It has been a constant motto in the community how 'respectful' NGS is to their fanbase, by allowing people to enjoy the game at their own pace and being very open to every kind of gamer; i.e, in other words: full copium for SEGA's dreadful and slow pace in delivering content.
That's the bottom line. The toxic positivity, which permeates even the official discord, is surely a damning achilles tendon that keeps any outer circle voice to even suggest successful ideas from other games. Let me say it like this: It is not bad to ask and be critical of SEGA's management. It does not automatically equate you to a Syberdumb drone, ok? If you like the game as is now, no problem with that, just don't gaslight people into not wanting different or better things.
But screaming at clouds while I see my old SegaNet PSO card won't do anything, and it is not even the theme of this post. Alas, as a compensation for two weeks absent from updating the website, there goes some new cosplay files. One of my problems with NGS is how it lacks any interest in fostering the competitive soul of players in its core game. I don't mean the Linestrike league.
Surely, SEGA in the past has used the deep community ties in its japanese events to promote some kind of competition in the mecha modes, and eventually its PVP mode. Also, the rankings for the roguelike mode pso2 were also source of fun beyond the usual exchanging points to get weapon camos.
It does not mean they did wrong. Having separate elements can be good to keep a tight focus on the core main game meta (which kinda went to hell in a handbasket with the ring system and the new classes) but it did also let the game community lie on side content and not engage together with its alliance systems on more competitive elements. Whoever wanted to engage in side content would do at their own volition, it wasn't a event that really moved the whole set of alliances over something greater.
Well, in NGS terms, SEGA releases every now and then R2 versions of their new Major Bosses as they are... just that. They give you 20SG for weekly kills and kind of says "have fun". I think it is an understatement if I say how mediocre this approach is, even without considering huge changes or events at all. I think beating the boss at least in its own first month zeitgeist (its purest form) could be awarded with some title or something bigger. Limited tasks are not really enough in my honest opinion.
But still, the community gathers and exchanges information, develop strategies, share times and videos of it. And that is where I realized how interesting and untapped is the potential that SEGA is leaving on the table. If people do compete at their own terms with barely receiving anything back, it means there is something to be developed. In a analogy, if Capcom in the 90s hadn't paid attention to SF2 bootlegs with crazy moves and limitations removed, There wouldn't have been a Marvel Vs Capcom gameplay with flashiness and crazy moves to begin with. Should I talk about Team Fortress coming from modders, or Battle Royale as a genre being kickstarted in ARMA mod scene? If there are players moving themselves over some shared content, there is fire. And we can talk about this, even if we are not part of any special inner circle.
I play Nikke, and on Nikke every two months Shift Up hosts and Union Raid, which basically is an event that gathers alliances over the objective of killing waves of 10 bosses separated by difficulty cyclic getting harder waves (being 7, counting then 70 bosses to kill). Players need to organize themselves to beat as many bosses as possible (each person having 3 chances of engaging in combat, so best case scenario is each person effectively killing 3 bosses, or at least killing two and weakening a third one). Players engage in these raids for the items they give, which are core items to evolve cubes, that are of a similar concept to rings, which boost certain chracateristics onf the nikkes you choose to equipe them. These are given away after the calculation of placement, that takes into account how many bosses they beaten and (for the big ones) how fast these groups were to conclude this. The best and fastest, the higher you are.
And that is where my idea of competitive function for alliances comes from. Of course, SEGA 'could' do something reusing their recycled bosses and follow through the same, using leciel and such, but I'm not even thinking about this. What I went with when suggesting something akin was giving a release of each R2 a 'hype' status. How?
Speedrunners and Highscores all over the world compete over fixed versions of their games. Super Mario 3 still is the same game from 30 years ago. But beating Dark Falz Dailion R2 on release is not the same as beating it one month and a half later. You get new augs, new level caps, new weapons, a new meta comes. Making the release of an R2 in my opinion should move people to try it not only because they want, but because it can lead to their own growth in the game. If I hadn't pushed myself to beat Dailion R2, I wouldn't have seek help of Tonyabf and friends and wouldn't have made proper changes to my tabs, equpments, gear for M.A.R.S or Canon moments.
What I say is that institutionalizing growth and competitiveness IS a nice way of fostering engagement with the game. It feels less like we are stalling waiting for content. The same way we have super player friendly events on seasonals, we should also have more competitive events.
My draft idea was:
Topic: Engage community on every new Major Boss or R2 with ranking score/speedrun event for a given time (1~2 weeks)
Reason: Currently the only rankings are mostly ARKS records that are hugely exploited and mean barely anything without taking minimum requirements in consideration. My proposal is very similar to what other service games do to engage their hardcore community. As a new boss or R2/R3 approaches, lock the promotion of new members for a month on alliances. Members from member status up to officials and owner are eligible ranking wise to engage in a 2-week special queue for ranking placement for in the new available rank or boss BY ALLIANCE. Reward players with SG, exclusive badges, special Build Parts that cherish the victory in the competitions or MAGs so as to make the people that love the game feel rewarded, instead of just paying them 20sg a week for completionism (leave this for after the event ends).
