated my reasons why.


So in other words you feel PSU is worse than PSO.

As for the rest of your post, Sega has shown with PSU they can give a steady stream of updates and new content. It's only the US version that got shafted. JP PSU has had a steady stream of updates the entire time. And it's had a free to play option for about 3-4 years now. All the content that has been added to the game for the past few years has been entirely brand new content that's not on the disc. That's the issue the 360 version is facing right now. Microsofts update policy is preventing Sega from adding new content to the game so new weapons and areas are using graphics of old content. The PC version however has been getting brand new content for years.

I'm not disputing the first months weren't a bit sparse for content. I am however saying the game changed dramatically after the first 2 events and the expansion came out. Myself and others who continued to play the game were rather annoyed the expansion didn't get reviewed because it addressed many of the issues the original game had when it launched, yet all people had to look at were dated reviews.

PSU's gameplay is significantly more advanced than PSO, saying it's the same old thing as PSO just shows you didn't really get that much into it. There were more changes than just how you managed your equipment. They way attacks and abilities worked was different and much more fluid and engaging than PSO's gameplay. The class system was completely different considering you could change your class at any time. Going back to PSO after playing PSU, it feels slow, clunky, and broken.

And it's not just some version of PSO2 that's free, the only version available is free. Considering the closed beta got updated almost every day, I think it's safe to say Sega is commited into giving updates. Also Sakai has stated that we should expect no less than 1 update a month. Which means at bare minimum, the game will be receiving monthly updates.

And again, I'm not saying PSO2 will beat WoW or be bigger than WoW, but it might just be able to make an impact. Because it's different enough and implements a bunch of new and fun gameplay mechanics.

[gamevet]

So in other words you feel PSU is worse than PSO.

No, I'm saying that I was already tired of that style of gameplay. I honestly thought I'd have as much fun with PSU, since it wasn't just the rehashed stuff we'd seen with PSO on multiple platforms.



As for the rest of your post, Sega has shown with PSU they can give a steady stream of updates and new content. It's only the US version that got shafted. JP PSU has had a steady stream of updates the entire time. And it's had a free to play option for about 3-4 years now. All the content that has been added to the game for the past few years has been entirely brand new content that's not on the disc. That's the issue the 360 version is facing right now. Microsofts update policy is preventing Sega from adding new content to the game so new weapons and areas are using graphics of old content. The PC version however has been getting brand new content for years.

I don't know. But if it was just the same 3 themes used to make the different levels, that's not what I'd call new content.



I'm not disputing the first months weren't a bit sparse for content. I am however saying the game changed dramatically after the first 2 events and the expansion came out. Myself and others who continued to play the game were rather annoyed the expansion didn't get reviewed because it addressed many of the issues the original game had when it launched, yet all people had to look at were dated reviews.

Well, that was a big part of the problem. Why would I continue to lay down cash, for content that I feel wasn't substantial enough for what I was paying? Sega needed to come out of the gates with guns a blaze and have enough content to keep even the most hardened gamers around.

It's the same problem that happened with The New Republic. Bioware spent over 3 years creating the content that made up the launch title, but didn't have enough new content to satiate those that had already blown through it.



PSU's gameplay is significantly more advanced than PSO, saying it's the same old thing as PSO just shows you didn't really get that much into it. There were more changes than just how you managed your equipment. They way attacks and abilities worked was different and much more fluid and engaging than PSO's gameplay. The class system was completely different considering you could change your class at any time. Going back to PSO after playing PSU, it feels slow, clunky, and broken.

That's the double edged sword. Do I really want to waste my time feeding my pad buddy, so I can craft shit? Not, really. Do I want to go to battle with friends, hoping to find a nice rare drop? Yes I do!



And again, I'm not saying PSO2 will beat WoW or be bigger than WoW, but it might just be able to make an impact. Because it's different enough and implements a bunch of new and fun gameplay mechanics.

That's like saying Homefront would have an impact on the COD community. It didn't happen and it sure hasn't happened with WOW and the constant list of contenders that tried to dethrone it.

Star Wars is a huge property, much bigger than Phantasy Star will ever be. But, it still didn't make people leave WOW to play The New Republic. Only when the public is tired of WOW, will something come along to replace it.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

I'm not saying PSO2 will make tons of people leave WoW to play PSO2. The bulk of the people who still play WoW play it because it's WoW and nothing else. They are not going to leave it for anything other than WoW 2 at this point. PSO2 though might be able to get that crowd who plays WoW and other traditional MMOs but don't like the gameplay and find them boring. TOR, Star Trek Online, etc. all fail to get that group because they are all copying the WoW gameplay formula only making a few tweaks here and there. Do I think PSO2 will have well over 10 million players? No. Do I think it could get well into the 100's of Thousands and possibly even 1 Million. Possibly if Sega plays their cards right. Which being free to play that would be enough for it to make an impact.

The closed beta test servers were over flowing with people as far more people signed up for it than Sega expected. They are even thinking of doing another closed beta test before the open beta and full release because they want to stress test the servers again. The closed beta had well over 100,000 active accounts. 100,000 people were invited, and each of them were able to invite 3 friends. And that's for a closed Japanese only beta test. We will probably see that number go up significantly with Open beta and the full release. We will see it go up as well if the game gets an official US release.

With those numbers it might not beat WoW, but it can make an impact.

One thing you keep bringing up here is that these games don't have enough content to justify paying for them, and you're right. However the big difference here with PSO2 is that it will be free to play. Now it may not have the massive amount of content that WoW has, but when a game like that is Free to play, people look at it differently. For example, Star Trek Online. When it launched I thought it was a rip-off for $15 a month with the minimal content and the horrible WoW gameplay. But now that it's free to play it's very enticing and I do find myself hopping on and playing it, to find lots of other people doing the same thing.

And PSU is not rehashed PSO, it's an evolution of PSO. There's a difference. Did you throw Sonic 2, 3, and Knuckles aside and deem them rehashes of Sonic 1? And what are the "same 3 themes" you're talking about? And you do realize that after your PM got to level 80 you could take it on missions with you and have it fight along side you right? And you are aware of the fact that on higher difficulty settings weapons start dropping premade. Synthing is there if you want a more customized version of a weapon. For example if you find a 25% Dark Lavis Cannon, a casual player might be fine with that. But a more hardcore player would want to find a board so he can try to synth a 50% Dark Lavis Cannon. In fact, the event that's going on right now, almost all the drops are premade, I have yet to receive a single synthing board.

The fact of the matter is, PSU now does have the content to make it worth it's $10 a month, which is lower than most Pay to play MMOs out there. Throw in the fact that theres' a free option and it really makes it worth playing. The problem with the game is Sega of America's support of the series in general, not the games themselves.

[gamevet]

One thing you keep bringing up here is that these games don't have enough content to justify paying for them, and you're right. However the big difference here with PSO2 is that it will be free to play. Now it may not have the massive amount of content that WoW has, but when a game like that is Free to play, people look at it differently. For example, Star Trek Online. When it launched I thought it was a rip-off for $15 a month with the minimal content and the horrible WoW gameplay. But now that it's free to play it's very enticing and I do find myself hopping on and playing it, to find lots of other people doing the same thing.

Yeah, I've thought about playing Star Trek Online, since it's free, but I just can't see myself investing that kind of time into an MMO.



And PSU is not rehashed PSO, it's an evolution of PSO. There's a difference. Did you throw Sonic 2, 3, and Knuckles aside and deem them rehashes of Sonic 1? And what are the "same 3 themes" you're talking about? And you do realize that after your PM got to level 80 you could take it on missions with you and have it fight along side you right? And you are aware of the fact that on higher difficulty settings weapons start dropping premade. Synthing is there if you want a more customized version of a weapon. For example if you find a 25% Dark Lavis Cannon, a casual player might be fine with that. But a more hardcore player would want to find a board so he can try to synth a 50% Dark Lavis Cannon. In fact, the event that's going on right now, almost all the drops are premade, I have yet to receive a single synthing board.


If I had put in 100's of hours into Sonic 1 and 2, I'd more than likely not want to play another Sonic game that played very simular. On the same note, I didn't like Sonic Adventure, because it had the stupid Chaos fetch quests that had nothing to do with platformer.

Great, the PM can finally come along with you after level 80. Total bullshit if you ask me. Sega takes away the MAG and replaces it with the shitty PM that you can't take with you until you're level 80. How is that an improvement?

You're talking about stuff you can do, long after years of updates. The problem is that the game needed to be more early, not years later. It's pretty obvious that you're a die-hard fan of the franchise, but you have to take into consideration that there are a lot of gamers out there that aren't, and need to be convinced that the game is worth sticking around for.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

It's an improvement because Mags were a broken disaster in PSO. There was absolutely nothing stopping you from equipping a level 200 Mag on a level 1 character and suddenly having the stats to equip things you normally wouldn't be able to equip until around level 90. And it's not until you're level 80, it's when the PM reaches level 80. You can easily be under level 10 with a level 80 PM that you can take with you on missions if you have the money to do it. Seriously, how long did you play? This is all basic stuff most players knew within the first month of the game. Considering you're single player file only got to chapter 2, I'm very curious as to how far you got in the online mode.

What hurt PSU was poor advertising. There was none in the US. Japan had tons of advertising and surprise surprise, the servers are still thriving there. Yeah, the lack of content hurt, but for a console based MMO it had a decent amount of content. By the end of the first year, the game had significantly more content than it had when it launched. Throw in the fact that the Expansion pack came out about a month or so after the 1 year anniversary, and the amount of content available by then was perfectly acceptable for a console based MMO. The game could not have launched on PS2 and 360 with the amount of content it has now, there just wouldn't be enough space to store all of that and the single player campaigns on the disc.

Pretty much when you quit, was right around when the game started to pick up in it's first year. You missed the S and S2 difficulty missions being added, you missed the HIVE area being added, you missed Operation Firebreak, you missed the quests like Bruces Dungeon and Her Secret Mission being added, you missed all the co-op missions being added like True Darkness, Cost of Research, Stolen Weapon, etc. You missed most of Episode 2 story missions being added. You missed 1UP Platinum Cup. And you missed the Expansion. There were also tons of less noticeable updates that fixed gameplay issues, glitches, and balance issues.

In the 2nd Year from the expansion we got the new areas of AMF Metro Liner, AMF Central Command, Old Rozenom City, Saguraki C.D., Northern Ice Caves, Casino Voloyal, Pavillion of Air, Il Cabo Base, Habirao F.D., Forest, Caves, Mines, and Ruins. With those are we also got the bosses Dark Falz, Mother Brain, and De Rol Le. We also got Episode 3 Story missions along with the event Max Attack G, First Anniversary Festa, Winter Mission Carnival, etc. Throw in the tons of system updates that fixed issues with player shops, gameplay, inventory management, PMs, Synthing, Grinding, etc. and there were plenty of updates and content in the first few years considering it was all content that had to fit on 1 DVD.

PSU did get new content and updates, you just quit during it's growing pains period that most MMOs go through when they start. Even WoW went through this with minimal updates and horrible server instability issues. Star Trek Online had this happen as well. People stupidly expect MMOs to instantly be as packed with content like WoW. They forget that WoW has been growing now for almost 8 years. It wasn't nearly as packed with content as it is now when it launched back around 2004/2005.

[Zoltor]

Looks like the game didn't live upto the hype, it seriously needs to be lacking/have major flaws, if a whopping 30day free trial wont get people to stay long term.

[Olls]

It is simply not worth paying a monthly fee for more than one MMO at a time, even if the game in question isn't terribly flawed.

[DarkDragon]

It is simply not worth paying a monthly fee for more than one MMO at a time, even if the game in question isn't terribly flawed.

I agree. With all the stuff that people have to pay for these days (rent, gas, car payments/insurance, phone bill/bills, internet access, pay off credit cards, etc) paying for a monthly MMO is way way down the list.

[Zoltor]

Well a month should be easily enough time to make people committed to a MMO.

Granted that doesn't mean people wouldn't be taking breaks every so often, ther's a reason why basically all the good MMOs moved to a ftp model(1:It's less demanding on the player, and 2: they make a hell of a lot more money on IM stuff, then they would a monthly sub, that forces you to pay just to login. It's much more likely for people to pay a lot of money a few/a bunch of times a year when they have some extra spending money, then forcing people to pay a monthly fee, just to login).

Also being forced to pay a monthly sub, makes MMOs feel more like a chore, then a fun activity, since you feel forced to put X amount of hours into a game, every month. There is nothing fun about feeling forced to play a game a certain amount of hours to make paying the sub worth it.

[Olls]

The only time an MMO would move to an F2P model is when its subscription base is in heavy decline.

My point is that when you've established yourself in an MMO, it takes a lot more than just a new good game to make the switch. I've tried SW:TOR myself, but without any friends that play it and the fact that you have to start all over, learn everything about the game, etc. made me decide that it just wasn't worth my time and money, even if it was the best game ever.

[Zoltor]

The only time an MMO would move to an F2P model is when its subscription base is in heavy decline.

My point is that when you've established yourself in an MMO, it takes a lot more than just a new good game to make the switch. I've tried SW:TOR myself, but without any friends that play it and the fact that you have to start all over, learn everything about the game, etc. made me decide that it just wasn't worth my time and money, even if it was the best game ever.


The ftp model makes much more money, so if the people running the MMOs are smart, they would move to that off the bat(afterall the format Isn't new anymore, It's well known now, that not only do players stay around longer, but they spend much more on the game as well), not just wait for subs to drop off.

Well a MMO these days definitely needs to start out with much more content, then they did, and needs to get pretty big content patches on a reg basis as well, because alot of the bigger MMOs are still alive.

As for friends, and such true enough, but if a MMO actually encourages making friends(instead of the normal making players have to rely on friends mechanic to get far), It's a non issue. A game that pulls this off amazingly well is Atlantica Online, It's so easy to make friends, It's not funny(It's noob friendly, yes guilds actually jump at the chance to recruit people of literally any lv, not just high levels, there's guild crafting, there's monster info sharing, guild dungeons, and so on).

[Kamahl]

As for friends, and such true enough, but if a MMO actually encourages making friends(instead of the normal making players have to rely on friends mechanic to get far, It's a non issue).
Which is something Guild Wars 2 is attempting with it's "everyone is friendly and works together" approach to quests, plus competitive multiplayer where even if you're lower level you can participate with the big boys.

[Zoltor]

Which is something Guild Wars 2 is attempting with it's "everyone is friendly and works together" approach to quests, plus competitive multiplayer where even if you're lower level you can participate with the big boys.

Guild Wars 2 does look like a promising game(I'm not even a fan of games that are so extremely focused on a PvP system, that PvP is the main point of the game, but I very much like what I'm reading about). Also they have the best MMO main website I have ever seen. I raelly love the developers attitude, you can tell they actually care about their playerbase.

[EclecticGroove]

The only issue with the F2P model is that the game needs to be designed around it, or at least VERY carefully restructured around that model.

If you do it right it's fun and lucrative for the players. You do it wrong and either you make no money because the cash shop is a giant pile of anemic crap... or you pass from f2p into the pay to win category...

At that point the company will probably be raking in stupid amounts of money off the players up until the entire game implodes on itself.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

PSO2's cash shop seems to be well thought out, though a few ares do border on nickel and diming players. For example you have to pay for additional character slots. However things like having your own personal room and your own personal shop you have to pay "rent" for through the cash shop. These aren't required to play the game but they can make the game more fun. For PSO2 all the rental objects are also bundled into a premium pack that comes out to about what a monthly subscription would be. Other things you can buy are scratch cards that can give you random items like MAG food, additional costumes, room decorations, etc. You can also buy exp and drop rate boosters as well as Scape Dolls to auto revive you when you die.

[Zoltor]

The only issue with the F2P model is that the game needs to be designed around it, or at least VERY carefully restructured around that model.

If you do it right it's fun and lucrative for the players. You do it wrong and either you make no money because the cash shop is a giant pile of anemic crap... or you pass from f2p into the pay to win category...

At that point the company will probably be raking in stupid amounts of money off the players up until the entire game implodes on itself.

Yea there's a ballance that needs to exist, a very fine one at that, but there's many games that exist that do it right, so after some research, and a year of beta testing the format+ the progression of such(trying to figure out how to go about improving the IM every so often, without making it pay to win, yet still have the items be worth buying), almost any MMO should beable to make a smooth transition.

[Olls]

The ftp model makes much more money, so if the people running the MMOs are smart, they would move to that off the bat(afterall the format Isn't new anymore, It's well known now, that not only do players stay around longer, but they spend much more on the game as well), not just wait for subs to drop off.

Well a MMO these days definitely needs to start out with much more content, then they did, and needs to get pretty big content patches on a reg basis as well, because alot of the bigger MMOs are still alive.

As for friends, and such true enough, but if a MMO actually encourages making friends(instead of the normal making players have to rely on friends mechanic to get far), It's a non issue. A game that pulls this off amazingly well is Atlantica Online, It's so easy to make friends, It's not funny(It's noob friendly, yes guilds actually jump at the chance to recruit people of literally any lv, not just high levels, there's guild crafting, there's monster info sharing, guild dungeons, and so on).

I'm speaking from experience regarding the friends thing; it's not a non-issue. You don't just ditch an established guild to go play some new no-name MMO that you know nobody in. These aren't single player RPGs. You cannot even compare these games to MMOs that have been F2P from the get go.
If F2P games made so much more money, why are the biggest players in the game still sub-based?
There is not a single MMO out today that has made the switch to F2P and has been succesful in the process. It's always done as a last resort.

[Zoltor]

I'm speaking from experience regarding the friends thing; it's not a non-issue. You don't just ditch an established guild to go play some new no-name MMO that you know nobody in. These aren't single player RPGs. You cannot even compare these games to MMOs that have been F2P from the get go.
If F2P games made so much more money, why are the biggest players in the game still sub-based?
There is not a single MMO out today that has made the switch to F2P and has been succesful in the process. It's always done as a last resort.

Did you even read my post(you make new friends, and in some games like the one I mentioned, It's downright easy/fast). If the friends you have in another game are close friends now, I'm sure you talk to them, and such elseware too, not just in game.

What's that stereotype in these country, oh yea that's right, Koreans are good with numbers, where the american companies have not only ran their companies into the ground for the most part, but the entiire country as well.

Lol needless to say, I don't think you should be basing your argument on your so called bigger MMOs(WoW? lol) being sub only. Also it should be noted that such companies don't like change at all, unless It's a effortless change. Going ftp from a sub system is a big change, and also means you'll need to start having a ton of mini patches in addition to the normal big expantions(nevermind the fact you need even better security then you need for a sub systems).

Let me put it in a easy way for you, is it better to get the 180 in a lump sum, and infact have people paying that much a few times a year on average, not even just once or have it devided by 12, with 180 total being the most people pay(It's pretty damn basic math)?

There's a reason many companies are moving to a ftp model, and it has nothing to do with the size of the game/playerbase(the amazing thing is, the ftp model is good for both the players, and the company, so it makes everyone happy).

[Olls]

Lol needless to say, I don't think you should be basing your argument on your so called bigger MMOs(WoW? lol) being sub only.


Why is this funny to you? Are you saying that you don't acknowledge WoW as being a big MMORPG? Are you making up your own facts again? Are you going to elaborate on why "I shouldn't be basing my argument on big MMOs being sub only"?
What IS truely funny is your "calculation". I'm guessing calculus wasn't your best subject.
I've already told you the reason why EXISTING MMORPGs are going F2P. This has nothing to do with NEW games going F2P. Take it or leave it.

[Zoltor]

Why is this funny to you? Are you saying that you don't acknowledge WoW as being a big MMORPG? Are you making up your own facts again? Are you going to elaborate on why "I shouldn't be basing my argument on big MMOs being sub only"?
What IS truely funny is your "calculation". I'm guessing calculus wasn't your best subject.
I've already told you the reason why EXISTING MMORPGs are going F2P. This has nothing to do with NEW games going F2P. Take it or leave it.

Because thats false, most MMOs are not sub only anymore, even a bunch that were originally sub based, are not strictly sub based anymore. I'm saying you shouldn't base your arguement that sub based is good because a couple of big MMOs will not switch over to a ftp model.

However to be frank, I don't think there's enough to the actual game in WoW's case to have a IM, It's so basic It's not funny. They would need to add tons of high quality content, not just more of the same dull content, because as it is now, what could they put in the IM that people would actually want(a xp boost, and some useless cosmetic items, that's probally about it).

Big doesn't mean better in games or business in general for that matter, nor does it imply they know how to make money(Look at all the companies in this country, literally next to none of them know how to make money properly, their idea of increasing profits, is cutting the employees wages/hours or worse. Oh yea, and you got to love when companies use substandard materials when manufactoring their products, yet they dare complain about not selling as many).

[gamevet]

It's an improvement because Mags were a broken disaster in PSO. There was absolutely nothing stopping you from equipping a level 200 Mag on a level 1 character and suddenly having the stats to equip things you normally wouldn't be able to equip until around level 90. And it's not until you're level 80, it's when the PM reaches level 80. You can easily be under level 10 with a level 80 PM that you can take with you on missions if you have the money to do it. Seriously, how long did you play? This is all basic stuff most players knew within the first month of the game. Considering you're single player file only got to chapter 2, I'm very curious as to how far you got in the online mode.

The mags were a disaster, because Sega couldn't stop Duping of items and Mags. It's not that the Mags were a bad idea at all and without duping, it wouldn't have been an issue. So, Sega took the easy route by taking the Mags away for PSU, which a lot of fans cried "foul" about.



What hurt PSU was poor advertising. There was none in the US. Japan had tons of advertising and surprise surprise, the servers are still thriving there. Yeah, the lack of content hurt, but for a console based MMO it had a decent amount of content. By the end of the first year, the game had significantly more content than it had when it launched. Throw in the fact that the Expansion pack came out about a month or so after the 1 year anniversary, and the amount of content available by then was perfectly acceptable for a console based MMO. The game could not have launched on PS2 and 360 with the amount of content it has now, there just wouldn't be enough space to store all of that and the single player campaigns on the disc.