Why: The core reason is increasing the competition sense in the min-maxing and soft-hardcore community and also fostering players to improve their runs and themselves. As of now, there is little to no reason to engage in this kind of activity because structurally PSO does not value the effort on these hard bosses they release beyond some drops and camo. They are made available and left without any significance to their release beyond suffering and self-improvement. Making it limited means that it restricts the criteria of beating the boss to a specific time-zeitgeist, so as to avoid redundancy with future LVL limit and new gear upgrades. This also provides an increase in alliance mobilization. Players themselves do their trial runs and post on youtube because they love the game and they also love to share their accomplishments. Making it part of the game routine is a credit to players that want to invest more time in the game and make their effort to gear up more engaging. It also adds one more "endgame-like" limited objective.
Of course, as usual, the inner circle went promptly for my head without even discussing any idea. Let's read them.
This one does make sense, which can be evaluated from toxic hardcore alliances kicking people that would not engage. That is a very predictable move, that could very well be diminished by not giving CORE special items that are required to do important stuff (like auguments in these) exactly like side content i.e Line Strike. You are not losing anything by not engaging, but the difference is that events like this involve main game content, not a total sidelined one. It is an opportunity to grow My concept of event needed to be better developed, so here goes a more inline thinking.
This event would allow, after 2 weeks of R2 released, a special queue. Every day, you would have 3 chances to rank a best time/score. But the thing is that you could only enter this with 3 other alliance players. Yes. And the whole alliance would benefit from players trying their best, as long as they had teams trying this R2, with whatever comp possible.
So, no, I don't think people would actively lose their heads over being casuals that don't want
anything to do with this. If I have an alliance where core players also help casuals and second life idlers and everybody enjoys their time, an optional core event would not conflict with this. Even more, this would also push people to stream their runs on discords with the interested players in their alliances and invite people that are under the BiS ceiling to maybe improve their gear and consume content that improves their game. Remember the feeling of doing a 10-game run to rank yourself on whatever competitive game, and how satisfying it is to doing this uphill battle? That is what i'm talking about.
In a second thought, locking players in alliances would not be a good idea, so easily scrapped, although i think keeping officers fixed would be important to avoid trustworthy players from moving to other allies, maybe the time for these events should be one week only. That is why I suggested it as a draft. Next.
Nope, gaslighting at its finest. Next.
Over what? Special BP for these events? SEGA already does this with paid emotes, BPs from Mandrake and Lawson exclusive items. If you rank the alliances in a top 100 (maybe for each ship or all-ship), and give their members points to trade (even to the ones that didn't participate) based on percentage to spend on the special trade shop for the event in emotes instead of FOMO rushing them like SEGA did with previous seasonal summer event and anniversary, I think it is a win win situation, specially to big 80+ memb alliances. "Oh but more fomo". You are not supposed to have everything, but remember that you could win points without playing effectively. So no forced situation here. If the alliance doesn't have meta players, OK. If your friends try their best in your small alli, you rank and at least all your friends in this alli also win something. Not a single quad on alli even trying gives no one anything.
Again, items on trade shop would be pointless ones to meta players that don't want to join alliances. Also, imagine top 5 allies getting special greek laurels or trophies (like the classes ones) to show off their rank collocation after the results are out in their alliance spaces and low scored ones other special stuff as well for participating? Nothing that sega hasn't considered with their Official Partner Program stuff before.
Again, if the game is already being played like that, why not allowing every member of allies to benefit from the meta players or even participating in something like this? Any educator knows the concept of scaffolding. If you allow people to have the chance to engage and have their quads to improve time, this would benefit the whole community and keep players bored with the game to stay for one more cool reason. The chance would intemerdiate learning. It did to me without this but something official would attract more people.
On top of that people would not be oblidged to do it, and still would win trade points. Win win for something supposedly of a 'sad concept'
Last one because this is so IN-THEBOX. That is the reason I mentioned a single special separated queue. If people want to still do it with their friends and post it online, they can, in the normal passworded (or full) room. Is it that hard?
And the best one "you are not from the sr group, so you should not opinate"
So, you are not one of us, so why bother? We made this and SEGA should hear us first. Gaslighting pure and simple. If one should be from an inner circle to even suggest something, so the community owns the means, not the company who manages it. Can we even think about how out of reality this take is? Anyway, that is just my two cents of a very watered down world clan event that is no news in other games, but, for what NGS had in mind as this freer installment with more and better stuff to do, it is such a pity they dont invest more in these alliance kind of contents because as is today, alliance is just a belta reactor farm for some, and a huge alliance task checkmark. Such a untapped potential for more alliance content.
The same way we celebrate seasons, we should also gather and celebrate new hardcore challenges.
Thank you for reading
GrayFoxRJ
Ship 2.
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