PSU had plenty of advertising in print gaming magazines (see the Nov. 2006 EGM ad below) and with online ads. I saw plenty of print ads for the game and its expansion disc.

Don't compare television advertising in Japan to that of the US. You won't see a lot of videogames being advertised here, on television, because the internet provides a cheaper outlet fot that. Putting up an advertisement on television for Japan, is like having a TV ad for a state here; the costs have to be significantly less than a nationwide TV ad here.



Pretty much when you quit, was right around when the game started to pick up in it's first year. You missed the S and S2 difficulty missions being added, you missed the HIVE area being added, you missed Operation Firebreak, you missed the quests like Bruces Dungeon and Her Secret Mission being added, you missed all the co-op missions being added like True Darkness, Cost of Research, Stolen Weapon, etc. You missed most of Episode 2 story missions being added. You missed 1UP Platinum Cup. And you missed the Expansion. There were also tons of less noticeable updates that fixed gameplay issues, glitches, and balance issues.

A lot of people were quitting, not just me. Most of the people I had met, were leaving at that point, as was I.



In the 2nd Year from the expansion we got the new areas of AMF Metro Liner, AMF Central Command, Old Rozenom City, Saguraki C.D., Northern Ice Caves, Casino Voloyal, Pavillion of Air, Il Cabo Base, Habirao F.D., Forest, Caves, Mines, and Ruins. With those are we also got the bosses Dark Falz, Mother Brain, and De Rol Le. We also got Episode 3 Story missions along with the event Max Attack G, First Anniversary Festa, Winter Mission Carnival, etc. Throw in the tons of system updates that fixed issues with player shops, gameplay, inventory management, PMs, Synthing, Grinding, etc. and there were plenty of updates and content in the first few years considering it was all content that had to fit on 1 DVD.

PSU did get new content and updates, you just quit during it's growing pains period that most MMOs go through when they start. Even WoW went through this with minimal updates and horrible server instability issues. Star Trek Online had this happen as well. People stupidly expect MMOs to instantly be as packed with content like WoW. They forget that WoW has been growing now for almost 8 years. It wasn't nearly as packed with content as it is now when it launched back around 2004/2005.

I played Star Wars: Galaxies for nearly 2 years. Even with it's botched launch, it had a ton more content than PSU, even if you add in every update that PSU had. Galaxies launched without player mounts, and the only way to get around the planet and to other planets was through shuttles and ships you bought tickets for. The only other option was to run a really long way between settlements. It would be nearly 4 months before we got a Dewback as our first mount and then came the land speeder and speeder bikes. Even with how long it took for the first updates to happen, the game still had tons of things to do, from crafting to earning job skills. Even without doing preset missions, you could wander around to fight or discover whatever you wanted. PSU, on the other hand, is stuck within a small little world that only expanded with every update. The two are not even comparable.

PSU probably would have been a bigger success, had Sega not decided to ass-rape people to play that game online. The costs did not justify the content you got. If it took 4-5 years for you to get all of that content, does the amount you'd spent equal what you got in return?

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Quit comparing a PS2 instance based MMO to open world PC MMOs. There's only so much you can fit into a 4GB disc on a system wtih 32MB of RAM. It's a completely different kind of game. PSU did however launch with more content than PSO did. There were more areas, and more bosses than PSO had at launch, and within 3 months it had significantly more content than PSO had when it reached the end of it's life. Would I say the cost justified what we got in the end? For the US servers no, for the Japanese servers hell yes.

Duping had nothing to do with the way MAGs broke the balance of PSO. They started dropping in Mines on Normal Difficulty, and you could create as many characters as you wanted and transfer them over. On PSO:BB Sega fixed the duping bugs and while cheating did still happen, it wasn't anywhere near the scale of what went on with Dreamcast and Gamecube PSO. MAGs still however were broken and screwed up the balance of the game. There were players who did nothing more than raise mags to sell to other players. They did make some kind of return in the PSU expansion, they just no longer had a dramatic impact on your stats. They instead became an equip-able weapon to use with one handed weapons allowing you to equip more skills while giving a boost like any other weapon.

And that's great you found some print ads, but you like many people here overestimate the audience of print gaming magazines. There's a reason so many of them have gone out of print, including EGM for a short while. Print ads do not have nearly the impact a fully fledged TV ad campaign has. As for online advertising, are you forgetting what year PSU came out? This was 2006, Youtube was still in it's infancy. And Sega still did zero online advertising for it in the US. The only stuff that got uploaded on sites like Youtube were Japanese trailers uploaded by fans:

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Heck, they still do ads for new content updates that they at least put online in Japan:

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Sega of America can't even do that. And then there's the issue of not even a peep beyond a late demo at E3 for PSP2. Yet in Japan they ad full advertising campaigns:

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Is it any wonder that the Portable games were some of the top selling PSP games the weeks they came out in Japan?

[Zoltor]

To gamevet: Yea there was alot of advertising for PSU in magazines, and tons of people were talking about it/looking foward to it, so it definitely didn't have advertising issues, I don't know how someone can say there was no advertising for a game that basically everyone knew about(they had to find out about it some way).

[TrekkiesUnite118]

To gamevet: Yea there was alot of advertising for PSU in magazines, and tons of people were talking about it/looking foward to it, so it definitely didn't have advertising issues, I don't know how someone can say there was no advertising for a game that basically everyone knew about(they had to find out about it some way).

Show me one US TV ad or Online trailer that was not a fan reupload of a Japanese trailer. Print ads do not help nearly as much as they did 10-20 years ago.

[Zoltor]

Show me one US TV ad or Online trailer that was not a fan reupload of a Japanese trailer. Print ads do not help nearly as much as they did 10-20 years ago.

Did I say there was a TV ad, no, but neverless there was a massive amount of adverting in magazines, and the internet(lol hell at the time it was probally the most talked about/anticipated game.

For computer games, magazines, and the internet have always been the center of advertising. Just becauss Blizzard's games, Myst, and a few minor PC games were advertised on TV, doesn't mean that was the norm.

[gamevet]

Quit comparing a PS2 instance based MMO to open world PC MMOs. There's only so much you can fit into a 4GB disc on a system wtih 32MB of RAM. It's a completely different kind of game. PSU did however launch with more content than PSO did. There were more areas, and more bosses than PSO had at launch, and within 3 months it had significantly more content than PSO had when it reached the end of it's life. Would I say the cost justified what we got in the end? For the US servers no, for the Japanese servers hell yes.

You made the comparison, the moment you brought up PSU in a thread about an open world MMO. You also have to take into consideration that Sega was charging $10 a month for PSU, which is almost as much as you'd pay for a an open world MMO at that time.



And that's great you found some print ads, but you like many people here overestimate the audience of print gaming magazines. There's a reason so many of them have gone out of print, including EGM for a short while. Print ads do not have nearly the impact a fully fledged TV ad campaign has.

EGM, Game Informer, Playstation Magazine and OXBM were still selling fairly well in 2006. If anything, gaming magazines were more than likely bought by the same people that would buy Phantasy Star Universe.

What television channel/network do you think would have been a great place to advertise PSU on? Would it have been during Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network?



As for online advertising, are you forgetting what year PSU came out? This was 2006, Youtube was still in it's infancy. And Sega still did zero online advertising for it in the US. The only stuff that got uploaded on sites like Youtube were Japanese trailers uploaded by fans:

Online advertising was and still is being done through banner ads on popular web sites like IGN and Gamespot. I used to get emails from Sega that would lead me directly to their site, where you could see all of the trailers for their games. And as popular as youtube is, Gametrailers (http://www.gametrailers.com/video/game-intro-phantasy-star/14152) is the site to go to for gaming media.




Is it any wonder that the Portable games were some of the top selling PSP games the weeks they came out in Japan?

Portable gaming is more popular in Japan, than the consoles are.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Sorry, I remember being excited about the game, but I only knew about it because I played PSO. Any non PSO players I spoke to about it had no clue what I was talking about. And again, I also said show me 1 US online ad or trailer. You can't because there aren't any beyond a couple teasers from 2004. The only thing close to it was 1UP announcing updates for US PSU half a year after the game came out. All the trailers that exist for the game online are for the Japanese version or are vague teaser trailers from 1-2 years before the game was anywhere near complete. There were no ads online or on TV when the game was near launch. Yeah people heard about it years before it came out, but by the time it came out they had forgotten about it. There was nothing saying "Hey, it's out! Come give it a try!" or "Coming out October 26th, 2006" Heck you couldn't even play a demo of it on PC.

I remember at my Gamestop the only reason they got it and the expansion in was because I preordered it. In my college town I was the only person who preordered the game at Gamestop. I know this because the box had a dent and when I asked if I could swap for another the clerk who I knew well said "I would have done that but you were the only one who preordered it, that's the only copy we have."

If there was truly an effective advertising campaign going on and everyone knew about it, don't you think in my hometown of State College where Penn State University's home campus resides at least one other person would have preordered it besides myself?


You made the comparison, the moment you brought up PSU in a thread about an open world MMO. You also have to take into consideration that Sega was charging $10 a month for PSU, which is almost as much as you'd pay for a an open world MMO at that time.

EGM, Game Informer, Playstation Magazine and OXBM were still selling fairly well in 2006. If anything, gaming magazines were more than likely bought by the same people that would buy Phantasy Star Universe.

What television channel/network do you think would have been a great place to advertise PSU on? Would it have been during Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network?

Online advertising was and still is being done through banner ads on popular web sites like IGN and Gamespot. I used to get emails from Sega that would lead me directly to their site, where you could see all of the trailers for their games. And as popular as youtube is, Gametrailers (http://www.gametrailers.com/video/game-intro-phantasy-star/14152) is the site to go to for gaming media.


Portable gaming is more popular in Japan, than the consoles are.


Nice you found the intro uploaded to Game Trailers. That doesn't say anything about when the game came out, or show any game play or anything to get people interested. That's typical Sega of America Advertising. Show a crummy CGI video a week before the game comes out and hope to hell it sells. And sorry, in 2006 I rarely went to GameTrailers. In fact the last time I truly went to Game Trailers was around 2004ish.

As for banner ads, I don't even remember seeing any of those. It's pretty sad that PSO-World, the biggest PSO fansite that many of Sega of America's employees frequent and are a huge part of can't even have a PSU/PSO banner ad. They instead have had a banner ad for WoW for the past 6 years.

As for bringing up PSU, I didn't bring it up in comparison to the Old Republic. I brought up PSO2 saying it could do well being different enough AND free to play. You brought up PSU saying you felt it was worse than PSO.

And yep, the whole reason PSP2 didn't sell in the US has to do with the fact that no one buys handhelds in the US. It can't have anything to do with the fact that Sega of America did absolutely zero advertising for the game.

What do I think would have been good channels to see ads for PSU? The same channels you get WoW and Halo ad's shoved down your throat. USA, Spike TV, TBS, FX, Sci Fi, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Fox, etc.

[gamevet]

I changed the Gametrailers link. It shows the very same PSU ads that were being shown on Sega's North American website. There's a whole list of North American videos and trailers for PSU on Gametrailers, and the one I linked is dated October of 2006.

Here's another one from September of 2006.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/trailer-3-phantasy-star/12958

[TrekkiesUnite118]

They may have made trailers to put on their website, but it's a shame they couldn't have put them places where they could have been more effective. And no, GameTrailers is not effective advertising. Not to mention the US ads and trailers are comprised of mostly cinematic footage, with virutally no online footage or gameplay footage.

[gamevet]

They may have made trailers to put on their website, but it's a shame they couldn't have put them places where they could have been more effective. And no, GameTrailers is not effective advertising.

That's the official North American ad you went to, when you clicked on a banner leading you to Sega' site. I honestly don't see how you had not seen any of the ad campaigns through magazines and website banners. They were all over the place.






As for bringing up PSU, I didn't bring it up in comparison to the Old Republic. I brought up PSO2 saying it could do well being different enough AND free to play. You brought up PSU saying you felt it was worse than PSO.

Yeah, I brought up PSU, but you did bring up PSO2.

Again, I didn't say it was a worse game. I said I didn't enjoy it as much, because the gameplay style that worked for the 1st game was kind of unique at the time, while PSU felt like more of the same and rather dated. Don't use the 4 gig DVD as an excuse for the size of PSU. Like I'd said earlier, Skyrim is huge, yet the game fits on a DVD as well. Sega could have put a lot more content on that disc, than they could with a GD-ROM for the Dreamcast. There's no excuse other than they cut corners.



And yep, the whole reason PSP2 didn't sell in the US has to do with the fact that no one buys handhelds in the US. It can't have anything to do with the fact that Sega of America did absolutely zero advertising for the game.

It has to do with the fact that handheld gaming is the dominant platform in Japan. PSP is still a top selling system there, outselling the PS3 and the Wii just about every week. One of the biggest selling games (in Japan) in recent years has been the Monster Hunter series on the PSP. They are a totally different market from the US.

http://www.the-magicbox.com/1205/game120503a.shtml


What do I think would have been good channels to see ads for PSU? The same channels you get WoW and Halo ad's shoved down your throat. USA, Spike TV, TBS, FX, Sci Fi, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Fox, etc.

WOW and Halo have television ads, because they are a very marketable product, with an already huge established userbase. There is no gamble with advertising those games, because they have already sold in the millions. I don't recall seeing WOW ads on television, until years after it was out.

Madden doesn't have any competition, yet EA advertises the game because they have the money in their budgets. Sega doesn't have that luxury and hasn't had it in over a decade. Like I said before, there's a huge difference in costs for putting up a television advertisement in a smaller market like Japan, compared to a nationwide ad in the United States.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Sega doesn't have that luxury now, but if they would have advertised better years ago, they may not be int he position they are now. I do realize that Handhelds are bigger in Japan than they are here, that still doesn't excuse the complete lack of advertising PSP2 got.

As for content you are forgetting a couple of Factors.

1) Skyrim is an offline only game. They can tweak the content to feel bigger because they aren't relying on the game to be consisntently played over and over again.
2) Skyrim is randomly generated. So it can just take a couple assets and randomly generate content with it. PSU doesn't do this, it's content is static. So every single map variation, item, character model, etc. has to fit on the disc. Throw in the fact that theres also a single player game on top of the online game which uses it's own set of maps, and you start to run out of space quickly. Especially when you throw in FMVs and all the voice acting and music. Being an online game, PSU has buttloads of music:
http://www.phantasystarmonthly.com/psuadxlist.htm

And that's not even all of it. Theres a lot missing in that list. That all needs to fit on the disc. There's close to half a gig's worth of data used up in Voices alone in PSU.

PSO:BB fully updated would fit on a GD-ROM. Thats including Episode 1, Episode 2, and Episode 4. PSU fully updated is more than a DVD. The offline story mode really takes up a lot of space when it comes to PSU. The PS2 disc for the PSU expansion is right up on the limit for the most a single layer DVD can hold. And that's after they took out all of the offline episode 1 content and all the unused content from the original version of the game.

As for the ad's on Sega's site, yeah I saw some of them, but how can you expect that minimal effort to get the word out and get new people interested? How can you expect people to look up your trailers on Game Trailers or come to your site and look at info if they don't even know you're making the game in the first place. As for web banners, I don't remember seeing a single one. I do remember seeing them for WoW and random free to play MMOs though. As for print ads as I said, those don't have as big of an impact as you like to think. Not that many people buy gaming magazines. You might not want to admit it, but it's the sad truth. I know I didn't buy them, and neither did any of my friends or relatives. I knew one person who read gaming Magazines in high school, and that was only because he got them for free for a brief period of time.

[gamevet]

Sega doesn't have that luxury now, but if they would have advertised better years ago, they may not be int he position they are now. I do realize that Handhelds are bigger in Japan than they are here, that still doesn't excuse the complete lack of advertising PSP2 got.

It only sold about 400k in Japan. That's a rather small return for the amount of money it would cost to advertise on television here.




As for content you are forgetting a couple of Factors.

1) Skyrim is an offline only game. They can tweak the content to feel bigger because they aren't relying on the game to be consisntently played over and over again.
2) Skyrim is randomly generated. So it can just take a couple assets and randomly generate content with it. PSU doesn't do this, it's content is static. So every single map variation, item, character model, etc. has to fit on the disc. Throw in the fact that theres also a single player game on top of the online game which uses it's own set of maps, and you start to run out of space quickly. Especially when you throw in FMVs and all the voice acting and music. Being an online game, PSU has buttloads of music:
http://www.phantasystarmonthly.com/psuadxlist.htm

You haven't played Skyrim then. Every character (literally 100s) has voice lines, there's hardly any text responses at all. And no, Skyrim is not randomly generated, other than a little bit of the smaller foliage. I can go to a place I'd visited weeks ago, and the same rock and stump would be in the same place I saw it last. Every building you enter is extremely detailed, down to the vase on a table and texture on the floor. Even the rocks under the water are visible. You could pretty much fit everything that was included on the PSU disc, in the same amount of space it would take to generate the town of Solitude in Skyrim. Plus, the amount of data space required for textures in PSU, is alot smaller than what is required for a game like Skyrim.




As for the ad's on Sega's site, yeah I saw some of them, but how can you expect that minimal effort to get the word out and get new people interested? How can you expect people to look up your trailers on Game Trailers or come to your site and look at info if they don't even know you're making the game in the first place. As for web banners, I don't remember seeing a single one. I do remember seeing them for WoW and random free to play MMOs though. As for print ads as I said, those don't have as big of an impact as you like to think. Not that many people buy gaming magazines. You might not want to admit it, but it's the sad truth. I know I didn't buy them, and neither did any of my friends or relatives. I knew one person who read gaming Magazines in high school, and that was only because he got them for free for a brief period of time.

More than 90% of all games released in the past 7 years have used that route for advertising.

Believe it or not, Phantasy Star Online is not a mass-market product. It's a niche product with a select audience, just as much as Catherine and Valkyria Chronicles are.

[Pulstar]

ha ha ha, nerds are too busy playing crap like this to do anything proactive like "take control". I'm not going to dis another person's game too much though. I like action and twitch stuff, but I'm sure MMORGs must be fun to somebody.

Ironic, isn't it? A part-time nerd decrying full-blown nerds? :fail:

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Skyrim reuses data at a ridiculous level. An article about XenoBlades graphics touches on this in this quote:


Huge games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim can look pretty thanks to good art direction, but they're also damn glitchy, and have to cut corners by reusing textures and environments. They're almost pieced together like LEGO constructs, with pre-made building blocks pieced together, and you can clearly see the proverbial puppet strings if you look at it long enough. It gets the job done, but it's a very Western thing. It's not the long, huge, open, varied, handcrafted kind of chicanery we're used to from Japanese role-playing games.

In Skyrim buildings and environments may be detailed, but in many cases they are put together using the same assets and building blocks as every other environment in the game. In Skyrim you may walk into a house that has lots of detail in the floor, the furniture, the vases, etc. But when you go next door you are probably going to see a lot of the same assets. Skyrim's world is pieced together reusing many of the same assets over and over again. PSU's Maps however are custom made for each mission and each variation of the mission. They are not simply the same models being reused and pieced together. That requires a lot more space.

You are also forgetting that Skyrim is on modern systems that can handle compressed textures. The PS2 cannot handle compressed textures. Before the texture goes into the GPU, it has to be uncompressed. That also saves a lot of space. As for the reason why PSU's maps are smaller, that's simple. PS2 only has 32MB of RAM total. Everything going on in the game at a given moment has to fit in that. So you need to have the space reserved for Your character's model and textures, your action palette and all it's models and textures, as well as your inventory. Multiply that by 6 for Online mode. You also have to have the data for each enemy type in the mission. You also have to have the Map layout and the textures and models in RAM. 32MB is not a lot, and it fills up fast.

So PSU's graphics are limited by what the PS2 is capable of. PSU's map sizes are limited by PS2's RAM. And the amount of content is limited by Disc Space. Sure you might have been able to get more content if you reused the same textures and models for ever single map in the game, but then it would look bland and boring. Each map in PSU has it's own unique look and feel to it. The same is not true for games like Skyrim that reuse assets to give a larger world.

As for PSP2's sales, In it's first 2 months on sale in Japan it sold closer to 600,000 copies, with almost half of it's sales being in it's first week. That's pretty impressive, especially considering Japan is a smaller country than the US. PSP2 Infinity has sold close to about $400,000 copies in Japan as well. Combined the portable Phantasy Star titles have sold well over 1 Million copies. Not to mention that's only including retail copies, digital copies are not included in those numbers. If Sega Advertised the game, they could have gotten a decent return on it.

Phantasy Star now may be a niche product, but it didn't used to be. It's only in that situation now because Sega of America has failed numerous times to properly advertise the series. There were plenty of people who played the games. According to VG Charts PSO on Dreamcast, Xbox, and Gamecube combined sold over 1 million copies, but there's obvious gaps in the data. There's no data for the US and Europe for the Dreamcast versions, there's no data for the PC version or Blue Burst, there's very minimal amounts of data for Episode 1 and 2 plus, even though I know it was easy to find when it came out. Considering we are missing huge amounts of data, that still looks better than niche. And I know for a fact when PSO:BB was in open beta in the US, the servers were overflowing and it was at times almost impossible to log in.

If Sega made a decent attempt at advertising Phantasy Star, the games would probably sell at least on par with other JRPGs.

[gamevet]

Skyrim reuses data at a ridiculous level. An article about XenoBlades graphics touches on this in this quote:



In Skyrim buildings and environments may be detailed, but in many cases they are put together using the same assets and building blocks as every other environment in the game. In Skyrim you may walk into a house that has lots of detail in the floor, the furniture, the vases, etc. But when you go next door you are probably going to see a lot of the same assets. Skyrim's world is pieced together reusing many of the same assets over and over again. PSU's Maps however are custom made for each mission and each variation of the mission. They are not simply the same models being reused and pieced together. That requires a lot more space.

Really? Solitude and Whiterun look nothing alike, unless you want to point out a stone wall with the same stones.

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aZzZBsWMk1M


That dude is a moron. Just about every game out there recycles textures and character models. Yes, PSU is very guilty of recycling the same textures and map pieces over and over and over again. That's why every new map consists of pieces borrowed from other levels, with a color pallete swap here and there. They do the same thing with the enemies, that have pieces of other enemies glued totogether to make a new enemy. PSU is basically RPG maker with developer level tools to make new maps. Like that reviewer said in my other post, everything you see in PSU, was already on the disc to begin with. The updates didn't bring new character or texture data, it was already there.



You are also forgetting that Skyrim is on modern systems that can handle compressed textures. The PS2 cannot handle compressed textures. Before the texture goes into the GPU, it has to be uncompressed. That also saves a lot of space. As for the reason why PSU's maps are smaller, that's simple. PS2 only has 32MB of RAM total. Everything going on in the game at a given moment has to fit in that. So you need to have the space reserved for Your character's model and textures, your action palette and all it's models and textures, as well as your inventory. Multiply that by 6 for Online mode. You also have to have the data for each enemy type in the mission. You also have to have the Map layout and the textures and models in RAM. 32MB is not a lot, and it fills up fast.

So PSU's graphics are limited by what the PS2 is capable of. PSU's map sizes are limited by PS2's RAM. And the amount of content is limited by Disc Space. Sure you might have been able to get more content if you reused the same textures and models for ever single map in the game, but then it would look bland and boring. Each map in PSU has it's own unique look and feel to it. The same is not true for games like Skyrim that reuse assets to give a larger world.

Morrowind is 4 years older than PSU, and it has large maps and towns to explore. San Andreas has a whole city as well. My comparison wasn't just about map sizes. It was about how much content the Phantasy Star Online games really have. When you look at it, there's a lot of rehashed stuff and playing the same things over and over again. It's worse than grinding in a typical MMO. I brought up Skyrim, because it is an example of a game with 100's of hours of gameplay, that doesn't rely on you doing same maps and simular missions over and over again. I could replace Skyrim with Morrowind and the statement would still be true.

There are plenty of ways around system memory restrictions, the first being that the PS2, or any other system, doesn't hold the the entire map for a game like San Andreas in memory. You can also see when PSU is loading enemy data off of the disc, right before they pop up on screen; it's not all being held in system memory.




As for PSP2's sales, In it's first 2 months on sale in Japan it sold closer to 600,000 copies, with almost half of it's sales being in it's first week. That's pretty impressive, especially considering Japan is a smaller country than the US. PSP2 Infinity has sold close to about $400,000 copies in Japan as well. Combined the portable Phantasy Star titles have sold well over 1 Million copies. Not to mention that's only including retail copies, digital copies are not included in those numbers. If Sega Advertised the game, they could have gotten a decent return on it.

You mean PSP 2nd, that sold 127,000 of it's units in 2010?

You keep overlooking that the PSP userbase is larger in Japan, than it is in any other region. No amount of advertising in North America would produce that many units sold of Phantasy Star Portable 2nd here. You're overestimating its appeal to the Western audience. You don't think that Sega doesn't know this, but you do?

http://www.the-magicbox.com/Chart-BestSell2011.shtml

001 [3DS] Mario Kart 7 (Nintendo) {2011-12-01} - 1,082,391
002 [3DS] Super Mario 3D Land (Nintendo) {2011-11-03} - 1,042,511
003 [PSP] Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (Capcom) {2010-12-01} - 1,021,457 / 4,502,446
004 [3DS] Monster Hunter Tri G (Capcom) {2011-12-10} - 809,322
005 [PS3] Final Fantasy XIII-2 (Square Enix) {2011-12-15} - 697,146
006 [PSP] Final Fantasy Type-0 (Square Enix) {2011-10-27} - 696,428
007 [WII] Rhythm Tengoku Fever (Nintendo) {2011-07-21} - 633,429
008 [PS3] Tales of Xillia (Bandai Namco) {2011-09-08} - 632,151
009 [WII] Wii Sports Resort (Nintendo) {2009-06-25} - 612,807 / 2,732,655
010 [WII] Wii Party (Nintendo) {2010-07-08} - 584,545 / 2,123,773

027 [PSP] Phantasy Star Portable 2: Infinity (SEGA) {2011-02-24} - 373,309




Phantasy Star now may be a niche product, but it didn't used to be. It's only in that situation now because Sega of America has failed numerous times to properly advertise the series. There were plenty of people who played the games. According to VG Charts PSO on Dreamcast, Xbox, and Gamecube combined sold over 1 million copies, but there's obvious gaps in the data. There's no data for the US and Europe for the Dreamcast versions, there's no data for the PC version or Blue Burst, there's very minimal amounts of data for Episode 1 and 2 plus, even though I know it was easy to find when it came out. Considering we are missing huge amounts of data, that still looks better than niche. And I know for a fact when PSO:BB was in open beta in the US, the servers were overflowing and it was at times almost impossible to log in.

If Sega made a decent attempt at advertising Phantasy Star, the games would probably sell at least on par with other JRPGs.

If the sales of Phantasy Star Portable 2: Infinity are any indication, the series is losing momentum in Japan as well.

I know for a fact that the original (free) PSO had an online userbase of 650K, during its peak on the Dreamcast. Who's to say that the sales of the game on Xbox and Gamecube were not partially filled by those that also had played the game on the DC?

[gamevet]

Skyrim reuses data at a ridiculous level. An article about XenoBlades graphics touches on this in this quote:



In Skyrim buildings and environments may be detailed, but in many cases they are put together using the same assets and building blocks as every other environment in the game. In Skyrim you may walk into a house that has lots of detail in the floor, the furniture, the vases, etc. But when you go next door you are probably going to see a lot of the same assets. Skyrim's world is pieced together reusing many of the same assets over and over again. PSU's Maps however are custom made for each mission and each variation of the mission. They are not simply the same models being reused and pieced together. That requires a lot more space.

That dude is a moron. Just about every videogame uses recycled texture, sprite or model data. Don't even try to tell me that PSU, or any of the other Phantasy Star Online games haven't used excessive amounts of recycled data, starting with the maps and palette swapped enemies.

Solitude, Whiterun and Markarth look nothing like eachother. They're totally different styles of architecture, with Whiterun being a Nordic village, Solitude looking more like an English castle and Markarth being carved out of a stone mountainside.
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aZzZBsWMk1M

VI-d6_0kZUE&feature=relmfu



You are also forgetting that Skyrim is on modern systems that can handle compressed textures. The PS2 cannot handle compressed textures. Before the texture goes into the GPU, it has to be uncompressed. That also saves a lot of space. As for the reason why PSU's maps are smaller, that's simple. PS2 only has 32MB of RAM total. Everything going on in the game at a given moment has to fit in that. So you need to have the space reserved for Your character's model and textures, your action palette and all it's models and textures, as well as your inventory. Multiply that by 6 for Online mode. You also have to have the data for each enemy type in the mission. You also have to have the Map layout and the textures and models in RAM. 32MB is not a lot, and it fills up fast.

This isn't just about compressed texture data. And the PS2 is certainly capable of decompressing data; it does it every time you see an MPEG video clip, which PSU has several of. Still, PSU on the PS2 only uses a single layer DVD, instead of the dual-layer (DVD-9) that the PS2 supports. That's a lot of unused space that could have been used for uncompressed texture data. PSU requires 8 gigs of HDD space, once it's decompressed from the DVD on the PC version of the game, btw.

I brought up Skyrim, because of how much it is doing, with the amount of space available on a DVD. I could exchange it with Morrowind (4 years older than PSU), a game that came on 2 CDs for the PC, and still had a lot more content than 5 years of PSU. You can even look towards the PS2 library, with a game like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, that has a virtual city for you to explore and exploit; It has massive amounts of things to do and explore.



So PSU's graphics are limited by what the PS2 is capable of. PSU's map sizes are limited by PS2's RAM. And the amount of content is limited by Disc Space. Sure you might have been able to get more content if you reused the same textures and models for ever single map in the game, but then it would look bland and boring. Each map in PSU has it's own unique look and feel to it. The same is not true for games like Skyrim that reuse assets to give a larger world.

See above. You're making up excuses for why Sega can get away with shortcuts, on a game that people payed $10 a month to play. If that $10 payed for the added content, Sega should have shipped AOI for free to everyone that payed for a year of that game.



As for PSP2's sales, In it's first 2 months on sale in Japan it sold closer to 600,000 copies, with almost half of it's sales being in it's first week. That's pretty impressive, especially considering Japan is a smaller country than the US. PSP2 Infinity has sold close to about $400,000 copies in Japan as well. Combined the portable Phantasy Star titles have sold well over 1 Million copies. Not to mention that's only including retail copies, digital copies are not included in those numbers. If Sega Advertised the game, they could have gotten a decent return on it.

Yeah, and then PSP2: Infinity sold a lot less (only 373k) than the previous title. Advertising should have kept it going strong, right?

http://www.the-magicbox.com/Chart-BestSell2011.shtml

027 [PSP] Phantasy Star Portable 2: Infinity (SEGA) {2011-02-24} - 373,309



The sales of Phantasy Star Portable games in Japan, does not mean that it will sell just as well to the rest of the world, especially when you consider that Japan is the PSPs best selling market. It's like expecting Grand Theft Auto IV and Modern Warfare 2 to sell big in Japan, when in fact they both sold around 100K at best there.




Phantasy Star now may be a niche product, but it didn't used to be. It's only in that situation now because Sega of America has failed numerous times to properly advertise the series. There were plenty of people who played the games. According to VG Charts PSO on Dreamcast, Xbox, and Gamecube combined sold over 1 million copies, but there's obvious gaps in the data. There's no data for the US and Europe for the Dreamcast versions, there's no data for the PC version or Blue Burst, there's very minimal amounts of data for Episode 1 and 2 plus, even though I know it was easy to find when it came out. Considering we are missing huge amounts of data, that still looks better than niche. And I know for a fact when PSO:BB was in open beta in the US, the servers were overflowing and it was at times almost impossible to log in.

If Sega made a decent attempt at advertising Phantasy Star, the games would probably sell at least on par with other JRPGs.

A good portion of those sales figures were for the Dreamcast version, that during its peak, had an online userbase of 100k + worldwide. The Gamecube version is considered pretty rare, or is heavily sought out, but I don't believe it cracked 80K sold here and the Xbox version probably didn't sell much better either.

Advertising isn't what killed Phantasy Star Online here. It was the moment that Sega decided to charge players monthly fees that killed it. I know I didn't take ver.2 online for very long, because the fees seemed unnecessary at the time. If Sega hadn't decided to start charging for online play with NFL2K2, the DC might have had even more momentum in North America with its online sports being way ahead of the competition.

[Lan Di]

I just cancelled my subscription. Too many bugs, too much time to spend on getting decent gear, and no dungeon queuing function. I'm thinking about giving up on MMOs altogether.

[Olls]

I canceled right after the free 30 day trial. The game to me feels like a single player RPG with some multi player features tacked on and I'm not going to subscribe to a monthly fee for a single player game.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

@gamevet.

Those numbers for PSO are not all for the Dreamcast version, in fact the Dreamcast version has most data missing. Half of those 1 million copies come from the Gamecube version. The Gamecube version of the game is not rare. The reason it costs so much on ebay is because it can be exploited to allow you to run homebrew apps on the Gamecube. It definitely sold more than 80k over here. According to vgcharts it sold closer it sold 230,000 copies in the US. And the Xbox version apparently sold around 110,000 copies in the US.

As for Infinity's sales being lower, you do realize that those numbers are only for the retail version right? The game is also available for download on PSN. And yes, I understand different markets buy different things, but a game selling as well as Phantasy Star does in Japan, and how well it's known, does justify advertising it.

And you're right, other games do recycle textures and what not. But Skyrim does a little more than this. Skyrim takes a bunch of pieces from it's assets and pieces them together to make the map for the current area you are in. PSU doesn't do this. In PSU each map is individually made and stored for each area. This makes maps more unique for an instance based MMO. However it also takes up space. For example, one mission area may have as many as 15+ maps. Other missions may reuse some maps, but some maps can't be reused because they are either story specific or they are boss maps and if the mission doesn't have a boss battle, that map can't be used. And if you wan't a night time or dusk mission, you can't use any maps from daytime variations of the area. You have to make new maps that use the night time textures and assets. This is simply how PSU works.

You also can't have very large maps either. The reason is PS2 RAM limitations. This is why PSU's mission areas are broken into smaller blocks with only 3 enemy types per block. The game has to have space to store 6 players, their inventories, their skills, etc. as well as maps and enemy data. That all has to fit into the PS2's puny memory. And the PS2 can't handle texture compression either. Yeah it can decompress them in software, but when they go to the GPU they have to be decompressed. Dreamcast, Gamecube, Xbox and up can all handle texture compression. This allows them to save lots of space in RAM that would be used for textures. This is why so many Dreamcast games have better texture quality and more texutre variety than a lot of PS2 games. PS2 the textures have to be decompressed in RAM before they can be sent to the GPU. This again hurts PSU and is why so many areas don't seem to have the texture variety that PSO had.

That's great the PC version of PSU takes up 8 GB (The JP expansion client takes up around 6.8 GB btw). But you are forgetting it also has the benefit of being able to use better compression since it can decompress data during installation, and take all the time it wants. PS2 PSU has to decompress data on the fly, which means it has to be quick, and the end result must fit in less than 32 MB of RAM. Regardless of what the other systems the game is on can do, PSU still had to be designed to work for the lowest common denominator, the PS2. PS2 PSU takes up a little under 4GB when you analyze the disc.

[gamevet]

@gamevet.

Those numbers for PSO are not all for the Dreamcast version, in fact the Dreamcast version has most data missing. Half of those 1 million copies come from the Gamecube version. The Gamecube version of the game is not rare. The reason it costs so much on ebay is because it can be exploited to allow you to run homebrew apps on the Gamecube. It definitely sold more than 80k over here. According to vgcharts it sold closer it sold 230,000 copies in the US. And the Xbox version apparently sold around 110,000 copies in the US.

Yeah, I looked it over a bit more. The GC version's sales figures also include the plus version. Between the Xbox and Gamecube it sold about 455,000 worldwide, while the 387,457 sold for the Dreamcast are only those sold in Japan.

http://forums.sega.com/showthread.php?74859-SEGA-Sales-Figures-(Ancient-to-Fairly-New)



Phantasy Star Online Versions 1 and 2 DC 387,457 j
Phantasy Star Online Part 1 & 2 (w/ Plus) GCN/XB 455,711 w


http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=Phantasy+Star+Online



As for Infinity's sales being lower, you do realize that those numbers are only for the retail version right? The game is also available for download on PSN. And yes, I understand different markets buy different things, but a game selling as well as Phantasy Star does in Japan, and how well it's known, does justify advertising it.

The previous title was available for download as well, so that pretty much negates the fact that Infinity's numbers don't include download.




And you're right, other games do recycle textures and what not. But Skyrim does a little more than this. Skyrim takes a bunch of pieces from it's assets and pieces them together to make the map for the current area you are in.

No, it doesn't. Yeah, the game uses many of the same pieces to create small rock formations, a well placed stump or marker, a rolling hill, but there are so many unique places to explore that don't look anything like the world around it. Markarth has Elvin mines with walls made of copper, while North of the Magician's guild, there is a cave carved out of the ice. Then you have a multitude of various weapons, armor, potions and items used for crafting.

Agisbane

http://www.ign.com/wikis/the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim/Unique_Items

I've already shown you 3 cities that had very different architectures, and set pieces unlike eachother. Yeah, small villages and farm towns use recycled buildings and set pieces, but most of the world does not. There are small side missions that have caves that use a very generic set of pieces that are obviously very simular to eachother, but those are not the majority of what you have to explore.

I honestly don't believe you have played Skyrim, so you're making judgements based on one silly reviewer that doesn't have a clue.



PSU doesn't do this. In PSU each map is individually made and stored for each area. This makes maps more unique for an instance based MMO. However it also takes up space. For example, one mission area may have as many as 15+ maps. Other missions may reuse some maps, but some maps can't be reused because they are either story specific or they are boss maps and if the mission doesn't have a boss battle, that map can't be used. And if you wan't a night time or dusk mission, you can't use any maps from daytime variations of the area. You have to make new maps that use the night time textures and assets. This is simply how PSU works.

I've played all of the Phantasy Star Online games up to Phantasy Star Portable, including Blue Burst. Those titles recycle map data way beyond what Skyrim or any of the Elder Scroll games have. Those Phanstasy Star maps are pretty much created like Dungeon Maker, with bits and pieces strung together to make maps. And yes, Skyrim does have night and daytime throughout the world, along with weather changes.



You also can't have very large maps either. The reason is PS2 RAM limitations. This is why PSU's mission areas are broken into smaller blocks with only 3 enemy types per block. The game has to have space to store 6 players, their inventories, their skills, etc. as well as maps and enemy data. That all has to fit into the PS2's puny memory. And the PS2 can't handle texture compression either. Yeah it can decompress them in software, but when they go to the GPU they have to be decompressed. Dreamcast, Gamecube, Xbox and up can all handle texture compression. This allows them to save lots of space in RAM that would be used for textures. This is why so many Dreamcast games have better texture quality and more texutre variety than a lot of PS2 games. PS2 the textures have to be decompressed in RAM before they can be sent to the GPU. This again hurts PSU and is why so many areas don't seem to have the texture variety that PSO had.

PSO had multi-tiered levels that would load once everyone entered a transport. System memory shouldn't be used as an excuse, as I've pointed out games like GTA: San Andreas that had a whole city to map out before you.



That's great the PC version of PSU takes up 8 GB (The JP expansion client takes up around 6.8 GB btw). But you are forgetting it also has the benefit of being able to use better compression since it can decompress data during installation, and take all the time it wants. PS2 PSU has to decompress data on the fly, which means it has to be quick, and the end result must fit in less than 32 MB of RAM. Regardless of what the other systems the game is on can do, PSU still had to be designed to work for the lowest common denominator, the PS2. PS2 PSU takes up a little under 4GB when you analyze the disc.

The PS2 had the option of DVD-9, so that isn't an excuse. PSU could have just as easily been 8 gigs on the PS2, with the option of a dual-layer DVD.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Dreamcast can do texture compression, and it has 8MB of dedicated Video Memory. That makes a very big difference. Throw in the fact that Dreamcast only had to deal with 4 characters with inventories of only 30 items each and it starts to make sense why PSU is broken up into smaller areas. All the textures have to sit in PS2's 32MB of RAM uncompressed, along with each enemy, it's data, and still have room for 6 characters and their 60 item inventories. Not to mention PSO's maps are designed for being reused. PSO's maps use a handful of unique rooms reused over and over and connected by corridors. The areas that use mostly unique rooms are also very small by comparison. PSU on the other hand uses more unique rooms that are typically larger than your usual PSO room.

PSO's drop system is completely different too. PSO's drop system is by area and section ID. Each enemy can only drop one item per difficulty, and it's determined by Section ID. So when you load up Ruins 3, only one drop table is loaded. PSU's drop system is different from this. PSU each enemy has it's own drop table. What an enemy drops is based on it's level. Level brackets are defined in 10 level increments up until around level 100, then the increment gets larger. Each enemy also has a special drop which has the ability to drop regardless of level. Not only does this make drop tables significantly larger than PSO's, it also means that you need to have multiple drop tables loaded for each enemy you use in a mission.

Combining all this it's easy to see why PSU's missions are divided into small blocks with only 3 enemy types each. You don't see more enemy types until you change blocks. As for games like GTA, those games are single player, so that reduces memory overhead a bit. Not to mention the entire city isn't really all there at once. In many cases it's broken up into smaller sections that load into memory when you cross a certain point.

Not to mention that GTAs graphics are rather basic and repetitive compared to PSUs:

J3aG5oA-YWQ

As for disc space, how many individual Music tracks does Skyrim have? Looking at it's OST I count about 52 individual tracks. Looking through PSU's data I count over 165 individual music tracks. That's over 3 times as many. That takes up quite a bit of disc space. Throw in FMVs for story mode and you start to run out of space.

Close to 700 MB of data in PSU is used for FMV alone. Considering there's 165+ music tracks, which range from 3-15MB in size, that adds up quick. If we average that to around say 8MB each, thats over 1.2 GB worth of music in the game. So this means that almost 2 GB of that single layer DVD are used up in Music and FMV alone. As you can see we are left with half of the DVD space now for maps. But wait, we haven't thrown in the voice and sound effect data. That comes to about 300 MB in the US version. In the Japanese version it's even more since every bit of text dialog in story missions has voice acting to go with it. However that's not all, we still have individual quest files. All of those combined come to about 170. As you can see now, we have about 1.5 GB of data left for Maps and other graphical data. But there's still offline weapon data, as well as enemy data. When we're all said and done, I'd say there's maybe 1 GB of space left for map data.

And you didn't understand what I was saying about Night and Day variations of Maps. Skyrim uses the same map for night and day obviously. PSU does not. In PSU if you want a mission to be at night, you need an entirely new map that uses textures and data for night. Because of this one area that has about 7 different map variations requires at least double that if you want to be able to use it for night time missions. Raffon Lakeshore has daytime, nighttime, and dusk variations. That's well over 20 different maps for one area. There's well over 100 maps for free missions in the game, that doesn't include story missions and other missions that use more unique maps. And you also have to remember there needs to be space for all the textures and models as well.

What's obviously taking up a lot of space here are the assets for the offline and online story mode. PSO was able to save space by making it's story mode minimal and use all of the same assets and maps as online multiplayer mode. PSU has it's own set of specific maps just for story mode, as well as cutscene data.

As for reusing data, PSU in many cases appears to be reusing map data, but it's actually a different map file, even if the only difference is the skybox being used. It's still stored separately on the disc. PSU also doesn't reuse textures as much as a game like Skyrim does. Skyrim sacrifices texture variety for model variety (though it still reuses it's fair share of models). PSU takes the opposite approach, it sacrifices more model variety for texture variety. Textures typically will take up more space than models.

Am I saying this is a good reason? No, I am saying however that being made for a System with minimal RAM and no HDD did limit PSU quite a bit. The fact that the game has improved and grown tremendously after that limitation was removed is proof of that. As for why they didn't use a dual layer DVD, I don't know. Maybe the same reason they put Phantasy Star 2 on a 6 Megabit cart instead of a 32 Megabit cart?

[Pulstar]

I'm thinking about giving up on MMOs altogether.

http://allthingslearning.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/walk-your-talk-face-feet.jpg

Time can certainly serve you better doing other things.

[gamevet]

Dreamcast can do texture compression, and it has 8MB of dedicated Video Memory. That makes a very big difference. Throw in the fact that Dreamcast only had to deal with 4 characters with inventories of only 30 items each and it starts to make sense why PSU is broken up into smaller areas. All the textures have to sit in PS2's 32MB of RAM uncompressed, along with each enemy, it's data, and still have room for 6 characters and their 60 item inventories. Not to mention PSO's maps are designed for being reused. PSO's maps use a handful of unique rooms reused over and over and connected by corridors. The areas that use mostly unique rooms are also very small by comparison. PSU on the other hand uses more unique rooms that are typically larger than your usual PSO room.

The Dreamcast also has only 16MB of system RAM to work with. Yeah, PSO has very few maps, because Sega had to fit it all on 1 gig of disc space. That's why Shenmue is on 3 discs.

As far inventory goes, that's hardly 1K worth of information and it's not shared between the 6 players systems while playing online.



PSO's drop system is completely different too. PSO's drop system is by area and section ID. Each enemy can only drop one item per difficulty, and it's determined by Section ID. So when you load up Ruins 3, only one drop table is loaded. PSU's drop system is different from this. PSU each enemy has it's own drop table. What an enemy drops is based on it's level. Level brackets are defined in 10 level increments up until around level 100, then the increment gets larger. Each enemy also has a special drop which has the ability to drop regardless of level. Not only does this make drop tables significantly larger than PSO's, it also means that you need to have multiple drop tables loaded for each enemy you use in a mission.

I've already told you that I've played PSO (I was online the first week it game out in the US) and PSO Ver.2. Why are you telling me something that every player of PSO knows?

I've attached pictures of my characters from PSO and PSO Ver. 2. Yeah, they're only level 30 (Greennill) and 33 (Bluefill), but my level 50 Humar was lost with my Dreamcast when it was stolen back in late 2001. Notice the Robochao and God/Ability++, those were duped items that were given to me. People weren't selling those items, as you say, they were giving them away.



Combining all this it's easy to see why PSU's missions are divided into small blocks with only 3 enemy types each. You don't see more enemy types until you change blocks. As for games like GTA, those games are single player, so that reduces memory overhead a bit. Not to mention the entire city isn't really all there at once. In many cases it's broken up into smaller sections that load into memory when you cross a certain point.

You've pretty much mentioned what every game does. PSU doesn't hold the whole map in system memory, like you think it does. It doesn't have to, since you're pretty much stuck in one area until the battles are completed. It doesn't matter what the other player is doing, because his system is handling the graphics for what he's doing, not you.


Not to mention that GTAs graphics are rather basic and repetitive compared to PSUs:

It's still the map of a whole city within a single DVD's space. It also has other vehicles and people to account for as you run around.

J3aG5oA-YWQ

This video shows exactly what I'm talking about. Did you notice the same plant popping up everywhere?


As for disc space, how many individual Music tracks does Skyrim have? Looking at it's OST I count about 52 individual tracks. Looking through PSU's data I count over 165 individual music tracks. That's over 3 times as many. That takes up quite a bit of disc space. Throw in FMVs for story mode and you start to run out of space.

Skyrim is loaded with voice samples for all of the conversations you have with NPCs and the NPCs talking as you walk through towns and areas.

The OST for PSU is 69 songs, some of which aren't that long.

69

http://www.ffinsider.net/soundtracks/for-brighter-day-phantasy-star-universe.html



Close to 700 MB of data in PSU is used for FMV alone. Considering there's 165+ music tracks, which range from 3-15MB in size, that adds up quick. If we average that to around say 8MB each, thats over 1.2 GB worth of music in the game. So this means that almost 2 GB of that single layer DVD are used up in Music and FMV alone. As you can see we are left with half of the DVD space now for maps. But wait, we haven't thrown in the voice and sound effect data. That comes to about 300 MB in the US version. In the Japanese version it's even more since every bit of text dialog in story missions has voice acting to go with it. However that's not all, we still have individual quest files. All of those combined come to about 170. As you can see now, we have about 1.5 GB of data left for Maps and other graphical data. But there's still offline weapon data, as well as enemy data. When we're all said and done, I'd say there's maybe 1 GB of space left for map data.

If that is true, what does that tell you? That the meat of the game is recycled textures and models, since they don't have much room left on the disc. This game should have been on a dual-layer DVD, especially when you consider that people were paying $120 for a year of playtime.



And you didn't understand what I was saying about Night and Day variations of Maps. Skyrim uses the same map for night and day obviously. PSU does not. In PSU if you want a mission to be at night, you need an entirely new map that uses textures and data for night. Because of this one area that has about 7 different map variations requires at least double that if you want to be able to use it for night time missions. Raffon Lakeshore has daytime, nighttime, and dusk variations. That's well over 20 different maps for one area. There's well over 100 maps for free missions in the game, that doesn't include story missions and other missions that use more unique maps. And you also have to remember there needs to be space for all the textures and models as well.

You obviously don't understand how it works then.

Did you notice how you can see dark patches in the Raffon fields, as the clouds pass by? That's call light sourcing. A map being darker isn't new textures, but the amount of light the object reflects is dimmed to the lowest levels. The ground, the enemies and even your characters are darker, but that is not new textures. The map layouts pretty much remained the same as well; I don't recall them being any different during night and day, but I remember hating that I couldn't see the enemies until they were right on top of me.



What's obviously taking up a lot of space here are the assets for the offline and online story mode. PSO was able to save space by making it's story mode minimal and use all of the same assets and maps as online multiplayer mode. PSU has it's own set of specific maps just for story mode, as well as cutscene data.

As for reusing data, PSU in many cases appears to be reusing map data, but it's actually a different map file, even if the only difference is the skybox being used. It's still stored separately on the disc. PSU also doesn't reuse textures as much as a game like Skyrim does. Skyrim sacrifices texture variety for model variety (though it still reuses it's fair share of models). PSU takes the opposite approach, it sacrifices more model variety for texture variety. Textures typically will take up more space than models.

Until you have played Skyrim, you're grasping at straws. The variety of textures and models is far beyond what PSU is doing and even Shenmue with its 3 gigs of disc space shows more variety than PSU.

PSU is very guilty of reusing assetts throughout multiple maps. It's not as bad as what PSO does, but it's very obvious, and way beyond what any RPG has done in the past 10 years.



Am I saying this is a good reason? No, I am saying however that being made for a System with minimal RAM and no HDD did limit PSU quite a bit. The fact that the game has improved and grown tremendously after that limitation was removed is proof of that. As for why they didn't use a dual layer DVD, I don't know. Maybe the same reason they put Phantasy Star 2 on a 6 Megabit cart instead of a 32 Megabit cart?

That's an apples to oranges comparison. Putting Phantasy Star 2 on a 32Mb cart would have been very expensive back in 1989, as was putting PSIV on a 48Mb cart 4 years later. Using a dual-layer disc would have costed maybe an additional 50 cents in manufacturing costs, but Sega didn't need to, because they didn't want to put the extra resources behind adding additional texture and model data. The additional map data isn't exacty a space hogging amount at all, and it's just a more advanced version of RPG maker, in the way it goes about making those maps.

[gamevet]

Dreamcast can do texture compression, and it has 8MB of dedicated Video Memory. That makes a very big difference. Throw in the fact that Dreamcast only had to deal with 4 characters with inventories of only 30 items each and it starts to make sense why PSU is broken up into smaller areas. All the textures have to sit in PS2's 32MB of RAM uncompressed, along with each enemy, it's data, and still have room for 6 characters and their 60 item inventories. Not to mention PSO's maps are designed for being reused. PSO's maps use a handful of unique rooms reused over and over and connected by corridors. The areas that use mostly unique rooms are also very small by comparison. PSU on the other hand uses more unique rooms that are typically larger than your usual PSO room.

The Dreamcast also has only 16MB of system RAM to work with. Yeah, PSO has very few maps, because Sega had to fit it all on 1 gig of disc space. That's why Shenmue is on 3 discs.

As far inventory goes, that's hardly 1K worth of information and it's not shared between the 6 players systems while playing online.



PSO's drop system is completely different too. PSO's drop system is by area and section ID. Each enemy can only drop one item per difficulty, and it's determined by Section ID. So when you load up Ruins 3, only one drop table is loaded. PSU's drop system is different from this. PSU each enemy has it's own drop table. What an enemy drops is based on it's level. Level brackets are defined in 10 level increments up until around level 100, then the increment gets larger. Each enemy also has a special drop which has the ability to drop regardless of level. Not only does this make drop tables significantly larger than PSO's, it also means that you need to have multiple drop tables loaded for each enemy you use in a mission.

I've already told you that I've played PSO (I was online the first week it game out in the US) and PSO Ver.2. Why are you telling me something that every player of PSO knows?

I've attached pictures of my characters from PSO and PSO Ver. 2. Yeah, they're only level 30 (Greennill) and 33 (Bluefill), but my level 50 Humar was lost with my Dreamcast when it was stolen back in late 2001. Notice the Robochao and God/Ability++, those were duped items that were given to me. People weren't selling those items, as you say, they were giving them away.



Combining all this it's easy to see why PSU's missions are divided into small blocks with only 3 enemy types each. You don't see more enemy types until you change blocks. As for games like GTA, those games are single player, so that reduces memory overhead a bit. Not to mention the entire city isn't really all there at once. In many cases it's broken up into smaller sections that load into memory when you cross a certain point.

You've pretty much mentioned what every game does. PSU doesn't hold the whole map in system memory, like you think it does. It doesn't have to, since you're pretty much stuck in one area until the battles are completed. It doesn't matter what the other player is doing, because his system is handling the graphics for what he's doing, not you.


Not to mention that GTAs graphics are rather basic and repetitive compared to PSUs:

It's still the map of a whole city within a single DVD's space. It also has other vehicles and people to account for as you run around.

J3aG5oA-YWQ

This video shows exactly what I'm talking about. Did you notice the same plant popping up everywhere?


As for disc space, how many individual Music tracks does Skyrim have? Looking at it's OST I count about 52 individual tracks. Looking through PSU's data I count over 165 individual music tracks. That's over 3 times as many. That takes up quite a bit of disc space. Throw in FMVs for story mode and you start to run out of space.

Skyrim is loaded with voice samples for all of the conversations you have with NPCs and the NPCs talking as you walk through towns and areas.

The OST for PSU is 69 songs, some of which aren't that long.

69

http://www.ffinsider.net/soundtracks/for-brighter-day-phantasy-star-universe.html



Close to 700 MB of data in PSU is used for FMV alone. Considering there's 165+ music tracks, which range from 3-15MB in size, that adds up quick. If we average that to around say 8MB each, thats over 1.2 GB worth of music in the game. So this means that almost 2 GB of that single layer DVD are used up in Music and FMV alone. As you can see we are left with half of the DVD space now for maps. But wait, we haven't thrown in the voice and sound effect data. That comes to about 300 MB in the US version. In the Japanese version it's even more since every bit of text dialog in story missions has voice acting to go with it. However that's not all, we still have individual quest files. All of those combined come to about 170. As you can see now, we have about 1.5 GB of data left for Maps and other graphical data. But there's still offline weapon data, as well as enemy data. When we're all said and done, I'd say there's maybe 1 GB of space left for map data.

If that is true, what does that tell you? That the meat of the game is recycled textures and models, since they don't have much room left on the disc. This game should have been on a dual-layer DVD, especially when you consider that people were paying $120 for a year of playtime.



And you didn't understand what I was saying about Night and Day variations of Maps. Skyrim uses the same map for night and day obviously. PSU does not. In PSU if you want a mission to be at night, you need an entirely new map that uses textures and data for night. Because of this one area that has about 7 different map variations requires at least double that if you want to be able to use it for night time missions. Raffon Lakeshore has daytime, nighttime, and dusk variations. That's well over 20 different maps for one area. There's well over 100 maps for free missions in the game, that doesn't include story missions and other missions that use more unique maps. And you also have to remember there needs to be space for all the textures and models as well.

You obviously don't understand how it works then.

Did you notice how you can see dark patches in the Raffon fields, as the clouds pass by? That's call light sourcing. A map being darker isn't new textures, but the amount of light the object reflects is dimmed to the lowest levels. The ground, the enemies and even your characters are darker, but that is not new textures. The map layouts pretty much remained the same as well; I don't recall them being any different during night and day, but I remember hating that I couldn't see the enemies until they were right on top of me.



What's obviously taking up a lot of space here are the assets for the offline and online story mode. PSO was able to save space by making it's story mode minimal and use all of the same assets and maps as online multiplayer mode. PSU has it's own set of specific maps just for story mode, as well as cutscene data.

As for reusing data, PSU in many cases appears to be reusing map data, but it's actually a different map file, even if the only difference is the skybox being used. It's still stored separately on the disc. PSU also doesn't reuse textures as much as a game like Skyrim does. Skyrim sacrifices texture variety for model variety (though it still reuses it's fair share of models). PSU takes the opposite approach, it sacrifices more model variety for texture variety. Textures typically will take up more space than models.

Until you have played Skyrim, you're grasping at straws. The variety of textures and models is far beyond what PSU is doing and even Shenmue with its 3 gigs of disc space shows more variety than PSU.

PSU is very guilty of reusing assetts throughout multiple maps. It's not as bad as what PSO does, but it's very obvious, and way beyond what any RPG has done in the past 10 years.



Am I saying this is a good reason? No, I am saying however that being made for a System with minimal RAM and no HDD did limit PSU quite a bit. The fact that the game has improved and grown tremendously after that limitation was removed is proof of that. As for why they didn't use a dual layer DVD, I don't know. Maybe the same reason they put Phantasy Star 2 on a 6 Megabit cart instead of a 32 Megabit cart?

That's an apples to oranges comparison. Putting Phantasy Star 2 on a 32Mb cart would have been very expensive back in 1989, as was putting PSIV on a 48Mb cart 4 to 5 years later. Using a dual-layer disc would have costed maybe an additional 50 cents in manufacturing costs, but Sega didn't need to, because they didn't want to put the extra resources behind adding additional texture and model data. The additional map data isn't exacty a space hogging amount at all, and it's just a more advanced version of RPG maker, in the way it goes about making those maps.

[gamevet]

Test


Dreamcast can do texture compression, and it has 8MB of dedicated Video Memory. That makes a very big difference. Throw in the fact that Dreamcast only had to deal with 4 characters with inventories of only 30 items each and it starts to make sense why PSU is broken up into smaller areas. All the textures have to sit in PS2's 32MB of RAM uncompressed, along with each enemy, it's data, and still have room for 6 characters and their 60 item inventories. Not to mention PSO's maps are designed for being reused. PSO's maps use a handful of unique rooms reused over and over and connected by corridors. The areas that use mostly unique rooms are also very small by comparison. PSU on the other hand uses more unique rooms that are typically larger than your usual PSO room.

The Dreamcast also has only 16MB of system RAM to work with. Yeah, PSO has very few maps, because Sega had to fit it all on 1 gig of disc space. That's why Shenmue is on 3 discs.

As far as inventory goes, that's hardly 1K worth of information and it's not shared between the 6 players' systems while playing online.



PSO's drop system is completely different too. PSO's drop system is by area and section ID. Each enemy can only drop one item per difficulty, and it's determined by Section ID. So when you load up Ruins 3, only one drop table is loaded. PSU's drop system is different from this. PSU each enemy has it's own drop table. What an enemy drops is based on it's level. Level brackets are defined in 10 level increments up until around level 100, then the increment gets larger. Each enemy also has a special drop which has the ability to drop regardless of level. Not only does this make drop tables significantly larger than PSO's, it also means that you need to have multiple drop tables loaded for each enemy you use in a mission.

I've already told you that I've played PSO (I was online the first week it game out in the US) and PSO Ver.2. Why are you telling me something that every player of PSO knows?

I've attached pictures of my characters from PSO and PSO Ver. 2. Yeah, they're only level 30 (Greennill) and 33 (Bluefill), but my level 50 Humar was lost with my Dreamcast when it was stolen back in late 2001. Notice the Robochao and God/Ability++, those were duped items that were given to me. People weren't selling those items, as you say, they were giving them away.



Combining all this it's easy to see why PSU's missions are divided into small blocks with only 3 enemy types each. You don't see more enemy types until you change blocks. As for games like GTA, those games are single player, so that reduces memory overhead a bit. Not to mention the entire city isn't really all there at once. In many cases it's broken up into smaller sections that load into memory when you cross a certain point.

You've pretty much mentioned what every game does. PSU doesn't hold the whole map in system memory, like you think it does. It doesn't have to, since you're pretty much stuck in one area until the battles are completed. It doesn't matter what the other player is doing, because his system is handling the graphics for what he's doing, not you.


Not to mention that GTAs graphics are rather basic and repetitive compared to PSUs:

It's still the map of a whole city within a single DVD's space. It also has other vehicles and people to account for as you run around.

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This video shows exactly what I'm talking about. Did you notice the same plant popping up everywhere?


As for disc space, how many individual Music tracks does Skyrim have? Looking at it's OST I count about 52 individual tracks. Looking through PSU's data I count over 165 individual music tracks. That's over 3 times as many. That takes up quite a bit of disc space. Throw in FMVs for story mode and you start to run out of space.

Skyrim is loaded with voice samples for all of the conversations you have with NPCs and the NPCs talking to eachother as you walk through towns and areas.

The OST for PSU is 69 songs, some of which aren't that long.

69

http://www.ffinsider.net/soundtracks/for-brighter-day-phantasy-star-universe.html



Close to 700 MB of data in PSU is used for FMV alone. Considering there's 165+ music tracks, which range from 3-15MB in size, that adds up quick. If we average that to around say 8MB each, thats over 1.2 GB worth of music in the game. So this means that almost 2 GB of that single layer DVD are used up in Music and FMV alone. As you can see we are left with half of the DVD space now for maps. But wait, we haven't thrown in the voice and sound effect data. That comes to about 300 MB in the US version. In the Japanese version it's even more since every bit of text dialog in story missions has voice acting to go with it. However that's not all, we still have individual quest files. All of those combined come to about 170. As you can see now, we have about 1.5 GB of data left for Maps and other graphical data. But there's still offline weapon data, as well as enemy data. When we're all said and done, I'd say there's maybe 1 GB of space left for map data.

If that is true, what does that tell you? That the meat of the game is recycled textures and models, since they don't have much room left on the disc. This game should have been on a dual-layer DVD, especially when you consider that people were paying $120 for a year of playtime.



And you didn't understand what I was saying about Night and Day variations of Maps. Skyrim uses the same map for night and day obviously. PSU does not. In PSU if you want a mission to be at night, you need an entirely new map that uses textures and data for night. Because of this one area that has about 7 different map variations requires at least double that if you want to be able to use it for night time missions. Raffon Lakeshore has daytime, nighttime, and dusk variations. That's well over 20 different maps for one area. There's well over 100 maps for free missions in the game, that doesn't include story missions and other missions that use more unique maps. And you also have to remember there needs to be space for all the textures and models as well.

You obviously don't understand how it works then.

Did you notice how you can see dark patches in the Raffon fields, as the clouds pass by? That's call light sourcing. A map being darker isn't new textures, but the amount of light the object reflects is dimmed to the lowest levels. The ground, the enemies and even your characters are darker, but that is not new textures. The map layouts pretty much remained the same as well; I don't recall them being any different during night and day, but I remember hating that I couldn't see the enemies until they were right on top of me.



What's obviously taking up a lot of space here are the assets for the offline and online story mode. PSO was able to save space by making it's story mode minimal and use all of the same assets and maps as online multiplayer mode. PSU has it's own set of specific maps just for story mode, as well as cutscene data.

As for reusing data, PSU in many cases appears to be reusing map data, but it's actually a different map file, even if the only difference is the skybox being used. It's still stored separately on the disc. PSU also doesn't reuse textures as much as a game like Skyrim does. Skyrim sacrifices texture variety for model variety (though it still reuses it's fair share of models). PSU takes the opposite approach, it sacrifices more model variety for texture variety. Textures typically will take up more space than models.

Until you have played Skyrim, you're grasping at straws. The variety of textures and models is far beyond what PSU is doing and even Shenmue with its 3 gigs of disc space shows more variety than PSU.

PSU is very guilty of reusing assetts throughout multiple maps. It's not as bad as what PSO does, but it's very obvious, and way beyond what any RPG has done in the past 10 years.



Am I saying this is a good reason? No, I am saying however that being made for a System with minimal RAM and no HDD did limit PSU quite a bit. The fact that the game has improved and grown tremendously after that limitation was removed is proof of that. As for why they didn't use a dual layer DVD, I don't know. Maybe the same reason they put Phantasy Star 2 on a 6 Megabit cart instead of a 32 Megabit cart?

That's an apples to oranges comparison. Putting Phantasy Star 2 on a 32Mb cart would have been very expensive back in 1989, as was putting PSIV on a 48Mb cart 4 years later. Using a dual-layer disc would have costed maybe an additional 50 cents in manufacturing costs, but Sega didn't need to, because they didn't want to put the extra resources behind adding additional texture and model data. The additional map data isn't exacty a space hogging amount at all, and it's just a more advanced version of RPG maker, in the way it goes about making those maps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_2_DVD-9_games

I'm not trying to shit on your beloved PSU, but I feel that Sega could have done so much more with the title, considering it was a pay to play online game.